Nathaniel Rodwell-Simon
Recently, it’s seemed impossible to go one day without hearing about the war between Israel and Palestine. There are moments when conversation wanes, then news of an atrocity or a new policy emerges, and passions catch fire again. To me, the situation has been especially surreal. It feels like a whole new discourse has emerged here in the United States. Growing up Israeli, with most of my family still living in Israel, I have spent half my life acutely aware of every little incident in this war which has gone on longer than I have lived. Over the years, even as I followed every minute development in the war, fervor surrounding it has only ever sustained itself for maybe a month at a time before the crushing news cycle swept attention on to the next hot button issue. Now, for the first time the conversation in the West has found the fuel to sustain itself for over half a year.
My first exposure to the war was in 2014. I was visiting family in Israel that summer. Early on in my trip, I heard my mom talk about an ongoing news story: three Israeli boys had gone missing. After two weeks, their bodies were found, and Hamas claimed responsibility for their kidnapping and murder. According to most accounts, Israel responded by arresting swathes of Hamas militants, to which Hamas retaliated by launching rockets at civilian centers. The one story I’ll always remember, though, came shortly before the firing of rockets: a group of Orthodox Jewish Israelis kidnapped a young Palestinian boy and burned him alive. As I hid from rockets and developed a paralyzing fear of everything from ambulance sirens to motorcycles revving, I kept thinking of the horrifying fates met by innocents on both sides.
Today, the relevance of this story is more obvious to me than ever. There is nobody born a murderer, a racist, an extremist, or full of hate. And, in a contextual vacuum, indoctrination rarely compels people to adopt such behaviors. Indoctrination feeds on fear, anger, and rage that has run hot for decades, boiling over today. Vocal extremes on either ideological side radicalize those who otherwise might see common ground. Most Israelis are not of the extreme, rabid, genocidal ilk. But every Israeli, including myself, has lost somebody, or knows somebody who has suffered. That is why the Israeli government has fed into Hamas’s success. A more powerful Hamas drives civilians and bystanders deeper into fear and closer to hate, to acceptance of worse and worse actions as “necessary evils.” I was guilty of this unacceptable rationalization once. It is only with time that I have come to realize how the State of Israel has taken the Israeli nation hostage, framing itself as the only thing capable of keeping Israel, and even Jews abroad, safe.
Fear has perpetuated the acceptance of crimes against Palestinians for decades. Israel was founded in the wake of the Holocaust. With nowhere to go, after having had their homes taken, livelihoods stolen, and families slaughtered, hundreds of thousands of refugees turned to an ancestral home. With this new territory, however, came longstanding, escalating tensions. While the land of modern Israel and Palestine was under British colonial rule from 1917 to 1948, paramilitary organizations such as Lehi and Irgun contributed to growing agitation between Jews—both those remaining in the land for millennia and those who made aliyah in modern times—and Arabs. Fear of being pushed out or overrun by the “others” struck both populations, especially as negotiations over the UN partition plan broke down. With the official escalation of a civil war, and surrounding Arab nations joining in the war against Israel, future citizens of a fledgling Israel became increasingly willing to accept defense by any means necessary: this included the massacre at Deir Yassin, the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people in the Nakba, and others. Holocaust survivors didn’t arrive with the intent to colonize, but when faced with a renewed threat of destruction, many who had just suffered similar atrocities allowed power-hungry militants to retaliate against the Palestinian people. From there, the standard was set, and extremists have held Israeli policy in an iron grip reinforced by fear ever since.
Hamas is no different. Just like Likud and the Messianic right wing of Israel, Hamas has devastatingly taken the Palestinian nation hostage. With every Israeli it kills or captures, it endangers more Palestinians. So, why does it continue to garner so much support within Gaza? Because suffering, violence, occupation, and genocide push people to extremes. When a Palestinian child is murdered, it sparks more hate against Israel and more resolve to do whatever it takes to fight back—to destroy Israel. When an Israeli child is murdered, the same happens in the other direction. The war, over many years, has become a war waged by extremists against the civilians of Israel and of Palestine.
The path to peace and freedom is still a mystery to me. The only thing I know for certain is a ceasefire must come first. A ceasefire both sides refute because it would weaken their respective positions. Israel has committed to rescuing all hostages taken on October 7, which they have been sorely unsuccessful at accomplishing, and to a destruction of Hamas so thorough that rebuilding the organization would be impossible. The latter has been carried out under the false pretense that bombs and bullets alone can kill ideas. Hamas aims to drive out all Israeli military presence and enforce a permanent ceasefire. It’s a lofty goal it knows the Netanyahu government will never agree to. Both governments offer each other unacceptable deals so they can return to their supporters and say, “They refused the ceasefire, they want to kill you all!” Each side publicly expresses their own goal yet will never actually achieve it. Six months of bombing have not brought my two cousins currently in Hamas captivity closer to freedom, and Hamas is no closer to extracting concessions from Israel.
The path to peace is not necessarily rooted in the states. I believe that advocates in the West have become far too caught up in certain minutia: most recently, for example, debating the definitions of Zionism or Intifada. The truth is, there are 15 million people in Israel and Palestine. 15 million people that both coincide and diverge culturally. 15 million occupied people. I don’t know what a solution looks like from a political perspective, only what it looks like for the people. It looks like Israelis seeing the beautiful beaches of Gaza and Palestinians lounging by the Galilee. Jews freely praying on the Temple Mount beside Muslims at Al Aqsa. It is a dream which will take great efforts by all involved to achieve. There will be grudges to be buried, understandings to be learned, and rulers to be toppled. It is a dream not of states defined by their governments, but of sibling nations molded by and for their people. A dream that cannot be achieved without a Free Israel and a Free Palestine.
Ron Gneezy is a fourth-year in the College