In the last few days my newsfeeds have been buzzing with various pictures related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Often times, when I read the captions and comments there is a lot of off-handed generalities that are made that are simply not appropriate and productive. The comments are typically from two different extremes. I see comments along the lines of, Death to Israel and They started it, so this is simply payback. These comments usually lead to a series of arguments and bickering which further divides people. However, there is a much larger pressing issue that is being ignored. Just like Muslims are quick to say All Muslims are not like that typically in response to some heinous crime, I firmly believe that not all Jews or Israelis are bad. What we really need is for people of diverse beliefs and ethnicities to come together to target social injustice. When we identify the perpetrators and assign them labels such as Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, Jew, and Israeli, it leaves people to defend those labels rather than focusing on a much larger problem which is social injustice. I really hope we can come together as human beings and look past labels and ethnic affiliations and focus on fixing the issue of social injustice globally.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 22:22:17 +0000