Everyone Has Lost the Plot

The Israel-Palestine crisis is complicated. And no, that's not me equivocating.

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A note:

The following is an essay that was very hard for me to write. Writing about Israel — my homeland, the place where I was forged and formed — is the hardest writing I do. This isn’t everything I think about Israel and Palestine. It’s where I am now, at 10:00 am on November 6, 2023. As all people, I am always learning and growing. If you have something to contribute to the conversation, I welcome it as long as you write from a place of kindness and compassion. I hope you read these words with an open heart.

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Since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas, when terrorists busted through the huge wall and instead of attacking the Israeli army decided to go house to house and behead children, gang rape women, and kill elderly people in wheelchairs, I have been writing about how we need to challenge ourselves to dig deep and find compassion in our hearts for people on “the other side.”

I wrote about this when friends and family in Israel told me they couldn’t find any compassion for Gazans because they are too appalled by the brutal massacre of Israeli innocents. I wrote about the need for compassion when I saw my friends posting that the Hamas had no choice but to ravage citizens because they are oppressed. I wrote about it as everyone around me, on the streets in the real world and in the virtual cesspool that is social media, seemed to have lost every semblance of a moral compass.

I’ve seen tweets about how it wasn’t that many beheaded babies in Southern Israel, as though that is a sentence that’s comprehensible in any way. I’ve heard friends and family say it probably isn’t that many thousands of innocent Palestinians being pulled from the rubble of their homes. As though that is a sentence that makes sense to anyone concerned with the value of human life.

And lately, I’ve read many, many, too many think pieces that talk about the ravaging of the Gaza strip without any context. Not one mention of anything that happened on October 7th, as though Israel woke up one day and decided to walk into Gaza for no damn reason. No mention of the vast reserves of food, water, fuel, and everything else that Hamas — the actual leadership of the Palestinians — is intentionally hoarding despite the fact that their citizens are drinking salt water. That babies in incubators are dying as the electricity shuts off. That people are, on average, living on two slices of bread a day. All this while, by the account of a released hostage, Hamas militants in their underground tunnels (that they built with cement intended for homes) eat pita with cheese and cucumber. Fresh vegetables, while your citizens starve? Surely, there should be some onus on a leadership that makes these choices.

No mention of the fact that Israelis and Palestinians don’t even like their governments, by and large. Or the political complexities behind the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, who wants to stay in power so he doesn’t have to go to trial for corruption and is therefore beholden to his coalition members who are, in short, a dumpster-fire. Or the fact that there haven’t been elections in Gaza since the early aughts.

It’s complicated, is what I’m saying.

I want to be even-handed, despite the fact that no one on the left has accorded me the same kindness. Israel is bombing the shit out of Gaza. There is nothing surgical about what is happening — it’s like dealing with a broken leg by amputating it. I don’t know what a “proportionate response” to the murder and mutilation of 1400 citizens, kidnapping 240 more, and displacing 200,000 more. But I cannot watch what is happening to Palestinian citizens and think this is the only way to take out an army of terrorists set on our destruction. If a physician told me the only way to fix my broken leg was to cut the whole thing off, I’d get another doctor. There must be some middle ground between killing 10,000 Palestinian civilians in order to get rid of Hamas and not getting rid of Hamas.

I wrote last week, and I will write it again:

Children being harmed are children being harmed, are they not? Is an Israeli child somehow guilty of a crime because of their heritage in a way the Palestinian children are not? Or vice versa?

Of course not. Children should not be held accountable for the political or ideological ideas of the adults in their midst. Unless, of course, you believe pain is finite or that some people are not deserving of empathy.

Palestinian civilians should not be punished for the actions of Hamas murderers. Israeli children should not be punished for the actions of settlers in the West Bank.

To me, this is not hard to understand. And yet. So many fucking think pieces. Everyone seems to think it’s easy to decide what’s right. Worse, depending what side you’re on, it’s as though the other people’s pain is either non-existent or isn’t that bad anyway.

It is that bad. That doesn’t take away from the legitimacy of the claim that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve justice for what has happened — not just in recent weeks but over the last 75 years of ongoing struggle, murder, displacement, hatred, and grief. On both sides.

Here’s one thing I am not going to do in this piece. I’m not going to tell you, in detail, about all the people I’ve known and known who were bombed, shot at, killed, soaked in the blood of their friends. You’ll have to believe me that I have known this kind of fear my whole life. I’m not going to make a spectacle of my trauma to prove that lives of my family and friends matter, too.

I will tell you that, as someone who grew up in Jerusalem during the second Intifada, I know a lot about Israel and Palestine. And I know that there’s a lot I don’t know. The sheer audacity to think you can have an opinion on something so complex, with so many intertwined narratives (many of which are both contradictory and true), with so much rich history and so many conflicting accounts, without a dedicated course of study is baffling to me. I have dedicated a great deal of time and energy confronting the myths I was taught and questioning the information in books, articles, speeches, and more. I know a lot, and I am learning more all the time.

I’m not equivocating when I say it’s fucking complicated. It just is complicated.

And all these slogans, all these Op-Eds with their bright (and simple) ideas about how to solve a decades-old conflict, have ramifications in the real world. A Palestinian-American boy was killed. Non-Israeli Jews and Israeli Jews alike are facing harassment and violence. Suddenly swastikas are showing up at leftist rallies. What the hell, folks?

When I hear people say that Israelis should just go somewhere else, what I hear is that my family should just uproot themselves and move somewhere else. When I hear that the Israelis in the South had it coming to them, what I hear is that if I had been murdered on that day, you would be ok with it. Revolutions are bloody, after all!

There’s only two things I know for sure about Israel-Palestine.

1. No one is going anywhere. 10 million Israelis are not going back to Poland, Latvia, Yemen, Algeria, or anywhere else. The children being raised there now are the fifth generation of Israelis. They belong there. Likewise, the nearly 7 million Palestinians are not going anywhere. Even under the horrifying conditions in Gaza, people have been reported as saying they want to stay. As is their right. A two-state solution is the only damn solution so we should all stop pretending the other side doesn’t exist or is just going to cave and cede all the territory at some point. Not gonna happen.

2. Humanity and compassion are our greatest tools to a solution. Unless we begin to see one another as human beings with legitimate pain and grief, we’ll be killing each other forever. This is the hardest part. It’s why organizations like the Standing Together Movement and Breaking the Silence are so important. Worldwide, we are too focused on punishment and a zero-sum view of pain. If we cannot understand that one person’s loss and horror does not detract from the loss and horror of another, we’ll never get out. There’s a reason this is the hardest, and most important thing. If it was easy, we would have figured it out already.

If you’re interested in learning the various narratives of the conflict currently, I recommend reading multiple news sources and comparing them with a critical eye. This is what I do, to ensure I’m not just in my own little echo chamber. To be clear, I am not saying I support everything (or anythign specific) written by journalists on these sites. I’m saying it’s important to see what other people think and really try to understand how they’re thinking and why they might think those thoughts. Here are a few good ones:

Israeli / Jewish News Sources

• Haaretz

• +972 Magazine

• Yediot Achronot

Arab World / Palestinian News Sources

• Al Jazeera

• Palestine Chronicle

• Middle East Eye

For books on the topic, I recommend these two to start. Again, as a way of hearing multiple points of view and narratives:

Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore

The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood by Rashid Khalidi

I have read the latter and the former comes highly recommended. It’s on my TBR list.

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If you don’t want reading homework, that’s fine. I get it. The only thing I ask is that you try, try, and then try some more to remember that human lives have value regardless of where they’re from and who their government is. Then, if you express an opinion about Israel and Palestine, remember that everyone is hurting. A lot. Remember that having empathy for endless people is not only possible but crucial, especially at this time when it’s hardest. Come humble to the situation. Come open to learning. Come loving. Imbue your rage over the atrocities in the region with love for humanity. The only way out is through the heart.

Sending love,

Mikhal

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Some organizations to donate to:

Standing Together Movement

“We envision a society that serves all of us. A just and equal society that treats every person with dignity. A society that chooses peace, justice, and independence for Israelis and Palestinians – Jews and Arabs. A society in which we all enjoy real security, adequate housing, quality education, good healthcare, a liveable climate, a decent salary, and the ability to age with dignity. Such a society is possible – we’re already building it.”

B’Tselem

“B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories strives for a future in which human rights, liberty and equality are guaranteed to all people, Palestinian and Jewish alike, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Such a future will only be possible when the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime end. That is the future we are working towards. B’Tselem (in Hebrew literally: in the image of), the name chosen for the organization by the late Member of Knesset Yossi Sarid, is an allusion to Genesis 1:27: “And God created humankind in His image. In the image of God did He create them.” The name expresses the universal and Jewish moral edict to respect and uphold the human rights of all people.”

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

“Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF), founded in 1991 by concerned humanitarians in the USA, provides free medical care to thousands of injured and ill children yearly who lack local access to care within the local health care system.  Over the years, we've sent over 2,000 affected children abroad for free medical care, sent thousands of international doctors and nurses to provide tens of thousands of children free medical care in local hospitals, and provided tens of thousands of children humanitarian aid and support they otherwise would not get. “

Leket: Providing Meals to Displaced Israelis

For Homebound Individuals and Seniors: Leket will purchase 320,000 cooked meals . These meals will be delivered to recipients directly or through local NPOs.

For Families: Leket will purchase essential supplies, including food, diapers, formula, and more, from local grocery stores in the South. These supplies will be distributed by local NPOs in the South, supporting both families in need and local business owners.

Leket will provide financial assistance through magnetic cards, to help individuals affected by the war. This program aims to assist those whose income has been impacted or who lack access to their consistent sources of aid.