The News You’re Not Being Told About The Hamas Attacks On Israel

If nothing changes, nothing changes

In 2018, I was in the Gaza Strip as bombs rained down around us. The hotel that my colleague and I were in shook as explosions rocked the city.

It was terrifying.

After the bombing stopped, every time I heard a noise, I jumped. My boss back home got me on the phone and wanted to pull me out. I told him I wanted to stay. I did end up staying, and I’m glad I did.

The next day, as we went to the place we were working at, I heard the sound of little children playing. Such a sound never sounded so beautiful as it did then. It’s at times like that that you realize that life is precious.

Fast forward five years, and the bombs are still dropping.

As someone who has been to the Gaza Strip and experienced bombings there, I deplore the current violence that has killed Israelis and now hundreds of Palestinians, including many children on both sides.

I’m also saddened and frustrated with the fact that violence which has been going on for decades is only front page news when Palestinians are the perpetrators.

When you see headlines which talk about ‘terrorists’ and which scream “Hell on earth”, it just cements the impression that Palestinians are always the bad guys while Israel is always the innocent victim.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

You never see front page headlines of the Israeli terrorism that is a daily occurrence for Palestinians. The nights when Israeli soldiers break into Palestinian homes and hold families, including children, at gunpoint, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes while illegal settlements are built next door, electricity running through a Palestinian village to the neighboring illegal Israeli settlement but not giving power to those Palestinians.

Day and night, it never ends.

Wouldn’t you be seriously pi$$ed off?

The way this is being reported cements the impression that Israeli lives are more valuable than Palestinian lives.

Putting ourselves in their shoes

As Martin Luther King lamented, violence is the language of the unheard. What the world has failed to hear is that this year it has been 75 years since the forced displacement by Israel of 3/4 of a million Palestinians from their homeland, many of whom were herded into the Gaza Strip, also known as the world’s largest open-air prison. That displacement is called Al Nakba (The Catastrophe).

After the horrors of the Holocaust, the oppressed became the oppressor.

Today, the Gaza Strip is home to two million people, trapped, unable to get out. So when Netanyahu warns them to get out before the retaliation comes, he knows full well they can’t leave.

As the UN Secretary-General has said, Israeli military operations must be conducted in strict accordance with international humanitarian law. And Israel announcing that it will initiate a complete siege of the Gaza Strip, with nothing allowed in – no electricity, food, or fuel – will just make things even worse, make Hamas even more angry.

And so the violence will continue.

Don’t kid yourself that Israel is somehow more humane than Hamas. They’re not. It’s just that Israel’s terrorism has the backing of countries like yours and mine and is more ‘respectable’ because it’s carried out by a nation-state that has much more advanced technology and has a semblance of democracy. Added to that, despite being a tiny country of only 9 million people, they have the fourth most powerful military in the world, backed by the US.

The violence from Hamas leaves me sad, shocked, and frustrated. Do they really not see that Israel will come back at them with much more force? But when you’re full of rage, you act on emotion and less on reason.

Violence from either side is never the answer. Hamas’ actions are to be condemned outright and they must acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

But when this only makes the front pages now, and all we hear from Joe Biden and others the world over yet again is of “Israel’s right to defend herself”, nothing will change. The violence will continue until justice is served for those under illegal occupation.

As Palestinians told us when the group I was with were there, let’s not be pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian, let’s be pro-peace.

For followers of the Prince of Peace, this should be a no-brainer.

When I was on the Mount of Beatitudes and saw a plaque which said, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, it hit home. It’s they who are the true people of God.

Tonight I can’t get the words of a U2 song out of my head:

Heaven on earth, we need it now.

I’m sick of all of this hanging around.

Sick of the sorrow, sick of the pain.

Sick of hearing again and again, that there’s gonna be peace on earth.

Come, Lord Jesus. May your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

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