The news cycle and my social media feeds have been dominated by coverage of the current ongoing conflict in Israel. I had initially hoped to avoid contributing to the discourse until things had cooled down – however, there’s far too many folks being caught up in this to hold back. So here’s some of my thoughts on the matter:
Indiscriminate Violence Not The Answer
The first, and perhaps most important point in all of this, is that violence is almost never the answer and the violence targeted at non-combatants is most certainly not the answer. Israel has long-ignored this boundary as have the Palestinians and other neighbouring countries. All stand equally condemned of such atrocities even if Hamas did drive this most surge.
Israel Has No High Ground
I am deeply sorrowful for the deaths of Israelite citizens in all of this – anger, grief, and despair are all quite understandable responses to the conflict. What is completely unacceptable is the shock and surprise I’ve heard in so many of the commentaries on this conflict. There is a clear narrative being pushed that Israel was attacked out of the blue, with no provocations, and is only defending itself. And THAT is demonstrably false. Israel has pursue a policy of oppression and marginalization of Palestinians for decades, and the British Empire likewise pursued such a policy before the formation of the state of Israel. There have been countless crimes committed by Israeli citizens, state actors, and government policies against their Palestinian neighbours. Further, Israel’s policy of mandatory military service hasn’t exactly encouraged a drive of peace – when the vast majority of your 18-20 years old see their friends being killed or maimed, and are being trained to see all Palestinians as potential threats, the motivation for pursuing peace the imagination that it may be possible is rather thin.
This is most emphatically not encouraging or condoning attacks on Israeli citizens or even the Israeli government – what I am stating is that the policies of the Israeli government and the actions of Israeli state actors and citizens have set the conditions for such a coordinated strike by Palestinians and other Arab neighbours to be both understandable and predictable. The timing may have been a surprise, but the idea of such a strike is definitely not.
Be Wary When Reading The News and Social Media Posts
As coverage of all of this continues, it is very important to not believe everything you read. The broad strokes – that there’s a conflict with many dead, injured, and captured and that Israel’s guard was lower than usual for some reason are likely to be accurate; specific atrocities and claims of incursions from specific areas are best treated with caution. The reasons for this are manifold but two main ones are important to highlight. First, even in the best of times, wars and conflicts are notoriously unreliable to get accurate news coverage of – the volatility of the situation means that a lot of verification is thin or nonexistent, and trusting in locally embedded media is not always exactly bias fee. Second, there is plenty of motives for claims and tales designed to evoke an emotional response to be spread – and that should always raise a red flag as these strong emotional responses can often short-circuit our usual reasoning systems. Some of these tales may indeed be true – but others won’t be and distinguishing between the two is unlikely to be fully possible for some time. The best thing then is not to amplify or engage such emotionally laden content until or unless we’ve got more verified intelligence.
I join in the hopes and calls for disarmament and a return to negotiations as quickly as possible.
The Dreamers' Corner 