We woke Saturday morning to personal messages from friends in Israel and Gaza…

Both sides devastated.

Both sides terrorized.

Both sides innocent.

And here, within just a few lines, I have already violated the sacred compact of How to Stand with Israel/Palestine.

For “The West”, all deference must be given to Israel.

Calling Palestinians innocent is tantamount to Holocaust denial. A hate crime.

For the “Muslim World” and various anti-colonial, global liberation movements, all deference must be given to Palestine.

Calling Israelis innocent is colonialist. Racist. Nakba denial. A hate crime.

We need a better way.

Crucial Context

Obviously, this war does not come out of nowhere. But it is context and nuance that is immediately thrown to the wind in these times as our timelines fill with flags and hashtags for one side or the other.

Was this terrorism against Israel? Yes, 100%. Hundreds of innocent Israelis have died, villages emptied, and countless taken hostage into Gaza.

Whatever broader context you may rightly add about liberation and years of Israeli oppression, you lose all moral high ground when you beat, rape, and pillage the enemy.

Does Israel use terror against Gaza? Yes, 100%. Millions of innocent Palestinians have been trapped by Israel in an open-air prison called the Gaza Strip for years.

Whatever broader context you may rightly add about Israel’s right to exist, covenants, and land, you lose all moral high ground when you bomb, starve, and destroy an entire population.

Two Things at Once

We are bred to choose sides.

Today, it’s Israel v. Palestine in a rematch of the ages.

But we should resist this simple-mindedness.

Two things can be true at once.

Innocent Israelis and innocent Palestinians are both caught in the crossfire here.

It’s not one or the other. It’s both.

Palestinians ≠ Hamas and Hamas ≠ Palestinians.

Jews and Palestinians can both be terrified at the same time.

Jews and Palestinians can both disagree with the actions of those who claim to represent them and wield the weapons.

Has the Israeli government chosen, over time, to become and sustain an apartheid state? Yes.

Is Hamas a corrupt terrorist organization that co-opts the language and vision of true liberation to maintain its hold on power? Yes.

Are both governments more incentivized to the status quo than a true peace? Yes. Because mortal enemies help us justify the things that we already want to do.

Begging the Question

Centuries of anti-Semitic rhetoric, scapegoating, and slaughter helped forge an identity and culture of Jewish isolationism. “If no one else will protect us, we must protect ourselves.”

This traumatized, save-ourselves view of the world rose out of oppression and genocide.

Ultimately, this collective pain and neurosis led to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel.

For the last 75 years, Palestinians have been living through the very kinds of oppression, scapegoating, dispossession, and torture that earned Israel its special place of global empathy and support.

Who started it?

Who did worse to whom?

These are reductionist questions that seem designed to uphold the status quo.

Who is the oppressor now?

Who has continued settling the land in contravention of all good faith?

Whose children consistently go without food, clean water, electricity, and healthcare because they are trapped inside an open-air prison called the Gaza Strip?

Which society is a modern technological behemoth and which society lives with A.I.-controlled guns trained on their children?

Violence begets violence.

This is why Hamas’s terrorism this weekend was not only morally reprehensible but strategically flawed.

And why Israel’s terrorism, bombing civilians in an environment designed by Israel to prevent safe haven, is not only morally reprehensible but strategically flawed.

Who’s going to finish it?

And how?

These are the most pressing questions of life and death today.

Why say all this?

Do I actually think any of these words matter in the grand scheme of things?

Yes. I do.

Because if we do not work on our humanity, our humanity will work on us.

We are tribal, vulnerable, and given to simplicity.

But we are also loving, caring, and capable of wild acts of sacrifice.

We can be petty and pugilistic.

And we can imagine what it might be like to live on the other side.

All of this is thoroughly human.

But it’s up to us to decide which side of our humanity we feed. Which side we nurture. And which side we upvote in times like these.

The politicians will be out in droves, with lapel pins and security resolutions.

The preachers will be out in droves, with scriptures and prophecies.

And what about the peacemakers?

Where will we be?

As people bleed out under the rubble…

As hostages fear for their lives…

Where will we be? Waving flags, further alienating one side from the other, or holding hands with all who are in need?

Jeremy Courtney
Cofounder
HUMANITE

www.humanite.org

P.S. — HUMANITE Peace Collective is on the ground responding. Here’s how you can help —>