As I write these words, I am sitting at home in Tel Aviv, trying to figure out how to protect my family in a house with no shelter or safe room, following with growing panic the reports and rumors of horrible events taking place in the Israeli towns near Gaza which are under attack. I see people, some of them my friends, calling on social media to attack Gaza more fiercely than ever before. Some Israelis are saying that now is the time to eradicate Gaza entirely — essentially calling for genocide. Through all the explosions, the dread and the bloodshed, speaking about peaceful solutions seems like madness to them.
Yet I remember that everything that I am feeling now, which every Israeli must be sharing, has been the life experience of millions of Palestinians for far too long. The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end of apartheid, occupation, and siege, and promote a future based on justice and equality for all of us. It is not in spite of the horror that we have to change course — it is exactly because of it.
The Arabs tried to genocide the Jews and destroy the state of Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973. They lost all three wars, and Israel kept what it gained. The Arabs can’t complain about Israel adhering to the 1948 borders when they tried to erase an Israel with those borders twice. Hamas still has, in their offical charter, an outline of what their goals are. Their goals are to genocide the Jews, destroy Israel, and establish an islamist Palestine that’s governed by Sharia.