The Balance Paradox

 It’s not about taking sides, but refusing to let truth be dragged too far in one direction.

I’ve been called a Zionist more times than I can count. The accusation comes fast and with fury, usually in response to something I’ve said that doesn’t perfectly align with the dominant narrative surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict. But the thing is, I’m not Jewish. I’m not Israeli. I’m not part of any political lobby or movement. I’m a Christian, and more importantly, I’m someone who believes in truth, balance, and resisting tribal thinking. What I’ve discovered, though, is that when you try to introduce nuance into a debate that has become emotionally charged and one-sided, people stop hearing what you’re actually saying. Instead, they assign you to a team, usually the team they see as the enemy.

That’s the balance paradox. In many modern debates, there is a tipping point where one side becomes so dominant in discourse that its claims, even if partly flawed or lacking context, are accepted without scrutiny. It becomes difficult to question, correct, or complicate the narrative without being accused of siding with the opposition. And because people are operating from a place of emotional or religious allegiance, they don’t take kindly to perceived disloyalty. You become a threat to their certainty, and therefore a traitor by default. But what they fail to see is that seeking truth is not betrayal. It’s integrity.

The best way I can explain this dynamic is through the image of a tug of war. Picture two teams pulling on a rope. At first, both sides are exerting effort. But over time, one side gains the upper hand. They grow in number, influence, and public sympathy. Eventually, they start pulling harder, faster, and with more force. And as they do, they start dragging the entire rope, and the conversation, in their direction. At that point, it becomes impossible for those in the middle to hold their footing. The rope isn’t just moving; it’s being yanked out of shape. Truth, once in the center, is being pulled far off to one side.

Now imagine someone sees this happening. They aren’t part of either team. They weren’t on the field to begin with. But they see that the discussion has lost its balance. They step forward, grab the rope on the side that’s losing, and begin to pull. Not because they fully believe in that team’s ideology, and not because they want them to win, but because they’re trying to steady the rope. They’re trying to pull it back to the center, where balance lives, where full context can be seen, where complexity can breathe. And yet the moment they do, the dominant side points at them and says, “You’re with them. You’re the enemy.” They’re no longer seen as someone pursuing balance, but as someone betraying the cause.

If someone tells the truth first time around, people tend to trust what they say next, even if the following statement is false. Once a dominant narrative wins over enough people with a sequence of persuasive claims, every subsequent claim seems more plausible just by proximity. People begin to think, “They were right about the last thing, so they must be right about this too.” No one stops to check whether the evidence is actually there. That’s the trap of momentum. When you’re winning the tug of war, it’s easier to get away with exaggerations, half-truths, or outright falsehoods, because trust is already secured and emotion is doing most of the work. Questioning those claims is treated not as healthy scepticism, but as betrayal. And that’s why it feels so dangerous to pull the rope the other way, even just a little.

That’s what it feels like to try and talk about Hamas’s authoritarianism in a room full of people emotionally invested in defending Palestine. That’s what it feels like to question, or to ask whether some narratives are being selectively amplified for effect. I don’t raise these points because I support bombing civilians or denying anyone their rights. I raise them because truth matters. Justice without truth is just another form of propaganda. If we can’t hold all sides accountable, if we can’t speak honestly even when it’s uncomfortable, then we’re not helping. We’re just feeding a new kind of dogma.

And the cost of holding that position is real. I’ve had friends stop speaking to me entirely just because I debated them on the Israel-Palestine issue. People I used to talk to every day have cut me off. They haven’t done it because I was cruel or hateful or dismissive of suffering, but because I introduced doubt. I asked questions. I saw through a different lens. And that, in today’s climate, is enough. That goes to show how deeply tribal some of these causes have become. It isn’t about evidence, conversation, or empathy anymore. It’s about loyalty. It’s about litmus tests. You either say all the right things or you’re cast out. You either echo the slogans or you’re suspected of betrayal. I’ve also had to cut other people off, too. Not because I wanted to lose friendships but because they were pulling on the rope too hard. Sometimes, the best thing to do, in such cases, is to simply let go of the rope.  

I don’t really support popular narratives. That’s why I tend to lean toward the unpopular decisions or perspectives. Not because I want to be a troll, not because I enjoy winding people up, but because when things start leaning too heavily in one direction, I feel a deep pull to push back. To resist the momentum. To restore balance. It’s not contrarianism for its own sake, it’s about keeping the rope from snapping. I believe we need equilibrium. We need space for thought, doubt, disagreement, and reflection. And you don’t get that when everyone’s sprinting in the same direction, cheering as they go, trampling over nuance on the way.

I can’t lie just to keep friends or avoid criticism. I’ve never worked like that. I’m a social liberal. I believe in human rights, compassion, and internationalism. I also believe in philosophy, in critical thinking, in layered truth, in the courage to challenge certainty. That doesn’t mean I take a nihilistic approach. I don’t deny people’s experiences or suggest that truth doesn’t exist. But I do see that truth is rarely one-dimensional. It lives in tension. It’s shaped by perspective. And it demands that we live with complexity rather than force every question into a binary.

Like the old story in Flatland, I don’t see life in a straight line. I don’t accept the illusion that everything is either this or that, black or white, good or evil. We live in a world of many hues, and we’re not meant to flatten our understanding to fit someone else’s demand for clarity or allegiance. That’s why I speak the way I do. That’s why I pull on the rope. Not because I hate one side or worship the other, but because I refuse to pretend that a flattened version of reality is enough. There is more to see. More to feel. More to understand. And I believe we can only begin to heal when we stop demanding that everyone pick a side and start asking if the picture we’re being shown is really the whole thing.