What We Talk About When We Talk About Israel

Can we get beyond the toddler's view of history?

Photo by Stacey Franco on Unsplash

OVER THE LAST FEW MONTHS I’ve started probably a dozen new posts, which currently live as drafts on my laptop. What’s kept me from finishing them is my growing dismay at the conversations happening both here on this Substack and more broadly.

I knew when I began writing that this would be a polarizing issue. I hoped to explore the nuances between those rigidly defined poles of opinion: either pro-Palestinian and completely anti-Israel, or pro-Israel and completely anti-Palestinian. Personally, most people I know fall somewhere in between these two extremes. That is, they may have a strong point of view but that POV also encompasses the “other side” to some extent.

• They may be fervent Israel supporters who also despise Netanyahu and his policies, including the settlements.

• They may be die-hard Palestinian supporters who also acknowledge Israel’s existence and hope for a peaceful way forward.

• They may be clear in some of their opinions and confused in others. (I count myself in this group. The more I learn, the messier this situation feels.)

• They may grieve both for the Israelis massacred by Hamas on and after October 7th, and also grieve for the Gazans massacred by Israel before and since that date.

• They may have read articles and books written by sincere, knowledgeable people on both sides of this conflict, and wonder at the malleability of truth.

• They may watch in horror as incidents of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia rise in the U.S. and elsewhere.

• They may have stopped talking about these issues with friends, colleagues, acquaintances because of the reactions they’ve received.

I’M AWARE OF THE PROBLEMS OF WHATABOUTISM, the practice of answering every accusation with an often irrelevant counter-accusation: “You think that’s bad? What about this?”

This practice has been weaponized to great effect in our current political landscape. I’ve also seen it deployed in more personal conflicts. It’s a way to deflect attention and it is both cowardly and morally reprehensible.

But charges of whataboutism can also be a way to shut down dialogue. To deny nuance. To derail hard conversations.

Gaza City before the war. Photo from Wikipedia.

The fact that Israelis were killed, kidnapped, harmed on October 7th does not change the fact that Gazans are being killed, displaced, harmed now.

The fact that Palestinians have been treated poorly and denied entry by Arab countries does not change the fact that they were displaced from their homes in 1948.

It is so very hard to talk about all of these things at once. Our brains default to their factory settings of us against them. We’re wired to believe that our in-groups are better than our out-groups.

That wiring has served us well for thousands of years. It’s not serving us so well now, especially in this conflict.

Our brains default to their factory settings of us against them.

WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ISRAEL AND PALESTINE, we have to be able to go beyond us and them, the toddler’s view of history: He hit me first! No, she did!

I don’t have answers here, only the kinds of questions that I hope will lead to more understanding, more nuance, more creative ideas for how to move forward.

The reason I’ve started and paused so many posts on this Substack is that I’m afraid of the hate mail I’ll get. I’m not afraid in a personal sense; you’re entitled to your opinion, and I’m entitled to delete your hateful comments. But I will admit to a growing sense of despair at the shape this conversation seems to take these days.

So publishing this post is an act of hope and optimism: That we can talk about and care about others as well as ourselves. That we can look for the nuance in a complicated situation. That we can talk about both Israelis and Palestinians with compassion, with empathy, with understanding.

Most of all, that we can have these conversations in ways that build bridges rather than blow them up.