“A land with no people for a people with no land.”  This is one of the slogans I heard many times as I prepared for my trip to Israel in 2013.  The attack by Hamas on Israel on 7 October, 2023 would not have happened had there been no people occupying the land of Palestine. Yet Israel formed their nation in taking over the majority of that land in 1948.  There were 1.3 million Palestinians living in their homeland at that time.  Menachem Begin gave orders to wipe out the entire human element in the village of Dar Yasin: 243 men, women and children sending a clear message to any one else who thought to defend their homes and communities: “stay and you will be slaughtered.” Just one example of Israel taking the moral high ground.  Some of the 700,000 Palestinian families driven out of their homes in 1948 still hold the deeds to their homes now 75 years later.

I was in Lebanon in 2016. In the largest refugee camp, I met 3^rd generation Palestinian refugees longing for home.  According to Amira Hass she, a Jewish journalist who lived among the Palestinians “needed to know the people whose lives had been forever altered by my society and my history, whose parents and grandparents, refugees, were forced from their villages in 1948.”  Her parents were among the few Jewish families who refused to move into a home, from which a Palestinian family had fled for their lives.

Nothing justifies Hamas’ attack on Israel today: full stop.  Nothing justifies Israel’s daily aggression, occupation, humiliation, torture of prisoners, imprisoning children, bulldozing homes, increasing development of settlements and enclaves on Palestinian territory etc.:  full stop.

To deny the truth of one side is an act of war. To collaborate with those creating falsehoods is an act of war.  Israel has been waging war on Palestine for a very long time. To declare it today by President Benjamin Netanyahu is quite disingenuous; it’s only a matter of scale.

As Israel is positioning to annihilate Hamas solving nothing for peace, I have a few thoughts. What would it do for these two legitimate people groups to come together in the midst of grief and horror to say “enough.”  Where are the brave men and women to exercise self-control knowing the long game requires a view for the well being of both nations?  This is an opportunity to acknowledge that the security of Israel is an extension of Palestinian security and the many sub-issues that have grown out of the clash of these two brother nations. It is right to condemn todays attack.  It is also right to spotlight the ongoing acts of terror on Palestinians by the Israeli’s.