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?
20+ years ago, when I was a freshman in high school, a Palestinian refugee joined our class. He mentioned off-handedly how quiet it was where we lived at night - he was used to hearing rockets/bombs all night while trying to sleep.
Then I started reading.
I’ve always stood with Palestine.
I’m genX, so South African apartheid was constantly on the news through my childhood. It doesn’t take much to see that Israel is just as shitty.
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The one caveat is that the sides are not equal. The Israelis have the resources to set up a 2-state solution unilaterally if they wanted, while the Palestinians are in an active famine right now. They’re just not willing to bear the economic and security costs of that, so the cycle continues.
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I mean, democracy is an ideology too. If you want to see a place with no ideology, think of somewhere with openly corrupt mafia-like rule. I’d point the finger more at tribalism.
No I meant believes in particular ideologies. I should have been more specific that I mean the fervor-type belief that is also exemplary with religion usually, but of course also shows up with Trumpsters a lot. I used both right to one another but didn’t specify, sorry.
Two things:
- two different Israeli tourists told me that Palestinians were animals during the course of different conversations at different times
2).I saw Five Broken Cameras
Those both happened at least a decade ago, and I’ve been pretty vocal about my condemnation of IDF violence since that point, and it’s been insane to have gotten s*** about supporting Palestine for so many years and then in the last few months see a complete reversal of the American perspective.
I’ve actually had someone reach out to me to ask some clarifying questions now that the hospital bombings and IDF invasions happening for decades are actually being reported on and there’s no way to ignore the overwhelming military and cultural advantage israel has in this conflict.
two different Israeli tourists told me that Palestinians were animals
One of the local businesses I frequent is owned by an Israeli man and he was telling me they all deserve to die, all of them, men, women, and children. He believes the world needs to be rid of all Palestinians.
I had been hanging out all night with a few israelis who were really nice and cool, and they were kind of hippies and were telling me how it was so cool how traveling made them feel so open with other people, and how the world was one, so I was like well but it’s kind of difficult with Palestine right?
And immediately one of them said “well not Palestine, Palestinians are animals.”
Another one you could tell by her face knew he shouldn’t have said that, and explained to me that nothing would ever work out Palestine because they were completely unreasonable and she paraphrased what he said but in less explicit language.
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I’ve never really understood people wanting to travel there or even move there as the danger of terrorist attacks seemed to high to risk it (and I travelled quite a bit in the world).
But when I looked into it to resolve my ignorance the apartheid nature seemed very clear to me (I had family in SA) so I was aware of the issue. So since a couple of years ago, maybe even a decade, the politics of Israel were very much against what I deem right and productive… or ethical.
So superficially I was for Israel (history class in school, Western news reporting, etc.) before I started inform myself.
I knew about the Free Palestine movement before the war but never knew much about the details. I didn’t know what Palestine was, exactly. I knew Hamas was a terrorist organization but couldn’t tell you what country they were in.
Then the attacks happened, and I saw a huge disparity among my friends. About half supported Palestine and half supported Israel, so I decided to spend a night researching the history of the conflict. That was an eye opener.
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but Hamas has the better media presence
They’re officially declared a terrorist organisation in many places, and nobody argues with it (not unreasonably, but nobody’s going after the settlers for the same). They might be pulling forward a bit right now, but historically the Israeli lobby has been no joke in the West.
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Yeah, I can cherry-pick morons off the internet too. That was an approximate “nobody”, there are of course some voices at the fringe. I mostly agree with OP, I just thought that one bit was an odd take.
As for the rest, terrorist is a meaningless word for non-state actors we don’t like. Hamas is not bad because they’re terrorists, but because they’re theocrats that want to eliminate the neighboring ethnic group. They are not alone.
Dude literally said that everyone he knows was siding with the genocided people side so he choose to side with one doing the genocide ,bruh…
So many Palestinians support Hamas that it’s hard to have sympathy.
That’s like saying Vietnamese deserves what US troops dis to them because they supported their freedom fighters.
My people too sided with their freedom fighters and were massacred for it. It was the same with every colonized country. You’re literally saying they don’t have the right to fight for their freedom.
The fight is more evenly matched than you suggest
So Isreal which is funded with billions and billions from USA who also literally bully anyone from trying to stop the genocide being committed by ‘Israel’, an apartheid state whose crimes are so horrible that despite the immense amount of propaganda they pour everywhere, peoples around the world still sided with palestinians, the fight as you call it or more precisely the one sided genocide is even. Okey.
Don’t try to make sense. They wanna hear “choose-your-side” opinions
Hamas has the better media presence? While Israel is doing a bad job I don’t think that’s the case at all. Hamas isn’t winning heats, but Palestinians are.
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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.
colonizers moving into Palestine and establishing a new country on their homeland
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?
supposed to be some “gotcha”?
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
Violent resistance is an unfortunate but nearly inevitable consequence to colonizing
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.
Westerner and was never brought up that one side was good or bad but that there was a failure of separation of church and state and this has led to a horrific unsolvable mess. Modern westerners are pretty sensitive to terrorism though and if you are a small religious sect attacking an established nation-state that has been an ally to western nations, yeah you become the greater evil in the eyes of most with a western upbringing. Other than the children, there aren’t a whole lot of innocents involved here. It’s many shades of grey. For those that have a voice in choosing leaders, I advise to lean against choosing any with strong religious convictions - even if they align with your own. Keep government secular.
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Talking with a LGBTQ muslim lady on Facebook 9 years ago. I was an islamophobe/Israel praising person and I had the lucky to find this chill and lovely woman who spent her time talking with me about islamophobia in general and the Palestinian situation as well, despite not being her obligation to do so. Thank you, Maryam for being a teacher for me!
Used to think Israel action is fair because Hamas been firing rocket in those building, but i’m not sure what and why this one particular incident that somehow started disillusion me. It’s the bombing of a high-rise housing Associated Press and Al Jazeera, Israel claimed it’s used by Hamas, but never provided any proof afterward.
Then a year later, the murder of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Israel blame Palestine but later investigation found out that it’s the Israel force that did it.
Then i dig deeper and found out they kill children without reason, and it’s a well documented fact.
the murder of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh
This was fucked up, worst part is they didn’t punish or release the name of the soldier responsible.
The sheer number of people, organizations, and national institutions that fell over each other in scrambling to support Israel/condemn Hammas set off my bullshit detector.
I’m still not taking sides, but the pro-Israel blitzkrieg is so over the top that I don’t accept it at face value. Someone’s trying to sell me something.
I’m not taking any sides. I knew it was a stupid fucking holy war. Israel is pretty big as it is anyways and so they take out everything on a slice of land they dwarf?
Just more senseless suffering over belief. Fuck all of it.
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Actually I won’t remember this years from now. I barely even remember about caring for 9/11. I even sometimes forget that the Ukraine/Russia war is even happening.
Want to know why? Because I don’t get myself too damn hung up on these things like you do. Cry me a river.
When Hamas intentionally killed innocent children with no agenda but to do just that then we had Palestinians in Western nations on the streets openly celebrating it, I realize that Hamas needed to go altogether. When Hamas would hold hostages under hospitals and hide behind Palestinian shields, I knew it was pretty much impossible to not have a great number of civilian deaths. We had possible treaty under Arafat but those were negotiated under bad faith by the Palestinian leaders and fell apart. No amount of aid will help the Palestinians when a great deal of it goes to Hamas.
When it was explained to me 25+ years ago how Israel was invented, and so I did further reading. Religious divides are wrong in every way, and they are prevent neighbourly integration, so I decided I disagree with Israel as a concept, just as I disagree with all apartheid systems. This invasion just solidified my opinion.
And bias in the media? The news here in Oz yesterday covered an orphaned four-year-old being returned to her family just because she was American/Israeli. It left out the many other orphaned four-year-olds dead or dying or lying in pain and fear, without medical attention, because of Israels “action”. The ones killed and injured with weapons Israel is lying about using, such as phosphorus. The media are biased as all get out. Poor little kids didn’t have a chance.
