Who should I side with? (English version)
In an increasingly polarised environment, especially on social media, more and more people are forced to take sides explicitly on the conflict between Israel and Hamas, which started after the terrorist attack on Israeli soil by the Iran-backed militia on October 7th 2023. A recent opinion video published by The New York Times tellingly shows the pressure that activists and opinion-makers on the Israeli side, as well as on the Palestinian one, are putting on ordinary people to choose a camp, and one only, denouncing the other as evil, or worse. However, this dynamic is wrong, and dangerous.
Few matters are more complicated than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a dispute that traces its roots back at least a century and a half, with the rise of the Zionist movement in the 1880s and the Balfour Declaration of 1917. At a recent public lecture organised by the Italian publisher Laterza in Rome, at which your columnist was present, a member of the public asked Professor Claudio Vercelli, the main speaker and a specialist on Jewish and Israeli studies, whether the original claims on the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean lay with Israel or the Palestinians. It should come as surprise that even an expert like Professor Vercelli could not provide an answer different and more articulated than a desperate laugh.
It is tempting to see the Palestinians as the only victims and Israel as the aggressor. Yet, despite Israel’s despicable occupation of Palestinian land, which dates back decades, sometimes people forget that many extremist Palestinian and Arab militias, or countries, do not recognise Israel as a legitimate State, and have as a goal to annihilate and destroy it. Indeed, Hamas’s actions provide a clear example of that desire to cancel the Jewish State from the map, even at the expense of civilian life. The Zionist movement dates back a long time, and was born to provide a safe and secure home for the Jewish people even before the Holocaust: Jews have endured centuries of discrimination and hatred all around Europe, starting from the Middle Ages, through Early Modern Age to the XIX and XX century. Events like the Dreyfus Affair in France in the 1890s have only reinforced this predicament, as has, to an extremely more important degree, the Nazi “final solution”, as was called the deliberate extermination of Jews in concentration camps, with its peak from 1942 until the fall of Hitler. Israel was born as the home of the oppressed, and if the oppressed behaves like an oppressor in somebody else’s land this does not make them less oppressed. Nor does it make less oppressed the brutal, and unjustifiable, scale of the military response, which has killed more than 10,000 people in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.
And yet, activists tell you that theirs is the only side of reason and moral integrity, pinning the blame only on the other camp. But this explosion of polarisation risks only to penetrate even more deeply in our society, already divided on many fronts. Antisemitism and islamophobia are on the rise in Europe and America, as recent episodes of violence and hate clearly demonstrate. European governments are preparing for the return of violent terrorism in their countries, tightening controls at the borders and even, in some cases, suspending the Schengen Accords, which allow people and goods to travel without restrictions across the continent. Whereas it is unclear where this will end, it is all but certain that polarisation is fuelling a growing sentiment of hate which threatens to embed itself in European societies with large Jewish and Muslim minorities, like Germany, France and Britain.
Your correspondent does not know whom to side with, and for a very simple reason. Unfortunately, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a football match, with opposing fans chanting songs against each other. The depth of opposing revendications and the extremely troubled history make this conflict one of the most sensitive matters on the planet. Pretending to settle it by picking the side of presumptive moral purity may be a hopeless exercise of stupidity in a parallel world, but where there are lives in danger it seems only a cynical and despicable practice, whether you stand with Israel or Palestine.
Dear reader, I honestly stand with both. But primarily, I stand with reason, heart, life, and peace, and certainly not with a group of shouting fans in a football stadium. This is a war, not a match. Be thoughtful and empathic, but not cynical, please.