One of the eternal problems inherent in talking about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is the simple fact that the brutality and inhumanity of Israeli military occupation is so horrible in so many everyday, small ways, that the “real” story can not truly be told except in larger trends or numbers (e.g. 10,000 homes have been demolished since 1967, etc). But for however powerful those sort of stats. may be in conveying the sad truths of Israeli rule, they diminish the very moving individual stories of oppression and domination that take place everyday: the humiliation Palestinians are subjected to at Israeli checkpoints; the everyday sort of fear and terror and uncertainty that Palestinians feel wondering whether their homes may be destroyed; the multiple frustrations they feel seeing their landscape torn up and destroyed aesthetically to build an Apartheid Wall to steal more land and protect illegal settlers; the feelings of utterly distracting fear associated with worrying about a family member who is being held in one or another Israeli torture centers (there are now nearly 10,000 such Palestinians).

These everyday forms of racism and domination plague nearly all Palestinian communities—every last one. Even in the north of Israel, in the Galilee where Hezbollah has sent rockets, at least two or three Palestinians have been killed.

Israelis, too, as the dominant party to this conflict, also fear. Those fears are no less real. But what gets lost in representations of Palestine-Israel is the simple fact that there is a vast disparity in suffering here. The prisoner issue is perfectly emblematic: three Israeli soldiers—not civilians—are taken prisoner in the last few weeks. Israel holds 10,000 Palestinians prisoner, including several dozen elected Palestinian parlimentarians. Imagine if the Palestinians had invaded Israel and taken 36 members of the Israeli Knesset hostage and transported them to a Ramallah jail. What might be the international reaction to this?

This underscores a perfectly transparent form of racism that undergirds the vast majority or depictions of this conflict. What is omitted, what is not said, what is forgotten, what is regarded as less than important reveals how many onlookers view the lives of those who are affected by this conflict.