I used to believe that it was unwise to speak out about the conflict taking place in the area that was called Palestine a century ago. It is political suicide to criticize Israel, was announced in my group of friends, after yet another bombing of the open-air prison called Gaza. Before you know it, you will be called an anti-Semite and your career will be at stake, was the warning. It was better to ‘pick my battles’, to focus on issues close to home that are not so controversial.
With Hamas’s recent surprise attack in Israel, and Israel’s subsequent retaliation in Gaza, different views and emotions in our society are being exposed. There are fellow countrymen who, like my former self, opt for strategic silence. Others choose to point out a guilty party. They hang Israeli flags and in their statement make a sharp distinction between perpetrators and victims. And finally, you have fellow countrymen who hide behind the words ‘complexity’ and ‘nuance’ so that they do not have to name the visible injustice.
But the reality is crystal clear. We have to face it alone. In essence, we can show compassion for the suffering that Israelis are suffering as a result of Hamas’s horrific attack, but at the same time recognize that the lives of millions of Palestinians are hopeless as a result of the Israeli colonization and oppression.
Numbers don’t lie about it. Israel’s conflict and blockade has left 80 percent of Gazans dependent on humanitarian aid. 59 percent of the population in Gaza lives in poverty. 95 percent do not have access to clean drinking water. 70 percent of young people are unemployed. Not to mention the psychological consequences of the endless bombings and blockades. More than 70 percent of Gazans have depressive complaints; two out of three adolescents in Gaza suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
“We know all too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” Nelson Mandela declared in 1997. With his ANC he made it his life’s mission to fight against apartheid. Violence was a necessary part of that struggle. We know from independence literature that you cannot move the colonizing party with words alone. As the French-Martinican thinker Frantz Fanon in The wretched of the earth shows: targeted violence is a necessary means to combat the power of the colonizer. The ANC, which used to be seen as a terrorist organization, stated for that reason Hamas’s recent attack on Israel “not surprising” because of “the brutality of Israel’s settler apartheid regime.”
The word apartheid in the context of Israel raises many eyebrows. Yet various human rights organizations and experts have shown that the situation of Palestinians is legally apartheid. Jeff Handmaker underlined this this week in the Dutch Dagblad. He teaches international law at Erasmus University and considers himself a ‘white Jew’. “Apartheid may even be a bit of a limited term now,” says Handmaker. “There are genocidal practices going on right now. 150,000 people have fled Gaza, but where should they go? They have nowhere to go.”
Only when we recognize that today’s victims can turn into tomorrow’s perpetrators can we relate to the conflict with appropriate words. It especially helps if we create a safe space for genuine conversation.
It is much more powerful to heal hearts than to throw yet another bomb. Like meditation specialist Yung Pueblo in his book Lighter states: “If we are able to reduce people’s trauma and suffering, peace will flow more widely into the world.” Those who operate from trauma mainly have room for retaliation, and not for humanity. But those who process their traumas, and for the residents of Israel and Palestine their states are built on traumas, are able to connect and work on a shared future.
Kiza Magendane is a political scientist.
A version of this article also appeared in the October 14, 2023 newspaper.