While I am aware of the conflict happening in Israel and Gaza now, I am largely silent about it on social media because I don’t want to attract the attention of toxic people to my space. Some of them don’t even mean to be toxic. Most are good people horrified by unnecessary suffering, whether they are on Palestine or Israel’s side.

The problem I have about the discourse around the Israel-Palestine conflict is that people feel like they need to take a side. Are you pro-Israel or pro-Palestine? My answer is always going to annoy them – I’m pro-peace. Being pro-peace feels like a cop out to these people.

I am tired of wars – everyone suffers. When will humanity evolve from killing each other to fixing the mess we’ve made of the world? To create prosperous trade among ourselves, to heal nature and fight diseases like cancer? Instead some of us have not left our tribal caves. It makes me sad.

I am also tired of participating in social media shouting matches like it is a football match. We’ve turned politics, real-life suffering and war into entertainment; we are the spectators in a coliseum, safe in our homes thousands of miles away from the battlezone, pointing our thumbs up or down at every turn of tragedy. I don’t want to be a part of this, it cheapens people’s suffering.

I see a lot of people commenting that the situation in Israel and Gaza is actually “very simple”, because one party has all the power, and one doesn’t. Not true at all. The Israel Palestine situation is really, really complex – power imbalance or not.

Both sides have done great wrongs to each other. Hamas doesn’t represent all of Palestine, so Hamas does not equal the people of Palestine. Israel’s government doesn’t represent all of Israelis. There are Israelis who oppose Netanyahu’s rule.

In my eyes, this conflict will never have a resolution because both sides are engaged in an “eye for an eye”. There can only be peace when forgiveness and love is made a priority by both sides, not “how many people can I kill?”

And seeing how bloodthirsty and narcissistic the leaders of both sides are … my hope is very small indeed.

Two books informed my view of the Israel Palestine situation. Blood Brothers and Son of Hamas. By reading these books, I realised that the simplistic view my Christian evangelical friends had of Israel was not accurate. The sanitizing of Hamas is incorrect too.

So, I do recommend that you read these books, straight from the people who lived there and experienced the horrors, to get perspective.

I’ve been following “alternative” media channels, and I was quite disappointed that some of them are often blindly on Palestine’s side without acknowledging that Hamas did terrible things during their attack on Israel, photographic evidence or not. I’m sure the 1000+ dead speaks for itself.

To me, Hamas killing people blunts their apparent fight for freedom or whatever. At the same time, I watch with disgust as Israel bombs innocent Palestinians, who probably didn’t know what the heck Hamas was planning and was just going about their lives until this terrible event happened.

Alternative or not, these media channels have the same habits as the Western mainstream media. They treat news like entertainment and sports. They crow when the “bad side” loses, cheer when the “good” side wins. They drum up emotions, usually anger and despair, for clicks. Watch them if you will, but just take the necessary information and don’t get sucked in by the emotional manipulation.

Frankly, I don’t know why people think the Israel-Palestine conflict is a black and white situation and choose to take sides, especially when they don’t know the history behind this conflict. I probably know more than the average Internet keyboard warrior, but even I do not dare to definitely say who is right or wrong.

I leave you with a quote from Elias Chacour and David Hazard, authors of Blood Brothers:

You who live in the United States, if you are pro-Israel, on behalf of the Palestinian children, I call unto you: Give further friendship to Israel. They need your friendship. But stop interpreting that friendship as an automatic antipathy against me, the Palestinian who is paying the bill for what others have done against my beloved Jewish brothers and sisters in the Holocaust and elsewhere.

And if you have been enlightened enough to take the side of the Palestinians—oh, bless your hearts—take our side, because for once you will be on the right side, right? But if taking our side would mean to become one-sided against my Jewish brothers and sisters, back up. We do not need such friendship. We need one more common friend. We do not need one more enemy . . . for God’s sake.

– From Blood Brothers

You can also watch Elias Chacour talk about his experience of the dark time called “the Nakba”.