It’s a childish thing, to ‘take sides’. I witness it daily: What, with my day job, and being the father of two daughters. My advice, which remains steadfast and often unheeded is always to ‘stay out of it’.

I have lost count of the number of times one of my bairns has relayed ‘beef’ between two of her friends, usually in the social media arena, when both of the warring parties insist on her taking a stance. Quite often, when not getting involved, the situation intensifies with both antagonists seeing her as the frenemy as she refuses, despite intense pressure, to pin her flag to the mast of either party, thus rendering herself, for a short while, as persona non grata.

But this phenomena, once played out only in playgrounds, is now a mainstay in all subsets of society, including the political arena, where our leaders insist we are either here or there and nowhere in between.

The major news story at present, bar Celebrity Big Brother, Holly Willoughby taking some rest bite or KSI’s hugfest with Tommy Fury is undoubtedly the ‘tensions’ between Israel and Palestine. The rhetoric is emboldened with news outlets billing it as Israel v. Hamas and not Palestine which should send alarm bells ringing from the off. Now I’ll be honest, I have no ‘skin in the game’. Absolutely none: not a jot or one iota. I know very few, if any, Israelis or Palestinians, I have no interest in religion and I am aware that this conflict has been going on since the Second World War and is based around territory and religion.

Yes, the attack on Israel was appalling, as is the Israeli retaliation, both actual and expected, which is the proverbial sledgehammer cracking a nut if ever there was one, but we are now being ‘forced’ into taking sides.

I have no interest in pinning my colours to either mast and, to be quite frank, no one cares about my thoughts regarding such seismic events, much the same as your opinions are seemingly insignificant. Yet, we have the Home Secretary of our country, Suella Braverman, encouraging the Police to arrest and charge those who chant, in demos, lines such as ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine should be free’ as well as those who fly their national flag. Confusing nationalism and religion with terrorism (Palestine with Hamas) is exactly the opposite of the rhetoric we have been fed for the previous two decades with factual statements such as ‘not all Muslims are terrorists’ being rightly drip fed to us. Yet now, that message has been turned on its head by those in power.

I switched on LBC late yesterday as they reported on a pro-Palestine rally that took place near Parliament Square when an interviewee said ‘you are either with us or you are against us’ which says everything about how messed up, uneducated and intolerant our society has become at all levels.

The truth is that most opinions on matters that affect Joe Average are in the grey, yet we have this idiotic rhetoric pervading every element of every day life: You are either for Israel or against them. You are either Pro Trans rights or anti. You are either racist or not racist. Its intellectual anorexia for those whose minds are not capable of having reasoned, logical debate and of realising that most of us sit somewhere between the two extremes.

Think about it: when did you last hear of someone as being ‘slightly’ to the left or right politically? Now folk are demonised as far left or far right. How do we define racism? Have you ever said, even 30 years ago, something negative about, say, travellers? That is different to having Nazi tattoos and going on EDL marches before firebombing the local mosque, yet to the talking heads among us you are either X or you are Y.

So, carefree, I plan to sit this one out. I am not unequivocally (Sunak’s word, not mine) going to back either horse as I know little of the riders or their past, or present, historical tapestry.

It's ok to stay in the grey as, without full receipt of the facts, your early proclamations may prove to be wrong as you continue to argue despite knowing you are wrong, as confirmation bias forces you to take a very uncomfortable stand indeed…

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher