"They just said, we found Emily. She's dead. I went, 'Yes!' and smiled, because that is the best news of the possibilities I knew. She was either dead or in Gaza. And if you know anything about what they do to people in Gaza, that is worse than death."
Those were the words of Thomas Hand, speaking about his 8-yo daughter after Hamas murdered her.
“Goodbye, darling. My heart. Oh, my heart. My little one, a piece of my heart.” — An unidentified Palestinian mother I saw in pure anguish on Al Jazeera English, kissing the corpse of her little girl one last time.
I used to participate on this site quite a bit, primarily in I/P. Life developments—career growth, family growth, random middle-aged man stuff, and other factors have combined to more or less make this infrequent. One of the factors has been that while I then and still do consider myself pro-Israel, there seems to be an inability to believe in a shared humanity. To me, being pro-Israel also means a viable state for the Palestinians, for anything else either means a unitary state that puts an end to a Jewish democratic state and has never been more than the pipe dream of Westerners, or an Israel at perpetual war. But beyond geopolitical calculations for the State of Israel, the absence of self-determination or really any kind of normal life for Palestinians is inhumane.
I haven’t accomplished much of anything this week, and for someone who lives and dies by the billable hour, that’s not a great thing. But I see monstrous terrorism conducted by Hamas...and reactions ranging from indifference to justification to outright denial, much of which from people I would’ve considered ideological allies up until now. Tone-deaf rallies that are ostensibly pro-Palestine but feature imagery of Hamas hang gliders and speakers praising (or in best-case scenarios, contextualizing or excusing) the assault that left some 1,500 Israelis dead. Then I turn my head and see desperate, anguished Palestinian civilians—most of whom have never cast a ballot for Hamas or anyone else bearing the brunt of the response: mothers crying over destroyed families and homes, children crying, confused, and scared, and an Israeli army with the full backing of the West ready to inflict more misery on people who mostly aren’t members of Hamas and are functionally being brutalized for their place of origin. It’s hard to focus on much else.
I’ve asked some of my acquaintances in the pro-Israel world if there’s any room for those of us who share their belief in the abject evil that is Hamas but that Palestinian civilians ought not to be punished for said evil. The response has been ambiguous—agreement that it would be good, but skepticism that such room can be found. And thus, I’ve had to conclude that at this time, it’s OK not to be OK.