On March 21, 1983, the legendary Irish rock band U2 released the song Sunday Bloody Sunday, which described the horrors of the events taking place in Northern Ireland, with a focus on the 1972 Bloody Sunday incident in which British soldiers shot and killed unarmed civilian protesters.
In the song, a young Bono and company describe how on that day there were “broken bottles under children’s feet” and “bodies strewn across a dead-end street.”
To this day, the song’s vibrance gives me goosebumps.
But the verses of this tragic ballad go well beyond the borders of Northern Ireland. They transcend years, decades, and centuries of the realities of war throughout human history.
How long must we sing this song?
On October 7, 2023, around 2,500 militants from the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas stormed across the Gaza-Israeli barrier, breaking into Israeli civilian homes and torturing, massacring, and kidnapping Israeli civilians of all ages.
At the time of writing, it has been reported that at least 1,400 Israelis were killed, including 260 young women and men at a music festival. At least 200 Israelis, including women and children, were kidnapped and taken back to Gaza.
Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, immediately ordered the bombing of Gaza, a move that has killed and displaced thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Israel and the surrounding Arab states have had quite a turbulent and violent history since Israel’s inception in 1948, and history has been used time and time again to justify the atrocities committed on both fronts.
It’s basically a never-ending song, a broken record that often appears unfixable, a tune that no one can get out of their head, an echo that never seems to fade away.
Both Sides
In the comments section of a New York Times article covering the crisis, a person wrote how civilians were suffering on both sides. Said commenter was criticized by another commenter for using “bothsidesism”, claiming that the only victim here is and has always been Israel.
The term “bothsidesism” is used pejoratively when someone creates a false balance between opposing views on a given topic to appear neutral and appease everyone.
I’ve seen this used by people when discussing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, claiming that “both sides are to blame”.
But in this particular case, Ukraine has so far only fought to take back the cities Russia invaded, and for the most part mainly killed Russian soldiers on Ukrainian territory, with some exceptions, while Russia continues to relentlessly bombard buildings inhabited by civilians, wreaking mass suffering on the Ukrainian people.
In this case, claiming “both sides” are equally at fault is widely inaccurate and unfair.
In the case of the Israel/Palestine conflict, we can accurately blame both Hamas and the Israeli military leadership led by the far right-wing Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The truth is neither side has legitimately acted on what they may call “self-defense”. If Hamas were acting in self-defense, they would simply try to ward off Israeli occupants in Palestinian territory, directly targeting those who are directly targeting Palestinians.
Sending thousands of Hamas militants into Israel to torture, massacre, and kidnap innocent civilians going about their daily lives is not “self-defense”, it’s madness driven by hatred for the residents of an entire nation, motivated in large part by religious fanaticism.
In parallel, launching missile after missile into residential buildings in Palestine, massacring and displacing thousands of Palestinian civilians, including countless children, who had nothing to do with the Hamas attack while also cutting off their electricity, food and water supplies is not “self-defense” on the part of Israel, it’s nothing more than an act of revenge driven by pure hatred towards an entire civilization, a move that will in no way keep Israel safe in the long term, and is likely to worsen -or end- the lives of the Israelis who were kidnapped and are now somewhere in the Gaza Strip, while conjuring even more resentment towards Israel.
Yes, regardless of the historical context and whoever you believe to be the true victim here, the events taking place in the Middle East are atrocious, and yes, it is both sides.
An interesting perspective
If both sides are at fault, why are so many people around the world compelled to take sides? The reason is simple, humans are a tribal species who are unable to see the world beyond the lens of their political leanings, their nationalistic fervor, or their religious beliefs.
One way to fully grasp the situation with a clear head is to try and forget the left-wing/right-wing dichotomy, or whose version of God or whatever version of religious scripture you were raised to believe, or what country you come from or which leader you idolize and which one you despise, and just consider the fact that a very small yet powerful and radical group of people from nation X ran into nation Y and mercilessly slaughtered and inflicted mass suffering on over a thousand people who were simply going about their daily lives.
In response, a small yet extremely powerful group of people from nation Y killed thousands of civilians from nation X, who had nothing to do with the atrocities committed against nation Y, and has displaced a few thousand more, while intentionally making sure those in nation X have limited access to food or water.
Which ones are “the good guys”, X or Y?
We could be them
Whether we like to accept it or not, nobody chose the place nor the time in history in which they were born, and most people’s world view is the product of their environment, including the values the culture they were born into instilled in them.
In the same way that how we speak (our native language and accent) is, for the most part, determined by where we grew up and who we grew up around, how we view the world is also molded by those same factors.
For those who hate Israelis or Jewish people for whatever reason, just think, you could have easily been born in Israel to a Jewish family, raised with Jewish values and possibly taught -with ceaseless repetition- to hate or fear Muslims, especially those in the surrounding countries and regions.
Conversely, you could have been born and raised in Palestine to Muslim parents and taught since birth -with ceaseless repetition- to hate Israelis, particularly Jewish ones.
In both cases, that’s most likely how your world view would be cemented as an adult. Free will is not as free as most of us would like to believe.
The violence you grew up witnessing, often perpetrated from the other side, from them (Israelis or Palestinians, depending on which side of that border you found yourself on), only feeds your hatred for the other side even more.
You have children, raise them to hate them, and the vicious cycle of violence is perpetuated for another generation.
Not once do you stop to think that if by chance you had been born and raised on the other side you would see the world in the same way they do. Sadly, not only do the perpetrators of violence refuse to understand this, they also refuse to grasp the fact that they suffer just like we do.
Humanity’s inhumanity and what the future may bring
There have been periods in history when it was easy to believe world peace would soon be upon us. After World War II many people believed that was it, the atrocities of war had taught us a powerful lesson, and peace would be the norm from now on.
In 1948, United Nations member states approved a treaty to make sure events like the Holocaust would “never again” take place, called the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Unfortunately, “never again has become time and again”, as the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner stated in 2018.
Contrary to popular belief, no, we are not evolving in the way we think we are. We are still those primitive tribespeople fighting over everything we can possibly fight over, only our weapons can now wreak havoc to a level we have yet to truly fathom.
Yeah, we made it out of the Cold War, and we have yet to completely blow ourselves into oblivion, which has led a great many optimists to naively believe we never will.
But we may be entering a point in history that is worse than the Cold War, with a new nuclear arms race already underway, increasing polarization and tension throughout much of the globe, and now the added value that global warming brings (or doesn’t bring) to the table, with the potential to turn resources like food and water into luxury commodities in the coming years, possibly catapulting global conflict to a level no human being has ever experienced.
Sure, Bono and the band may be getting old, but there’s plenty more to sing about, after all, there are six more bloody days in the week.
If you’re a passionate reader then you may very well enjoy my fiction novel The Shadow in the Mirror, where you can find out what’s actually going on with Harold Hopkins (genre: paranormal suspense).
Harold’s only wish is to lead a normal life. Yet for reasons he can’t comprehend, he is shunned by all living things. No matter how hard he tries, he is unable to garner attention from the woman he loves, nor can he foster genuine friendships or find a decent job. Meanwhile, since childhood, he has been haunted by his own reflection in the mirror, which frequently acts as a window to another world. The person on the other side is everything Harold wishes he could be, like a clone of himself leading the fruitful life he was destined to lead. He finally sets off in search of answers, where he learns about the unearthly events that took place when he was born, and discovers the tantalizing truth about his own existence…
