As a Palestinian, I have spent much of my life in conversations about violence—in university classrooms, churches, conferences, television studios, and discussions with friends and colleagues around the world. Again and again, I have noticed a striking pattern.
There is usually a sincere effort to understand how history has shaped Israeli fears and actions.
Whenever the conversation turns to Israeli violence, people instinctively search for its history. They speak of the Holocaust, centuries of antisemitism, collective trauma, existential insecurity, suicide bombings, rockets, and the state’s responsibility to protect its citizens. Whatever conclusions follow, there is usually a sincere effort to understand how history has shaped Israeli fears and actions.
When the conversation turns to Palestinian violence, however, the questions often change. The history of the Nakba, military occupation, dispossession, settlement expansion, repeated wars, blockade, imprisonment, and the daily realities of life under military control quickly fade into the background.
Instead of asking what Palestinians have experienced, many begin by asking what kind of people Palestinians are.
Even the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza—the massive destruction of human life and communities, repeated displacement, hunger, and the devastation of the conditions necessary for life is frequently discussed without the longer history that has shaped it. Instead of asking what Palestinians have experienced, many begin by asking what kind of people Palestinians are.
Violence is interpreted less as the tragic outcome of history than as the expression of identity. Labels such as terrorist, extremist, or fanatic replace the patient work of historical understanding.
Explaining Palestinian violence... is frequently treated as an attempt to excuse terrorism.
Over more than three decades of teaching Israeli, Palestinian, European, and North American students, I have watched this pattern repeat itself. Explaining Israeli violence is generally regarded as responsible scholarship. It reflects a willingness to understand history before reaching moral judgment. Explaining Palestinian violence, by contrast, is frequently treated as an attempt to excuse terrorism. The same method of historical inquiry that is praised when applied to Israelis often becomes suspect when applied to Palestinians.
Attacks against civilians... deserve unequivocal moral condemnation.
I am not attempting to justify violence here. Deliberate attacks against civilians, whether committed by states or by non-state actors, deserve unequivocal moral condemnation. Every victim bears the image of God, every life possesses equal dignity, and every act that intentionally targets the innocent demands moral accountability.
Neither am I writing about violence itself, but about how violence is interpreted. Before deciding whether an act deserves condemnation or sympathy, we have often already decided whether the people who committed it deserve a history. That prior judgment shapes every moral judgment that follows.
My concern is therefore not simply political but ethical. Why do we instinctively search for history, memory, and trauma behind one people’s violence while reducing another people’s violence to labels, culture, or religion? Why is one people granted a biography while the other is assigned an identity?
We recognize the humanity of one people through their story while flattening another into a stereotype.
This asymmetry reveals a deeper moral habit. We extend historical curiosity to some while denying it to others. We recognize the humanity of one people through their story while flattening another into a stereotype.
Gaza has exposed the deadly consequences of this habit: when Palestinian history and humanity are obscured, immense Palestinian suffering can be explained away, normalized, or rendered morally invisible. Until we confront this unequal way of interpreting violence, we will continue to misunderstand not only the Israeli Palestinian context but also the moral assumptions that shape our judgments.
One violence comes with a biography; the other comes with a label.
Who is allowed to have a reason?
Understanding is not the same as agreeing.
One of the earliest lessons I learned as both a student and later as a teacher is that understanding is not the same as agreeing. Historians, psychologists, and social scientists seek to explain human behavior without thereby excusing it.
We ask why wars begin, why societies become polarized, why fear shapes political decisions, and why individuals commit acts they might never have imagined. Explanation is not an act of approval; it is the beginning of understanding.
This principle is applied almost instinctively in many conflicts. We recognize that nations and communities act within histories that shape their perceptions of danger, justice, and survival.
To understand is not to justify... human actions emerge within historical experience.
Few people object when scholars explain European politics through the memory of two world wars, American foreign policy through the trauma of Pearl Harbor or September 11, or Jewish consciousness through centuries of antisemitism culminating in the Holocaust. To understand is not to justify. It is to acknowledge that human actions emerge within historical experience.
Yet this principle often changes when the discussion turns to Palestinians. The moment someone mentions the Nakba, military occupation, settlement expansion, repeated wars, or decades of life under military control, the conversation frequently shifts.
Are you trying to justify terrorism?
Instead of engaging in this historical context, many respond with a familiar question: Are you trying to justify terrorism? The very act of explaining Palestinian experience becomes morally suspect.
Why should historical inquiry be welcomed in one case but resisted in the other?
All peoples carry memories that shape how they understand the present. Israelis do, and Palestinians do. History excuses violence for neither. It does not remove moral responsibility. But if historical explanation is essential for understanding one people’s actions, intellectual honesty requires us to extend the same principle to the other.
Justice requires us... to ask the same historical questions of every people.
When one people is consistently granted reasons while another is reduced to labels, we create two moral frameworks: one in which violence is interpreted through memory and history, and another in which it is interpreted through identity and stereotype. That is not simply a political inconsistency; it is a moral one. Justice requires us not only to condemn violence wherever it occurs but also to ask the same historical questions of every people, even when the answers challenge our assumptions.
When history belongs to only one people
Collective memory shapes moral imagination long before... political decisions.
History is never merely a record of the past. It is a story through which communities understand who they are, why they fear, what they hope for, and how they interpret the present. Collective memory shapes moral imagination long before it shapes political decisions.
Few would dispute that the Holocaust remains indispensable for understanding modern Jewish identity and the State of Israel. It continues to influence how many Israelis perceive vulnerability, security, and the responsibility to protect Jewish life. A discussion of Israel that ignored this history would rightly be criticized as historically superficial and morally insensitive.
The same principle, however, is rarely extended to Palestinians with equal consistency. The Nakba, decades of displacement, military occupation, settlement expansion, repeated assaults on Gaza, and the continuing struggle for dignity are too often treated as secondary—or as politically inconvenient when Palestinian actions are discussed.
A history that remains alive for those who endure it is frequently dismissed by those who interpret it from a distance.
The present catastrophe in Gaza cannot be separated from this history. Yet a history that remains alive for those who endure it is frequently dismissed by those who interpret it from a distance.
This asymmetry has profound moral consequences. When one people’s history is recognized while another’s is ignored, we begin to assign unequal humanity. One people is understood as a community shaped by memory, trauma, and lived experience. The other is viewed through fixed identities and inherited assumptions. Historical depth is granted to one; essentialized identity is assigned to the other.
Compassion follows recognition, and recognition follows the stories we are willing to hear.
Such an imbalance impoverishes our moral imagination. It becomes easier to empathize with those whose fears are historically narrated than with those whose suffering is politically minimized. Compassion follows recognition, and recognition follows the stories we are willing to hear.
Acknowledging history does not diminish moral responsibility. Neither the Holocaust nor the Nakba can justify the deliberate targeting of civilians. Both remind us, however, that violence never emerges in a historical vacuum. Human beings are formed by memory as well as by choice, and moral judgment becomes more, no less, responsible when it takes history seriously.
The question is not whose history matters more. It is whether we possess the moral consistency to recognize that every people carries a history worthy of being heard. A just interpretation of violence begins with the refusal to reserve historical dignity for only one side.
The language that changes everything
Violence is never interpreted in a vacuum. Before we know the facts, before evidence has been examined, and often before moral judgment is formed, language has already begun shaping the story. The words we choose do more than describe reality; they frame it. They tell us what questions to ask, whose fears deserve attention, and whose actions require explanation.
Language frequently establishes an unequal moral landscape.
In the Israeli Palestinian context, language frequently establishes an unequal moral landscape. Israeli military actions are commonly described through words such as security, self-defense, deterrence, and counterterrorism.
These terms immediately place events within a framework of historical vulnerability and legitimate protection. They invite the listener to ask what threats produced the response and what fears lay behind it.
The vocabulary surrounding Palestinians is often markedly different. Violence is quickly described as terrorism, extremism, fanaticism, or radicalization. Deliberate attacks against civilians rightly deserve condemnation, and terrorism is a legitimate moral category.
Yet when such labels become the primary language through which Palestinians are understood, they replace rather than accompany historical explanation. The conversation ends before it has truly begun.
This difference in language has profound ethical consequences. One vocabulary encourages inquiry; the other discourages it. One asks, What happened to produce this response? The other asks, what kind of people would do such a thing? History quietly gives way to identity, and identity hardens into stereotypes.
The issue is whether we apply the same interpretive standards to both peoples.
The issue is not whether certain acts should be called terrorism or whether states have the right to protect their citizens. The issue is whether we apply the same interpretive standards to both peoples. If historical context enriches our understanding of one side’s actions, it should not disappear when we consider the actions of the other. Moral consistency requires us to ask the same questions before reaching our conclusions.
Language, however, is never merely descriptive. It is also an expression of power. Those who possess political, military, cultural, and media influence often possess the ability to shape public memory. They influence which histories are remembered, which fears become universally recognized, and which experiences remain at the margins of public consciousness.
This has become painfully visible in Gaza, where Palestinian men, women, and children are frequently presented as numbers, while the history, names, families, and interrupted futures behind those numbers disappear. Words do more than describe violence; they help determine whose suffering is acknowledged, whose history is considered relevant, and whose humanity is recognized.
Language can open the door to historical understanding.
Language can open the door to historical understanding, or it can close that door with a single label. It can affirm the dignity of a people’s story, or it can silence it. Whenever language grants one people the privilege of history while reducing another to a stereotype, it ceases to be a tool of understanding and becomes an instrument of inequality.
Reading Palestinians as human beings
The tragedy is not only violence itself but also how violence shapes the way we see one another.
The deeper I have reflected on this, the more convinced I have become that the tragedy is not only violence itself but also how violence shapes the way we see one another. Before evaluating an action, we have often formed an image of the person who committed it. That image determines whether we search for history or settle for a stereotype, whether we ask questions or assign labels.
Israeli actions, even when strongly criticized, are generally understood within a larger human story. They are connected to centuries of persecution, the Holocaust, existential insecurity, and the desire to protect a people who have known profound vulnerability. Whether one agrees with Israeli policies or not, there is usually an assumption that Israeli decisions emerge from a complex historical journey.
When history disappears, empathy begins to disappear with it.
Too often, Palestinians are denied that same human complexity. Instead of being seen as a people shaped by the Nakba, displacement, military occupation, repeated wars, restrictions on movement, and the struggle to preserve dignity, they are reduced to labels that seem to explain everything. Once labels replace stories, history disappears. When history disappears, empathy begins to disappear with it.
This is the deeper moral issue. The question is not simply how we interpret violence but how we understand the people who live within it. Are Palestinians to be encountered as human beings with memories, grief, hopes, and aspirations like every other people? Or are they to remain objects of suspicion whose history need not be heard?
Scripture consistently refuses to reduce people to categories.
As a Palestinian Christian, I believe the answer begins with the biblical affirmation that every human being is created in the image of God. Scripture consistently refuses to reduce people to categories. Again and again, God calls his people to see the neighbor before the label, the person before the stereotype, and the human story before political identity.
To deny a people’s history is to deny part of their humanity. That conviction extends far beyond Israel and Palestine. Whenever we deny a people’s history, we diminish their dignity. Whenever we refuse to hear their story, we make compassion more difficult and justice more selective. Lasting peace cannot be built on selective memory. It begins when we grant every people the same historical dignity we instinctively extend to ourselves.
Conclusion: A prophetic call
Will we have the moral courage to recognize that every people carries a story worthy of being heard?
The question before us is not only how we judge violence. It is how we choose to see one another. Will we continue to grant one people the dignity of history while reducing another to labels? Or will we have the moral courage to recognize that every people carries a story worthy of being heard?
As Christians, we follow one who consistently crossed the boundaries others refused to cross. Jesus saw persons where society saw categories. He listened before he judged. He restored dignity to those who had been silenced, excluded, and feared. His followers cannot do less.
The church cannot proclaim reconciliation while accepting moral frameworks that recognize the history of one people and erase the history of another. Gaza places this contradiction before the church with terrible urgency.
We cannot confess that every person bears the image of God while allowing political loyalties, national identities, or inherited prejudices to determine whose suffering deserves our compassion and whose suffering remains invisible. Nor can we speak credibly of peace while refusing to name the devastation of Gaza and the Palestinian history within which it is taking place.
The first act of justice is not to agree with another people’s story. It is to acknowledge that they have one. Only then can our disagreements become honest, our judgments become just, and our pursuit of peace become more than rhetoric.
We are called to resist every language, ideology, and political narrative that denies the humanity of another people.
The prophetic task before us is therefore clear. We are called to resist every language, ideology, and political narrative that denies the humanity of another people. We are called to listen before we judge, to understand before we condemn, and to defend the equal dignity of every human being created in the image of God.
History must never become the privilege of the powerful. It is the inheritance of every people. When we deny another people’s history, we diminish their humanity—and our own. But when we choose to hear one another’s stories with truth, humility, and courage, we take the first step toward a justice that makes reconciliation possible and a peace worthy of the name.
Professor Dr. Salim J. Munayer is the founder of Musalaha, an organization dedicated to fostering reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis and other divided communities in the Middle East. He served for several years as Academic Dean at Bethlehem Bible College and has authored several theological books focusing on theology, reconciliation, and justice. Professor Munayer currently serves as the MENA Region Team Lead for the Peace and Reconciliation Network (PRN) of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA).
