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 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.
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.
I (early GenX) grew up with: it is an ugly conflict between two evil sides who do not hold back to kill. When agreements are reached, there is always one side who breaches the agreements. Periodic killing returns in a continuous cycle. At the end of every period the conflict hardens and borders are moved.
I have not changed my opinion. I have not seen an eye opener in the past months.
SNAFU: Situation Normal, All Fucked Up
Yeah, plus that hardly describes just Palestine and Israel, more “humanity, as a whole”. It’s just rarely as openly on displayed that it’s all fucked up. Plus, as long as ideologic and religious believes can hold any sway in organizing states or populations, this will never ever ever cease.
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!
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.
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.
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’ve learned a lot more over time, especially recently. I never had a eureka moment though. Everyone deserves to live in peace and with basic human rights. I’ll always advocate for that. Specifically this conflict though is between a Democratic state who has done fucked up shit and a genocidal fundmentalist terrorist group. There is still a clearly much less bad side here.
I know you mean well, but although neither side is wholly anything I can advocate, even after seeing Palestine, if I had to choose, I side with Israel. I don’t care how persecuted you are, you simply do not kill random civilians. That would fall under indiscriminate escalation, which is different from just having a conflict with someone because each of the different levels of escalation, when surpassed, by definition mark the escalator as an antagonist (especially when not just in Israel; the Jewish committee in America have been threatened, so much that the unions are distancing themselves and multiple Jewish American leaders have been killed). And they did it on an Israeli holiday (which adds an extra challenge to them explaining why what’s going on isn’t antisemitic; one of their defenses is “Israeli citizens exist on stolen land, therefore they are thieves and the best punishment for thievery is death” which is almost a word-for-word paraphrasing of Axis Germany’s defense).
Israel in comparison, though they’ve been haughty in how they deal with their neighbors, have been operating under just that, a broken sense of arrogance. If you’re wondering, I do despise what Israel has done to Palestine, and the escalations by Palestine and Hamas don’t take away from the fact that Israel is guilty, enough that I question US involvement in Israel, especially when the US is already involved in India. I have always known what all three countries are doing to Palestine/Pakistan and it feels like they’ve been stabbing the bear for so long, like someone who acquires a garden but doesn’t nourish its flowers. But it’s not something I look at and think “look at how suffering they are, I fully understand why they did what they did now”. No I don’t. You don’t engage in an all-out assault, start a campaign of guerilla warfare which is more psychologically profound, drag Russia and North Korea onto your side just because “they’re you’re enemies’ enemies”, and lie when you do commit tragic accidents like the hospital bombings, which nobody doubts was Hamas’ and Palestine’s doing except them and half their peers (which I understand they cling to because it would foil their original plan of wanting the Saudis to step out of relations with Israel). As a technical LGBT member, I also don’t want to say I 100% trust Palestine to be in control anymore than Israel, as that’s an internal struggle all on its own.
