Advanced Essay #1: Invisible Iron Dome

Hope, broke, killed, died. A peace deal was a possibility. Soon afterwards, human right laws were broken. One war began and armies were killed. More than one person died, more than one dream of hope ended. Soon after, the cycle begins again. Never stopping to the end. The whole world has lived through one, a war between Palestine and Israel. A conflict that has raged for years and probably many more to come.

In my lifetime, there have been too many wars. Too many people dead, too many people's hopes lost. Yet, giving a blind eye to the hope for a peaceful solution is what too many across the region and across the world have brought upon themselves. I still see a future of change in a peaceful manner for this ongoing challenge that has faced generations for decades.

July 8th, 2014. The middle of the summer and 10 days before Madiba Day, the internationally recognized day of service celebrating the life and fight for human rights that the iconic leader Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela gave our world. That was the day Israel began one of their many military invasions on Palestinian land. Later on, the world would hear of despicable numbers detailing the people that were murdered by the apartheid government. 2,000 plus Palestinian men, women and children would die in the weeks that followed. To this day, families continue to suffer from the war, the war that highlighted the inhumane actions that Israel took on their supposed “enemy”.

“Israel isn’t the enemy,” say Fox News.

“They are the heroes for peace,” say half our country.

Then why does a hero carry hundreds of deadly weapons, including the most dangerous weapons known to men and women, in their backyard? Why have they threatened to use them (and have indeed used other deadly weapons) on millions of people? What does a enemy or a hero mean to us as a nation? Were we heroes when we sent the nuclear bomb to Japan? Were we enemies when we formally recognized Nelson Mandela as a leader and not a ‘terrorist’?

Days before the official military intervention by the Israeli government led by all around war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, my family and I had followed the news consequently. It was like running a marathon for us, the pictures brought pain but at the same time (strangely) optimism. Even though each news agency took the war in a different perspective and sometimes bias view, we looked over each news program carefully to understand their hidden statement. Yet, there was less bias on news agencies compared to wars in the past. There was a small hole of openness to all sides of the conflicted that wasn’t real a year before. 

Now, it was July 8th and I was set to leave to Germany the day that followed. We stood around looking at the live images on MSNBC. Israel had invaded Palestine. Israel began to harm, to break and to kill. All our personal worries ended, for the worries, the pain, the struggle of the Palestinians was real. And it was not going to end.

There’s this dome, a dome that hides the world’s people from the true story, the complete story. For this dome is made of iron, it seems to never be able to break. It’s so tough and sturdy, that to everybody it feels like human nature, it’s just a simple fact. Like Christopher Columbus being a exploring hero or George Washington being the most perfect President in history, nearly everyone takes it as fact, without digging for the utterly, complete truth. Not the biased truth but the real truth. We go into the lazy category there, when we have the curiosity to learn so much more. For the dome we live under, however, everything we hear isn’t necessarily fact. What’s outside the dome isn’t completely told. For this dome seems unbreakable, for now.

This dome is invisible. To more than half this world, no one can see it being formed over their mindset and heart as they grow and accomplish. But there are few with the superpower to escape outside the dome and see the perspective view. Those superheroes don’t have bias, they encounter the truth of a conflict that has too many opinions and to much passion, that it’s nearly impossible to make everyone happy with your very own view. There’s more than that invisible, iron dome and we can all break it from ourselves. We have that power. and we should use it.

Israel and Palestine is not the only conflict with so much complexity that no one really understands it and see no use for a peaceful resolution. There’s a huge refugee crisis affecting Europe. The refugees come from two continents, Asia and Africa (and some from Europe itself). For not all news agencies cover it in detail, due to not seeing interest in the refugees and instead in an election that is over a year away. There is an intense murder rate swooping Central and South American countries that has frightened human rights activists across the world. We only hear about what’s going on down there when Donald Trump opens his mouth and the reaction that follows. Why do we not want to challenge ourselves to care?