People who are neither Jewish nor Palestinian have been in a strange situation for a while now. If you are Jewish, you might not know this, but we are afraid to say anything out of fear of saying something wrong. I think that you think this means we don’t support you, but that is not true, at least in my case and for others that I have spoken with about this.
We are friends with both Jews as well as Palestinians and other Muslims. We like them both. Every Jew and every Muslim I have met has seemed to be a good person. I have learned about both the Jewish and Muslim religions. They both value caring about others and treating other people well. Obviously, we don’t tolerate people who want to kill other people based on their ethnicity, religion, or race. Obviously, we don’t support Hamas, who not only committed the horrific acts against Israel and Jews on October 7th but have also publicly stated that they want to kill all the Jews. But do all Palestinians feel that way? I don’t think so.
Isreal estimates that Hamas has about 30,000 fighters. I learned this from a podcast called The Brutal Calculation of Hamas’s Leader, published by The Journal, which I recommended listening to. (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-journal/id1469394914?i=1000659324663) In 2023, the population of the Gaza strip was about 2 million people. Those numbers suggest to me that not all Gaza residents are with Hamas. But it wouldn’t surprise me if Hamas gained supporters as a result of Israel’s bombings in Gaza since October.
The Jews have been persecuted for centuries, since long before WWII. And since WWII, Israel has been surrounded by countries that are against them. Israel has had to endure bombings and terrorist attacks in their country for decades, so much that they had to build an expensive high tech “iron dome” over their country. I understand why they feel the way they feel.
But, have you ever had to tell a friend that you think there is something wrong with what they are doing?
Not everyone in Gaza is Hamas, and Israel’s bombings in Gaza have killed 35,000 people and injured 80,000. After 9/11, the US was in a similar situation having suffered a terrorist attack by al Qaeda. We thought al Qaeda leaders were in Afghanistan, so we bombed the crap out of Afghanistan. Our bombing in Afghanistan killed 46,000 Afghan civilians. (https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/WarDeathToll) Our bombing did not kill Osama Bin Ladin, the al Qaeda leader. We did not get him until ten years later, in Pakistan, using a CIA-lead Navy Seal Team special mission.
I believe that, now that over twenty years has passed since 9/11, most people on both sides of the aisle do not think bombing Afghanistan turned out to be a good idea. It did not accomplish its goal to eradicate al Qaeda because al Qaeda was an elusive group of people, hard to target with bombs. I think an intelligence-driven surgical mission to target Hamas leaders would work better, and it would not kill innocent people in Gaza. It is also a better way to locate and save hostages. Between the US and Israel, we have a lot of intelligence, as well as cyber capabilities, which would be more effective to target Hamas than bombing Gaza.
I have heard one argument that since Hamas is using Gaza civilians as a human shield, it is OK for us to kill both. In other words, since Hamas is not caring for the lives of civilians, Israel should not have to either. This is certainly a moral dilemma, but if my enemy held an innocent person in front of him, I would not shoot the innocent person. I like to think that I would find another way.
I support Israel and Jews.
I support Palestinians in their desire to have their own land that they control. Shouldn’t everyone have that? The Jews did not have their own land until 1948, and that was not right either.
I do not support anyone who wants to kill other people based on their religion or national origin, such as Hamas. And I want Israel to stop killing innocent people in Gaza.
Individual Jews and Muslims have sometimes supported each other in history. For a heartwarming fiction based on a true story about how individuals of several different religions, including Muslims, risked their lives to save a Jewish Haggadah (a book used during a Seder) from destruction countless times since the book was created in the 1400s, read People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1379961.People_of_the_Book
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