Justice or Peace?

If you pursue justice at the cost of peace, there is an immense risk that you will end up with neither justice, nor peace.

Justice or Peace?

People are dying.

I don't typically post pictures of dead bodies in war zones because it's disrespectful to the dead person and their family, but I see everything that gets posted from Gaza.

It's just repulsive to look at pictures of human beings torn apart by bombs or rubble or bullets.

But what's more, anyone with any empathy should understand that life is just not practically liveable in the grip of war, where you can't go outside, or if you can't even access necessities like medicines or potentially food, or water, or electricity.

This is hell for the human beings.

That's why I have chosen to try to be a peace advocate. It's not just because I dislike the long term status quo of military occupation. When hot war breaks out, people get torn to pieces. And oftentimes it's the disabled people, or the sick people, or the injured who get the worst of it. If you are any of those things it is harder to evacuate, and it's harder for your family because they have to help you.

What an absolute heartbreaking nightmare it must have been for so many people in Gaza.

I am driven by empathy a lot of the time, so ultimately this is one of the most important reasons why I have totally separated myself from the conventional Palestinian position, which is that "the Israelis stole our land, so we will resist them until they give it back."

Yes, I learned the Jewish history as well, and I learned that they are our cousins and indigenous to the land, and have been so for thousands of years. I learned about the wicked and bizarre ideology of Hamas which seeks to win the land by any means necessary, including extreme violence against Israelis, and even if Palestinians suffer horrendously. And ultimately, for Hamas—and other groups like the Muslim Brotherhood—it is not even so much about Palestine as it is about the idea of Islamic theocracy.

But more than anything else, I don't want people to die or suffer.

And that's why I would say that peace matters more than justice.

Justice, of course, is a matter of opinion. Many Israelis believe that what has happened to Gaza is a just revenge for the attacks of October 7th. And many Palestinians wish revenge on Israel as a result of not only the current war, but as their own demand for justice for all of the previous wars, and the displacement of the Palestinians in the past. These are almost irreconcilable differences in a terms of people’s views of what constitutes justice.

But there is another meaning to the word justice. Justice is a legal process that can be achieved peacefully. People who have suffered or been displaced or who lost their family members or homes can be compensated. They can be rehomed. Individuals who committed war crimes can be arrested or otherwise held legally accountable. And this kind of legal process will actually just not happen in the context of a never-ending irreconcilable and violent conflict. Every time we go back to war, it just adds more grievance, and more anger, and makes it harder to achieve any kind of agreement to end the conflict.

So justice or peace?

Peace first. Stop the violence. Stop the killing. Stop the war. Stop the blatant acts of vengeance. Stop the jihad. Stop the kidnapping. Release the hostages unconditionally. And start a negotiation! Pick up the phone and talk to the leaders on the other side like adults!

Of course, I do not want a false peace where one side has to completely roll over and kiss the feet of the other, or where people have to live as second class citizens. Building true peace is about being respectful of each other and ourselves insofar as possible, and also about give and take. A peace that is achieved through total submission risks breeding resentment and guarantees inequality and fearfulness. And a peace that is achieved through total annihilation is no peace at all.

But once there is peace, through reconciliation and rebuilding the relationship and through legal procedures, people can pursue justice, and we can decide through a process of negotiation and legal arguments exactly what justice will be.

That’s why I find it so frustrating hearing people chanting “no justice, no peace”. They are just shooting themselves in the foot.