To my friends in Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank, I am hoping you all remain safe and unharmed. There are no speeches or platitudes that can airbrush the horror which has unfolded or which may come. And no person of conscience would celebrate the slaughter or suffering of anyone, especially of civilians.

But for those of us outside this region, it is urgent to see the context of how this all came about. None of this came about in a vacuum. This is not a justification for terrorism. Absolutely not. But if we truly care about peace, we should begin with understanding.

In much of the media, it is once again being portrayed as a conflict of equals. Of culture against culture, religion against religion. As two countries in some kind of eternal war. And this is a dangerous falsehood.

We can go back over 75 years and explore how following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, British Mandate Palestine continued its colonial project which began the cycle of dispossession and violence. To the odious, centuries-long persecution of Jews in Europe which led to the Holocaust and the forced displacement of millions of Jews, many of whom fled to the Middle-East. To the UN partition of Israel/Palestine which was grossly unfair toward the Palestinians in land allocation and resources. To the Nakba, or Catastrophe, where scores were massacred and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their villages and homes by violent militias. To the repeated betrayal of Palestinian aspirations for self determination by American politicians and their biased and militarized foreign policy. To decades of entrenched discrimination, segregation and ethnic cleansing. But I think it is best to look at the past few decades instead.

In recent years, Israel has been designated an apartheid state by the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and by Israeli human rights organizations like B’Tselem and If Not Now. Even President Jimmy Carter warned of this years ago, and the Israeli ex-Mossad chief Tamir Pardo called his country an apartheid state. Mossad is Israel’s intelligence agency. All of this is demonstrated to most reasonable people when presented with the facts on the ground.

Nearly 3 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem live under Israeli occupation. Israeli apologists claim that the Palestinian Authority is their government when, in actuality, it is merely a proxy government for the occupation. Thanks to the unfair Oslo Accords, Israel has been able to effectively divided the occupied West Bank into three administrative areas. In all but one of those zones, Israel has absolute control. Palestinians in the remaining area are still subject to the Israeli occupation by way of the administration of its proxy, the PA.

All Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem face home demolitions, walls, barriers, separate roads, scores of dehumanizing checkpoints, daily violence from illegal settlers that include being shot at and the burning of olive groves, and military tribunals instead of civil courts like their Israeli settler counterparts. Palestinian children are routinely spirited away in terrorizing night raids and taken to detention centers that are often undisclosed. There they often face abuse and neglect.

And over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, which has been blockaded and besieged for nearly 15 years, have absolutely no say regarding their unjustified imprisonment or the routine collective punishment meted out by the Israeli military. These Palestinians are subject to indiscriminate carpet bombing and are prevented from leaving the Strip by Israel and Egypt. Israel has historically targeted schools, apartment buildings, shelters, mosques and the press with indiscriminate bombs. And the UN has warned repeatedly that Gaza will be unlivable thanks to poverty, scant access to clean drinking water, and routine Israeli drone surveillance and bombardment.

Within Israel, towns and neighbourhoods have committees that have the right to exclude whomever they want on the basis of ethnicity or religion. Those that have a Jewish majority can effectively ban non-Jews from living where they want, echoing the redlining practices in the US that excluded Black Americans from purchasing homes in predominantly white, middle-class neighborhoods. Many Palestinian and Bedouin communities are disproportionately discriminated in building permits and are often disconnected from basic services like water and garbage collection. In fact, there are over 65 laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel and it allocates only a fraction of its budget to Palestinian Israelis councils.

This context is vital to understand how persecution and dehumanization foment alienation and rage. It is also important to note that Palestinian civilian deaths far outweigh Israeli civilian deaths. Again, this is not a justification for terrorism. But it demonstrates the disproportionate amount of suffering in reality, opposed to how it is often represented in mainstream media.

The war Israel is going to wage on Gaza this time could be the most devastating one yet. Israel is now governed by some of the most far-right figures on the political spectrum and in the past few months they have used violence against their own citizens at peaceful protests. Some have faced criminal charges. Many have openly expressed racist sentiments and genocidal intent. All food, water and electricity to the small, walled-in enclave has been severely restricted or cut-off. In response, a cornered Hamas will likely become even more violent toward those it has captured.

Therefore, if we truly care for a just peace we must make our voices heard now. Western governments have direct impact on how this will unfold. Billions of dollars have been allocated for a military response to what is, by all accounts, a humanitarian disaster. We must not only demand a ceasefire, but a just peace. For Palestinians humanity to be recognized. For an end to the decades long oppression, dispossession and apartheid. And for a viable, fair path forward for Jews and Palestinians to live as equals and, hopefully, as brothers and sisters in that beautiful land.

Kenn Orphan, October 2023