ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

I hadn’t known too much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict myself, but I decided to teach a design studio about the conflict back in 2013, prompted by yet another bout of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. The beauty of teaching in design was that I could frame a question in direct engagement with urgent issues of our time and lead students through the process of investigating the question and look for a solution together, without me having figured out all the answers and delivering the answers to them.

Upon researching into the conflict, my students found out that it was the Palestinians who were oppressed by the Israelis. Access to the basic resources such as food, water or electricity in Palestinian settlements as well as physical movements in and out of the settlements were being strictly controlled and restricted by the Israelis. Palestinians were considered ‘second class citizens’ by the Israelis and were treated as such. 

Essentially, the Palestinians existed at mercy of the Israelis.

My students shook their head in disbelief: HOW can you oppress others, when you have been oppressed yourself? 

Ten years later, when the Gaza War broke out in 2023, with no apparent progress in between, I could not help but recall my students’ disbelief in the paradox of oppressing others when you have been oppressed yourself. 

Psychologists talk about how those who have been bullied as children will become bullies themselves when they grow up. Why? Because they will seek out the power they didn’t feel inside themselves through a false sense of power over others — through domination, control and subjugation. 

Unless you felt your own intrinsic power, you could only be one of two things: either the bully or the bullied, the oppressor or the oppressed, on top or at bottom — perpetuating the cycle of domination and subjugation.

Now Israel had become the bully, historically having been bullied themselves. 

The West turning a blind eye toward this injustice, being in unconditional support of Israel as a historical victim no matter what, has enabled Israel to continue its maltreatment of Palestinians until now. Shutting down any criticism of Israel for its violation of human rights as ‘anti-semitism’ would be a false accusation of anti-semitism. 

Despite suppression of pro-Palestinian protests around the world, what the Gaza War 2023 did was to bring the Palestinian voice to the fore, which had been silenced under the unconditional support of Israel. Being ‘pro-Palestinian’ didn’t mean that you were ‘pro-Hamas’ — a terrorist organization that seeks to eradicate the State of Israel — nor was it justifying their violence.

It meant that you were standing up against injustice — the system of oppression itself. If anyone used the ‘pro-Palestinian’ stance as the opportunity to express their blind hate against all Jews and the denial of Israel’s right to exist, it only spoiled the opportunity to address the real issue: the oppression of Palestinians.

At the same time, to attribute what Israelis were doing to Palestinians as something specific to the inherent nature of Jews would amount to anti-semitism. The dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians was the dynamics of power that was going on all over the world — from personal relationships in people’s homes, the relationship between neighboring nations to the geo-political relationship between the ‘West’ and the rest.

But the polarization between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian camps on US university campuses missed the opportunity to unite on the humanity’s fight for justice: One could condemn the Hamas and its killing of innocent civilians AND stand up for the Palestinian right  at the same time  — not only against the system of oppression in the way Palestinians were being treated, but also the way the Israeli government was retaliating by killing millions of Palestinian civilians — because both were fighting for the same thing: justice for humanity. 

Rather than turning a blind eye to injustice, exposing injustice and standing up for justice would be a step forward in the humanity’s fight for justice.  

But it won’t be enough, as the ‘symptoms’ of hierarchy — the dynamics of power — would go on unless we intervened at the source of the problem, which was not feeling one’s intrinsic power from within oneself.  So the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would get at the root of the problem would be to empower both Israelis and Palestinians with the tools to connect with their true source of power and feel their intrinsic power from within themselves. 

Connection to their intrinsic power would also allow dis-identification from deriving one’s sense of self and worth from either being an Israeli or a Palestinian, a Jew or an Arab — the source of division — and be able to transcend these categories and meet on the human level — see each other as humans beyond these categories. Transcending these categories would only be possible when one has found oneself beyond these categories.

And that’s what the rest of the world could also do while watching this conflict: rather than being busy taking sides, which would only fuel more polarization, we could work on exposing and standing up against injustice united in a humanity’s fight for justice, we can empower ourselves as well as others with the tools to connect with our true source of power.