The Most Terrifying Debates I’ve Had With Pro-Palestinians

A few years ago, my parents told me I should get into debate. My psychologist, my school counselor, and my teachers all echoed this. They said I would be very good at arguing my point of view, and I needed an extracurricular activity to socialize with other teens my age.

In a few debates in English and Social Studies during middle school, I excelled very well. These were about more civil and less controversial topics. But somehow, I managed to have a strong opinion on everything. My teachers said it was “impossible to defeat me” in an argument. I began to enjoy debate, and it worked. For the first time, I felt like I could socialize with other kids my age, and I wasn’t as scared to talk to anyone.

Then came October 7. I woke up to find an Email from the New York Times. I remember it clearly. I opened the article, and I cannot describe what I felt. The pictures, the testimonies, and the reports were just awful. I was shocked, devastated, and anguished. But I didn’t let myself feel those emotions. I have never been able to feel “weak”, to admit defeat, or to let others make me feel sad. So I pushed everything else aside and replaced those with a new emotion: Anger. Anger at Hamas. At Palestinians. At everyone who cheered these horrific atrocities.

I think that may have been the right choice for my sanity. Or maybe the wrong one. It’s hard to tell, even 2 years later. If I had let myself feel the grief and fear, would it have broken me? Or has the hate I felt done irreversible damage to my worldview?

Just two days later, I returned to public school. In the first few days back at school, my peers began taking sides. To my shock, most of them sided with Hamas. Or, at least, Palestine. It’s hard to tell which one, if those two are even different.

We started to have conversations. I was forced to sit at a desk with two girls I absolutely despised. I had known them for a few years, and they were the stereotypical YA bullies. They would make fun of my anxiety, my lack of friends, and, because I would often glare at them, they decided I was gay. Since then, I’ve learned to ignore people like this, but it would still be satisfying to punch one of them in the face.

Now, these two girls, who already hated me for a multitude of reasons, were constantly on TikTok. As we know, TikTok is the hub of Pro-Palestinian content, from misinformation to fact to pure antisemitic hate. As young hispanic women, they sided with the Palestinians.

When we had our first conversation about this, it was actually quite civil. They said they supported Palestine because “more Palestinians have died in this war than Israelis”. While I found this reasoning to be irrational and absurd, I wasn’t too angry at them. Then they asked me why I supported Israel. I cited the October 7 massacre, and the slaughter of hundreds of unarmed civilians.

Then one of the girls dismissed this. “No,” she said. “You support Israel because you are Jewish. Admit it.”

At that point, I lost it. We had several heated arguments over the next few weeks, before the administration decided to put a stop to everything. I eventually left the school.

After not being around these people for a while, I matured and felt like I could actually succeed in school. I would often watch debates online, by figures like Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro. I decided to try it myself.

At another youth activist group, for young adults looking to make change, we had some conversations. I had gone there expecting support, but found out too late that the vast majority of my peers and support staff were militant supporters of Palestine.

Another girl said that Israel was committing a “genocide” in Gaza. I asked her why. She shrugged, refusing to give me any answer or explanation. Then, I mentioned the October 7 attacks, hoping we could have an actual conversation about this.

“Remind me what that was again?” she asked.

I did. “It was the slaughter of Israelis by Hamas, where over 1,000 people were murdered and 250 were taken hostage.”

She shrugged, then curtly said, “They were acting in self-defense.”

At that point, another girl there jumped in on the conversation. She told me that Israel was the bad guy, to which I responded that Operation Swords of Iron was in self-defense, purely to return the hostages and ensure that nothing like October 7 would happen again.

She said that the war had gone “way beyond defending [Israel]”, and that it was a genocide. It’s important to note that, at the time, Hamas was still holding around 100 hostages.

Instead of giving any reasoning or argument, she responded by listing horrible things she had seen on TikTok. She gave me very graphic descriptions of alleged Palestinian casualties.

This isn’t necessarily a genocide. It’s a war. War is horrible. And urban combat is worse. When Hamas attacked Israel, they knew what would happen. They wanted it to happen. They wanted Gazan civilians to suffer horribly, for the world to see what they had done. And they wanted people to blame Israel.

Israel has, for the most part, won the physical war. But Hamas, and its allies, have won the propaganda war. I had heard this, but I only realized the scale of this in another debate.

My opponent said that, because of her hispanic heritage, she sided with the Palestinians. According to her, Palestinians were indigenous to the land, and the Jews were the equivalent of “White colonizers”. I corrected her, saying that Jews were indigenous, but she retorted, saying “Well that’s not the way I learned it”.

This was disturbing, but next, she justified the October 7 attacks. She said that October 7 was a retaliation for Israel’s “decades of oppression” against Palestinians. Of course, she made no mention of the Intifadas, or the innumerable terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians over the years.

Next, she asked me, “If there are two people in an unhealthy relationship, and one partner is constantly abusing the other, and then the victim decides to fight back, and the abuser ends up dead, is the victim really that bad?” This metaphor was extremely inaccurate. She seemed to be ignoring, glossing over, or minimizing the aforementioned Intifadas, bus bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, and lynchings perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists, not as an act of resistance, but purely out of hate.

I asked her why she thought Hamas committed October 7. “What was their plan? What did they expect to happen?” She gave me a look, indicating she had never thought about this before. When I explained that Hamas’s strategy was to force Israel into obliterating the Gaza Strip, she seemed skeptical and confused.

After this, I was done. I couldn’t debate this anymore. The ignorance and hate of my opponents was just too much, and I had no strength left to have any actual conversations. Then I realized I didn’t need to debate at all.

I don’t have to justify my country’s actions to people who will never take me seriously. It’s not my responsibility. I should focus my energy elsewhere. Toward my own community.

That was when I became closer with my Safta. I started keeping Shabbat a few times, and visiting the local synagogue. I found that, even though I don’t believe in HaShem and never have, I’m still Jewish. For me, Judaism isn’t a religion. It’s a family and an identity. And, in the midst of this new wave of antisemitism, the best thing I can do is to preserve my heritage. I can participate in community events more. I’ve been afraid to go to the synagogue, to wear Jewish symbols in public, to declare my support for Israel. But the only thing stronger than hate is love.

I learned to not waste my time trying to sway the political opinions of random people. They’re either concrete in their ideology, which is different than mine, or too bigoted to listen to reason. And most of all, Jews don’t need majority support. Looking back through history, we’ve been targeted constantly. We have always been a minority. In most civilizations, we’ve had to hide our faith. But somehow, we’ve made it through everything. I don’t believe in G-d, but this, in my opinion, is a miracle.