We the People Deserve Better and Must Keep Our Hope Alive

We the people of Israel are not our leaders. Many of us do not agree with the government. Many of us weep over government decisions. We are not homogeneous.

We the people of Gaza are not all supporters of Hamas. We want our children to get an education, to have a better life. Some of us have had to bow to Hamas’s wishes to keep our families safe. We are not homogeneous.

We the people of Iran, are not the Ayatollahs. We are not evil. But we are afraid. We are afraid to speak out. We are afraid to even allow an Israeli friend to be on the list of our Facebook friends. We are not homogeneous.

And I, an American Israeli, have been privileged to know all of you. To hear you, to listen to you, to understand the complications of your lives, to create a connection with you.

I have also been privileged to teach young Saudi business students. They knew I was both Israeli and American. Some were piqued with curiosity and spent lunch breaks asking me about Tel Aviv and Israeli hummus. Others just smiled. One young woman remained aloof. That young woman, at the end of the weeklong seminar, approached me and said, “You know what it’s like when you’re brought up to believe that a person must have a tail and horns, and then you see, you see …” She couldn’t say anything further, and I was frozen. I didn’t know how to help her. I was so moved and overcome with emotion. I would have hugged her if she had let me, but I didn’t know what to do. Years later, I still feel like I missed an opportunity.

One of my closest friends is Palestinian. And we agree to disagree yet still respect each other’s positions. And we seek middle ground. We listen.

Of course, not everything is bright and happy. Recently, a young colleague said she couldn’t talk to me because she is Palestinian. She even asked to be moved across the room to get as far away from me as possible. This was before the war. A colleague told me about a Palestinian friend he talked to all the time, who had been to his house, and who, now after the war, after daily counts of the dead in Gaza, can barely get a word out without cursing Israel.

I drive past the banner in my neighborhood that wishes a “Mazal tov” to the young man held hostage in Gaza who shares my daughter’s name, Elia, a name which bears the name of God, a name that in Kabbalah is testimony of strong faith and sanctity. May the Elia, held in the bowels of Gaza, have faith and strength enough to hold on until he is finally set free.

I begin to sob at the evil this world has chosen for all of us to endure. The evil instilled in those terrorists I struggle to recognize as my neighbors. I can barely see in them any of the good I want to believe in so terribly. And it hurts all the more because I have friends on all sides. It hurts all the more because I long to believe that humanity will survive. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word humanity comes from both French and Latin. In classical Latin humanity meant civilization, humane character, and kindness. In Middle French and Anglo-Norman it meant benevolence, compassion and humankind. I long to believe humanity will survive.

I watch Israeli television and see a young Palestinian mother break down when she is told by Israel she must move once again to keep her children safe, as the Israeli military tries to reduce civilian deaths. She screams with frustration and fear, and I feel her anger and her pain. I know that I would feel the same in her shoes. She doesn’t curse Israel, and she doesn’t curse Hamas. She looks up at the camera, and then higher up to the heavens, and shrieks. And I cry at the evil in this world.

I watch the news: I hear how the leaders of the Middle East are preparing for war and more war, evil perpetuating evil. And I cry. When will it end? When will the hostages come home? When will the death, maiming and destruction end?

This week I listened to “Choice,” a short story by Jodi Picoult written in 2022 as it was becoming clear that Roe v. Wade, the far-reaching 1973 Supreme Court decision that declared the constitutional right to an abortion, was about to be overturned by the same court nearly half a century later. The upcoming decision would mean that abortion would be inaccessible or severely restricted in nearly half of the states in the U.S. In the story, many men wake up pregnant.

Picoult said in her author’s note that as she struggled to find more ways to speak out against the imminent decision, she did what she always does, she wrote.
And that’s what I am doing. It is what I always do. Writing to protest the evil. Writing to keep alive my hope that humanity still exists, that our humanity won’t be eradicated by the pain and hatred of this war, that humanity will find its back to understanding that people are not their governments. People are not the terrorist groups that claim to represent them.

A friend said to me today that good people will always be good, and the bad will always be bad. I want to believe in the good of humanity. I want to believe that the evil can stop.

I want it to stop in a way that will ensure everyone will be safe. Safe from the evil. The Israelis who evacuated their homes will be able to return. The hostages will be returned. The people of Gaza will not have to live under Hamas and will have help rebuilding their homes.

We the people do not deserve the evil. We the people deserve a chance. And I write, because writing is all I know how to do.

I write to keep my hope alive that we will find a way out of this darkness. I write even though that hope every minute, every hour, threatens to dim into the black abyss.

I write because it is all I can do.