Questions to Myself: Sequel to a Non-Interview with Mohammed
Telling myself, ask answerable questions. Unanswerable questions deter progress.
WhatsApping with Mohammed, last week, I asked questions and withheld questions. Discussion. Everything will never be said. Not that I couldn’t ask. We both asked and answered. No expectations to adopt the other’s narrative. Respecting it. Exposing bitter contrasts.
Recalling a team meeting. Israelis and West Bank Palestinians. Early 2024. Following Dr. Khalil Shikaki’s quarterly report on trends in West Bank and Gaza on condemnation of Hamas and the events of October 7. In discussion, a Palestinian woman emphasized condemnation of killing innocent civilians. I asked, “Was an IDF soldier protecting an innocent Israeli civilian, a legitimate target for the Nukhba forces?” She reiterated condemnation for killing civilians. Got it. Didn’t like it. Doesn’t mean I condone all acts of all Israeli soldiers.
Refocusing on the WhatsApp exchange. Mohammed’s UN-issued refugee card. He didn’t know, I froze, momentarily. Thawed thinking Jews longed for Zion. Conflicted empathy. Question to self persists: What does it mean, Mohammed and his family returning to Jaffa? Other Palestinians returning to Beersheva, Haifa, Jerusalem?Non-negotiable?
Coincidentally reading last weekend’s Haaretz interview with Israeli philosopher, Prof. Avishai Margalit. Noted, he and his late wife purchased their home in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood, deliberately choosing a new building, not a once-abandoned Arab home, lest original owners someday appear at their door.
My memory triggered: First trip to Poland, 1988. A colleague left our group one day for his father’s birthplace. He found the family home. A child admitted him. Table in place, by the window. Sunlight illuminating his grandfather’s workspace as a scribe, described in family stories. He envisioned his grandfather, there, writing sacred texts. He departed.
Jaffa?
Margalit asserted we should be judged not by our ideals, but our compromises.
Mohammed’s analogies: Palestinians, like Jewish victims; German perpetrators, like Israeli perpetrators.
Why should I deliver his message? He speaks for himself, presenting situations that make me shudder: Members of the Jewish people perpetrating horrors Palestinians experience in Gaza and the West Bank.
I have cause for invoking his voice:
Encountering Jews frequently posting passionate defenses of Israel, I’m angered, frustrated, despite truths in their arguments. Their best intentions, despite presumable knowledge of legitimate grounds for criticizing Israel, deem questionable Israeli actions excusable in the big picture. They’re not!
Mohammed can speak without my help, posting reels portraying IDF soldiers as Nazis. I object but confront unrelenting supporters of Israel’s actions with Mohammed’s voice because it warrants a place, in the big picture.
Challenge flaws in Palestinian narratives, but not by excusing flaws in Jewish narratives.
Denial defers a vital question. Is pride in Jewish identity and identification with Israel passed from generation to generation reconcilable with reality?
Bringing Mohammed’s voice to the table, I urge that passionate Jewish voice of defense to reflect.
Invoking Mohammed’s analogies, wondering: Were I not Jewish, would I have risked my life to save Jews from Nazis? Would he?
Can I help Palestinians attacked by Israeli settlers? Be the Israeli advocating for Palestinians’ rights. It doesn’t overwrite your own rights. Rationalized limitations.
Not only Mohammed compares the Jewish people in WWII Europe to Palestinians now under Israeli occupation. My teacher, former MK, Prof. Naomi Chazan, recently interviewed, compares post-World War II Jewish tekumah to what now faces Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Restoration, renewal – tekumah – revival following destruction. Netanyahu renamed Iron Swords the Tekumah War, dictating his post-October 7 narrative. Chazan concludes: Israel’s survival depends on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Until then, I identify with Gershon Baskin’s recent op-ed. Relating to upcoming elections, Zionist parties declaring they will only form a government coalition with Zionist parties, not Arab parties, Baskin adamantly objects to defying liberal democracy:
Jewish self-determination does not require denying the Palestinian people the same national rights we claim for ourselves… It does not require believing that Jewish rights are absolute while Palestinian rights are temporary, conditional, or negotiable.
He doesn’t undermine Zionism’s historic legitimacy. He rejects current actions in its name.
On my parallel, detached thought track, pondering Jewish predilection towards concern for other Jews, Israeli expectations that Israel save Jews oppressed in other lands. Liberal democracy. Israel, on behalf of its Palestinian citizens, 20% of its population, should protect oppressed Palestinians – innocent Palestinians in the West Bank, in Gaza.
Observing a soldier shopping while shopping too, stereotyped him. While extraordinarily appreciating soldiers risking their lives, protecting us from Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, the extra-large kippah on this soldier’s head, curled payot extended below his ears, suggest Ben-Gvir ideology. Flooded by toxic thoughts, presumptuous accusations, interrogating him in my mind. Wondering, in uniform or in civilian clothes, is he that Jew dedicated to ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, to violent provocation of the Palestinian population?
Morals. Ethics. Divergence. Answerable questions.
- Harriet Gimpel, August 8, 2026
