In life, people search for freedom all the time. It comes in many forms, freedom from school, freedom from work and responsibilities, but the type of freedom that is most precious is freedom of autonomy. Being able to choose for yourself and stand up against those who oppress.

The news on Palestine these days reinforces the fight for freedom against oppression. Palestinians do not have rights that typically democracies give to their citizens such as being able to keep their own homes let alone voting. In Sheikh Jarrah, the Palestinians are fighting to keep their homes and protest every night. However, as they go to to protest their are Israeli settlers nearby who mock them and along with the help of the Israeli soldiers have the protesters locked up and imprisoned where they are not treated even remotely well.

It sounds like a story that would resonate with the West but sadly they turn a blind eye and retell the story as one of self defense against Gaza rather than recounting the events from the beginning. It started with the fight for freedom in Sheikh Jarrah, a fight which was not violent on the side of the Palestinians who were trying to protect their homes (yes their physical home) that they were being unfairly and forcefully evicted from.

Why you might ask? It is because they live in East Jerusalem. That simple. Israel wants to occupy all of Jerusalem and want to remove any non-Israeli settler from that land and fill it with their people alone. This is the “peaceful” method Israel is using to continue to take over the land of another country. “Peaceful” was in quotations here. There is nothing peaceful about it. Israeli settlers can show up to a house, while people are inside, accompanied by soldiers who are fully armed and equipped to use any means necessary to remove the Palestinians who refuse to leave or even argue against the Israeli settler.

Those are the rules of the people who wrote the rights for the Palestinians. This is the government of Israel that the West supports and says that they have the right to defend themselves. It is because of these protests that the Israeli government began to fire rockets at Gaza. Yes, now Gaza is the main attention of the world as the victim, a weakness of Palestine due to the separation.

See, Gaza is on the east side of the country and Sheikh Jarrah is on the West. They are disconnected but both territories are housing Palestinians. A classic case of divide and conquer. Since those protests gained ground in social media, the Israelis began to destroy major buildings and homes in Gaza. Buildings like the media building housing the workplace of the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera. They turned it into a more publicized event and diverted the attention from Sheikh Jarrah. Even though they continued to fire rubber bullets and do damage to Al-Aqsa (a holy place for all three major religions – Islam, Christianity and yes, Judaism).

So then how can the West say they are self-defending themselves when they are the ones who instigated and caused all the suffering and senseless killing in the first place? How is this self-defense? It is the innate structure of Israel that prevents all people from having an equal playing field to contribute and thrive in. They allow Palestinians little in terms of rights and push to have more of the land dominated by Israeli settlers simply to call the land Israel and Israel’s alone. They fight to wipe out the Palestinians from the land they want for themselves.

Now that they have a ceasefire in place that will last, who knows how long as this is not the first time, they use the media in the West in particular to showcase and receive sympathy for all Jews. However, the state of Israel will never represent all Jewish people. Those who follow the Torah completely know that the land belongs to God and not to the people and cannot be claimed and traded by the Jewish people. Those who try to claim the land are not the Jewish people but are the Zionists. Let that be clear and let people not confuse the two.

“The Land cannot be sold in perpetuity for the Land is Mine, and you are residents and sojourners with Me.” 
-translated quote from the Torah

As the attention is on Gaza and the ceasefire as well as the people their trying to rebuild their homes, the problem in Sheikh Jarrah continues. The Western media does not cover it, but the people’s media does! Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and any other form where the individual can post and share their message is the best weapon against the Israeli settlers. If the attention is brought to the injustice that the state of Israel has on the Palestinians, the world will wake up to it. Because the loss of freedom to participate equally in any country is not humane and is not right. I pray for your freedom Palestine, I pray your time will come.