There’s tension in my title. With all the killing, suffering, hopelessness and despair, my agony isn’t central. Yet, it drives my effort to understand the complexities that cause our moral compasses to spin out of control. 

I am a Zionist and a Jew, from a long line of secular Zionists. My ancestors worked to create Israel and dreamed of a nation for Jews and Arabs. My great aunt, Rose Zeitlin, witnessed the Brit Shalom at Israel’s birth, covenanting to work for peace with the Arab people. Their dream soon shattered. Still, I support Israel as a Jewish state with the same rights as other states, including the rights to secure borders and self-defense.

Being a Jewish state doesn’t imply a religious state. England is officially Anglican. It’s hardly a religious state forcing the precepts of the Church on its citizens. Most weekly worshippers there are Muslims, and their number is greater than the combined worshippers of all other faiths. So let it be with Israel. I don’t support the Orthodox rabbinate imposing their religious views on Muslims and non-Orthodox Jews.

I’m also pro-Palestinian. I support a Palestinian state with a shared capital in Jerusalem. The suffering Palestinians have a right to a homeland and to live in peace with each other, other Arab states and the Jewish state.

 Neither our religions nor our histories condemn us to endless conflict. This fratricide is a choice, the often-cynical choice of selfish and frightened leaders. What can we do today with all the history, pain and inability to change the past? How can we stop killing our brothers, sisters and cousins? 

When I call the Arabs and Palestinians my cousins, I’m not being sentimental. My DNA reveals me to be 90% Ashkenazi Jewish and 9% Arab. (There’s a story!) Having lived as a Jew in an Arab Muslim country, Tunisia, for two years, speaking Arabic, and having studied Islam with an Imam, I’m not anti-Muslim or anti-Arab. I am anti-hatred and killing.

Israel has a right to defend itself from attack and credible threats of annihilation. The Palestinians have a right to their struggle for statehood. These foreseeable “rights” can lead to inevitable wrongs, in the name of justice. There may be a right for a struggle to create or protect a nation, but it can’t be unlimited or beyond questioning.

I have a right to defend myself, but my rights are limited. I can’t use a shotgun to blast you off my lawn. I can’t use deadly force without being subject to criminal investigation if not prosecution. Nations also are subject to limitations. The United States had a right to retaliate against Japan following Pearl Harbor. We probably had a right to use flame-throwers in Okinawa and to bomb Tokyo. It’s fair, however, to question the use of the A-bomb on Hiroshima, and, it’s imperative to ask about our choice to drop another A-bomb on Nagasaki only three days later.

It’s both fair and necessary to ask if the October slaughter, rapes and kidnapping of Israeli Jews and Arabs by Hamas, which broke an existing, if imperfect, ceasefire was an appropriate action in a struggle for statehood or just an atrocity to destabilize and eventually destroy Israel? It’s legitimate to question just how much force Israel needed to degrade (it can’t destroy) Hamas. It’s not anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic or anti-Arab to question how a struggle or war is conducted.

Hezbollah immediately sending rockets into northern Israel was a trap Israel to lure Israeli forces away from Gaza. Israel had little choice and fell into the trap. If Canada were sending 200-300 missiles a day into the US, we’d probably nuke them. Israel responded with rockets.  

When Israel bombed civilian areas of Gaza, the world, including us, asked questions. Israel’s response was to ask what the world wanted of them? October 7 couldn’t be ignored. The world said, “We want proportionality, not saturation bombing.” Then Israel focused on assassinating a Hamas leader in Tehran and a Hezbollah leader in Beirut. The world said, “Uh, not that. That’s too focused.” Then Israel sabotaged pagers ordered by Hezbollah that they designed to kill and injure enrolled Hezbollah leaders and soldiers. Again, the world said, “Not that! That’s a war crime because civilians were killed and injured.” This is ironic coming from Hezbollah that doesn’t recognize civilians when they’re Israeli and had already fired thousands of missiles into Israel. 

Israel’s reaction has been to ask what it means to have the right to defend yourself if no actions, whether widespread or narrowly focused, are legitimate? Is Israel expected to send strong letters to Sinwar and Nasrallah? 

Today, we tremble on a precipice of a regional war that is in no nation’s interest. The opportunity to grow the Abraham Accords is stalled, which was the intent of Hamas on October 7. Hostilities with Iran are heating up. Iran wants chaos but not real war. It’s comfortable with its proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Can I be both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian? Yes. I want two states. I want peace. I stand with Israel but not with Netanyahu and his far right. I stand with Palestinians but not Sinwar in Gaza or Nasrallah in Lebanon. I see no contradiction in these distinctions. I stood with the Peace Movement in this country and not with Presidents Johnson or Nixon. 

 I can oppose leaders and policies and still believe in eventual peace and reconciliation. Wars end. Israelis vacation in Germany. Americans are tourists in Vietnam. Enmity is neither inevitable nor eternal. It will take time and new leadership but deep in my heart, I do believe that peace will come someday, that my cousins will live together, thrive together and feast together at one another’s tables in our own lands.