Loving thy neighbor

Loving thy neighbor here sounds like a bad joke. Who is this “neighbor” who should stir our empathy? It is a faceless image blurred by the narrative we’ve been told since childhood. We were taught to hate before we were taught to feel. The one who should simply be human became a distorted projection of fear, resentment, and inherited distrust that we never even question.

The “neighbor” was turned into a label: terrorist, enemy, threat. How can you love someone who, in your mind, was never more than a monster? On the other hand, the feeling is mutual. I’m as dehumanized to them as they are to me. Love thy neighbor? You can’t love someone you only know through the echo of explosions and headlines that pit us against each other as if we’re doomed to hate.

They try to sell us peace like a marketing product, while beneath that shiny surface, hatred is carefully cultivated. We love the idea of peace as long as it doesn’t ask too much of us. It doesn’t make us rethink our privileges or let go of the certainties we cling to like a lifeline. In this context, peace has become an excuse to keep the same war going, just with a more palatable veneer.

Don’t come at me with pretty speeches about love and reconciliation when love is treated like a bargaining chip—or worse, a disguised weapon. To truly love thy neighbor would require seeing the other as equal. And who’s ready for that? To recognize the other means admitting that we’ve also failed, that we’ve also erred, that we’ve also blinded ourselves to our pain and retreated into our comfortable bubble of self-righteousness.

The bitter truth is we don’t want to see our neighbor. We want to keep them at a distance because, deep down, we know that if we look closely, we’ll see ourselves reflected. And facing that truth hurts. It hurts to admit that we’re stuck in a cycle where we’re both victims and perpetrators, humanitarians in name who find it easier to hate than to confront the complexity of understanding.

Loving thy neighbor takes courage, and we, Israelis and Palestinians, are impoverished in that regard. We lack the courage to let go of inherited hatred, the straightforward narrative, and the comfort of a known enemy. We’re content to keep war as our routine because it’s simpler to follow a script already written than to write a new story with our own hands.

As we remain trapped in this inertia, the neighbor remains just an abstract concept, a shadow we prefer not to confront. What’s left is a void of humanity where love is just a pretty word for speeches but devoid of soul, of life. We’re too far apart, not just geographically but emotionally, to begin thinking about loving our neighbor. Here, the neighbor is the mirror we avoid. And that mirror is too shattered to show us anything but our flaws.