"Surely, you must accept that now is the time to speak up. Now that there's an official declaration of war. You can't keep pleading ignorance in good faith."
But Ben shook his head. "I still don't know enough."
This was the third time Lola had used a casual meetup to argue that Ben needed to speak out publicly against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. He was getting quite fed up with this. "I don't know enough to say anything," he said. "I'll do some reading, and maybe once I feel like I know something, I'll 'speak out'. Until then, can we just enjoy a coffee, and talk about something else?"
Lola, who generally enjoyed prodding and teasing Ben, but had spent the previous night watching live footage of bombings along the Gaza strip, couldn't take it this time. "You call yourself a leftist, but you're so willing to ignore settler colonialism as long as it's happening in the Middle East, where you don't have to think about it. I don't know what to call that other than hypocrisy."
Ben sighed. Put his coffee down. "I am a leftist; I'm against colonialism. You know that. I'm against colonialism wherever it happens. But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm fully qualified to speak publicly on every single international conflict."
"It's not a conflict. It's an occupation."
"Every occupation, then."
Without being consciously aware of it, Lola's voice got louder. "I'm not asking you to speak out on every single occupation. I'm asking you to speak out against the Israeli occupation of Palestine."
"Why just that one?"
"Because they've literally just declared war."
"Isn't it a little antisemitic to just focus on the Jewish state? There's a lot of other states involved in colonialism or occupation right now - Russia, for example, who are also at war." Ben knew that this comment would thoroughly enrage Lola, and obliterate any chance of a change of subject. But he was getting irritable himself, and thought he might as well go all in. "I didn't 'speak out' against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is just as brutal and unlawful; but you didn't call me out on that. In fact, you didn't say anything about it yourself."
"There's no need, in the West, for people like us to speak out against Russia. All of mainstream media is already doing that. Constantly. Our media supports Ukraine so uncritically that there's complete denial of the Nazism in the Ukrainian government. Every major news outlet reports daily on the war crimes of the Russian military, celebrating any military act by Ukrainians as the obvious act of self-defence it is. Western media, rightfully, treats Ukrainian resistance as heroic, and condemns Russian brutality as horrific. But all of that same media portrays Israel as if it's some kind of helpless victim, defending itself from a terrorist regime, when the truth is, like Russia, it's an occupying force. It's a major military power, backed by the US, that has been taking over Palestinian land since 1948. To speak out against the Russian invasion is to speak in agreement with accepted European orthodoxy. It doesn't challenge anything. To speak in defence of the Palestinian people, though, is to actively challenge the foreign policy of our own government."
"Please stop shouting," Ben said, aware that others in the café were starting to glance at their table.
"If other people overhear me, maybe they'll learn something," Lola said, although she did lower her voice.
"You haven't really addressed my main problem, which is that I simply don't understand enough about the Israel / Palestine conf-" - Ben stopped himself - "occupation, to speak publicly about it. I mean, you've been correcting me several times during this conversation. What if I were to, I dunno, post about this on Instagram, and call it a 'conflict', rather than an occupation? Wouldn't that do more harm than good? Wouldn't it play into the idea that both sides are equally bad?"
"Yes, it would, but-"
"-And so isn't it reasonable to assume that, given my lack of knowledge on the whole subject, my saying or writing anything publicly about it might mislead others? And, not only that," he went on, "but I'm not really educated about Jewish culture, nor the history of antisemitism. I wish I was, but I'm not. So given the particular circumstances of the Israeli state, isn't it possible that I might accidentally say some antisemitic stuff in a clumsy attempt to call out Israel?"
"First of all," Lola said, "if you say antisemitic shit, that's on you. Your own ignorance is your responsibility. If you're so worried you might be racist, you've got a duty to educate yourself.
"And secondly, you haven't even got to write something yourself. Just repost the words of other people, who are well-informed about this. Like the Jewish Voice for Peace campaign. Or Amnesty International. Or any of the other institutions and academics around the world who unilaterally condemn Israel as an occupying, colonial state."
"How do I know which ones to trust, if I don't know anything? The thing is, I haven't heard of any of those, other than Amnesty International. Like you were saying before, western media doesn't provide accurate coverage of the situation, and I live in the west, so I haven't really had much easily-accessible information. I wasn't taught about this in school, nobody in my life talks to me about this other than you, and when I've tried to read Jewish authors writing about antisemitism, most of them are pretty supportive of the whole Israel idea. I just haven't had access to the same material as you."
"Bullshit," Lola said, leaning forward. "We went to the same school. None of my friends talk about this either. I've had access to the same mainstream propaganda outlets as you for all my life. The only difference is that you haven't made the extra effort to actually seek out the truth of what's happening in Palestine."
"Well, so what if I haven't?" Ben asked, surprising himself with his own impatience; "I study biochemistry. I spend the vast majority of my time poring over textbooks that have absolutely nothing to do with politics, and trying desperately to retain the information in time for an exam, which happens once a month. I know that not only is the mitochondria the powerhouse of the cell, but cells themselves can be considered biological lifeforms, according to some interpretations. They make decisions. Every single individual human cell has the capacity to make value judgements. And those are just the 41% of cells in the human body that we'd consider human. The majority of the human body is comprised entirely of bacteria and other microorganisms. This is pretty complicated shit. And someone's got to know about it, because the acquisition of scientific knowledge is a moral good in and of itself. Without it, we wouldn't have any medicine. But if all scientists have to also be experts on Middle Eastern conflicts, as well as the complete history of all oppression in the world, we wouldn't have time to do any science."
"In the words of Audre Lorde, your silence will not protect you!"
"Perhaps not, but my science will, if I ever fall seriously ill. And I won't be able to do science if all my time is preoccupied with advocating for Palestinian rights."
Lola almost screamed. "I'm not asking you to spend all of your time on this. I'm asking that you spend what time you do have. I don't want you to end the fucking occupation single-handedly, but I do think that there's no way to defend saying nothing.
"If you see someone being beaten up in the street, and you don't do anything at all to help that person because you 'don't know enough', you're a shitty person. If you don't at least shout for others to help you stop the assault, or try and step in, you're basically complicit in the beating. You're allowing it to happen."
This made Ben pause. He took a swig of his coffee, now lukewarm, and his brow furrowed.
"I'm not sure that rule always applies," he said. "To take an example from real life: the other day, I was walking through town, and I saw two lads shouting something at a girl. She didn't really respond to what they were saying, but she didn't look happy about it. The lads were laughing to each other. I was stood right next to the lads when it happened, but I still couldn't make out what they were saying, maybe because I wasn't really paying attention. Now, I'm against cat-calling. Obviously. I'm against instances of men verbally harassing women. Obviously. So I thought about approaching the lads, and asking them why they'd just shouted at that woman."
"But you didn't," Lola said, stirring her drink impatiently.
"I just walked past. Because I didn't hear what they'd said. How could I possibly confront them about something, if I didn't even know what the thing was?"
"That's not the same as my example, Ben. If you walk past someone getting beaten up, it's pretty easy to see what's going on."
"Alright, fine. But if we're to leave the analogy behind for a minute, I wouldn't say it's that clear what's going on in Israel, halfway across the world, given how complex the situation is..."
Lola pulled out her phone and started typing. Ben awkwardly swirled the coffee dregs around the bottom of his mug, beginning to thoroughly regret ever engaging in this conversation.
Finding what she was looking for, Lola thrust her phone in Ben's face. On the screen, a woman held her head in her hands, weeping. The sounds of grief fuzzed around her, compressed into crackling by the phone's tiny speaker, not designed to convey the subtlety of mourning. The woman stood among rubble. Men ran past her carrying the body of a child, bloodied and stunned, and she fell to her knees. As Ben confronted this horrifying footage, Lola said: "This is Gaza. This is what's apparently too complicated for you to understand. Children, dead, under the rubble of their fucking school. It's an open-air prison. The Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, just described Palestinians as 'human animals', and said they're cutting off all food, water and electricity to the 5 million people who live there. Surely you know enough now. Surely."
Ben couldn't look at the video any more. "Okay," he said; "but you could show similar footage of that festival in Israel..."
Lola looked ready to throw coffee at him. "How fucking dare you."
"Look, I understand this isn't an equal situation. I understand the argument that when Israelis attack Palestine, they do so backed by the US, as an aggressive force, with relative impunity. I understand that when Palestinians resist, they're basically defending their own existence, and that lends a bit more moral weight to what they're doing, even if, and I'll stand by this, it's still fucking horrific to murder civilians.
"But that's not what I'm arguing," Ben continued. "I'm saying, that one video isn't enough for anyone to come to an informed decision about a decades-long military occupation. Because if that was the case, then you could see one video of violence done against Israelis, and conclude Palestine's in the wrong."
"Nobody's saying you should make a statement after just seeing one video..."
"You just did. The implication of showing me a video on your phone, and saying 'surely now you get it', is that I'm going to see this one video and suddenly have this massive revelation about what I think. And it's not like this is uncommon. That's how, like, all social media works. There's this constant emphasis that this one infographic contains all you need to know in order to have an opinion on Palestine, as if it's not the subject of intense scholarly debate."
Lola just tutted, distracted by a news notification, and put her phone away.
"Okay, well, you've seen more than one video now. You've told me what your opinion is. You seem to understand that it's an occupation, and that Israel regularly violates human rights. Why not say something?"
"You know what," Ben said, "I just might."
Lola sat back in her chair.
"I just might, Lola. I... You're right. I think I do know enough, at this point, to say something."
Until this point, Lola had been working intensely to restrain herself from yelling something at Ben. Usually, she was pretty calm, but she knew Ben as an intelligent person, and his persistent reluctance to speak on this issue especially upset her, because of how vocal he was about other injustices. Now that he'd conceded some ground to her, she didn't know how to sit. She shifted around, bouncing her heel on the ground. After a moment of silence, she smiled.
"About fucking time."
"But..." Ben said, and the smile disappeared.
"Yes?"
"You see what I'm saying, right?"
Lola sighed. "About what?"
"About not knowing enough. Like, it'd be impossible, wouldn't it, to speak out against absolutely everything that's going wrong with the world?"
"I'm not asking you to-"
"I know you're not asking me to. I know. Jesus. But I mean in principle. The logic you're applying to me now, you could apply to pretty much any social injustice. And if you want to be consistent, you should apply it to everything. So there's not really any excuse for people to not know about the climate crisis, for example. The science is available. And that's gonna kill millions, so we should all speak out against it all the time.
"Right..."
"Okay. And also white supremacy, right? White supremacy, neocolonialism, the prison-industrial complex that essentially keeps Black people in a state of slavery across the US... and what about patriarchy? The rates of male violence against women are only increasing. And of course, we've got to be intersectional in our analysis. We've got to understand the sociology, history, economics and psychology of white supremacy and patriarchy, both separately and as interacting structures. We also have to understand gender as a complex, performative, construct that keeps patriarchy and white supremacy alive. And let's not forget about corporate finance, and the need for a Marxist analysis of capitalism. And in all of this, we need to make time for 'speaking out' on social media, going to protests, engaging in civil disobedience, and calling out every single instance of problematic behaviour from our friends."
"I literally do not disagree with a single thing you just said."
"Me neither."
"Then," Lola asked, "what are you saying?"
"I'm just saying it's a lot. You know? That's all. Learning all that stuff, doing all that stuff; it's a lot to ask of people."
"But what does saying that achieve?"
"Nothing. Obviously, we do need to spend as much time and effort as possible trying to read up on important stuff. I suppose that all I want," Ben said, the words almost catching in his throat, "is validation. I just want you to acknowledge that thinking about this is quite hard to do, actually."
The emotion in Ben's voice, though he'd done his best to hide it, completely diffused the last of Lola's tension. "It is hard. I'm sorry I didn't... Yeah. It's hard."
"Thank you."
Lola paused for a moment.
"I just... I feel so strongly about this, and it frustrates me when people don't-"
"-See it exactly the same way as you?" Ben said, with a warm smile.
"Well, yes."
"That's okay."
"Are we..."
Ben grinned. "We're good."
Shortly after that conversation, the two paid for their drinks, and went home. Lola spent that night reading a book on biochemistry, which she found completely impenetrable. Ben didn't sleep; the image of the mourning mother refused to leave his mind. At two in the morning, he opened his phone, to see if there were any updates on the situation in Gaza. What he saw made him start typing...
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