Draymond Green calls for Middle East peace, but leaves something out

After Draymond Green’s first full practice back with the Golden State Warriors, there were plenty of basketball questions for the star to answer. But before answering those, Green went out of his way at the start of the post-practice press conference to passionately address the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.

In a two-minute address to begin his press conference, Green called for an end to the “killing of innocent people” in this conflict.

“I just send my heart out to everybody involved — to Palestinians and Israelis,” Green said. “You’ve got people dying daily … I send my love and prayers and just hope it ends. No one kind of sees a means to an end, but just want to see it end and people get back to living their lives the way they’ve lived their lives. The killing of innocent people, terrorist attacks… we’ve dealt with that here in America. It’s not good.”

Green said he has a lot of friends and family that are Jewish and that one of his closest friends is a Jewish man who sends him messages “every time something’s going on.” Green said he didn’t want to wade too deep into the politics of the conflict, at one point saying that, “If I’m totally honest, I don’t know much about American politics, let alone anywhere else in the world’s politics.” 

But that rings a bit hollow, given Green’s past participation in what’s been criticized as a “propaganda trip” for this specific global conflict. He took a 2018 trip to Israel that was organized by the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), a non-profit whose vision is “to secure the survival of Israel, providing a thriving homeland for Jews worldwide.”

Green, who didn’t address his 2018 trip to Israel on Sunday, was criticized for the visit at the time, with a Dave Zirin piece at The Nation comparing this visit to “Green visiting the Ferguson police department while fires were still smoldering in 2014.”

In his 2018 piece, Zirin made note of the similarities between the plight of the Palestinians and the Black Lives Matter movement. Five years later, Green made a similar comparison on Sunday when asked a follow-up question on why he felt it was important to speak up on the topic.

“I’m a Black man. I know how it feels to get f—d over, and so I sympathize with them,” Green said. “When my best friend is contacting me three, four times a day terrified, that’s a problem. But I know how that feels. I grew up in Saginaw, Michigan. You don’t really know if you’re gonna go home when you leave that day. Yeah, the hope is to get back home but so many things take a turn throughout the course of a day and neighborhoods like we grew up in. So I know that feeling, that fear. I feel that because I am a part of a race and culture that’s marginalized.

“So that’s why I felt the need to say something, because so many people sit quiet when they think it might get them in trouble. But if you just had a little more compassion, you may be OK.”

Green’s comments didn’t clearly delineate who the “them” he is referring to is (though his second reference to his Jewish best friend is notable). But by commenting on the issue at all, Green is wading into the fiery political waters — even if his message of compassion can be true, too.

“I can’t get into all that [politics], I just don’t know,” Green said. “But what I do know is there’s people dying. I do know that they’re super terrified. I do know that there’s people dealing with a lot of s—t. And for me, that’s enough to say something.”