Anti-Zionists Taught Me About Jewish Confidence
For more than seven years, I have spoken regularly with anti-Zionists, including Palestinians, mostly online. Throughout, I openly displayed my Jewishness and my commitment to Jewish cultural continuity. That experience has changed how I understand the current wave of antisemitism.
Not because I found no hostility. I often encountered hostility, especially when I did not condemn Israel in the frame some people were looking for. But I also found something many Jews are rarely taught to expect: spaces where Jewish peoplehood was not treated as something shameful, illegitimate, or automatically doomed to disappear.
That creates a strange opening. The coast is not simply clear. But there are harbors we have not learned to recognize.
My family is not Orthodox, but we observe much of kashrut and celebrate Shabbat and the major Jewish holidays. When I wrote about those practices, I received little pushback. When I wrote about parts of Jewish history or the Jewish textual tradition that did not map neatly onto modern Zionism, I often encountered curiosity.
Sometimes, Palestinians or their supporters wished me a happy Jewish holiday. It felt like more than politeness. At times, it felt as if they had been waiting for permission to acknowledge Jewish life without betraying their own commitments. There was a sadness in it too, as though the conflict had made even a simple holiday greeting emotionally difficult.
That is not the whole story. Some people did say hateful things about Israel, Zionists, or Jews. But the holiday greetings revealed something else. Many people I encountered were not asking me to erase my Jewishness. They were looking for a way to relate to it.
So I kept going.
I did not only speak about my Jewishness as private heritage or family memory. I spoke about the vitality and compelling nature of Judaism as things I wanted to strengthen.
One could imagine my position being seen as politically threatening. In Israel-Palestine, demographics are rarely neutral. Yet when I displayed this unapologetic desire for Jewish life to thrive and grow, the expected wall of hostility in Palestinian and anti-Zionist spaces simply did not materialize.
Most people did not respond as though Jewish growth itself were the problem. Some even gave upvotes.
The whole experience made me think of the classic line from U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address. Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Fear often holds us back, yet even the people we are taught to fear can be friendlier than we are prepared to imagine.
The deeper question seemed to be whether Jewish flourishing required Palestinian diminishment.
From the beginning, I worked to avoid this diminishment. I treated Palestinians and their culture as related to ours, with much to admire and even emulate—including their resilience, sumud. I treated their concerns as heartfelt and recognized the deep love of the land as something besides hatred of Jews. I showed gratitude when they took the time to join the conversation.
I named their grief. I recognized their hurt. I still named Jewish trauma, while refusing to compete over who was the greater victim. I sought and built on points of common ground.
The full paradigm—bold Jewishness thinking intergenerationally and outwardly toward a bright future, inviting Palestinians as partners in making this possible—is conspicuously missing from the Israel-Palestine political map. Yet the instinct has echoes surprisingly close to where I live, New York City. This is the homeland of the Lenape people. And just to the north and west of Lenape country, another Indigenous civilization—the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, Confederacy—developed one of the world’s most powerful traditions of peacemaking from parallel logic.
Like Jews, the Haudenosaunee are a resilient people whose culture celebrates life, emphasizes gratitude and social responsibility, and follows the rhythms of the seasonal agricultural festivals of their homeland. Their Confederacy was formalized six hundred years ago according to some historians, or nine hundred years ago according to their oral tradition and astronomical evidence, among nations in prolonged cycles of conflict.
Its political system offers a remarkable model for avoiding zero-sum dynamics and protecting good-faith minority perspectives. The oral tradition extensively recounts the peacemaking that reunited the extended families, reunited the nations through the families, and formalized the Confederacy. The process built on preexisting social structures and traditions and was carried forward by the people, after being set in motion by several key women and men.
At the time of the American Revolution, the Haudenosaunee were a potent force in eastern North America. Their highly effective framework allowed even former enemies, outsiders, and displaced people to be incorporated into their Confederacy or into other political relationships.
I believe Jews have a lot to learn from the Haudenosaunee and from their Great Right Way, the Kayanerenkó:wa. The Kayanerenkó:wa is a practical model for how peoples trapped in violence can begin to relate differently to one another. It can make room for many cosmologies and traditions. Historically, Native teachings were already diverse, and Haudenosaunee political and cultural life came to include Christians as well. I have found that similar approaches can build unique cross-factional bridges in our Middle Eastern conflicts.
The Kayanerenkó:wa, like Halakha, is not only a social structure but a pattern of individual conduct that generates and continually sustains that structure. Both contain real and binding obligations for insiders. Both illustrate more general themes, such as affirmation of one’s own people as a starting point for genuinely meeting others, which are relevant to dialogue across political fault lines.
A more Kayanerenkó:wa-inspired approach to Israel-Palestine engagement, and the one I took, might include:
- Observe and wait for the right opening before you engage.
Watch and listen to the discussion first. If you feel lost by the subject, get background from multiple perspectives. If you feel confused by why one group is reacting in a particular way, explore the perspective more and try to infer the underlying values and priorities as they might describe them. Slowly, begin to add what you have, making sure you can actually contribute. - Seek to meet Palestinians and their supporters while embracing an intergenerational view of Jewish continuity.
Do not enter as a Jew apologizing for being Jewish or paralyzed by guilt about Israel. If you are Jewish, enter as a proud and joyful Jew who cares about Palestinians and perceives them as a related people. Regardless, seek to build Jewish strength as Palestinian strength and vice versa. - Recognize that they may be emotionally hurt, and do not challenge this.
If you notice grief, pain, or anger, fully acknowledge it before you say or do anything else. Genuinely desire to heal. - Look for harbors.
Pay attention to small signs, such as holiday greetings, curiosity about Jewish tradition, or openness to a less threat-oriented and more partnership-oriented rhetoric than conventional pro-Israel advocacy. Notice willingness to distinguish Jewish life from Jewish rule. - Respond to these gestures with gratitude.
Treat them as meaningful openings, not trivial niceties. - Let gratitude become politics.
Ask: if I receive Palestinian presence as a gift rather than a threat, what political positions follow? Feeding and rebuilding Gaza is one. Anything that can become a shared binational challenge would be another. - Build long-term personal relationships, not short-term conversations.
There are many ways to build relationships—Zoom calls, shared meals, joint aid projects, and joint advocacy for areas of agreement are just a few. My peacebuilding organization, Unity is Strength, spent years producing a jointly written and edited Peace Haggadah and holds annual Peace Seders. - Keep the door open without forcing anyone through.
Individuals, families, organizations, and eventually peoples may move through it at different speeds. A welcoming space that does not feel like betrayal of one’s people allows trust to grow, making it easier for others to approach in their own time. - Be patient and accepting.
Relationships take time. And these are not perfect people. Most have baggage and preconceptions. The question is not whether they are saints, but whether you have common ground and respect important aspects of them. - Celebrate life and friendship.
When you reach someone and build a connection, it is enjoyable. You are with a person you care about, and you overcame barriers to connect. Be proud and happy that you broke a wall that needed to be broken, built something that needed to be built, and broadened yourself and your own community in the process.
This is not a silver bullet. It would only affect the region if many people are doing this—ideally coordinating with one another. And it does not invalidate the need for security. However, if Jews can strengthen ourselves and our peoplehood by engaging with and supporting Palestinians, things change. Suddenly, the dynamics become much warmer. Suddenly, the peace process is more resilient and more alive. And hope appears.
I would like to thank people from the Onöndowa’ga:’ (Seneca) and Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) Nations, whose privacy I am preserving, for reviewing this article and providing helpful suggestions, as well as the other Haudenosaunee people who provided feedback on portions of the article. Any errors or misinterpretations are my own.
