The War in Gaza: Ebony and Ivory or 50,000 Shades of Grey?

There is a grand piano in the middle of Adelaide airport, available to any member of the public to sit down and serenade the travellers in the airport concourse. Last week on a work trip, I stood there for a while listening to a talented teenage boy play a Coldplay song. He was good.

That grand piano is available for anyone to play, you don’t need to qualify or pass a test or meet a minimum standard. Truth is, I could go and tinkle the ivories any time – but I don’t. Because I don’t know how to play the piano. I’ll leave the piano-playing to the piano players so as not to upset my fellow travellers at the airport.

In the last few months I’ve kept wishing that the uninformed, ignorant or biased people posting about the Middle East crisis would do the same. I wish some of them would simply sit on the sidelines and observe rather than making things worse by weighing in on a subject they know little about.

If you don’t know the history of the conflict, if you don’t appreciate the nuance and shades of grey around the subject matter about which you are posting, if you are not willing to be impartial or acknowledge that there are two sides to a conflict (or in the Israel-Hamas war, a multitude of sides) then I implore you not to inflame the situation with provocative, divisive or incendiary posts.

I’ve been writing lately about the current conflict because I have been following it for most of my life. I’ve read endless books and articles about Middle Eastern history for years. I know the facts. I think I know the arguments on both sides. I recognise the complexity and I admit to my bias.

You won’t see me though weighing into the Ukraine conflict or the current conflict in the Congo or Pakistan because, while I am a little ashamed to admit it, I am not following those conflicts. I don’t know the history. But I know they are complex and multi-faceted so I’ll leave it to the experts before I start posting about it on social media.

I simply don’t know how to play those pianos.

I recognise that Instagram and TikTok posts don’t allow for nuance and detail and I’m all for the right for freedom of speech. But these freedoms carry with them some responsibility - and sadly right now the proliferation of insidious, hate-fuelled social media posts are adding to racial vilification of the Jewish community, witnessed in the well documented antisemitic acts we are seeing every day.

I’m convinced that the virulent anti-Israel (or antisemitic) posting is part of the problem. Hence why I’d rather the ill-informed would sit on the fence or otherwise find out the truth, as hard as that is in this post-truth media landscape - or at the very least, acknowledge the greyness.

Or take a few lessons and do some research before trying to play the Palestine piano.

To be clear, I have no issue with informed people advocating for Palestinian independence (which I and virtually every Jew I know supports) and I have no issue with people criticising Israel’s policies or politicians (like half of Israel do regularly, being an open liberal democracy). When it comes to war, debate is healthy and necessary.

But at least do so with actual knowledge of the history or through a reliance on reliable, reputable sources - not via simplistic, concocted narratives based on the post of another TikTok-er or on an extreme left, distorted version of facts.

So maybe before you press “share,” ask yourself is this true or accurate or one-sided or is this helping or endangering others by spreading lies or racist tropes? I think a lot of us have been a little guilty of doing that from time to time, on all sides of this conflict.

One of the many cases I’m referring to has been the vitriolic and often frenzied anti-Israel posting by a community of popular social media influencers (I’m told the term “mummy bloggers” might be a pejorative term, which is genuinely not my intent). There is a handful of these influencers in Australia who have been spreading horrific anti-Israel and antisemitic messages in recent months, using patently misleading terminology like ‘apartheid’ and ‘colonisers’ to describe Israel.

Several of these influencers have been boldly declaring that anyone who supports the mere existence of the State of Israel is therefore a ‘baby killer’ and a supporter of ‘genocide’. Put aside the fact that the term ‘genocide’ is a completely false, misleading and factually inaccurate description of the tragedy of the Gaza war.

Put aside that these influencers expressed zero outrage and posted absolutely nothing about the October 7th terrorist barbarism in which babies were deliberately targeted and murdered point blank (as opposed to the deaths as a tragic unintended consequence of a bombing war).

Put aside the hypocrisy that these influencers, all previously outspoken #MeToo warriors, have remained completely silent about the undeniable acts of mass rape and mutilation committed by the terrorists against Israeli women, that Hamas themselves proudly documented on social media.

And put aside the fact that prior to October most of these influencers had shown zero interest whatsoever in the Middle East or geo-politics.

But now they’ve somehow suddenly become expert commentators on the conflict, simplifying a war into sexy sound bites - while chillingly their words get taken as gospel by their enormous social media followings. This behaviour is both disingenuous and dangerous.

I urge my non-Jewish friends and colleagues who are understandably less focussed on this conflict than members of the Jewish community - and perhaps less aware of the history and geo-political complexities of the region, to treat these ‘genocide’ or ‘ethnic cleansing’ claims as ill-informed and sensationalist (or given the hypocrisy I outlined above, perhaps unworthy of any merit) or simply ask a Jewish friend or colleague for the inevitable ‘other side.’

For many years the ‘genocide’ term has been used deliberately to demonize the State of Israel and sadly, it goes some way to diminish recognized acts of genocide, such as those that occurred in the Holocaust, against Armenians, and in Rwanda. But it certainly sounds click-bait worthy when sprouted in large font on Instagram and its luridness seems to be helping these influencers gain even more followers.

Even more importantly, I urge you to warn your kids to treat such posts with suspicion and scepticism, or to consider that there is another side, because the impact that this hate-speech is having on the younger generation is fuelling the current surge in antisemitism, leading to violence and hatred.

It infuriates me that some of these ill-informed influencers (often with malicious intent), have taken the term ‘Zionist’ and turned it into an insult, equating the ideology with words like 'genocidal' and 'racist'. Again for my non-Jewish friends not familiar with its meaning, nothing could be further from the truth.

Simply put Zionists believe that the Jewish people deserve their own state in their ancestral homeland, a homeland that they have had a claim over for 3000 years. It means that we support the right of Israel to exist.

Do Zionists support everything the Israeli government does – no. It’s a democracy, where lots of people disagree with the current right-wing government. In fact prior to October 7th, half the country were protesting against the government. Now the whole country feel they are fighting Hamas (and the tsunami of haters in the media) for an existentialist right to exist.

Most Zionists I know support Palestinian independence and a Two State solution. And yes, there are many complications and historical injustices around that, some by Israel, many by other Arab nations. As I have said earlier, it's complicated. There are many sides. Despite what an Insta headline might suggest, it’s not black and white, it’s not a struggle between ebony and ivory. But at its core a Zionist believes Israel has a right to exist as the Jewish homeland.

For what it’s worth, I also happen to not support everything the Australian government does and like much of this country, I struggle with Australia’s past treatment of refugees and certainly our inability to find reconciliation with our First Nations people. But I still love and support this country and its right to exist. One can be both in favour of a country while opposing some of its policies.

Labelling Israel and supporters of the nation ‘genocidal baby-killers’ because we support the right of Israel to exist is obscene, misguided and inflammatory. Bottom line, while not advocating for these influencers to be silenced, they need to be called out when propagating one-sided misinformation and worse still, for inflaming antisemitic hatred.

On Wednesday night I went to a beautiful Jewish wedding. The son of one of my oldest friends. A few hundred Jewish and non-Jewish people celebrating the union of two young Jewish Australians.

As is traditional at a Jewish wedding – at the end of the ceremony the groom stomped on a glass to remember the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem thousands of years ago, signifying that even in our happiest times, we remember our tragic history and our unbroken connection to Israel.

We sang Jewish songs about peace and unity. We danced the Hora circle dance, in which we linked arms with each other, Jews and non-Jews, in a show of unity and inclusion. We celebrated life.

Just for the evening, we forgot about the war and took our minds temporarily off the hostages still being held in Gazan tunnels (the ones that sadly many people have already forgotten about). For a few hours we paused our distress about the tragedy of the innocent Palestinians losing their lives in this war.

We briefly stopped worrying about our relatives in Israel, running into bomb shelters every day to escape the endless Hamas rockets (that the influencers never mention). We forgot about the massacre of the innocent people on October 7th that started this latest war.

We muted our fears about antisemitism and stopped scrolling through unending posts and articles about the conflict online and for a few hours we didn’t despair about the hate and misinformation in those posts.

The room was filled with love and community.

And optimism and hope.

I am confident that the majority of the Jewish wedding guests were also Zionists. People who want peace in the Middle East. People who hold no hostility to any race or religion. People who support a Two State solution and Palestinian independence. People who are heart-broken and despondent at the loss of lives on both sides of the conflict.

Not one genocidal baby killer to be seen in that dancing, singing, swirling circle of Jews.

I wish that next time someone wants to call my people ‘genocidal baby-killers’, that they’d come to a Jewish wedding. Or a wedding in Israel which is exactly the same. I think they’d see us quite differently. And I suspect they might post differently on social media if they knew how their anti-Israel blinkers are hurting us and emboldening others to hate us.

Or if not that, I wish they’d be like me at the airport. Just observing. Not causing anyone the pain and discomfort of listening to me attempt to bang away loudly at the piano, despite my lacking the knowledge or experience to be doing so.

Leaving it instead to the piano player to play the piano.

Here’s to a more peaceful, happy, healthy and hate-free New Year.