Morally Certain, Practically Useless: What Progress Looks Like When You Stop Performing It

research + reactions
Written By Ranty Em

If you've spent any time participating in online (or in-person) discourse about Israel and Palestine, you know how often – and how rapidly – it becomes a name-calling, rage-filled, sanctimonious futile screaming match. Each side has decided which accounts to amplify and which to ratio, devoid of context or nuance – instead, based on propaganda, soundbites, and rhetoric. They show up in comment sections with the energy of someone who just discovered podcasts and has decided to explain the situation to people who actually live it — certain, sanctimonious, and wholly incurious.

They are very, very loud.

And at the end of the exchange, what's changed? Each side is equally, if not more, entrenched in their beliefs. The rage has been performed. The ratio has been delivered. Nobody's mind moved an inch. That's not activism. That's not solidarity. That's just noise with a cause attached to it, and the people actually suffering are no better off than they were before you logged on or attended your protest.

All the while, they are completely silent about Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah, and Mo Husseini. About the 200-plus organizations in ALLMEP, the 800 bereaved families in the Parents Circle, the 45,000 members of Women Wage Peace. About the Palestinian and Israeli people who have lost the most and chosen, anyway, to build something instead of burn it down. Worse still, they speak over them, redirecting critical attention from potential progress to cyclical, lazy performance.

But the loudest voices have received enough of our limited attention. It’s time to dive into those who are closest to the conflict and are actively working to bring about positive change without it coming at the cost of the other side. And it's about what it means that the most one-sided voices in this discourse have opted out of these conversations.

This is Part 2 of a two-part post. Part 1 outlines how the redefinition of "Zionist" in contemporary activist discourse isn't political critique — it's a rhetorical trap with a documented paper trail.

A note on scope: Part 1 focuses specifically on the word "Zionist" because it sits at a unique intersection; it's both a political position and an identity label that the majority of Jewish people hold in some form. When you redefine it (I don’t hate Jews, I hate Zionists), you're not just misrepresenting a policy stance. You're making someone's identity itself the evidence against them. That's a specific kind of rhetorical move with a specific documented history, and it has specific real-world consequences for Jewish people in Western countries right now. That's why it gets its own post. 

The people who act for peace

Here's what I’ve noticed about the people who are loudest online about this conflict: they are, almost without exception, the furthest from it. The people closest to the pain, who have lost family, been imprisoned, been strip-searched, been murdered in their homes, are the ones most likely to be talking about peace. That's not a coincidence. Proximity has a way of burning off the luxury of ideological purity. These are some of the people doing that work, and the fact that you probably haven't heard of most of them is itself an indictment of what the discourse has decided to amplify.

Take Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gazan-American who leads Realign for Palestine, a project of the Atlantic Council. The project aims to amplify pragmatic and rational voices that courageously hold multiple truths, advocating for Palestinian statehood and self-determination, and asserting that the two-state solution is the only credible, humane path forward.

Alkhatib grew up in Gaza. He lost family to this conflict. He is not naive about what Palestinians have endured. And his position is: multiple things can be true at the same time. Palestinians and Israelis each have legitimate grievances, valid histories, rights, and aspirations.

He calls out rhetoric that forecloses possibility rather than creating it. Because violence has failed to deliver results for the Palestinian people for 76 years. Violence has failed to deliver security for the Jewish people for 76 years.

Then there’s ALLMEP, the Alliance for Middle East Peace, a coalition of 200+ civil society organizations, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis, advancing cooperation, trust, justice, equality, mutual understanding, and peace within and between these communities. Two hundred organizations. Hundreds of thousands of people, on the ground, doing the work. Not scoring points on social media. Building something.

Mo Husseini, a Palestinian-American writer whose essay “50 Completely True Things” was read more than half a million times, because it said the things that most people who truly want peace believe privately but feel too politically exposed to say publicly. His core argument: you cannot advocate for love, compassion, coexistence, and tolerance with hatred and violence as your tools. There is no freedom built on the back of racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, or anti-Arabism. And this: if you cannot mourn both Palestinian and Israeli dead, your vision is selective. If you cannot condemn both occupation and terrorism, your justice is performative. If you believe your side alone carries the flag of truth, you are not fighting for peace. You are fighting for dominance.

That’s a Palestinian-American saying that. Someone with more reason than the loudest voices to see this in simple terms, who refuses to. Because the simple terms are a dead end.

They are far from alone. Hamza Howidy was born in Gaza in 1997, imprisoned and tortured by Hamas for protesting against them, and now lives in exile in Germany. He calls out both the Israeli occupation and Hamas’s stranglehold on Palestinian political life, and he has been publicly critical of Al Jazeera for ignoring anti-Hamas protests in Gaza while framing everything through its own political agenda. He supports Realign for Palestine for the same reason Alkhatib does: because the Palestinian people deserve leadership that actually serves them, not factions that use their suffering as ammunition.

Adnan Jaber is a Palestinian from Jerusalem now based in Los Angeles, teaching “Design Entrepreneurship for Peace and Impact” at UCLA and working at the intersection of technology, dialogue, and peacebuilding. He founded the PeaceTech Group, bringing together 20 CEOs from Palestinian and Israeli organizations. He got into this work not as a career move but because he couldn’t get a job in Israel’s tech sector despite being qualified, went to a peace seminar out of pragmatic desperation and came out the other side believing that the encounter between people who see each other as human is the only thing that actually changes anything. He has said openly that working in Palestinian peace circles means being called a “normalizer” by your own community. He does it anyway.

Bahea Manasra is a Palestinian-American policy analyst and political organizer in Minnesota, daughter of West Bank immigrants, who since October 7 has been insistent that Palestinian voices in the diaspora have to be heard in serious conversations about human rights and peace, not just in protest, but in policy. She envisions a future where Palestinians and Israelis alike live with safety, dignity, and freedom.

Maoz Inon is an Israeli whose parents, Bilha and Ya’akov, were murdered by Hamas in their home near Gaza on October 7. Within days, he chose not revenge but peace. He has spent the two years since in partnership with Palestinian activist Aziz Abu Sarah, whose brother died from injuries sustained in Israeli custody. Together they gave a TED Talk seen by millions, met two popes, and wrote a book called The Future Is Peace. Inon has been explicit about what that choice cost him: “Revenge will only make this hole bigger and bigger. And then I realized it will become big enough to be my grave.”

Amit Shiff is an Israeli teenager and Mizrahi activist working with the Mizrahi Civic Collective to bring non-Ashkenazi Israeli voices into the peace movement, pushing back against the stereotype that Mizrahi Israelis are monolithically right-wing and don’t care about Palestinian rights. He’s a reminder that the peace camp is not, and cannot afford to be, a monoculture.

Alon-Lee Green and Rula Daood are the Jewish and Palestinian co-directors of Standing Together, the fastest-growing Jewish-Arab grassroots movement in Israel. Green is from Tel Aviv. Daood is a Palestinian from Kafr Yasif in northern Israel who joined the organization after being strip-searched at Ben Gurion Airport and decided to fight for equality rather than absorb the humiliation quietly. Together they’ve organized ceasefire protests, protected aid convoys to Gaza from right-wing attacks, and just launched a joint Arab-Jewish political party. Both have been arrested at demonstrations. Neither has stopped. Their message has been consistent since October 7: Israeli Jews and Palestinians urgently need to become partners, and the labels “pro-Israel” and “pro-Palestinian” are the cage, not the key.

These are not hypothetical people imagining peace from a comfortable distance. They are people who have lost things, risked things, and are still choosing to build something rather than destroy it.

So where should you put your energy?

If you’ve read this far and you genuinely want to help Palestinians — not just perform solidarity — here is what that actually looks like. Note: I’ve deliberately left Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross off this list. Both have documented problems with how they’ve handled this conflict specifically.

The organizations below have been vetted for credibility, independence, and impact on the ground. They are not perfect (no organization operating in an active conflict zone is), but they are doing verifiable work with real accountability. They are also, notably, not the ones that show up in viral fundraising posts. If you've been meaning to do something and haven't known what to do, this is where I’d recommend looking first.

Humanitarian relief — getting aid to people on the ground

If your goal is to get food, medicine, and supplies to Palestinian civilians right now, these are the organizations with the track record, the infrastructure, and the independence to do it without a political agenda attached.

Anera — Operating in Palestine since 1968 with no political or religious affiliation. Food, medical kits, hygiene supplies. Four-star Charity Navigator rating.JDC (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) — A note: this one is a bit different from the others on this list. JDC isn't focused specifically on Israel and Palestine — it's the leading global Jewish humanitarian organization, operating in 70 countries since 1914. It aided Jewish refugees during and after the Holocaust, supported Soviet Jewry, and currently responds to crises from Ukraine to India to Argentina. It's here because the rise in antisemitism connected to this conflict has real consequences for vulnerable Jewish communities worldwide, and that's worth resourcing too. Four-star Charity Navigator rating.

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund — Medical care and humanitarian aid specifically for Palestinian children. Verifiable track record, no documented institutional bias.

World Vision — Community-based presence in Gaza and the West Bank since 1975.

Peacebuilding — organizations doing the work on the ground, with both communities

These are the organizations that exist in the hardest space, not just delivering aid but sitting across the table from the other side and choosing to stay and do the work. Many of them have been doing it through multiple wars, multiple governments, and sustained pressure from both communities to stop. They haven't. That matters.

Combatants for Peace — Founded by former Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters who put down their weapons. They hold a joint memorial ceremony every year for both Israeli and Palestinian dead. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Still organizing joint protests and demonstrations during the current war.

Parents Circle Families Forum — Over 800 bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families, all of whom have lost someone to this conflict. They chose reconciliation. That should stop you in your tracks.

Standing Together — The largest Jewish-Arab grassroots movement in Israel, organizing both communities for peace, equality, and social justice. Since October 7 they have organized aid convoys to Gaza, protected humanitarian trucks from far-right attacks, and held anti-war protests across Israel. Led by Alon-Lee Green and Rula Daood.

Women Wage Peace — 45,000 members, Israeli and Palestinian women working together for a negotiated peace. Their partner organization, the Palestinian Women of the Sun, works alongside them. One of their founders, Vivian Silver, was murdered by Hamas on October 7. The movement kept going. 

Tech2Peace — Connects Israeli and Palestinian youth through technology and dialogue. Founded 2018, now a multi-million dollar initiative. Adnan Jaber sits on its board.

Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam — A village between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv where Jewish and Palestinian families have lived together since 1970. They run a School for Peace and an education center. Not symbolic; actually lived.

Sulha Peace Project — Brings Israelis and Palestinians together in sustained encounter, based on the Arabic tradition of sulha (reconciliation). Has operated through multiple wars without stopping.

Advocacy — organizations pushing for political solutions

If you want to push for political outcomes, a two-state solution, Palestinian statehood, an end to settlement expansion, these are the organizations making that case with evidence, strategy, and pragmatism rather than noise. They are all, notably, led by or deeply partnered with people who actually live there.

Realign for Palestine — Amplifies pragmatic Palestinian voices who support statehood and a two-state solution, and explicitly reject maximalist frameworks that foreclose peace.

ALLMEP — The umbrella network for over 200 civil society organizations working on Israeli-Palestinian peace. The best single resource to find where to plug in.

Peace Now — Israel’s oldest and largest peace movement, pushing for two states and against settlement expansion. On the ground in Israel for decades.

Geneva Initiative — Israeli and Palestinian negotiators who drafted a detailed model peace agreement based on two states. They run policy workshops, briefings, and public education.

The choice that's in front of you

Rage-fueled online discourse will not feed anyone. Self-righteousness will not rebuild a hospital. None of this noise will rebuild a home, free a hostage, or bring back a single person who has died in this conflict on either side. If the goal is to feed your outrage or feel ideologically pure, stay in your echo chamber. If the goal is to help the people you're shouting about, the organizations need more voices.

Oversimplifying this conflict doesn't just miss the point; it actively serves the people who benefit from keeping it simple. Bad actors on every side of this have always relied on outrage that doesn't ask questions, on grief that gets pointed rather than processed, on followers who feel too validated to look closer. The people paying for that certainty are the civilians caught under the rule of those bad actors, who had the least say in any of this and bear the most consequence.

Before you share, before you ratio, before you decide whose suffering counts most, please ask yourself who benefits from your reaction. The manipulation is intentional. The exploitation of your emotions is a feature, not a bug. The people in harm's way deserve advocates who are consciously working to overcome those manipulation tactics.

The people building something — the ones you just read about — aren't doing it by winning arguments on the internet. They're doing it by refusing to play a zero-sum game, and are instead insisting that something better is possible. You can do the same. It starts with where you put your money, your attention, and your amplification.

Additional Resources

On the people building peace

On performative solidarity vs. actual outcomes

  • Adil Faouzi, Times of Israel, Palestine as Performative Trend — a Moroccan journalist making the case that causes which reward performance over progress become brands, and brands do not liberate people.

On emotional manipulation and why your outrage is a resource someone else is harvesting

On why the two-state solution matters

On shared indigeneity — both peoples belong to this land

  • Rafi Gassel, Times of Israel, Israelis and Palestinians Are Both Indigenous — and Why That Matters — draws on a 2020 Tel Aviv University genomic study showing both Jews and Palestinians share the majority of their ancestry with ancient DNA from the Southern Levant going back over 3,000 years. The piece that makes the strongest case for why the zero sum framing isn't just politically unproductive. It's factually wrong.

  • Hoover Institution, Jewish Roots in the Land of Israel/Palestine — a historically grounded explainer of the Jewish claim to indigeneity that explicitly acknowledges Arab claims on the same land rather than dismissing them.

Ranty Em
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