Ground Rules on “Speaking Out” About the Israel/Palestine Conflict
Ground Rules on “Speaking Out” About the Israel/Palestine Conflict
Don’t meet the criteria? Then shut your mouth.
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and !Ground Rules on “Speaking Out” About the Israel/Palestine Conflict
The Israel-Hamas War is no doubt the most reported story on Earth right now. The amount of coverage it’s received bears zero relevance to its overall importance in comparison to other global conflagrations. But it’s everywhere — on the news, out on the streets, all over social media, and at elite universities’ graduation ceremonies.
As the war has dragged on, this conflict has become a convenient virtue-signaling tool for people with a poor grasp of history who need a cause to feel good about themselves. ‘#freepalestine’ is an easy cause to take on because there are no barriers to entry, and all of the rhetoric is already pre-packaged for the common useful idiot.
For several months, I have witnessed the following types of interviewees as invited guests on political shows currently milking this conflict like a cow for ratings:
“Journalists” who think they are experts because they traveled to the West Bank or Gaza once and had a “moving experience” with their Palestinian tour guide who spoke in English to them about their lives under evil colonizers. These journalists also seem to think they’re in a “special” category when dealing with police or military forces. It’s hilarious.
Students at elite Western universities who think that throwing around terms like “imperialism,” “colonialism,” and “apartheid” gives validity to their arguments about an issue for which none of those terms actually apply. Their professors and families are usually encouraging this behavior.
An LGBTQ person who once did an interview about trans rights in the USA / UK, and for whatever reason agreed to speak on a panel about the Israel-Hamas War (because those two topics are so similar) despite having zero connection to the conflict.
One could argue that the hosts of these programs never should have invited these guests to begin with. But the real issue is why someone in the above categories would agree to speak about them in the first place to a broad audience.
I consider myself to have a pretty good grasp of the relevant history of Israel. I’m happy to talk about it with others who want to hear my view, and I’ve done a fair amount of writing about it here. But I would never, ever agree to be interviewed about this conflict on television. Why?
Because I do not meet the following criteria:
Do I speak the relevant languages of the country/region I am talking about?
Have I lived in the area (in this case Israel, Gaza, or the West Bank) for an extended period?
Have I served in the armed forces and seen actual combat? If the answer is no, I do not get to opine on what people “should” do in combat situations.
Newsflash: no one cares about your opinion.
No one cares about your opinions in general, much less the one you have about this war. I know that’s upsetting and probably counter to what your parents have communicated to you throughout your life: that the world should value your opinions as much as they did.
The reality is that 130 hostages still remain in Hamas captivity. They have been in captivity now for over 230 days. These hostages represent over a dozen nationalities, and several are not Jewish. While I would argue that Jew-hatred motivated the Hamas attacks on October 7th (the significance of which the Western consumers of news seem to have forgotten already), the end result was basically if you happened to be on the “other side of the fence” that day, you were a target. Hamas didn’t care if you were Thai, Bedouin, Israeli, or American. That was part of their savagery.
As long as Hamas is holding hostages, the war will continue. While it’s impossible to know the exact number of civilian deaths in Gaza, we can all agree it’s in the tens of thousands. Any civilian death is tragic, no matter how much the IDF tries to avoid them. As long as Hamas has the hostages, that number will only increase. And guess what? Neither the hostages abducted from Israel nor the Gazans living under the current terror — all circumstances Hamas brought on — care about your stupid “from the river to the sea” chants.
I realize I do not have the power to influence the release of the hostages. But I can encourage others in my part of the West to show some humility. If you don’t know something due to a lack of familiarity or experience, ask someone who does. When they answer, listen actively. I know the next point will go counter to the “silence is violence” crowd, but I’ll say it: active listening requires your silence.
Maybe if we all listened a little more than we talked, this war never would have happened at all.
#bringthemhomenow
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Well said
On the hostages thing, I thought I had heard there were "at least 100 confirmed alive and in captivity, mostly from other nations, and at least another two dozen who may be captive, dead or in hiding" - which may make the horror of this situation even worse, really.