For the sake of peace

Each time another another bomb falls or drone strikes in the Middle East, I cringe, worried over who will live and who will die, who will be injured in the explosion and who will be lucky enough to escape unharmed. For ten months the bombs have fallen, and I want to scream: “Please, for the sake of peace, stop fighting!”

Ever since October 7th, when Hamas’ acts of brutality were seared into the world’s consciousness, I’ve prayed for peace. Yet there’s no end in sight, no plan for the day after from either side.  Still, I keep praying for peace, praying that the leaders so intent on waging war will come to their senses and sit down to make peace, or, at least, agree to a cease fire soon. 

But peace won’t come, I’m afraid, until Israelis and Palestinians are willing to accept each other’s story. For years each side has claimed its own story as the truth about its right to live in the land. But for each story to be true, it requires each side to pretend the other side doesn’t exist, as if  shutting our eyes to reality will reshape reality when all it does is blind each side to reality. Acknowledging each other’s reality means accepting that there exists more than one’s own story. 

When I was a boy in Hebrew school, my teachers taught us the history of Israel, but never mentioned Palestine. We dropped coins into blue-and-white JNF (Jewish National Fund) boxes. We sent money to plant trees in the land. Nothing was mentioned about the history of the Palestinian people. Instead, we were taught about the mass of immigrants from Europe, Jews who sought a safe haven to rebuild their lives after their homes and families had been destroyed in the Holocaust. The 1948 war was about surviving in a dangerous world and fighting the antisemites who wanted to erase us from the face of the earth. 

Our story, the Jewish story we told ourselves, was all about our survival. But as it turned out, this version of history was only part of the story. My teachers didn’t tell us about the Nakba in 1948, the tragedy that befell the Palestinians. Instead, they taught us how the war in 1948 brought about the fulfillment of my people’s longed for dream, allowing us to return to our homeland after centuries of wandering. Nobody mentioned it was the cause of  another people’s tragedy.

Today I want to tell the Palestinians that I’ve been working to understand their story. They want a home where they can feel safe and live a life of dignity and peace, just as Jews for centuries have wanted the same thing. And I want to ask if it’s possible for us to share our stories and our dreams? Don’t each of us need a homeland, a place where we can live together in peace as human beings, dreaming side by side? Aren’t we all human beings? Can’t we learn to share the land?

No doubt many of my friends will call me a foolish dreamer. Naive. Blind to the hatred of Hamas and Hezbollah. But I’m not blind. I remember preparing for my Bar Mitzvah and learning about the Biblical prophets and their messages of justice—“Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20)—and the need to care for all people, not just our own people — “The stranger that sojourns with you shall be unto you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.” (Lev. 19:34) Have we forgotten their words?

I’m afraid it may be too late, but I want to tell the Palestinians that I’m not their enemy. I’m a liberal Jew who grew up as an American, and I believe in liberty and equality for all, not just here in America but in Israel, too, a country that was created as a democracy, even though I’m saddened to say it treats its Arab citizens with less respect than it gives its Jewish citizens. Liberty and equality may be considered outdated liberal values and scorned today, but they are time-honored Jewish values, part of our ethical and moral tradition, part of the fiber of our DNA. 

For the past ten months I’ve sat here in America as pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated on college campuses and as Jewish students have been harassed and told to go back to Poland. Like so many others, I’ve lost sleep over the hostages and the loss of so many lives, especially the senseless loss of so many children. To tell the truth, I’m no longer sure if anyone’s prayers, in Hebrew or Arabic or English or any language, can be heard over the protests and the explosions and the cries of pain and suffering.

This war has made me think about the kind of world I want to live in and hope to pass on to my daughter and her generation and to the children, both Israeli and Palestinian, who come after. It’s made me question if it’s possible to wage a “humane” war, and it’s made me wonder about the future—if we will even have a future. Will Israeli leaders choose to use unrestricted power in the hope of deterrence? Or will they follow the ethical principles of our religion and seek a peaceful solution to this conflict?

Admittedly, these principles have not always brought us, Jew or Arab, a lasting peace. But isn’t any kind of peace a better alternative to war? I pray the words of our prophets are heard in the days ahead, and that our dreams of peace lead us closer to the path of peace.