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An Israeli-Palestinian Primer
We need to stop invalidating both Jews and Palestinians
Since we live in a time of absolutes and either-or politics where we spend more time invalidating the other side than we do trying to understand each other, I have no doubt this piece won’t land well on Jews or Arabs.
Maybe I’m on to something.
Jews like me grew up with a very lopsided view of Israel. We turned the desert into a blooming nation.
Where almost everything they did was great, and nearly everything bad happening there was the Arabs’ fault. The Arabs chose violence over peace.
If the Arabs had just accepted losing their homes, none of these disputes would have happened.
Arabs primarily grew up with a view that Israel was illegitimate and needed to be eradicated. No compromise. That the Jews don’t belong in a place once called by their namesake, Judea. That the Jews are thieves. Their view was just as lopsided.
Neither side willing to humanize the other. Or understand their side of the equation.
The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is, at its core, a land dispute between Jews, who claim Israel as their indigenous ancestral homeland, where they were formed as a nation thousands of years ago with Zion as its capital.
And Palestinians who likewise claim the same land as their own. Where generations and generations of Arab families have lived and worked. In places like Jerusalem, Akko, Nablus, Gaza and Jaffa.
You can’t learn this stuff on TikTok or AI-generated “All Eyes On” posts.
The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict predates the Palestinians, as numerous outside forces conquered the land of Israel-Judea for more than 2,000 years. Before Islam.
From the Macedonians to the Romans and the Early Muslim conquests, leading to the Ottoman-Muslim takeover and, eventually, the British.
Jews worldwide continued to long for their return to Israel for the last 2,000 years, ending each Passover Seder for centuries with the phrase, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Next year in Zion. All long before 1948.
