There Is No Military Solution

I recently joined Orli Matlow on her podcast “War Is Stupid” for a wide-ranging conversation about the Israeli occupation, U.S. complicity, and what it actually means to talk about “security” when entire communities are living under permanent threat (listen here or watch on YouTube). We spoke about my recent airport interrogation leaving Israel, about being assaulted by Israeli soldiers during a night raid in the West Bank in 2022, and about the killing of my friend Awdah Hathaleen—murdered on camera by a settler who, as of this writing, still walks free.

Listening back to the episode, I was struck by how little distance there is between what we discussed and what’s unfolding right now in the United States. As ICE raids once storm through neighborhoods—agents masked, families separated, communities terrorized—I have flashbacks from my time in the occupied West Bank. After all, the logic is the same: terrorization, dehumanization, and brutalization, all in the name of “law and order” and “security.”

One of the points I try to make in this conversation is that the prevailing dogma of the Israeli political establishment that promise “peace through overwhelming strength” and “security by force alone” is a lie. In the end, as the sign you can see on my office door says, “Only peace will bring security,” because Israeli safety depends on Palestinian liberation. The two aren’t in opposition to each other. They’re deeply intertwined. It’s the same in America: instead of dividing into our small tribal groupings, we should wake up to the truth of our interconnectedness and mutual dependency. That’s the path toward peace and prosperity.