History is interesting and important but you won't find any answers there right now. It's not relevant. What happened 6 days ago was a pogrom - it was the indiscriminate mass murder of Jews for being Jews. These weren’t military targets. No one stopped to ask about their politics… babies don't have politics. There's no story and no version of history that will make it alright so we can stop searching.
The only acceptable response from anyone who values life, is devastation. The scale and the horrific nature of this Hamas attack is without parallel. We just saw a meticulously planned attack on civilians involving thousands of terrorists. The intention was mass murder, mutilation, abduction... We don’t need to apologise, or understand, or search for the ‘but’ or the ‘why’ or talk about the broader political context.
We need to condemn. We need to grieve.
It feels threatening, and hurtful, and strangely familiar to have people searching for historical or political ‘reasons’ why this is anything other than despicable.
Jewish people inherit an existential fear that many of us try and ignore or forget because we want to be past that. We’ve heard many reasons why it was ok to kill us… because of our beliefs, because we are 'sub-human', because of Jesus, because of usury, because of Zionism… When we see the Australian Greens posting their support of the Palestinian people or Waleed go on the Project to explain how the rally at the Opera House was misrepresented, that’s what we hear. ‘It’s not ok, but…’
That’s part of our story. We bring that into the context.
If you’ve ever been in an argument, you know two people can have very different ‘true’ versions of events. We talk about the War of Independence, they talk about The 'Nakba' or Tragedy. Multiply this by thousands of years and millions of people and then try to extract a coherent, causal narrative. The study of history is important but it always leaves out much, much more than it can possibly include. We’re all subjective, meaning-making and story-telling machines and we’ve always used history to make meaning from chaos... and to justify, apologise and manipulate. We are all guilty of that.
This is a cycle of violence. Israelis feel justified in their occupation of the Palestinian territories because of the real existential threat of Palestinian extremists who desire their death. If we were ignorant of that detail, we now have some clarity.
Palestinian extremists feel justified in their acts of terror because of Israeli occupation and their interpretation of religious dogma. Both sides have provocateurs and extremists. Neither side is willingly going anywhere. It is their home. It is where they belong, even if there are stories of them having come from elsewhere. We’ve all come from elsewhere.
There is no excuse to choose violence – you believe that or you don’t. It is above politics.
History is interesting and important but you won't find any answers there right now. It's not relevant. What happened 6 days ago was a pogrom - it was the indiscriminate mass murder of Jews for being Jews. These weren’t military targets. No one stopped to ask about their politics… babies don't have politics. There's no story and no version of history that will make it alright so we can stop searching.
The only acceptable response from anyone who values life, is devastation. The scale and the horrific nature of this Hamas attack is without parallel. We just saw a meticulously planned attack on civilians involving thousands of terrorists. The intention was mass murder, mutilation, abduction... We don’t need to apologise, or understand, or search for the ‘but’ or the ‘why’ or talk about the broader political context.
We need to condemn. We need to grieve.
It feels threatening, and hurtful, and strangely familiar to have people searching for historical or political ‘reasons’ why this is anything other than despicable.
Jewish people inherit an existential fear that many of us try and ignore or forget because we want to be past that. We’ve heard many reasons why it was ok to kill us… because of our beliefs, because we are 'sub-human', because of Jesus, because of usury, because of Zionism… When we see the Australian Greens posting their support of the Palestinian people or Waleed go on the Project to explain how the rally at the Opera House was misrepresented, that’s what we hear. ‘It’s not ok, but…’
That’s part of our story. We bring that into the context.
If you’ve ever been in an argument, you know two people can have very different ‘true’ versions of events. We talk about the War of Independence, they talk about The 'Nakba' or Tragedy. Multiply this by thousands of years and millions of people and then try to extract a coherent, causal narrative. The study of history is important but it always leaves out much, much more than it can possibly include. We’re all subjective, meaning-making and story-telling machines and we’ve always used history to make meaning from chaos... and to justify, apologise and manipulate. We are all guilty of that.
This is a cycle of violence. Israelis feel justified in their occupation of the Palestinian territories because of the real existential threat of Palestinian extremists who desire their death. If we were ignorant of that detail, we now have some clarity.
Palestinian extremists feel justified in their acts of terror because of Israeli occupation and their interpretation of religious dogma. Both sides have provocateurs and extremists. Neither side is willingly going anywhere. It is their home. It is where they belong, even if there are stories of them having come from elsewhere. We’ve all come from elsewhere.
There is no excuse to choose violence – you believe that or you don’t. It is above politics.