Jewish institutions invest a lot of time & money in educating their youth about the facts, history, struggles, aspiration, identity, and connection the Jewish People have with the Land of Israel. But have many of these students ever met a Palestinian, or ever spent an hour learning about their narrative? The unfortunate answer is “most likely no”. Because of this, the moment a Jewish student engages with a Palestinian or with the unlearned nuances of the Palestinian narrative, it causes one of three reactions.

1) FEAR- Denial of the Palestinian narrative:
Where they deny anything that may humanize Palestinians or validate their connection to the Land.

2) ANGER- Rejection of the Jewish narrative:
Where they reject their own narrative, and begin to dehumanize, delegitimize, and hold double standards against their own People.

3) LOVE- Merging both narratives:
Where one realizes that they don’t have to turn against either, can be proud of their own identity/collective, and work to find ways to correct the problems both simultaneously face.

Denying Palestinian identity is not only futile, but causes others that are more intellectually open to learning about the full story, to feel “lied to”, not necessarily because lies were told to them, but because the whole truth was kept from them. It is also incredibly damaging for Jews to reject their own People and side with those who seek their family’s destruction (whether they are conscious about it or not) since it will only lead to more Jewish suffering and condition Palestinians to thinking that Jews should all just be tokens, thus making any self-respecting Jew automatically experienced as an immediate threat and an ideological enemy, furthering the divide and our inability to communicate with each other.

If we want to see less Jews turning against their own People and more Jews caring about their Palestinian cousins, then it is time we find ways in bringing truths together, filtering out lies & manipulations, excluding foreign powers & voices who profit from our suffering, and most importantly all realizing that the only way to proceed without continued war, is for the two populations to unite in ways that are appropriate to both collectives.

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