A thread on Israel and #Palestine and why the media’s “both sideing” and false equivalency between the occupier and the occupied means the average person in this country has no understanding of the basic facts surrounding the worlds longest running military occupation. 
1. I’m very fortunate to have spent time in Israel and Palestine and to have travelled and worked across the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. I’ve worked with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and displaced Palestinian in Syria and Iraq over more than 15 years.
2. The first time I travelled to Palestine it was to volunteer alongside the Palestine Red Crescent as an international observer. I spent my days terrified - riding in ambulances with paramedics to ensure patients got through heavily militarised checkpoints to reach hospital.
3. All around me was the machinery and weapons of the occupation, tanks, machine guns, and jittery Israeli soldiers, most of whom looked like they were in their early twenties. The entire West Bank was under military curfew at the time.
4. We transported pregnant women, older patients, children, incl a child who had been shot in the face by the Israeli army to hospital. For the first time in my life I started truly understanding the meaning of the words “curfew” “checkpoints” and “occupation”.
5. I’m ashamed to say I had never fully comprehended the meaning of these words or the lived reality of these words and I’m a journalist who prides myself in understanding a bit about the world. I fast realised that I understood very little precisely because
6. so much of the distorted and white-washed media coverage of Palestine replaces the word occupation with the word conflict and the word Hamas with the words Palestinian people and the words resistance with the word terrorism.
7. Everyday in the occupied West Bank I witnessed the daily resistance of the Palestinians to the occupation.
Resistance looked like this:
School teaches opening up their schools and classrooms to their students.
Children being tear gassed on their way to school.
Resistance looked like this:
School teaches opening up their schools and classrooms to their students.
Children being tear gassed on their way to school.
8. Shop keepers and bakers opening up their businesses.
Paramedics, doctors, nurses, medical staff going to work daily knowing they will be seeing the worst of the horrors.
Children playing football on the streets of Nablus and the Balata Refugee Camp under military curfew
Paramedics, doctors, nurses, medical staff going to work daily knowing they will be seeing the worst of the horrors.
Children playing football on the streets of Nablus and the Balata Refugee Camp under military curfew
9. People laughing, singing and feeling and breathing joy, despite knowing their lives hang by a thread.
This is the resistance the West doesn’t name or show. To do so would mean to value and individualise Palestinians, their stories, history, their dignity and thirst for life.
This is the resistance the West doesn’t name or show. To do so would mean to value and individualise Palestinians, their stories, history, their dignity and thirst for life.
10. To do so would mean to reject the racist framing of Arabs. This doesn’t fit the distorted western narratives of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims (of course not all Palestinians are Muslim).
11. It’s when I arrived in Gaza and in particular when I set foot in the refugee camps that I started to really, really see the brutality of the occupation. In the West Bank there were Israeli soldiers on the ground, you could try and talk to them to negotiate your way through a
12. check point, in Gaza, there were no soldiers, only watch towers, electronic gadgets, extreme deprivation and a visceral feeling of being trapped amongst concrete, people, the sea, inbetween lots and lots of people, most striking of all, lots of children and young people.
13. I also met Israelis and representatives from Israeli human rights organisations and civil society organisations working to end the occupation. These brave and principled people are targeted by the state of Israel for the work they do.
14. I seldom hear their voices or see their faces in our news bulletins or hear their stories. There is next to no nuance, there is no room or space given to hear and see these stories and realities. It’s fifty years + from the the world’s longest running military occupation
15. the average person in this county and around the world can’t even relay the most basic of facts about Israel and Palestine. This isn’t by accident. Language, terminology and images matter. Being factually accurate, providing context and nuance matters.
16. Not creating false equivalency between the occupier and the occupied matters.
All the Palestinians I know and the Israelis I know want peace and justice. They want to live, to breathe, they want to see their children flourish and thrive, they want the occupation to end.
All the Palestinians I know and the Israelis I know want peace and justice. They want to live, to breathe, they want to see their children flourish and thrive, they want the occupation to end.
17. Those of us who want the same for them need to raise our voices. We need to not fall into traps of “both sides” the only both sides are the civilians and the people of Palestine and Israel.
18. We need to be extremely vigilant of and stand up to antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism gaining more traction in our society, cities and communities and we need to stop anyone from dividing us with their words and actions.
19. We need to speak the truth with compassion at all times and act to amplify the truth with compassion at all times.
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