(c) Scott Peek Photography

History. It all ties back to history, and it always will tie back to the history and constant struggle between Jews, Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians. If you want to be well-versed on what’s going on in the war that Israel recently declared on Hamas due to the unprecedented attacks in Southern Israel, you must know the history of both sides and how they got to this point.
Failed peace agreements. Wars. Occupations. Intifadas. Families being displaced from the homes they believe are rightful to them. It’s been going on since Israel was founded as a state in 1948. But actually, it’s been longer than that. More than half of the Torah (the Old Testament) takes place in Canaan, which is now current day Israel.
This was the Jews’ holy land, which they were later persecuted and killed for by the Romans. Under Ottoman life, Jews prospered — making up a small percentage of Palestine’s population— up until the mid 19th century, where hate began to grow for the Jews. While the Jewish population dwindled, the Arab population grew and gave rise to thousands of thousands families and peoples who took home in the land of Palestine, creating prosperous cities and lives under the Sultanate.
Eventually, in 1917 with the Balfour declaration, the British Government called for a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, which was eventualy established after the Holocaust in 1948.
Now, you have a problem where millions of Jews are migrating to their “promised land,” which they’ve dreamed about for thousands of years, and people living in their own promised land. Countless Palestinians are displaced, leaving the West Bank a true point of contention for years to come, and currently, a far-right government in Israel increases their presence in what is supposed to be a future state of Palestine, according to the Oslo Accords of 1993. After multiple land agreements turned down by Arab leaders, wars fought between people on whose land it is, and much aggression from both sides to get the other people out of what they believe is rightfully theirs, we find ourselves where we currently are.
While I don’t have time to go into a deeper history (and believe me, this is barely scratching the surface of the conflict,) I encourage you to educate yourself before you get into arguments or take sides.
Hamas, a terrorist group that gained control of the Gaza Strip during elections in 2006 and later violently disconnected its ties with the Palestinian National Authority, has never accepted the peace with Israel and has always called for the complete destruction of the Jewish state purely because of the Jews who live there.
They incite violence. They take hostages. They put the innocent Palestinian families living in the Gaza Strip at risk by using UN partitioned supplies to strengthen their insurgency and use their people as human shields to gain traction. It’s not right. It’s not humane. It’s tearing up Gaza’s society.
When it comes to the death of innocent civilians, there are no sides to take or people to call “right.” Whether the teenagers murdered by terrorists at the Re’im music festivals or the Palestinian families caught in the crossfire of Israeli airstrikes, both sides are taking massive amounts of casualties that are only accredited to the bitter history between the people.
Whether the land is Israel or Palestine or both to you, both people have the right to exist there. In their homes. As we diverge from the possibility of a two-state solution more and more as time goes on, hearts around the world yearn for civilians, people who should never be a point of convention in a war. It hurts me to see more and more people dying on both sides for a conflict that both Palestinians and Israelis should not have to suffer through.
Due to the sad fact that Hamas is so deeply embedded into Gazan and Palestinian society, Israel has a hard approach to take.
Hamas has built up Gaza over the last 17 years at the expense of all the citizens who live in their land of Palestine as their ancestral home. It’s hard to find a strategy against a terrorist organization who builds armies around their society.
I urge everyone to read the news. Read different news sources, don’t just get your news from one source. Read books. Read history, watch videos and create your own opinions.
Know the difference between the Israeli-Palestinian struggle in the West Bank with occupation battles and border struggles and the Israel-Hamas struggle, a true war against terror. Now more than ever, educate yourself on what sets these two conflicts apart and how you can become a leader in your community.