The harrowing atrocities hitting the people of Gaza and Israel have made waves across the world, showering television, and computer screens with images of naked suffering. After Hamas’ surprise attack on Israeli civilians on 7th October, storming homes and massacring women and children, Israel launched a series of devastating air attacks on Gaza, threatening to decimate the entire territory as a form of collective punishment to all Palestinians for the crimes of Hamas.
Instead of serving at worst as unfortunate collateral, civilians on both sides have been inhumanely tortured, both by Hamas and the Israeli defense forces. Such targeted and unforgiving victimisation can only be compared to genocide. Polemics have swept across the West, conflating the corrupt Israeli government with the Jewish community as a whole, and Hamas’ terrorist actions, with all Palestinians. Yet in their relentless squabble to find a culprit, governments and the media fail to disassociate the agents from the victims involved on both sides of the conflict, thereby undermining the complexity of the situation.
Polemics have swept across the West, conflating the corrupt Israeli government with the Jewish community as a whole, and Hamas’ terrorist actions, with all Palestinians
The crux of the dilemma stems from a land ownership dispute over modern-day Israel. Following Europe’s failure to protect the Jewish community from the monstrosities of the Holocaust, part of Palestine was handed over to Jewish leaders as it was held to be their ancestral home, leading to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. In so doing, thousands of Palestinian Arabs were displaced and oppressed. Since then, Israel have defied the 1949 armistice lines on several occasions, occupying the West Bank, the whole of Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, from which they withdrew their forces in 2005. Gaza has since been ruled by Hamas which has been striving for Israel’s destruction since they were elected in 2007. A series of blockades imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip and rockets fired by Hamas into Israel have culminated in the conflict witnessed today.
The bloodshed and inhumane aid deprivations affecting the people of Gaza has caused vehement protests across Europe. Both pro-Palestinian and Jewish protests have taken place across the UK, calling for a ceasefire. The problem arises when public resentment feeds on fake news and hate forums that fester the internet, fueling discrimination against entire communities. Such anger was taken too far when certain protestors brandished swastikas and began antisemitic chants at a protest in London the other day. Polemics built off misinformation and misleading videos such as those spreading disinformation about the Al-Ahli hospital blast in Gaza which tragically killing 471 people civilians, perpetuate the never-ending blame game and continually fail to address the greatest wrong-doing of all: that both Palestinian and Jewish lives, living in or near Gaza, have been brutally sacrificed in the Israel-Hamas war. The pursuit of blame only perpetuates the horror and insults the memories of lives lost.
