Hamas were wrong, but I stand with Palestine.
Imagine if you will, you have a home. You grew up in that home. In fact, it has been your family home for centuries. At one point you had neighbours next door who weren’t family but they moved a few towns over quite a while back. Like, centuries and centuries back. So for pretty much all of modern history, it’s just been your family in the town, and it’s a beautiful home. Over the years you paid taxes to many different people, and they kept changing the name of your town but it was still your town. It was still your home.
Then about 5 towns over, where the majority of your old neighbours had moved to, there was some trouble. It was nothing to do with you, but it seems the people in the town had decided they didn’t want your old neighbours there anymore. Sensing there was something in the air, your old neighbours begin to think it might be good to get out and they would like to return to your town. As they start to return they realise quite how big your family has gotten, every house in every street seems to be your family, and they’re not sure they like it. They begin a movement, small at this point, to claim they are the rightful owners of your town. A town you have been in for thousands of years, that they’ve only just returned to after about 2,000 years away. For about 25 years this movement grows, bringing more of your old neighbours back to the town.
Turns out though, these returning neighbours were right when they sensed trouble in the air, because the people 5 towns over really wanted them gone. They took them from their houses and put them into camps that many didn’t survive. It was a horrendous experience for your old neighbours. Devastating in fact. Eventually, other towns worked together to liberate them, but it was clear they couldn’t remain in that town anymore. One of the towns that liberated them, they actually were the current people you were paying your taxes to. And they decided, without a word to you about it, that what they would do is they’d split your town. They’d let you keep some of it, but part of it would be given to your old neighbours.
You and your family are thinking hold on a minute, this is our home. We’ve been here for thousands of years. All of this town matters to us, our roots are miles deep in every corner, you can’t just decide it’s not ours anymore. Your neighbours declare the section they’ve been given the true town, and to your dismay, the rest of the towns agree. Not only do they agree, but for decades they refuse to acknowledge your town is legitimate at all.
Your neighbours also decide the section they were given isn’t enough. They want the entire town and start edging their way in, taking you and your family from your houses and claiming them as their own. Despite acknowledging that their occupation of your sections is illegal, the other towns send them money, weapons and aid to enable them to further their stake on your land. It is declared that any descendants of your neighbours who have never even stepped foot on the land can claim it theirs, show up tomorrow and move in. However your family members who were expelled or forced to flee the town, they cannot do the same.
Eventually, it gets to the point that 85% of what was historically your home has been taken by them. Huge numbers of your family were expelled from their homes and forced into this one tiny strip for the last 70 years. They’ve hemmed you in and they control everything. Food, water, electricity, medicine, it all only gets to you if they decide to allow it. Every second, a third of the population are without electricity by design. The neighbours block the resources you need for sustaining a power grid. They have checkpoints for entry into other parts of the town and they have one channel for people like them and people from other towns, but they make you go down a separate channel. To get a passport, you have to meet the requirements laid out by the government of your neighbours, so you can only leave or return to your home with their permission. They control the land, the sea, and the sky around you, turning what was once your home into an open-air prison.
If it were you, would you not want to fight for safety, security, and respect in your home? Would you not want freedom from the control of the coloniser?
To be clear, I do not support the actions of Hamas. Targeting civilians and taking them hostage is a war crime, whether you are the oppressor or the oppressed. Targeting women for the sake of degrading them to assert your power is not in any way aligned with fighting for your freedom. It is violence and terror for violence and terror’s sake. I absolutely feel for the ordinary Israeli citizen who is in fear for their safety. I feel for the Jewish outside of Israel who feel unsafe because ignorance leads people to assume being Jewish must mean support of Zionism and Israeli occupation. Far too many take the Israel-Palestine conflict as a chance to be both anti-semitic and Islamophobic, something that is literally endangering lives and also hinders valid criticisms of the Israeli government as an oppressive force.
But I absolutely do not stand with Israel. Israel who have responded to the Hamas attack by dropping bombs on the Gaza Strip. Israel who have responded to the Hamas attack by cutting off the water, fuel, and electricity supply to the Gaza Strip. They also plan to cut off food and medicine supplies. 50% of the population of the Gaza Strip are children. 50%. 80% of the population relies entirely on outside aid to survive due to the ongoing conflict with Israel. Aid hasn’t reached them since Saturday. Israel has in fact warned Egypt that if they attempt to send trucks with aid to Gaza, they will not hesitate to bomb those trucks. Levelling them with bombs, denying them water, electricity, food, medicine and aid, that isn’t a targeted response to the group that harmed you. Children and vulnerable people are going to die. It’s the beginnings of a genocide by illegal occupiers.
Between January 1st 2008 - September 19th 2023 there have been at least 6,407 Palestinian fatalities as a direct result of confrontations between Palestine and Israel. 3,212 of those were as a result of airstrikes. 3,808 of those were civilian lives lost. In that same time, the number of Israeli fatalities was 308, and 177 of them civilian. The scale of the violence the Palestinian people are subjected to every year is astronomical. This one act by Hamas is the only time in 15 years that Israeli fatalities outnumber Palestinian, and with the response by Israel it’s not likely to stay that way for long.
To sit and watch as political figureheads the world over speak of standing with Israel in the face of terror, knowing they sit silently whilst Palestinians exist in a world where they don’t know anything but terror? To hear it from the exact same mouths who say “Stand with Ukraine against the illegal occupation of their land by an oppressive state.” It is mind-melting. Look at the data. Look at the chart. It is inconceivable to me that it is the bars in green we are expected to stand alongside. To stand in support of. Hamas’s attack was wrong. It was inhumane. It was illegal. That should not be up for debate. Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the treatment of the Palestinian people is wrong, it is inhumane, and it is illegal. That shouldn’t be up for debate either.
And look, this is a very simplified version of a very long and complex history of political, social, and religious conflict. People study for years to try and understand the crux of this conflict, and to come up with viable solutions. You or I will not become experts through opinion pieces and “what you need to know about Israel-Palestine relations” infographics. But one day this conflict will be looked at in the same way we now look at Apartheid in South Africa, the way we look at the violence of the British Empire, the way we look at the treatment of Native Americans by Christopher Columbus. On the whole, without needing to be experts on the topic, we tend to agree on which side of history we like to think we would have stood if we’d been around then. So the question is which side do you stand on now?
I stand with Palestine.