A Proportionate Response to a Disproportionate Subject

On equal sides of humanity and diametrically different sides of oppression.

Who are we truly ‘in anger with’? 

I have never lived in Israel, but half of my family does or once did. My mother was born on a kibbutz much like the one massacred by Hamas and IDF fire on October 7th. My grandfather lives in Israel and co-edits the Palestine-Israel Journal with prominent Palestinian journalist, Ziad AbuZayyad and an editorial team of Arabs and Jews. I wrote an article for their youth edition. My aunt and my two 12-year-old cousins live there as well and took shelter during the attacks and subsequent ones. However, like my father’s Italian side, I grew up in the Bronx.

I’ve had Arab and Muslim friends for as long as I can remember. Going to NYC public schools for nearly my entire education through graduate school, almost all my friends are incredible people, part of rich cultures that I’ve seen since I was a child, marginalized by xenophobia’s poor mentalities. I have friends whose neighborhoods have been terrorized by Israeli settlers. I am apparently only two degrees of separation from people killed or held captive by Hamas. One of whom, Vivian, used to help people from Gaza find medical care and created a peace organization run by a partnership of Israelis and Palestinian women.  I have friends who are current or former refugees of war and imperialist oppression. I have friends who will need to live as Muslim and Jewish parents to children in this world for the rest of their lives. This is all I know.

This is the only story I can offer. But I believe the more perspectives we offer the world, the more likely someone will see one they never thought existed.

My ties to my family and friends are all the way through. And to me, in times of pain, that has always meant not just being tied to their individual suffering, but the suffering faced in the totality of their experience in this world. That means, if I care for someone, I care for whatever issues their communities face. Never forget: your friends will always be someone else’s stranger.

And, because of the values I’ve developed since I was a kid, my tie to empathy, humanity, and human rights also goes all the way through. And to me, especially in times of pain, that means using it as a lens, a North Star, and going where it leads me. Not a singular person. Not a singular government. Not a singular movement. The principles themselves. To paraphrase human rights lawyer, congressional candidate, and activist, Qasim Rashid: “We must adhere to these recognized principles (of human rights), even when it’s hard—especially when it’s hard.”

I’m just trying to find my place in all this. 

As are many descendants—who can get the brunt of our anger. 

I’ve heard many claims “you need to study the ‘history;’ “do your research,” or live in Israel—which is misleading, because it’s a different experience depending on who you ask—before speaking out with any sort of platform. Yes, if you’re going to write a policy paper or speak as a historical authority, you should do extensive, peer-reviewed research. And research and context are valuable and important to have an educated opinion. But you don’t need to be a scholar or have lived in the area to feel pain for the people. Pain for the dramatic loss of life and believe there must be other ways, besides this magnitude of death, displacement, and destruction, to achieve any goal.

I always say the true test is how you explain something to a child. Would you really want your child to be desensitized to the other children dead or in terror? Would your immediate response really be: ‘Well it’s complicated’? Or cry, console, and emote with them and their fears first and foremost before any history lesson or suggestion of justification.

The reason Stanley and I founded Let’s Not Be Trash over five years ago was primarily to discuss masculinity, gender, and sexism. But it transcended into a place for all issues of morality, justice, and equity and how all these components intersect—with all our humanity and imperfections as humans and writers laid bare. This is about building a coalition. Coalitions are made up of people at different steps in their education and enlightenment. If we always close the doors and pause to wait for ‘sufficient’ knowledge, we will eternally be a train waiting at the station, and never a coalition of the willing ready to roll (IYKYK).

So, given where I come from, the people I care about, and the purpose for this platform, right now, all I want to do, in all its incompleteness, is talk about how we talk.

How we talk to each other today and each day forward. Because there is one thing I know regarding violence, oppression, and change: cycles stop when we start.

And as Zack de la Rocha said: “It has to start somewhere; it has to start somehow. What better place than here; what better time than now?”

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I think it’s important now more than ever to talk, humanize experiences, and have active compassion with each other. That being said, no one should be forced to engage with anyone who does not acknowledge their humanity. You cannot extend an olive branch to someone who believes you shouldn’t have olives. Or that you are somehow guilty or an enemy at birth. As Baldwin said, “We can disagree, and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”

But once we do engage, with the purpose of any sort of productive conversation, one of the primary issues with discourse between people of any community facing harm, is acknowledgment of that harm.

And here we are, concurrent with that truth, with a visible distinction that unlike most of what we consider wars and conflicts—this one has a severely disproportionate foundation. Israel gets three billion dollars of funding per year for its military operations from the US. With the IDF, Mossad, Shinbet, and nearly unwavering support from the US, battling a displaced population, in what the Human Rights Watch calls an open-air prison, with significantly limited resources—even with any munitions and resources from other Middle Eastern nations—the incongruity between these sides is staggering. As there are in death tolls.

And with that truth, there is this one: “People are not their governments.” This is a refrain over the past few months for just treatment of all populations during the past month. We can certainly hold people accountable for the impact of their actions, but we must not reduce, as a general school of thought, an individual to the system and location they are born into.

So, in our personal life, we are tasked with viewing proportionate humanity in the face of significantly disproportionate political power. We must hold these multiple truths, along with dual empathy—and perspectives in macro and micro.

In the micro we are all equally human: Palestinian, Israeli, Arab, Jewish, Muslim, anyone. We are all deserving of empathy. In the micro, our hurt and pain for any loss of life, any fear, is human and cannot be quantified or superseded. An Israeli child being orphaned by Hamas killing their family, being taken hostage, with status unknown, or a Jewish parent losing their child, is of equal magnitude, value, and human grief and pain, as a Palestinian child becoming orphaned by the IDF’s bombs, a family searching for their child amidst miles of rubble, and a parent losing their child to a barrage of rockets in a hospital where they thought they were safe. And everyone deserves safety. Equal, interpersonal empathy must remain in the balance of a drastically uneven position between Palestine and Israel as states.

Our conversations, on an interpersonal level, can become a never-ending cycle of: ‘I won’t acknowledge your wound until you acknowledge mine.’ Among many things, empathy in dialogue is acknowledging someone else’s wound.

Within this empathy, we must have grace. Especially grace for grief. We cannot demand all to see the loss of their people, neighbors, friends, and family, bodies dragged, child hostages and babies violently murdered en masse in any place, and, then, expect them to jump into correct activism and form. We cannot demand a mother who just lost her newborn child to immediately condemn Hamas. We cannot demand someone who had their family or child slaughtered immediately condemn the IDF. If everyone is human, it is in human nature to grieve and grieve differently. With different reactions, different looks, and different timelines. It’s unjust and unrealistic to expect optimal anything from someone, of any background, who suffers the loss of life at the hands of Hamas, IDF, US military, or anyone else.

Some can move onward to various actions faster than others. And some feel that their empathy cup is full of the plight of their own community. And as much as I personally disagree with the notion that such a containment even exists—in the wake of tragedy there is often fear and emotion, not reason and logic.

Leaders such as Netanyahu are experts at weaponizing Jewish fear and grief into Israeli policy and propaganda consumption. Additionally, just the claims, not verified as of now (to the best one can even do so), of sexual violence, during the actions of Hamas during their October 7th attack and the IDF towards Palestinian women in custody —who actually bragged about it on occasion—will be triggering, no matter the full scope of evidence or lack thereof uncovered. It’s like a lawyer poisoning the waters by telling the jury something they know the judge will strike from the record, regardless if it is factual, but will remain in the jury’s mind.

We must have grace for the survivors of sexual violence, who in addition to being traumatized by being in or seeing any of this violence, were also retraumatized by this image. Rape, cruelty, and torture serve no purpose in any movement or strategy, aside from misogyny in its most terrorizing form. But their mention serves as a great tool of manipulation of our most innate nightmares, especially to women—the disproportionate survivors of such violence.

Jewish people have been terrorized through pogroms ( village massacres reminiscent of what Hamas did on October 7th), since before the 20th century, and of course, lost over six million people in the Holocaust. Palestinians, have lost tens of thousands of people since 1948, including the Nakba, which is close to being the second deadliest in loss of life to the violence of the past month. This current, unrelenting wave of IDF bombing and attacks in Gaza has erased entire Palestinian bloodlines; the Holocaust erased entire Jewish lineages. The erasure of Israelis and Jews is stated as a goal of Hamas’s resistance in their charter. I know this has since been revised. But forgive me if when the new 2017 release dropped, I wasn’t 100% assured everyone got the memo. Even if they were, six years is kinda recent too, for trusting ex-mass murder covenants and all its armed enforcers. Maybe that’s just me. Hell, the IDF can barely get on the memo with which calendar they designate a terrorist organization—or Trump which amazing dip. The Israeli government and military have stated—and acted—as if all civilians are targets as part of their current military attack on Gaza. Several UN officials, and their own definition of the term support that all of these are statements, and for Gaza, current conditions, lead to genocide. These are facts and analyses we must contend with concurrently.

All of this is to say, in the macro “both sides,” are not in the same position in power, capability, and oppression—as lands, Israel has oppressed Palestine, not the other way around. But both sides—when we break up “sides” to people and communities—have reasons to have fear. And just a cursory dive into the history of these peoples demonstrates that present fears are steeped in the historical, generational fear of annihilation.

Fears of this magnitude can become encompassing. They can reach a point where no facts matter, no level of empathy, support, or condemnation sufficient, other than the ones that make them feel safe. And when someone is in that space, it’s best to give them space. However, when someone operating from an emotional standpoint, from this place of hurt and fear, takes action for policy or uses their platform for significant influence, then, I believe, it’s important to have a new discussion. This is where empathy and intervention intersect. We can feel for someone’s wounds while speaking up before they pick at another’s.

Why chastise someone who desires a place to call their own and share with a community? 

There’s a viral message where a woman posted that she texted her boyfriend that she was upset because her Shawarma fell apart. An unraveling Shwarma can unravel one’s day, indeed. His response: “Oh no, are you solution-oriented or in the feelings stage?”

Obviously, the comparison here is not in the subject matter (though ironically Shawarma is enjoyed by all)—it’s the idea. Even in general, people who are upset, come to an interaction with different stages and frames of mind. These are only ever amplified by death, trauma, and core fears. Frequently, within the conversations we’re having about the devastation of the past month and many other incidents of massive violence and death, people aren't in the same discussion. There is a mismatch between stages and readiness between feelings, full emotional compasses, and solutions.

It’s important to ask ourselves, for our own energy and mental health, what stage someone else is at and what stage we’re at on a daily basis. We just witnessed thousands of deaths. Terrified people were taken hostage and families woke up every day uncertain of the status of their children whether in a tunnel or amongst endless rubble. Entire families were massacred. People dying due to dehydration. Babies are killed in hospital beds through bombs or refusal to allow resources. We’ve heard some of the most dehumanizing rhetoric. We cannot become desensitized to this. And we cannot have meaningful policy conversations with someone who probably needs therapy, emotional stability, and a hug (not that we all don’t to various events). It is ok to want to talk, not want to talk, be mad, be confused, be conflicted, and not have all the answers.

It’s also ok, and necessary, I believe, to take the side of humanity.

This is not a team sport. My team is the Yankees. Nations, states, and political groups aint my teams. Because a team is an unconditional commitment, and predominantly self-interested bodies damn sure deserve conditions. Team Human leads me to horrified families, terrified hostages, villages massacred, including those with people dedicated to peace, with thousands dead and wounded, a population of millions of people living without basic needs and contained between walls, and l4,000, mostly civilians, many under 18, murdered with no end in sight.

Anyone who is going through some emotions about all that sorta doesn’t have a playbook.

We must talk in equal truths in the micro, and value facts in the macro, with acknowledgment where there is disproportion. Israel has more power than Palestine. Israelis are not more or less human than Palestinians. Human despair, pain, fear, and grief cannot be measured. Resources, munitions, and civilian fatalities can be.

Through conversation and connection, we build coalitions. Being human rights-centered is not naive or a fool’s errand— it leads to tangible policy. Building coalitions leads to collective empathy, and collective empathy leads to the critical mass necessary for just, humane policy.

Unfortunately, some see the mere advocacy of humanity to be an affront to another’s cause. We must balance any equation that asserts Israeli humanity negates that of Palestinians and vice versa. Maybe some people feel they have space for peace, but they don’t have the space, nor understand how others still have space, for the empathy required to achieve it.

But a humanity that negates is a humanity that cannot sustain—and, for that end, all must sustain.