Israel/Palestine: Taking sides with civilians

A nation without a state were given a state. But it was another nation’s state, previously Greek, Roman, Arabic, Egyptian, Ottoman, and British, among others. And it was the stateless nation’s homeland too, once, 2 000 years ago.

Exiles ever since, they’d finally come home – albeit to someone else’s home. And so the other nation became second-class citizens in their own land.

What a mess… I hear my own silence on the Israeli-Palestinian-Hamas-holocaust-genocide-apartheid war like a rebuke.

Understanding the conflict

On Russia-Ukraine it was glass-clear, with an aggressor and a country defending itself. Finished. But Israel-Hamas is clear as mud. And what could I possibly contribute? Hopes and prayers? If that worked the world would have been at peace long ago.

A solidarity march to an embassy then – but which one? Israeli? Palestinian? On body count alone, I’d say Palestine; also they’re under siege, cut off from water, medicine, humanitarian aid, hope…

But then civilian Israel was mercilessly attacked, its kibbutzim overrun by thugs with guns, leaving babies riddled with bullets, young people hunted down like vermin at a music festival, and a death that somehow haunts me most of all: the granny whose killing was recorded on her phone then posted to her Facebook page, where her grandchildren saw it.

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Children

The Jewish nation has a history of brutal victimhood, of pogroms and genocide, with six million of their own massacred in living memory just for being Jewish. But does that give Israel a pass when it comes to upholding human rights?

No. Does that mean they can rain missiles on thousands with nowhere to run, hoping to hit the men using civilians like a shield – those who are fighting for a country they consider stolen? No.

So for fear of my silence being read as indifference, I’ll say this: what a sprawling, tragic, gordian knot it is. I cannot imagine how to fix it; I do not expect it will be solved in my lifetime, but it certainly won’t be while missiles fly.

Am I taking sides then? Yes. The side where children aren’t murdered, where families are safe in their homes – so nobody’s side, and everybody’s.

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