Many Israelis are in denial about Gaza's plight. Let's change that

On October 29, 2023, Aws Albarghouthi—a prominent Palestinian-American researcher in my community whom I deeply respect—wrote on X:

"Today the Israeli army entered our town in the West Bank and shot a bunch of people in cold blood, killing Nasser Albarghouthi.

Note that the West Bank has no Hamas."

Many of the responses to his message were compassionate, expressing condolences over the loss of his relative. But I was taken aback when many people I knew personally responded by denying or justifying what had happened.

Some mused that Nasser Albarghouthi must have been a Hamas fighter. Others accused Aws of lying.

It all felt familiar. I am Israeli-American, and I had just recently learned that two of my family’s in-laws had been murdered on Oct. 7 while at a music festival in the Negev Desert, and a dozen of my first cousin’s friends had all been killed that day in their homes.

When I shared this, I was greeted in part with compassion, but also with denial and blame. Though I hadn't known these in-laws and family friends personally, I still felt fundamentally shaken, but I had very little space to grieve and be human.

Aws Albarghouthi granted me that space and compassion. So he entered my circle of trust. He was the first ever Palestinian in my circle of trust, 33 years into my life. And I think that’s why I was able to recognise, for the first time, what denial and blame look like when they come from "my side." And perhaps, for the first time, I am not tacitly participating in it.

Now I see it everywhere.

There’s widespread famine looming in Gaza, especially in the north, where people are starving to death. But within many of my Israeli circles: denial and blame.

Some friends cling to "Pallywood" conspiracy theories, believing that Palestinians are filming or photographing staged images of themselves suffering to elicit sympathy.

Others share press releases by the Israeli government about how many aid trucks are actually getting into Gaza, despite what humanitarian groups say.

Some solely blame Hamas. Still others share photographs of Palestinians eating shawarma in Rafah and claim that there cannot be a famine if there is shawarma (nevermind that Rafah is in the south, and the existence of shawarma does not rule out a famine).

Perhaps some Israelis do this because of a deep distrust of Palestinian sources. For others it might be because it helps them believe they're on the right side of history.

Only in my Israeli leftist circles do I feel that I can have a conversation about how our country is, for whatever reason, definitely inducing a famine in northern Gaza.

I wonder, in another world, if I'd still be denying and blaming. Like many Israelis, I grew up primed to distrust every Palestinian source by default. When I did try to read Palestinian sources, so much of what I found appeared biased or false, so I assumed that all of it must be biased or false.

In the face of conflicting narratives and information, I often could not tell what was true from what was not. So to cope, I stuck to my circle of trust. My friends and family. I subconsciously enlisted their help in filtering out truth from falsehood.

Until October, there were no Palestinians in that circle of trust. I have been working hard to change that over the past five months, making as many Palestinian friends as possible.

Our relationships often begin online. I reach out to Palestinians who are suffering and offer compassion. Online friendships often then led to video chats and so on, as well as joint activism.

Sometimes Palestinians reach out to me first, like one friend in Gaza who said he felt the same drive to bridge the divide and he liked a lot of what I wrote publicly.

I met another friend, Ihab, because he saw that I donated to a Palestinian-American's recovery fund after he was shot in the US for wearing a keffiyeh. Ihab reached out and thanked me for that, and we started to talk. Now I'm also trying to raise money for him to finish his master's degree in human rights in the US.

Granted, these Palestinian friends are a pretty biased sample. They are broadly aligned with my values and vision, and they are also open to making Israeli friends. They are typically pretty anti-Hamas, and they definitely do not approve of October 7. But they do push me out of my comfort zone quite a bit.

I had never even heard anyone's personal nakba stories before, for example. But now it feels like such a gift when people share them with me, just like it's a gift when I share my grandfather's Holocaust survival story.

My new friends will also push back a bit on my views and preconceptions, like bringing up the ways in which Israeli settlement projects have continued for decades, regardless of who was in charge, even if the current government is escalating that development significantly.

Bottom line: I trust them. Because they are kind and compassionate people, first and foremost. They are my friends.

This access and understanding gives me a bit of a superpower with other people who consider me a part of their circles of trust. It’s hard, but I do know that I can sometimes share what I learn and help change minds. Just last week, I was talking to an Israeli loved one about the starvation in Gaza, and I’d been met at first by the usual denials.

But I persisted and shared what I’d recently learned about a particular extremist who had been funding "protests" to block aid trucks from going into Gaza.

At the end of my explanation, my loved one said he understood, sighed, and voiced his wish for a ceasefire agreement. Having access to Palestinian perspectives that I trust, and being able to share them with Israelis who trust me, is a kind of superpower in enacting change on a small scale.

I think what can make the biggest difference is trying to help other Israelis expand their circles of trust to include their own Palestinian friends. Some of my Palestinian friends live in Gaza, some in the occupied West Bank, some in Israel, and some in the diaspora. We all talk about the things normal friends talk about.

But they all also share with me what their family and friends are going through. Starvation, air strikes, raids, inability to access medical care. And somehow, in spite of that, in spite of everything, still they hope for a better future for both Israelis and Palestinians. How can friendships like that be anything but life-changing?

Now I can see just how unjust everything is. But more importantly, I can see how just everything really could be. When thinking about the future, I used to wonder how I could feel comfortable living in harmony with this theoretical group of people, the Palestinians, who had always been portrayed to me as people who wanted me dead.

Now, when I think about the future, I dream instead of living one day in harmony with Ihab, Rana, Khalil, Ahmed, Lutfi, Anwar, Aws, and the many other Palestinian friends I’ve made. Of our families befriending one another and sharing food, of stories together over coffee or tea.

And I cannot help but feel that the thing I want most in the world is to make that day more than just a dream. Let us all work to make that more than just a dream.