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I received a response on Facebook to something I posted (see below). This is from a non-Jewish person that I went to high school with and haven't been in touch with since. This person was also posting on social media things that my Jewish friends found offensive. I've been asked to share my response so here it is for anyone interested:
Not at all. I don't think any innocent Palestinian should be killed, and certainly not children. The question is who is to blame for their deaths and how do we avoid more deaths in the future? I was born in Israel and lived there for most of my childhood. My entire family still lives there, so I'm speaking from firsthand experience, not from anything I've read in the papers or seen on TV. The truth is that 99% of Israelis just want to live in peace. If tomorrow you removed all weapons from Gaza and the West Bank, there would be no violence. On the other hand, if you removed all weapons from Israel, within a week there would be no Israel. We would be attacked by all our neighbors, not just the Palestinians, and every last Jew would be murdered. In order for there to be peace, the first thing you need is for each side to recognize the other's right to exist. 99% of Israelis recognize the Palestinians' right to exist and govern themselves. This includes all of my friends and family and everyone I know. As we well know, there are always extremists in any society, so that's why it's not 100%. Of course, Bibi (the Prime Minister) and some decisions from the government, primarily relating to settlements, haven't helped the peace process, and we fully recognize that (we can discuss the peace process separately and how the Palestinians have rebuffed every attempt Israel has made over the years to find a solution). However, over the past year+, you've had hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting against Bibi in the streets, including my family and friends. Even my 85-year-old grandma was in the street protesting. That's because Israel is the only place in the Middle East where one can safely protest against the government. Not to mention the only place where women have equal rights, and being gay isn't punishable by imprisonment or death. We can get back to that. When Iranians recently protested against the "moralilty police" that was beating women to death for removing their hijab, the government's response was to publicly execute protestors as a deterrent. And it worked.
My point is that Israel has always just wanted peace. In 1948 when the UN partitioned the land, the Jews said, "Okay, let's make this work." The Arabs immediately attacked us on all fronts. It's been the same story for 75 years. We're attacked, we win the war, and we wait for the next barrage. Still, we've managed to achieve peace with at least some of our neighbors. Let's use Egypt as an example. Egypt attacked Israel in 1948, 1967, 1973 (not including smaller skirmishes along the years). After the war in 1973, Egypt finally decided that it was better for its citizens to live alongside Israel peacefully than to keep trying to eliminate it. For the first time, Egypt recognized Israel's right to exist, and we've had relative peace ever since. The same thing happened with Jordan, which borders Israel on the east. They attacked us numerous times, and peace only happened after we beat them so badly that they decided it's better for their citizens to recognize Israel and live alongside us, than to keep attacking us.
There are a lot of words and narratives tossed around about the existing conflict that are simply not true. For example, Israel does not occupy Gaza and hasn't since 2005. In fact, there is not a single Jew or Israeli in Gaza except those held hostage. In 2005, Israel pulled out of Gaza and forcefully removed about 9,000 Jews who were living there at the time. We turned it over to the Palestinians and offered to supply them with whatever they needed to build a thriving state. There was no siege and no occupation. Israel provided Gaza with food, electricity, money, and continued to do so until about three weeks ago. The Palestinians elected Hamas to govern Gaza. Hamas immediately started a bloody civil war in which it eliminated all its political opponents - who are Palestinian, by the way - and has held power ever since. Hamas' mission isn't up for interpretation. They have a charter, which you can read online, that in its preamble (i.e., the very first paragraph) states that "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." This is just one of many places where they make it clear that their goal is to eliminate Israel and the Jews. Nothing about creating a thriving Palestinian state. Since Hamas fully took control of Gaza in 2007, it has been nothing but violence. Hamas has openly declared war on Israel the Jews and has spent the past 16 years solely focused on killing as many of us as possible. Gaza receives hundreds of millions of dollars in aid each year. It's received billions of dollars since Hamas took over and has nothing to show for it. That's because Hamas doesn't use that money to build infrastructure or schools or parks or art centers or anything you'd expect a government to provide its citizens. Instead, it uses all the money to build weapons and tunnels in order to carry out its stated purpose of eliminating Israel. It's impossible to negotiate a two-state solution if one side's demand is that the other side is eliminated.
In Israel, we've gotten used to living under rocket fire, which is insane in its own right. Every building in Israel has a safe room, and, as we speak, most of my family is sitting in one as alarms glare across the country. I lived in Israel during the Gulf War, and we'd spend many nights in our safe room wearing gas masks as bombs fell all around us. One fell close enough to melt the paint off the side of our house. I also lived there during the first intifada, when buses and restaurants and shops were blown up every week. When I was in third or fourth grade (can't remember now), three girls in my school who were a year older than me went to the mall in Tel Aviv and were blown up by a suicide bomber. No other country in the world would accept living under constant rocket fire. But we were willing to continue living this way to avoid casualties in Gaza because it's impossible to retaliate against Hamas without killing civilians. This is because Hamas keeps and fires its weapons from residential neighborhoods, including schools and hospitals. This has been well-documented for years.
However, after what happened on October 7th, we can no longer live with Hamas on our doorstep. The scale and barbarity of the attack has shaken every single person in the country. You can choose whether to believe the details you've likely heard on the news or social media, but I can tell you that I personally know people there who have seen things that are unimaginable. Entire families burned to death in their homes and much worse. My cousin is a soldier in the south. There's a rotation in which each weekend some soldiers get to go home, and it so happened to be his turn on the 7th. His unit was attacked that morning while they slept. Four of his best friends were murdered, and eight more were badly injured. A good family friend of ours is from Kibbutz Nahal Oz, which was attacked that day. I'm not exaggerating when I say that mostof his friends have been murdered or kidnapped. I'm sharing these stories with you to reiterate that I'm speaking from personal experience, not what I see in the media.
After what happened on the 7th, Israelis almost unanimously agree that Hamas must be removed. The question is how to do this with minimal civilian casualties. This is a very difficult problem since Hamas operates from within the civilian population. Keep in mind that Israel has the military capability destroy Hamas from the air. If we were really trying to commit genocide, as has become a popular slogan all around the world, then we could easily flatten Gaza from the sky without a single Israeli soldier being killed. Of course, we would never even consider something like that because we, unlike Hamas, value human life. For us, each life is sacred. I'm not religious by any means, but there is a saying that comes from Judaism that "whoever saves a life saves the entire world." That's why the hostage situation is so painful in Israel. Everyone knows a hostage or knows someone who knows a hostage, with never more than one degree of separation. When Hamas last kidnapped a single soldier, we released 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including those that committed terrible attacks against Israelis, in exchange for him. We'd gladly empty our prisons to get back the 230+ hostages now being held. You have kids, right? Imagine if they were taken from you and held in some dark tunnel by terrorists who have declared their intention to wipe your people off the face of the earth. What would you do to get them back? What would you expect your government to do? These are not rhetorical questions, I would love to hear your response.
More than any other word I've seen, genocide is the one that's been most misused and is the most dangerous. Genocide is defined as the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group. The word was invented after WW2 to describe what Hitler did to the Jews. It's also Hamas' openly stated purpose. On the other hand, no one in Israel wants to, nor has any intention to, destroy the Palestinians (setting aside the few extremists we identified above). The reason that Israel is sending ground troops into Gaza is to identify Hamas operatives as precisely as possible to try and protect the general population. Many Israeli soldiers will die trying to accomplish this. I pray that doesn't include my cousins or any of my friends.
Furthermore, Israel provides Palestinians with electricity, food, water, medical supplies and treatment, and jobs. Thousands of Palestinians cross into Israel every day to earn wages that are impossible to get in Gaza or the West Bank. That's because Hamas, the elected government in Gaza, isn't interested in economic growth, minimum wages, or any of the basic functions that one expects from its government. The average Palestinian lives in poverty, while the leaders of Hamas, who work for Iran, are incredibly wealthy and live far away in Qatar. Now Israel is being accused of genocide for cutting off electricity to Gaza. In what world is one country obligated to provide electricity to another, let alone when that country is firing rockets and murdering its citizens? The Palestinians receive enough aid to build all the power plants they'd ever need, but instead use that money to build rockets. Israel is being accused of genocide because of its siege of Gaza. What about Egypt? They share a border with Gaza and have refused to open it or let any Palestinians into Egypt. Why is that? That's because even Egypt, which is run by the Muslim Brotherhood, wants nothing to do with Hamas. They understand what happens if you let them in and would rather see thousands of Palestinians die than risk letting them cross the border. This is true for the entire Arab world. Israel is portrayed as this big bully against the weak Palestinians. But we are surrounded by 2 billion Muslims. There are only 7 million Jews in Israel. Speaking of genocide, the Arab population in Israel has grown dramatically, accounting for over 20% of the population in Israel, while there are almost no Jews anywhere else in the Middle East. Arabs in Israel receive citizenship, vote, serve in the army and even in Parliament. Jews are not welcomed almost anywhere in the Middle East. Like I said, Palestinians cross into Israel every day to work or receive medical care in Israeli hospitals. Do you know what happens to an Israeli if he were to wander into Gaza? He'd be executed or held hostage. If it was a woman, she'd be raped first. We're the ones committing genocide?
This is why Israel still occupies the West Bank. We don't want to be there. Soldiers and police officers are killed all the time. The problem is, as we've seen in Gaza, as soon as we leave, the place turns into a terrorist safe-haven. The Palestinian Authority is weak, corrupt, and hasn't shown any ability to govern. If Israel were to leave the West Bank tomorrow, Hamas or Hezbollah would take over in a matter of weeks. Then we'd have the same situation we now have in Gaza but much closer to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. This would be an existential threat to the survival of Israel and the Jewish people. Israel is tiny, about the size of New Jersey. The distance from the West Bank to Tel Aviv is about 10 miles. Think about that. That's like less than the distance from Palmetto High to Vizcaya. The distance to Jerusalem is less than half of that, like driving from Palemtto to Killian. Not much of a buffer to defend ourselves from attacks.
Let's get back to Gaza. It is a beautiful place with amazing beaches. It can be the Singapore of the Middle East if the Palestinians put in place a government that wants to create instead of destroy. If there was a government that cared more about its own people's well-being than it did hating Jews and Israelis, there would be peace and prosperity for everyone, including the Palestinians now suffering. Even now, Israel is blamed for not allowing fuel into Gaza. We’re told the hospitals are about to run out of fuel for their generators, yet Hamas has enough fuel to fire hundreds of rockets into Israel every day. How do you make peace with a “government” that prioritizes shooting rockets at you over providing medical care to its own people?
Again, the question isn't whether they are suffering - everyone in Israel fully recognizes and the vast majority sympathize with the innocent Palestinians in Gaza - but rather who is to blame and how do we fix it. I don't want to get too far into history here, so I will only briefly touch on the notion that Israel is a colonizer, since that's another popular rally cry. Jews were present in Israel thousands of years ago before Islam was even invented. Prior to the UN partition for Israel, the region was controlled by the British Empire and several empires before that. The word "Palestine" originates from the Roman Emperor Hadrian as part of his own genocide against the Jews when he tried to eliminate them from what was then called Judea.
In any event, for there to be peace, both sides must recognize the other's right to exist. That's the very first step in any negotiation. I promise you that, if Hamas is removed and rockets stop flying in from Gaza, not a single Israeli bullet would be aimed at Gaza. Israel would continue, as it has for years, providing Palestinians with whatever they need to rebuild, and we'd gladly help them create a paradise in Gaza that they can rule however they see fit - so long as they do so peacefully. Keep in mind that women still wouldn't have any rights, and homosexuality would still be illegal just like it is in the rest of the Middle East, but that's their prerogative. Human rights is too much to ask for; we're just asking for peace.
Finally, I won't dive too deep into the anti-Semitic rhetoric that has sprung up around the world, although I find it both eye-opening and terrifying. There were celebratory marches all around the world immediately after the attacks of October 7th, before the fires in southern Israel were out and well before Israel responded. These were not rallies in support of Palestinians but rather rallies celebrating murder, rape, and destruction. How does removing images of children held hostage help Palestinians? We're seeing this all over the world. How does chanting "gas the Jews" in Sydney help the Palestinians? How does burning Israeli flags at Tulane or calling for violence against Hillel at Cornell help the Palestinians? In Israel, my family and friends are shocked and mortified and grieving what happened but they are not afraid. They've all lived through wars and suicide bombers and rockets and understand what needs to be done. In America, on the other hand, my friends - some of which I assume may also be your friends - are terrified. They're afraid to send their kids to public school because they might be bullied or attacked for being Jewish, and they're afraid to send them to Jewish school because it feels inevitable that at least one will be attacked given the current rhetoric. I, like most of my friends, have always supported human rights and social justice causes. We supported gay rights and black lives matter and trans rights and voted accordingly. Now we feel betrayed and abandoned by the same people we've fought to defend. The anti-Semitism that we've heard about our entire lives from our grandparents who survived or fled the Holocaust, which we always felt only existed in fringe pockets of Western society like the KKK or other hate groups, has surfaced in a way that I would have thought impossible a month ago. It only reinforces our belief that we cannot exist without the state of Israel because it's the only place where we are unconditionally welcomed, and the only army that will defend us. And while neither Israeli society nor its government are perfect, we share, and fight for, Western values, and all we've ever wanted is to live in peace.
I took a lot of time and put a lot of thought into this response so I hope you read it with an open mind.
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