Sascha Harvey

(Illustration)

I want you to imagine yourself as a young Palestinian boy, born in the early 2000s in Gaza. You grow up in what is essentially a concentration camp, a city under land, sea and air blockade by Israel since 2007. In 2008, you were spared from being one of the 313 children killed in Operation Cast Lead. In 2012, you understood a bit more about the world, and Israeli bombs rain down around you for eight days during Operation Pillar of Defense. In 2014, you are entering your preteen years and hear the story of four boys between the ages of 9 to 11, struck dead by Israeli missiles while playing soccer on the beach in Gaza. As a teenager, you hear the stories of Razan Al-Najjar and Eyad Al-Hallaq, and your anger grows. In 2021, Palestine catches the world’s attention as Gaza is targeted once again, entire families wiped out – but Israel continues its crimes without consequence. 

It’s 2023 now, and you’re an adult. You spent your childhood watching the genocide of your people as Israeli settlers frolic on Tel Aviv beaches and set Palestinian olive groves on fire. You are old enough to have heard your grandparents and parents’ stories of more of the same. Naturally, inevitably, the anger and the pain of living under occupation leads you to take action. 

Civil rights organizer and pan-Africanist Kwame Ture once wrote, “in order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience,” as a criticism of the peaceful approach taken by other African-American leaders in the face of deadly anti-Blackness. 

To me, his words also address a fundamental failure in the western understanding of the Palestinian people and their cause: the white-hot spotlight on their self-defense after 75 years of indifference to violent colonization by Israel.

You cannot sit comfortably in America, which is also stolen land, and pass moral judgment on an indigenous group struggling for liberation from an occupying force your country funds (especially when said natives actually have tried peaceful measures). If you believe that the solution to 75 years of occupation lies in peace talks and “sharing the land,” I strongly suggest you pick up a book and refresh your memory on how Haiti, Algeria and Vietnam achieved independence from their colonizers. 

Liberation isn’t pretty squares on an Instagram story or GoFundMes retweeted a thousand times. It’s painful, ugly and the product of long-endured systemic oppression. And never the fault of the colonized.

The outrage at Palestinians in Gaza, whether they are affiliated with Hamas or not, resorting to violence against their colonizer is selective and hypocritical. Where were your condemnations of civilian death in the indiscriminate bombings of Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021? Why weren’t you moved to call for peace every time Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers raided various cities in the West Bank and shot young Palestinian men for throwing rocks at fully armed tanks? What was your response every time a Palestinian was shot dead at a checkpoint for moving a hand too quickly, or when a Palestinian family was kicked out of its generational home to make room for some racist New Yorkers?

Palestinians who have lived under the thumb of Israeli violence their entire lives are labeled as terrorists. Yet it is Israel that routinely aims its missiles and bullets at residential buildings, medics and journalists. Somehow, Palestinians are the threat that needs to be neutralized when IDF is funded and stocked with cutting-edge technology by the most powerful country in the world. 

Our world has lost the plot so completely that it defends Israeli colonizers with state-of-the-art bomb shelters and Western countries of origin to comfortably cower in, but never the Palestinians with nothing but smuggled weaponry and rocks from the land they so proudly defend as theirs to protect themselves with.

To me, it seems that Israeli civilians got a taste, 75 years later, of the lived experience of those they stole the land from – and I find it incredibly difficult to find sympathy for them.

I urge you to take a step back from your fear of being falsely accused of antisemitism or supporting terrorism, and, instead, take the time to understand the Palestinian plight without the barrage of Western media constantly demonizing us – and choose to be on the correct side of history.

Editor’s note: The quotation marks around “civilians” have been removed. The author did not intend to imply that Israelis are less than human, but to refer to their status as colonizers.