What it is like to be a Liberal Israeli right now.
I have received a lot of pings from friends abroad asking what it is like in Israel. So I am putting pen to paper in the most blunt way possible. If you are at all curious/interested in understanding what is going on beyond the misinformation and memes, you are invited to read and share and discuss and make (thoughtful) comments. If you want to go back to your ignorant echo-chamber then go for it.
First, I don't claim to be an expert on history or policy. I am going to share with you my perspective only on this insane and complex situation. I will go one by one by the players involved as I see it.
Regarding Arab Israelis
Arab Israelis, Christians and Muslims, have been treated as 2nd class citizens for far to long in Israel, and they deserve far better. They are an active and vibrant part of Israeli society. They work and pay taxes and participate (which is much more than the Ultra Orthodox do), but they have never been treated as equals. Israel does a horrible job of taking care of their minority populations (except the Ultra Orthodox), and their protests are justified and legitimate. BUT — big but — lynching and rioting is not justified.
It is about damn time that Israel recognized that 20% of the population deserves to be treated equally.
Ironically, even with this statement, a Muslim woman in Israel can vote, divorce, get a job, and drive without fearing for her life.
Regarding Hamas
Make no mistake about it. What you are witnessing from the comfort of your home is the attempted mass destruction and indiscriminate killing of Israeli civilians by Hamas. Full stop. Also, you need to understand that this conflict was not provoked by Israel. Let me repeat this since I have been asked this numerous times: Israel did not start a war with Hamas. Hamas used the internal unrest in Israel over the last month as an excuse to piggyback on the situation and try to flex their muscles. Understand that Hamas triggered the Israel response you see, and had they not fired, not a single Palestinian would have died.
Hamas is a terrorist organization whose charter explicitly states the goal of the organization is the eradication of Jews and Israel. It also states that the role of a woman is just to make male babies, but, you know…
Hamas has a long, storied, and well documented history of oppressing their own people, killing dissenters, maintaining a stranglehold on the people of Gaza for their own political aims, using human shields, and indoctrinating children in their pursuits. Fun times.
Readers need to understand that Hamas does not support the Palestinian cause. Hamas oppresses and kills their own people to maintain their power.
Regarding Palestinians
There is no doubt at all that residents of the Gaza strip are in a humanitarian crisis, and have been for a long time. Unfortunately, every dollar that has been sent their way has been siphoned of by Hamas to build more and more arms. The Palestinians have been shat on for years from every direction — by Israel, by Hamas, and by the larger Arab world (remember when Kuwait kicked out 500,000 of them? Yeah, of course you don't).
Their situation is most dire because nobody knows what to do… They are stuck with Hamas and are effectively powerless to find alternatives — and there are no real alternatives. As someone who greatly wants to see some semblance of peace, or even the basic building blocks in that direction, it is disheartening that the entire subject has been shelved by pretty much everyone over the last five years.
Massive changes need to happen for their situation to improve, but it is really hard for me to see any hope on the horizon in the near term.
Regarding Israel
There is an insidious and dangerous trend going on in Israel right now which is given encouragement and support from for right-wing ultra nationalists like Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich and their followers. For those who don't know who they are — they are the worst of the worst. Ideological right wing racist nut jobs. They actively provoked and lit the fuse of this powder keg.
And guess who enabled them and brought them into the political fold and gave them legitimacy — your boy Bibi Netanyahu (yours, not mine). Already a month ago when things were heating up in the Temple Mount and Sheikh Jarakh, Bibi effectively gave Ben Gvir the green light to continue his juvenile provocations. Good job Beebs, thanks for endangering all of us.
Regarding the Arab World
As predicted, the Arab world will always come out against Israel with broad public statements. Also as predicted, the Arab world will largely do nothing more than that. The reason is simple — they have moved on. They have bigger fish to fry, and bigger issues to address. Times change, priorities change. The UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, and Sudan all signed recent agreements with Israel. Its just business, baby, what can you do.
I do commend Egypt, which also shares a border with Gaza, for being the adult in the room and trying to push for a cease fire.
Regarding the rest of the World
As always, there is an endless onslaught of baseless junk on social media. I would say that 99% of it, both left and right, is ideological crap and not actual fact-based logic.
I mean, look at this ridiculousness:
Fenerbahce players — one of the leading soccer clubs from Turkey — are wearing Free Palestine shirts. Seriously? Turkey? The same country that has been executing, raping, and murdering their Kurdish population for 40 years? The irony. This is like China calling out Islamophobia after all that they have done to their Uyger population. This is like Trump coming out as pro labor unions. To their credit, if there is one country in the world that can say something about massive humanitarian crimes it is Turkey because, you know, they commit them.
As for you Americans…
Too many Americans have proven to me again and again that they are absolutely amazing at making ignorant blanket statements. Throwing around memes on insta/twitter/FB like they know something. What is most disappointing to me is that organizations like BLM are taking sides on something without any thought behind it. If anything, BLM should be most closely aligned with the Arab Israelis, and not with Hamas. Supporting Hamas does not mean supporting Palestinians. Supporting Hamas means you support terror. It means you support murder and oppression and militant radicalism.
I will go so far as to say that your posts/memes/whatever are actually making the situation worse. Instead of fostering dialogue and understand you are creating one-sided echo chambers devoid of thought, logic, or reason.
So now what?
If you want to support Palestinians:
You should do everything in your power to give the people of Gaza an alternative besides Hamas. They need a working and functioning government that puts money in to hospitals, schools, infrastructure, a deep-water sea port, actual STEM education for girls, vaccines, etc. Every dollar you give to Hamas ends up as the broken shrapnel of yet another one of the 2500 rockets that have been launched into Israel over the last week.
Their situation is dire, and incomprehensibly sad, and has been for years, and unfortunately there is no clear solution. I am sure there are organizations who are working toward this. I just hope that it is not too late for the people of Gaza.
If you want to support Israel:
Far right nationalists are a cancer to Israel society. They, and their political enablers, are ripping Israel apart, inciting violence, and actively endangering the broader population. You should ask yourself a hard question — do you really care about Israel, or do you only care about the small sliver that matches your ideology? If you really care about Israel you need to do whatever you can to get people like Ben Gvir and Smotritch (and their enablers) as far away as possible from positions of power and influence.
If you want to support Israeli Arabs:
See above.
I live in a very complex part of the world. Nothing here is black and white. Everything here can be justified and argued to death by some point in history. I am over rehashing history. There is only the present and what you do with it to shape the future.
In this I have come to a distinct conclusion — extremisms, both left and right, is dangerous and undeniably selfish. Why? Because extremists don’t care about you or me. They are willing to make the larger population suffer and potentially die in order to push their agenda and Ideology. I see it with Hamas and the Palestinians. I see it with the far right Israeli nationalists.
It is the same situation with anti-vaxxers, with QAnon, with climate change deniers, etc. People who are willing to endanger the masses in order to push their ideological shit.
You really care about these people and this region? Then do everything in your power to rid them of extremists.
