We're a group of activists in a Western country where most have been brought up with either "Israel = good, Hamas = bad" or "It's a sad, but unsolvable conflict between two equal sides". The media heavily skewed to the Israeli perspective, and our politicians want to condemn protests in support of Palestinians. Therefore, unless you purposefully seek out information on what's going on in Palestine, you won't really encounter information about the occupation, the apartheid or the human rights violations. There are a lot of gaps in people's information and understanding of the situation.
Atm there's a lot of dehumanization, a lot of "Well, what can you do? Hamas keeps attacking Israel, what are they supposed to do?". I think the Israel=Good is deep-rooted in a lot of westerners. I know it was in me.
We've asked ourselves and each other what finally broke through our previous perception, so we could see the inequality and realize that what's happening is not right
One mentioned seeing a journalist in the back of an ambulance being handed a one-year-old that had passed
One mentioned seeing a video of a caring father saying goodbye to his little girl, kissing her eyes before she was wrapped in the materiale they wrap their dead. The father clearly in denial, smiling and wishing for her to wake up.
A big one for me was being told that it's not an equal fight. It's not two equally strong countries. It's one country with a huge military, and another with barely any. Another was hearing about the human rights violations that's been going on for decades - the fabricated water shortage, the children in Israeli jails.
I believe these are the moments we need to collect and present to those who are still wary on where they stand.
What broke through to you?
I know you mean well, but although neither side is wholly anything I can advocate, even after seeing Palestine, if I had to choose, I side with Israel. I don't care how persecuted you are, you simply do not kill random civilians. That would fall under indiscriminate escalation, which is different from just having a conflict with someone because each of the different levels of escalation, when surpassed, by definition mark the escalator as an antagonist (especially when not just in Israel; the Jewish committee in America have been threatened, so much that the unions are distancing themselves and multiple Jewish American leaders have been killed). And they did it on an Israeli holiday (which adds an extra challenge to them explaining why what's going on isn't antisemitic; one of their defenses is "Israeli citizens exist on stolen land, therefore they are thieves and the best punishment for thievery is death" which is almost a word-for-word paraphrasing of Axis Germany's defense).
Israel in comparison, though they've been haughty in how they deal with their neighbors, have been operating under just that, a broken sense of arrogance. If you're wondering, I do despise what Israel has done to Palestine, and the escalations by Palestine and Hamas don't take away from the fact that Israel is guilty, enough that I question US involvement in Israel, especially when the US is already involved in India. I have always known what all three countries are doing to Palestine/Pakistan and it feels like they've been stabbing the bear for so long, like someone who acquires a garden but doesn't nourish its flowers. But it's not something I look at and think "look at how suffering they are, I fully understand why they did what they did now". No I don't. You don't engage in an all-out assault, start a campaign of guerilla warfare which is more psychologically profound, drag Russia and North Korea onto your side just because "they're you're enemies' enemies", and lie when you do commit tragic accidents like the hospital bombings, which nobody doubts was Hamas' and Palestine's doing except them and half their peers (which I understand they cling to because it would foil their original plan of wanting the Saudis to step out of relations with Israel). As a technical LGBT member, I also don't want to say I 100% trust Palestine to be in control anymore than Israel, as that's an internal struggle all on its own.