Palestine: Why Should I Care?

As I sit here in the sunny countryside’s of Oxfordshire, I couldn’t be further away from the reality of the situation in Gaza, in the West Bank and in Palestine. But I am not here to write about the greenness of Oxfordshire, no I am here to write about the situation in Palestine, about why I care and about why you should care

Often I am asked why I care about Palestine, how does it directly affect my life they ask. And to an extent they have a point. Why would you care about something that’s a thousand miles and has no effect on your day to day life? As someone who has lived in London all he’s life, I could easily be forgiven for being caught up in one of the biggest capitalist societies in the world where most people care about when their next shopping trip will be. To this extent I used to be caught up in this world, the world of consuming as much as you can and having the nicest clothes amongst others.

To this day I still couldn’t put an exact point on why I began to care about the injustices the Palestinians face every day, whether it’s the humiliation of a Palestinian waiting hours at a checkpoint or the constant bombing the people of Gaza face. I would however put the heaviest influence down to a rap song by UK artist Lowkey and Twitter. Twitter has allowed me to interact with the people of Palestine and it has become an essential source of news in the area. This couldn’t be truer than in the past week where 14 Palestinians have died in what the Israelis call ‘retaliation’ for the attack in Eilat (thus far they have blamed Gaza purely on the fact that Kalashnikov rifles were used).

If I only relied on the BBC and the Israeli media for news on Israel/Palestine, it would have me believe that the Israelis live in constant fear and all the people of Palestine are terrorists and are hell bent on the killing of the Jewish people. This could not be further from the truth as Twitter has showed how caring the Palestinians are, the humor and strength they have in the face adversity.

But why should you care about Palestine? As a British citizen I am allowed to travel freely to Israel and even the West Bank (as long as Israeli airport officials don’t know). I ask you why I’m allowed as a foreigner, to travel freely to Israel and Palestine but the people of Gaza are locked up in an open air prison not allowed to leave for medical treatments, for Education or to even see the world. Care about Palestine, care about their freedom of travel which we take for granted.

Further to this, Palestinians continually have their land taken away, where Israel has used Ottoman rule to take homes. Not only do they continue to demolish homes and evict Palestinian (and make them pay for the demolition), they also continue to build settlements where in this past month they approved new homes in Arial and East Jerusalem. These homes are for Jews only, and more often than not they are occupied by the most racist settlers who continually harass Palestinians. What would you do if you was evicted from your home, from your community and if your land was continually taken? Care about Palestine, care about the freedom they deserve.

I could go into a number of other injustices the people of Palestine face, and why you should care about them. But the biggest reason of them all is simply humanity, caring for your fellow man. Palestinians are just like you, they want to lead a normal life like you but their human rights are continually violated. So I ask you care about humanity, care about Palestine.