I grew up in a society where hatred of Israel sometimes occupied more space than love for our own lives. Over time, I came to understand something essential: when a society builds its collective imagination around resentment and the obsession with an enemy, it eventually destroys its own capacity for happiness, freedom, and progress.

I grew up in a world where Israel occupied all our minds, far beyond its actual geographic reality. A monster with an abstract face — so close, yet so distant.

In my Syrian childhood, and through the social, familial, and official narratives surrounding me, the “Palestinian cause” was not simply one political issue among others. It had become a religion. A total framework through which the rest of the world was interpreted. An obsession. A permanent struggle. A reason to exist. A collective emotion so deeply internalized that it no longer even needed to be questioned. A collective honor believed to have been violated and humiliated. The answer was absolute hatred.

We were not asked to think. We were expected to adhere. To adhere to a collective hatred. Without understanding. It was written. It was decided. By God or by ideologues.

Hatred of Israel required no neutral understanding of the conflict, of history, or even of Jews themselves. How can one remain neutral when fed only a single version of history? It existed before words, before nuance, before political debate. It structured conversations, school lessons, radio broadcasts, television series, slogans — even silences. Society organized both its daily life and its imagined future around hatred.

And over time, I came to understand something even more disturbing: this hatred never destroyed the designated enemy. It primarily destroyed those who carried it. It led them........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)