My Public Silence on Palestine and Israel
Once more, silence is not always violence. | ⏱️ 10 Min Read
🎧 You can find the audio version of this essay on my newly-launched podcast Unaccountable with Alice Greczyn, right here on Substack.
“We’re finding out who our real friends are.”
“We’re learning whom to let go of and whom not to hire.”
“Silence is violence.”
Both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine accounts have been expressing these same sentiments on social media for the past seven months. I have Arab friends who feel abandoned by my refusal to speak publicly on this latest wave of a centuries-long war. I have Jewish friends who feel the same. I have non-Arab and non-Jewish friends whose livelihoods hang in jeopardy because of what they’ve posted — and haven’t.
“If you’re not with us, you’re against us,” is the classic refrain woven into these assumptions of silence.
I’ve written before on why silence is not always violence. I maintain this and want to elaborate on my position within today’s context. I don’t anticipate making further public commentary on this topic unless certain things change, and this post is an explanation as to why for those who are hurt and angered by my refrainment.
I am closely following stories and posts on what is happening in Palestine and Israel. I am very much feeling pressured to speak up. I have yet to see something posted that seems actionable to me.
“Spread awareness,” people say. To whom? Who is unaware? We are aware — we just don’t know what can be done. Demanding that we emote and publicly post our opinions on this war seems likely to cause more strife than help.
I don’t know what a post from me will do to help the people suffering in Palestine or Israel. To do this without a clear and realistic call-to-action would feel exploitative and performative to me. I cannot see any defined steps to take. “All Eyes On Rafah” feels like a call to watch horror from the comfort of our phones, and just do that: Watch. Witness. Spread awareness.
Impassioned videos plea with us to not just watch but do something. “Being informed means nothing without taking action,” they say.
Yet they don’t say which actions to take. Donating to aid relief organizations seems useless when aid is blockaded and effectively dismantled. Signing virtual petitions for a ceasefire seems — beg your pardon — nonsensical. Has any government waging war stopped because other countries asked them to? Demanded them to? Why would Israel pause its killing so that nonprofits can help the very people Israel wants dead?
Israel has been clear, intentional, and consistent in expressing that they have zero intention of ceasing fire. If evidence shows that calls for a ceasefire are not working, what steps do we take next? Tangible, actionable, practical steps? Or are we just supposed to emote? And for whom? Each other?
Feel, feel, feel. Watch, watch, watch. And do what? Sit there and cry into our phones while regurgitating the same memes and videos as everyone else? To what end?
Are these calls to watch calls to…to what? Stop paying taxes? Vote for neither Biden, Trump, nor Kennedy? Shell out our email addresses for spam in hopes some senator might see our digital signature and decide to…what? Keep calling for a ceasefire?
Maybe… Are we maybe calling on the world’s governments to bomb Israel? To bomb the United States for funding them? If Israel refuses to listen to calls for a ceasefire, what are we really saying with our memes at this point?
This reminds me of the #StopKony campaign in 2012. I argued then that what people were really saying, without the coarseness of saying it, was #KillKony.
Will, “Stop, Israel,” turn into, “Stop Israel,” before turning into, “Kill Israel”? Will calls for #ceasefire turn into #ceasefireorelse?
How do you cease fire without fire? Even the peaceful protests of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. were futile until met with violence. Only then did their bloodshed make an effective difference.
Are we willing to acknowledge that, in the face of Israel’s refusal to cease fire, what we’re really calling for is more violence? Am I wrong? I’d love to be.
Tell me, what alternative actions do you see when centuries of evidence suggest that neither party in this war has any intention of stopping peacefully? What does anyone think will actually stop Israel and organizations like Hamas? Two-state and single-state solutions have been proposed. Neither party wants to settle for either and has proven so, time and again.1
Will Israel keep bombing until all Palestinians, and the threat of Hamas terrorists and potentially vengeful loved ones, are dead? Even if Hamas surrendered and every one of its soldiers handed themselves over to Israeli authorities today, along with the return of Israeli hostages, would Israel trust such an alleged surrender? Why would they? Or, if Israel did cease fire, what then? How do these nations solve the problem that their sincerely held religious beliefs perpetuate in the first place, leaving no compromise with the other?
These are the thoughts that go through my head. This is why I see no value in contributing to the spread of awareness: Besides my share of ignorance, I have no hope to offer nor an actionable solution to advocate for.
If calls for spreading awareness are meant to collectively prepare us for actionable solutions once options besides a ceasefire do arrive, great. I’ll keep staying as informed as I can. You don’t need my voice chiming into the awareness conversation. I will not say what are clearly the “right” things to say because I have opinions that are nuanced and unhelpful. So, until there are viable long-term solutions on the table, I don’t intend to further clutter the public conversation with a perspective that doesn’t offer anything of benefit to the people suffering.
My contribution to helping mitigate suffering is to encourage freedom from faith.
The more I can encourage people to let go of faith-based beliefs and live in the physical reality we share, the fewer faith-fueled wars and other harms there will be.
[Israel and Palestine] can negotiate a deal…with both settling for less than they originally demanded, using rational considerations. But two camps that deeply believe God has given them the land are incapable of doing this, because it requires them to renege on the fundament on which their faith and identity are based.
— “Israel and Palestine Are Now In a Religious War” by Caroline de Gruyter at Foreign Policy
If I’m not convinced I can help someone, I like to keep my thoughts, feelings, and opinions to myself.
I can understand why others value solidarity for solidarity’s sake. That’s always infuriated me more, both as giver and receiver. I don’t want your sympathy without actions. I don’t want your anger without change. I don’t want your emotions — I want a plan. Closure, resolution, logic.
I will not insult people the ways I would feel insulted, especially about matters so literally grave. For me to be a hypocrite in these ways by emoting about Palestine and Israel without proposing viable solutions would feel like the sickest, most selfish, most performative thing I could do, for it wouldn’t be for them. I don’t think Israelis or Palestinians care what I think in the least. My posting would be for me, because I care about you think.
My silence is a respect.
I am not indifferent. I am not uncaring. I am not afraid. I am hopeless and don’t care to be all that public about it until and unless I have hope that’s placed in realistic possibility. In the meantime, I’d rather you judge me for my silence than insult people I care far more about. When there are more effective, solution-driven ways my care can be actionable, I’ll be acting.
Don’t mistake someone’s lack of posting for indifference or cowardice. Consider their silence may be coming from the most carefully deliberated of places. Consider that their actions in secret are speaking louder than the post you hope to see them make on Instagram. Consider what they’d say if they weren’t silent may be the opposite of what you want to hear.
I sincerely invite your respectful counter-arguments. If you think a ceasefire is realistic, I welcome your links that prove why. If you think a one- or two-state solution is plausible in light of religious differences and attempts made so far, I’d love to see your evidence supporting either option.
If you have a realistic, viable solution to propose for how to end this conflict, to stop this suffering… I am all ears.
I’m Alice Greczyn, an author and speaker. This newsletter is free. If my writing intrigues you, please subscribe, and if you’d like to donate to my costs (news subscriptions, image licensing, audio recording, etc.), I’d surely appreciate it. Thank you.
Infighting between secular and religious Palestinians, and secular and religious Israelis, seems to be an underacknowledged reason for both countries’ inability to arrive at a peaceful, single- or two-state solution. As Caroline de Gruyter succinctly puts it in her article for Foreign Policy, “On both sides, politics and society are now deeply divided. Both in Israel and Palestine, the main internal division is between those who are secular and those who are religiously motivated. On both sides, the religious camp seems to be getting the upper hand.”
I generally agree, but I think at this point calling it a war is disingenuous as it implies some form of equal footing. This is a massacre upon tens of thousands of people who did not ask for this. It's inhumane.
In my opinion, you have a lot to contribute to this discussion, but like you said, not by taking sides, analyzing situations, calling for action, or any of that. I think that you have a very rare perspective that lets you take a step above the situation and look at it from a more universally human perspective.
The perspective I'd love to see you write about is the vulnerability of human beings to emotional manipulation. You see how smart, generous people are manipulated, intentionally or not, by the media they are consuming. You know the vulnerabilities we all have when it comes to situations that evoke rage, fear, sadness, and other strong emotions.
I believe that the most important thing we can communicate to the people we touch right now is how to recognize our vulnerabilities to emotional manipulation and how to guard against them. The lesson here is not about how Israel oppressed Palestine, how Palestine reacted by killing civilians, or how Israel reacted to that. The real lesson here is about how the human beings on both sides have brains that intrinsically respond to the highly charged emotions and situations they live with every day. It is about how their environment indoctrinates their minds into holding beliefs (religious and otherwise) that can lead to such extremes. It is about how people following the situation from afar believe one way or another based on the sphere of information in which they immerse themselves. Human perception so easily snaps to the simplest, most emotional views of the informational ecosystem they live in.
I'd love to see you write about this topic from this overarching, human point of view. I think exposing as many people as possible to the ideas behind neurological humility is the most important thing we can do in a world where simplified, emotional information swirls around us constantly. I think your understanding of the issue and your writing style are perfect for expressing this message.