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?
Hamas is a direct result of Israel’s actions. If Israel hadn’t carried out an apartheid for the last 70 years Hamas wouldn’t even exist. It doesn’t help that Israel directly funded Hamas in favor of secular liberation groups.
By that very same logic, what you’re calling an “apartheid for the last 70 years” can be called a “direct result” of Palestine’s actions. I’ll explain…
Both the areas of Palestine and Israel were defined by the British after the fall of the Ottoman Empire who controlled the Levant (and more) for the hundreds of years prior. (We all know that Jews have been living in that area for millennia, and that Muslim Arabs have been living there since just after being violently conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate (the follow-up to Muhammad’s conquest), ~650AD.) And just one day after the nation of Israel claimed independence a group of neighboring Arab Muslim country’s, Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Iraq, and the Holy War Army of the All-Palestine Protectorate, made the terrible decision to invade Israel, leading to the first Arab-Israeli War of 1948. These five Arab nations miscalculated, and Israel managed to not only fend off but fight back against them, pushing the borders of Gaza and the West Bank to roughly what they are today. (Before the 1948 Arab Israeli War, Palestine controlled almost have of the shared border with Egypt, half of the border with Lebanon, and Palestinian territories were effectively, but narrowly, connected.) After the war, the relationship between Israeli Jews and Arab Muslims hit a new low, and the victorious Israel expelled and relocated the Palestinian Arabs out of their newly acquired territory and into the areas that they hold today.
Long story short, in 1948 a coalition of Arab Muslim countries including Palestine, believed that they could conquer and destroy Israel. They tried and failed, and after a 10 month war, Israel not only defended themselves but pushed Palestinian territory back.
We can go back and back and back in this cycle of violence in which both sides are guilty of waging war and committing crimes against humanity. But it really does take two to tango, and you’d have to be either biased or stupid to pick a side (other than the side of the innocent).
(By the way, I’m not arguing with the fact that Israel, especially Netenyahu’s government, has been backing and propping up Hamas. That’s correct, and it shows that both Israel and Palestine are currently being run by the most extreme warmongering governments possible. They both wanted war, and now they’ve got it.)
Wait, is the fact that Palestine and other Arab countries weren’t cool with colonizers moving into Palestine and establishing a new country on their homeland supposed to be some “gotcha”? Like no shit, I’m sure the Palestinians were just as happy with their colonizers moving in as the native Americans were.
Violent resistance to colonizers in no way justifies the colonizing. Nor does it balance the scales to some sort of “both sides”. Violent resistance is an unfortunate but nearly inevitable consequence to colonizing. Most people aren’t going to welcome the colonizers, nor should they.
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.