Israel & Palestine: The People in the Middle

Amid the noise of outrage, blame, and destruction, the quiet voices of Israelis and Palestinians who long for peace are being drowned out. It’s time we start listening to them.

We are living in a time where it feels as though empathy is being buried beneath rubble, where the loudest voices are often the most extreme, and where outrage overshadows humanity. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become a global theatre of blame and bloodshed, with each side locked in a cycle of accusation, grief and rage. Both claim the mantle of victimhood, both shout of genocide, of terrorism, of existential threat. Both carry centuries of trauma in their bones. And both, heartbreakingly, are now mirroring each other’s hatred.

I watched a video today. An IDF soldier, standing in uniform, was asked what he thinks should happen to Gaza. Without hesitation, he said it should be flattened. The Palestinian influencer behind the camera looked visibly shaken, yet satisfied. This was the clip he came to collect. This was the evidence he wanted to show the world what Israel is. But what I couldn’t stop thinking about was that, in so many similar videos, the words are reversed. It’s Israeli civilians listening to Palestinian supporters say that Tel Aviv should be flattened, that Jews should leave or be removed, that Israel has no right to exist. The words may come from different mouths, but they echo each other with eerie precision.

How did we get here? How did we arrive at a place where mutual annihilation feels like a more popular solution than coexistence?

There is a hypocrisy growing louder every day. People accuse the other of propaganda while sharing their own. They deny the grief of the other side while spotlighting their own pain. They reduce mothers, children, families into symbols for hashtags and slogans. We’ve lost the capacity to see the human being behind the cause. And in this war of words and weapons, one truth is being drowned out by all the shouting, that most Israelis and most Palestinians are not screaming for war. They are not calling for genocide. They are simply trying to survive. They are trying to live.

There are families in Gaza and families in Tel Aviv who want nothing more than what any of us want, to live in peace, to have clean water and safe streets, to send their children to school and watch them grow into something beautiful. They are not calling for the destruction of the other. They are not on the frontlines of social media or in the back rooms of government offices. They are quiet. And they are the ones who will lose the most if this hatred continues to escalate.

Because hate is contagious. And the more we justify it, the more it spreads. It is easy to hate someone who calls for your death. It is easy to close your heart to those who cheer when your people suffer. But if we all wait for the other to show compassion first, then no one ever will. And that is how entire peoples are flattened, not just by bombs or blockades, but by the slow erosion of empathy.

I am not asking anyone to excuse injustice or forget history. I am asking us to remember that in the rubble of this conflict, there are still children playing, still mothers cooking, still fathers holding onto hope. There are still people dreaming of something better than vengeance. We must choose to see them. We must choose to hear them.

Because if we don’t, this war will never end. And I fear that in the end, there will be nothing left but dust, hatred, and the hollow silence of those who once dreamed of peace and were ignored.