We’re a group of activists in a Western country where most have been brought up with either “Israel = good, Hamas = bad” or “It’s a sad, but unsolvable conflict between two equal sides”. The media heavily skewed to the Israeli perspective, and our politicians want to condemn protests in support of Palestinians. Therefore, unless you purposefully seek out information on what’s going on in Palestine, you won’t really encounter information about the occupation, the apartheid or the human rights violations. There are a lot of gaps in people’s information and understanding of the situation.
Atm there’s a lot of dehumanization, a lot of “Well, what can you do? Hamas keeps attacking Israel, what are they supposed to do?”. I think the Israel=Good is deep-rooted in a lot of westerners. I know it was in me.
We’ve asked ourselves and each other what finally broke through our previous perception, so we could see the inequality and realize that what’s happening is not right
One mentioned seeing a journalist in the back of an ambulance being handed a one-year-old that had passed
One mentioned seeing a video of a caring father saying goodbye to his little girl, kissing her eyes before she was wrapped in the materiale they wrap their dead. The father clearly in denial, smiling and wishing for her to wake up.
A big one for me was being told that it’s not an equal fight. It’s not two equally strong countries. It’s one country with a huge military, and another with barely any. Another was hearing about the human rights violations that’s been going on for decades - the fabricated water shortage, the children in Israeli jails.
I believe these are the moments we need to collect and present to those who are still wary on where they stand.
What broke through to you?
You’re being reductive. Is it ignorance or bias?
Jews are historically native people to the region. Ancestors of both Israel and Palestine have been living in the Levant for thousands of years, alongside other tribal people: Israelites (sound familiar?), Philistines (hmm?), Judah (oh!?), Canaanites, Samaritans, Phoenicians, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_ancient_Levant
Long before the concept of nations and hard borders, long before the concept of colonialism, long before the violent conquest of the Islamic Caliphates, the native tribal people of Israel, Judah, and Philistine occupied an area that can only be considered their collective native homeland.
So here’s a little history quiz: how did Arab Muslims wind up living in Gaza anyway?
Maybe they were invited by the native people of Israel, Judan, and Philistia?
No “gotcha”. Just objective facts and history.
Read up, learning is free and it’ll be good for you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_Israel_and_Judah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War
Killing women and children in cold blood isn’t “resistance”, it’s cowardly terrorism. Historically ignorant and largely baseless claims of colonization don’t justify the type of brutal barbaric terrorism that we saw on October 7th. What’s more, terrorism hasn’t proven to be a very good or effective strategy for making life in Gaza better, it’s only made things dramatically worse for people there.
The “unfortunate but nearly inevitable consequence” to putting a genocidal terrorist organization like Hamas in control of your people is that they will ultimately do things that provoke a war. Hamas wanted a fight, Netenyahu wanted a fight, they both wanted each other, and now they have a war. It’s not a mystery.
Hamas war criminals should release their hostages, surrender themselves to the IDF, and give Gaza back to the Palestinian people who they have been autocratically governing for nearly 20 years.
Likewise Israel should release the people who they’ve held without charges and due process, they should respect the national borders that they themselves established by pulling back “settlers” living in Palestinian territory, and they should rid their government of right-wing warmongers like Netenyahu and Ben-Gvir.