Me and my father, mother, and sister went out to dinner with my father’s side of the family (aunt, uncle, cousin and his girlfriend). The conversation led to the “conflict” in Palestine when my uncle started talking about it, saying that Jewish people were originally there, which I responded to by saying so were Palestinians, that Palestinians are not some settlers but share, to be the most charitable to him, roughly the same ancestry (although I could have said that the Palestinians have a much deeper connection to the land). When I asked why they wouldn’t make the same argument about “ancestry” nonsense concerning Native America, they said it was because “we won,” which flies in the face of their righteous indignation at the Oct. 7th attack, but whatever.

This sparked my cousin and Aunt’s involvement as well (while my sister, mom, and my cousin’s girlfriend stayed out of it), where they all hurled points at me simultaneously and I couldn’t even respond to anything fully without being interrupted, nor respond to every separate point at the same time—as much as my dad tried to chime in to help me, it was minimal, and at times he was also against me, like when I explained that the IOF bombed Israeli houses in the kibbutz to clear out Hamas after Oct. 7 so you can’t pin all the deaths on Hamas, to which he brilliantly added: “that makes no sense.”

My uncle said that Palestinians were offered a section of land by the UN prior to Israel’s takeover, to which I responded that the UN agreement was not an “offer” but a draft plan that the UN could not enforce at the time, and that Palestinians would have no reason to secede part of their territory to a colonizing force except the hindsight that they would be forced to secede yet more—I should have also said that it’s farcical to put forward the argument that the Palestinians deserve to be colonized because they refused to be colonized. I did bring up the Nakba, but nothing meaningful came of that.

I pointed out Israel’s bombings of hospitals, to which my cousin responded that the Al Ahli Arab Hospital bombing (I had to give the name because, despite him trying to concentrate it to a single example, he was clueless) was perpetrated by Hamas and that there were recordings of Hamas officials admitting to this. I responded that the claim is that it was perpetrated by PIJ, and that this is incorrect as the cancer center of that same hospital had been bombed by Israel three days prior and the AJ footage used by the IOF to trace it as a rocket coming out of Gaza was completely misrepresented and did not prove this. Furthermore, the “recording” referenced was proven by Channel 5 (UK) to be a fabrication. He responded “what’s Channel 5? (with a scoff). Then it came to denying the Health Ministry’s numbers, where I pointed out HRW’s confirmation of them.

My uncle used the Holocaust as an excuse for Israel’s occupation of Palestine, to which I pointed out that Palestinians had no part in this. He responded that many Palestinians were part of the SS. I said most of them weren’t but this didn’t matter to him. I asked him to look up the Haavara Agreement but was interrupted.

My aunt said that Hamas uses human shields. I responded that it is the IOF that uses Palestinians as human shields, citing the UN (2013) and the IOF’s own objection to the banning of the practice prior (there was no response to this). I also added that Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth and that there is nowhere they can resist without being met with this accusation, which has never been confirmed and is simply Israel/U.S. propaganda. My uncle responded that Hamas controls this, to which I said that this isn’t true as Israel controls movement. They asked me why Egypt didn’t let people in, and I said I didn’t know but that isn’t the point, to which they responded that they “knew.” Hooray! It is that whenever you allow free immigration from Palestine, people go to other countries and “become terrorists”/“cause trouble.” When I asked if they thought all Palestinians were terrorists they said “no, just Hamas.” I should have asked if they spoke another dialect of English where anything they said made any sense, much less disproved my response to the original point.

They talked about how the siege was okay because Hamas was stealing all of the supplies anyways, and I said “From who? The ‘human animals’? That’s what Gallant said when he announced the total siege after Oct. 7th.” My aunt and cousin responded that this is “just war,” and war is “awful anywhere.” They pointed out that Hamas has the destruction of Israel in their charter. I asked what the issue was, and if they had a problem with the Likud party’s similar statements. No response. But no time to linger.

They said Hamas was supported by Iran (I don’t know why this matters), and that Iran is an “evil country.” I said that maybe you shouldn’t have imprisoned Mosaddegh for life and propped up a monarch. My uncle said “maybe we shouldn’t, but give me a break, it would be the same way anyways.” My aunt said that the Quran says all Jews must be killed (I asked where but she didn’t reply)—I wanted to say “doesn’t the Bible say Jewish people will go to hell unless they accept Christianity?” Didn’t get the chance. My aunt said she “opposed killing anywhere,” which is the really profound drivel you get from people who have been proven wrong, that this was their point the entire time is laughable.

On a side note, my uncle also brought up Chinese “expansionism” “across the globe.” When I asked where “across the globe” he was referring to, he said in the Philippines, where China had built artificial islands, and in Africa. I said that Chinese activity in Africa was simply investment and the like, and that you could at the very least make the same argument for the U.S. Also, China has never executed African political leaders for regime change like the U.S. My dad chimed in: “maybe they have.” AAAH

So much more happened but I can’t remember everything, my heart was beating out of my chest dealing with it all (told by my mom I ruined our last time with them before they moved to another state). I had to shake their hands after like we had just played a great game of Yahtzee, and my uncle said “You learned some stuff” to me when I was leaving. Learned afterwards from my mom and sister that my aunt was making mean faces at me when I looked away and kept whispering to them that I was “brainwashed by liberal schools.” Sorry.