Beyond the whole “I support X side” argument, which is quite frankly immature and treats a serious and tragic conflict like it’s some sort of football match, the main thing to remember here is — these are people dying. People dehumanize the hell out of the combatants in the conflict, and it rubs me the wrong way. If you listen to the pro-Palestine side, every Israeli is some sort of Jewish flavored Neo-Nazi. If you hear the pro-Israel side, it seems as if every Palestinian is some Hamas-flag waving lunatic.
It’s honestly just super tiresome, the way the debate has turned a complex issue into something black and white, simple, devoid of shades of grey. It does a huge disservice to the struggles of ordinary people caught within the crossfires. I myself am not “innocent” in this — a few days ago I wrote an answer and I mentioned how most Palestinians dying are Muslim. Someone pointed out there are quite a few Christian Palestinians even in Gaza, and some are dying.
They, too, lose loved ones, lives, their churches are bombed, such as the remnants of the church building pictured above. The whole “evil Muslims who hate Jews” argument doesn’t really hold water. Neither does the “they’re all Hamas supporters anyway!” argument, which is patently false. The violence doesn’t just happen in Gaza, either — in 2023 alone, nearly 500 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank, for instance. Many by Israeli armed forces, or violent Jewish settlers.
So does this mean I “support Palestine”? I don’t know. I think more than anything, it means I just hate people turning complex issues into black-and-white, right-and-wrong cases that become dumbed down and oversimplified. This conflict is so much more than evil this side, pitiful that side… and these are very real lives we’re talking about.
Footnotes
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