When Everything Is Equal, Nothing Matters

This week, two young lives were extinguished in Washington, D.C., outside the Capital Jewish Museum. Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were not anonymous. They were idealistic, compassionate, and deeply committed to building bridges. Sarah worked in public diplomacy at the Israeli Embassy. Yaron was a researcher, a scholar, a thinker. They were a couple—partners in life and in purpose.

They were murdered in cold blood. And yet, the world barely blinked.

There were statements, of course. Obligatory condemnations. Muted outrage. In some corners, silence altogether. And in far too many places, that familiar reflex: “This is tragic… but…”

I’ve spent the past year speaking to nearly 17,000 high school students across the United States about antisemitism, bigotry, and moral responsibility. And what I’ve seen is this: our moral compass is wobbling. Our capacity to hold space for someone else’s suffering without inserting qualifiers is vanishing. We’ve trained a generation to respond to tragedy not with empathy, but with moral calculus.

When Jews are killed, the world increasingly treats it as something to be contextualized—not condemned. We ask what the Jews did to provoke it. We analyze the geopolitical moment. We reach for “both sides.” And in doing so, we abandon clarity for comfort.

We are witnessing the spread of an ideological framework—what some are beginning to call a globalized intifada. A physical uprising and a moral one: a worldview in which antisemitic violence is reframed as resistance, in which any act—no matter how brutal—is rationalized as justified so long as the perpetrator is perceived as marginalized.

Social media accelerates this. The algorithm favors outrage over nuance. It rewards slogans over substance. In this environment, simplified narratives dominate. And nuance? It dies in the comment section.

We are seeing radicalization unfold not in caves, but in comments. Not in extremist cells, but in classrooms. The rhetoric of dehumanization—the language that made October 7 possible—has metastasized. It’s not confined to the Middle East. It’s showing up on our streets, in our schools, and in the reactions (or lack thereof) to the murder of Sarah and Yaron.

After nearly every antisemitic attack, I see the same refrain. “Yes, it’s terrible. But remember what’s happening in Gaza.” Or: “Let’s also talk about the suffering of Palestinians.”

As if mourning two murdered Jews somehow requires permission.

Let me be clear: grief is not a pie. There’s no limit to how much we can hold. But when Jewish suffering is only acknowledged on the condition that it be shared with others, it ceases to be real empathy. It becomes a transaction.

This is the danger of moral relativism: it turns human lives into bargaining chips. It transforms grief into performance. It encourages a kind of shallow solidarity where the priority isn’t comforting the grieving, but appearing “balanced” to your peers.

This isn’t about Palestinians. This is about a culture—especially in the West—that is more interested in broadcasting its values than embodying them.

Agency and the False Oppressor/Victim Binary
Much of this confusion stems from a simplistic and false binary: the idea that in every conflict, there is a singular oppressor and a singular victim.

But this framework strips Palestinians of their agency. It treats them not as people with choices, responsibilities, and internal diversity—but as passive victims of history. That, too, is a form of dehumanization.

You can call for justice without glorifying those who choose violence. You can advocate for human dignity without excusing those who destroy it. Assigning blanket victimhood to Palestinians erases the complexity of their society, including the choices made by their leaders and communities. Electing Hamas, electing leaders who refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, participating in October 7th; these were choices made by the majority of Palestinian society.

It also imposes a moral lens that blames Jews collectively for the actions of a state, while exempting Palestinians from moral responsibility for the choices of their most violent actors. This asymmetry isn’t justice. It’s bigotry dressed in progressive clothing.

When I speak to students, I ask them not just to understand history, but to interrogate the present.

What does it mean when a swastika is penciled into a desk while we’re reading survivor testimony?

What does it say about us when educators struggle to say the word “Jew” in the context of hate crimes?

What are we teaching young people when the murder of two Israeli Jews is considered politically complicated?

We’ve taught this generation to think critically—but we haven’t taught them to think morally. We’ve emphasized empathy but haven’t practiced it. We’ve elevated context over clarity, and in doing so, we’ve blurred the lines between good and evil.

In our attempt to include all voices, we’ve lost the ability to name wrongs. In our effort to validate every narrative, we’ve forgotten that some actions are indefensible. We’ve confused complexity with moral equivalence.

So let us begin here—with moral clarity.

Sarah and Yaron were murdered. Not as collateral damage. Not in a war zone. But because they were Jewish and worked for peace under a flag some people have decided is a justification for violence.

There is no justification.

We must say this clearly. Without caveats. Without hashtags. Without “whataboutisms.” And we must demand that others do the same.

That means calling out those who respond to murder with moral hedging. It means refusing to accept virtue signaling in place of real solidarity. A social media post isn’t bravery. Quoting Audre Lorde while refusing to name Hamas as a genocidal force isn’t justice. Wearing a keffiyeh while ignoring the dead Jewish bodies on your own soil isn’t activism—it’s cowardice.

The virtue signaling we see from too many corners doesn’t help Palestinians. It doesn’t challenge authoritarianism. And it certainly doesn’t bring us closer to peace. What it does is cheapen mourning, flatten history, and embolden the worst among us.

Let us say their names: Sarah Milgrim. Yaron Lischinsky.

Let us say them without disclaimers.

Let us teach their names to our students, not as statistics, but as stories—with lives, with love, with purpose.

And let us remind the world: Jewish lives are not conditional. We are not metaphors. We are not symbols to be debated. We are people. And we bleed.

May their memories be a blessing.
May our response be a legacy—of moral clarity, courageous empathy, and a refusal to stay silent.