I am writing this

• as the grand-grandchild of a Jewish Holocaust survivor, who was sent to the concentration camp in Theresienstadt.
• as a German citizen, whose only “pride” in his country stems from educating a generation whose responsibility is to make sure something like the Holocaust can never happen again.
• acknowledging that I am by far not as educated as the experts dealing with the Israeli-Palestine relationship.
• acknowledging that the Israeli government isn’t the Israeli people and Hamas isn’t the Palestinian people.
• acknowledging that people become “irrational” when their security is endangered (Campbell, 2023).
• emphasizing that justifying something (violence) is different from understanding/explaining it.
• emphasizing that sometimes we have to simplify in order to discuss and communicate/discuss in good faith.

I wonder

• why people are surprised about the Hamas attack on Israel considering that the Palestinians were constantly harassed, forced out of their land, and put in the “world’s largest open air prison” (NPR, 2023). Israel has continued this policy supported by Western governments without any peaceful way for Palestinians to resist.
• what Israel and other supporters think will happen next and how they think a peaceful future in the region can be built.
• why dying to fight for your land is seen as “fanatic” (The Economist, 2023) in Palestinians, but heroic in Ukrainians.

Like many people, I am struggling to make sense of it all. What has surprised me after the horrific attacks, though, is the empathy shown towards the Palestinians and the suddenly appearing criticism of the Israeli government. It seems as if the Hamas’ attack has successfully shone the spotlight not only on it’s own cruelty, but also the Israeli’s government’s and armed force’s violence against Palestinians. The Israeli’s harassment of Palestinians seems to be acknowledged by the Western political class.

I’d love to learn the things that I am missing here…