Zoom the Eff Out

Dear World,

When we focus on Israelis vs. Palestinians, we put a tiny frame on a giant canvass.  When we widen the frame to see the larger picture, we see Iranian backed Hamas. Everyone else are bit players in a region puppeteered by Hamas. Please do not buy into the “us vs. them” “Jew vs. Arab” narrative, even if it is easier to understand and is soooooooo satisfying in its “righteousness”. This is not a binary “which one” question: Israel versus Palestine. It’s a “how” question. How do we move forward—together?

This means overcoming Hamas and creating two states that can thrive in relationship with each other.

The level of power Hamas has in the conflict is a failure. Please see the fuller picture—the complexities, the history, the terrible choices we are all faced with. 

A recent video that went viral sums this up for me. In it, you see a Palestinian on the ground and a Jewish Israeli shooting him dead. Most people, including Jews and Arabs, would agree that you do not shoot a person who is not a threat. That is true, even if you make the frame wider. But the wider frame also gives context. The man on the ground just stabbed a passer-by and was running to stab others. Why was that omitted from what went viral on the left in the US? And if we pulled the frame even wider, we would see geopolitical forces that rely on this very dynamic to feed their power.

Replace ‘the Jews’ with anyone else in this situation and the conflict would not still be active after generations.

The worst part of John Oliver’s awful video in May was seeing the graphics of the Israeli and Palestinian flags on the screen while (doing a sickening job of) trying to explain what was happening. Where was the Hamas flag, John? Why assist evil regimes in their goal to inflame the Arab vs. Jew narrative?

Imagine if all the world’s efforts shifted to collectively ending Hamas’ power. Replace ‘the Jews’ with anyone else in this situation and the conflict would not still be active after generations.

Stop zero-ing in on the Jews and letting the big-picture terrorists off the hook. 

Love,
A Liberal Zionist