Embracing Universal Love and Liberal Values

Embracing Universal Love and Liberal Values
Drawing Relational Boundaries One Year After October 7th

Gene G-P

October 14, 2024

Dear internet friends,

For any American who has loved ones living in Israel or Palestine, it’s been a horrifying year. We’ve had to watch our Israeli and Palestinian friends and family experience unimaginable levels of pain, death, fear, and rage. We’ve sent them our love and our support, and watched from afar with desperation and futility as the escalating violence spirals out of control.

Meanwhile, here in our local communities, our social networks have gone insane. As the trauma of October 7 and the ensuing months has seeped through the religious, social, political, and cultural webs that surround me, I have witnessed formerly tight knit communities deploy increasingly more ferocious rhetorical attacks against their own members. I’ve watched as former friends have accused each other of being apologists for genocide, supporters of terrorism, or (perhaps worst of all) complicit fence-sitters. Sitting at our computers with no imminent threat to our physical safety, groups of neighbors, artists, congregants, casual acquaintances, and colleagues are tearing each other to shreds over narrow differences of opinion, incompatible interpretations of history, and competing moral frameworks. The tragic irony, of course, is that these bitter relationship-ruining confrontations rarely seem to result in anyone changing their perspective, serving instead to reinforce previously held beliefs. 

Reeling from these upsetting encounters, formerly open-minded Americans have had to ask themselves a new and challenging question: with whom am I willing to engage on the topic of Israel/Palestine? Who is willing to engage with me? Which ideas can I stand to coexist with, and which are simply beyond the pale? Who can I tolerate on my feed and who must be banished from the timeline? Personally, I’ve been on quite a journey in relation to this question over the past year, and have drawn and redrawn my “red lines” several times. Now, with a year of navigating this new political hellscape under my belt, I think I’ve finally developed a framework that works for me, and I’m throwing it out there to my extended network to see if, perhaps, it might resonate for others as well.

Here is my key proposition: in order for two people to have a meaningful exchange about Israel/Palestine, they must overlap on at least one of two dimensions: the Heart Dimension or the Head Dimension. If someone crosses your Head Dimension red lines, but you can find a way to connect on the Heart Dimension, then the relationship has a path forward. And of course, the inverse works as well, though I’ve experienced that combination to be less common. But if two people are unable to meet each other on either the plane of the Heart or the Head, then, as much as it may be painful to acknowledge, there is no path forward for the conversation. With this framework in mind, I’ll turn to the Heart Dimension first. 

The Heart Dimension: Embracing Universal Love

I believe that a strong Heart connection can allow us to stay in connection across lines of difference, even in the hardest times. It is an inescapable truth that all human life is sacred. Every innocent life lost represents the loss of an entire universe to those left behind. Love is the one, great connecting force in this world, and we must protect and nurture our ability to love and care for all people, even when powerful forces try to convince us to hate those on the “other side” of intractable conflicts. We cannot and should not be in the business of denying the loss and pain of those grieving the death of their loved ones, no matter the framing context. The Palestinian child buried alive and suffocating to death under the rubble alongside a Hamas combatant cannot be dismissed as “collateral damage.” The young Israeli dancer maimed by a grenade and dragged into captivity cannot be reduced to a “bargaining chip” for the Palestinian cause. It is immoral to belittle or deny the war crimes committed by members of one national group against the other side.

This does not mean that we should fall victim to the fallacy of equating the scale of devastation on both sides of this current battle. Make no mistake, the level of destruction faced by Palestinians is exponentially higher than that of Israelis right now, with dozens of entire Palestinian bloodlines erased, and there is no equivalency to the levels of firepower held by the respective armed forces. But it does not serve the memories of the tens of thousands of dead Palestinians to whitewash the deaths of hundreds of Israelis. While, thank G!d, I have not lost any friends this year, so many of my friends are mourning beautiful souls lost on both sides of the devastation. The pain experienced by the families of the remaining hostages is truly incomprehensible to me; simply imagining what their days must be like brings me to tears. 

So this is my red line when it comes to the dimension of the Heart: If you can only mourn the death of innocents on one side of this tragedy, then I see you in your trauma, and I love you, but our hearts are not aligned. But if you can feel the suffering of all grieving families, regardless of national identity, then, as painful as it is, we can connect over our shared sense of loss, grief, and fear for the future, regardless of our political beliefs. The ability to express mutual love and empathy can generate the trust we need in order to assume best intentions in each other. Without this trust, it is too easy to indulge the dark, inner voice that entices us to lash out and score rhetorical points at the expense of maintaining a relationship. When I know that you respect the paramount value of protecting all human life, I can trust that you too are yearning for a political solution that will bring peace and safety to those we care about so dearly. 

But how do we get to that political solution? That’s where we cross into the dimension of the Head and things get a bit more complicated. 

The Head Dimension: Embracing Liberal Values

Ah yes, the L word. It’s quite a contested term. For some, it is synonymous with ideas like leftism, progressivism, Socialism, and woke-ism. For others, it symbolizes moderation, weakness, capitulation, and even conservatism. So why am I embracing it? Because I think we need to rescue some core liberal values from the muddy rhetorical waters in which they have been submerged. In particular: the defense of human rights, the pursuit of truth, and a profound tolerance for diversity of thought.

Attacks on liberalism have come fast and furious from both the left and the right. Illiberal extremists on both sides of the political spectrum have declared war on the Truth, pushing it aside when it is not politically expedient for their agenda. On the Israel/Palestine front, nationalist partisans refuse to accept evidence presented by sources they do not trust, but reflexively accept as truth those stories which are shared by their allies. Unfortunately, reality does not have a political bias, and deepfakes and other forms of intentional deception are on the rise. When we write off all inconvenient truths as the propaganda output of our enemies, we do ourselves and our political allies a disservice. A political belief system must be resilient to the unpleasant realities that challenge its legitimacy if it is to endure. 

Furthermore, too many Israeli and Palestinian activists, having pledged allegiance to their camp years ago, are not pausing to reflect on their core values as sizable contingents of their movements drift rapidly into illiberal, warmongering territory, and away from the path of peace and coexistence. The Palestinian activists I met on the ground in the West Bank were deeply committed to the principle of non-violence, following in the footsteps of leading Palestinian intellectuals such as Edward Said, who made it clear that nonviolent resistance was both the correct tactical choice and a moral imperative. With my respect for the Palestinian nonviolent activist community in mind, I am disturbed by the rise in support for “resistance at any cost” rhetoric among “progressive” Americans that excuses the murderous tactics of Hamas and explicitly embraces Hezbollah’s intentional targeting of civilians with its rockets. In addition to being illiberal, these positions are anti-progressive and anti-Humanist, and they should be excised from any Palestinian solidarity movement that truly believes in peace. 

Meanwhile, among many defenders of Israel, “progressive” or not, the dehumanization of Palestinians is just as horrific, with many ardent Zionists willing to embrace ethnic cleansing and collective punishment as necessary tools for combating a “barbaric” native Arab population that “only understands force.” The rising acceptance of Jewish supremacist hate groups in the occupied territories and all across Israel is a stain on the already well-stained cloth that is Israel’s troubled democracy. There is nothing “progressive” about aligning yourself with terrorists, be they Jewish or Palestinian. To be a liberal means to spurn and shun those who spit in the face of decades of hard-fought human rights progress by supporting the targeting of innocents in political conflict. 

And yes, I did slip the Z word in there as well. So am I a Zionist? Increasingly, I find myself drawn towards a label used by Vivian Silver (may her memory be for a blessing), the Canadian-Israeli peace activist who lived on a kibbutz near the Gaza border and was murdered by Hamas on October 7: conditional Zionism. For now, I am willing to align myself broadly with the fundamental stated goal of Zionism (Jewish national self-determination in the historical land of Israel) because I believe the seven million Jewish residents currently residing between the Jordan and the Mediterranean have the right to a government that represents them and their values. They have the right to protect the beautiful, multi-ethnic refuge for the Jewish people that has blossomed in this land over the past hundred years, resulting in the revitalization of a global Jewish culture decimated by the Holocaust and dislocated by the systematic and violent ejection of Jews from Arab countries in the 1950s. I believe it is intellectually dishonest to write off all Israeli Jews as “illegitimate colonizers,” when roughly 90% of Israelis have only one passport and have no other nation-state to which they can “return.” 

All that said, however, I believe the Jewish community’s right to self-determination is not absolute, and indeed, is conditional on Israel’s reciprocal recognition of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, whose own connection to the land runs deep, and who have paid the price for catastrophic military decisions made by Israeli and Arab leaders decades ago. If Israeli society and its leaders continue to reject efforts to achieve mutual national recognition, then Zionism will continue to be tainted by this core moral failing of the movement. Indeed, it is not lost on me that a large and rapidly increasing segment of those who embrace the Zionist label also embrace Jewish supremacist thinking and ethnic cleansing. That is why I join Vivian in using the Zionist label only conditionally, and may eventually need to reject it entirely, should the despicable ethnic cleansers win out in the struggle to define this contested term.

How do we solve the seemingly unsolvable question of competing national claims to a single, small territory, shaped by centuries of war, immigration, tragedy, renaissance, and hope? 

Here’s where my liberal core value of tolerance for diverse opinions comes in handy. I’m open to arguments! Thousands of researchers and historians and diplomats have proposed paths to peace, and each of them have their relative strengths and weaknesses, many of which have shifted with current events. After living in Jerusalem for nearly three years, traveling across Israel and Palestine, supporting shared society activists on the ground, and studying conflict resolution in academia, I believe there are legitimate arguments to be made in favor of a number of proposals, be they one-state, two-state, three-state, federation, or confederation. On a purely intellectual level, I find the vision of A Land for All to be the most compelling. However, the tragic reality is that the level of hate and distrust fueled by this latest round of violence and devastation in Gaza and Israel has set back the integral work of building trust between Israeli and Palestinian societies by a generation, and so I am doubtful this vision can come to fruition for many decades. 

So where are my red lines when it comes to the Head dimension? If you support the targeting of civilians as a legitimate tactic of war, you cross the line. If you deny the right of either the Palestinian or Israeli nations to self-govern and build rich, diverse societies in this land, you cross the line. If, however, you recognize that neither national group is going anywhere, then you must acknowledge that some type of shared sovereignty in this small sliver of land is the only moral path forward. The unacceptable alternatives are total domination or perpetual war. We do not have to agree on the details of the eventual political solution, but we do have to believe in the mutual right to safety held by both Jews and Palestinians. 

In Conclusion

So those are my red lines. I hope it isn’t too hard for most of my internet friends to stay with me on the same side of at least one of them. If, on the other hand, you cannot find it in your heart to grieve the losses of people you see as your “enemy,” and you oppose the core liberal values of truth and tolerance, we likely won’t have much to discuss, and I won’t be offended if you remove me from your timeline. 

If you’re still reading and are curious which organizations I believe best reflect the principles I’ve laid out above, I encourage you to check out the following organizations and send them large sums of money.

Heart (Organizations Building Shared Society):

• Standing Together is building a grassroots movement of Jews and Palestinians within Israel who recognize that these two peoples have a shared humanity and a shared destiny, and that there is no way forward in this land for one without the other. Maintaining this kind of heart-centered organizing at a time when almost all other political forces are trying to tear the two peoples apart is truly a heroic effort. 

• Standing Together is just one of dozens of heroic grassroots organizations standing up for human rights and shared society in Israel/Palestine that are funded by the New Israel Fund. 

Head (Organizations Advocating for Liberal Political Solutions):

• J Street is the largest Liberal Zionist lobbying group in the United States. That may not sound sexy, but they have successfully made a name for themselves in Washington as the representative of the millions of Americans who believe that, while Israeli Jews have a right to safety and self-determination, the Israeli government and military must be held accountable for their immoral actions by the American political establishment, and Palestinian human rights must be protected.

• When it comes to dispassionate analysis of the nuts and bolts of military and diplomatic challenges in the region, Israel Policy Forum is the smartest organization I know. Their work may sometimes lack an appreciation for the Heart dimension, but I believe there is an essential role for this kind of Head-forward, logic-driven analysis, and they are quite effective at getting their incisive analysis in front of the American policy-makers who matter.

• In contrast to the ethical vacuum at the heart of many legacy American Jewish communal organizations that refuse to stand up for democracy and human rights, the religious leaders of T’ruah are amplifying a clear moral vision for a shared, democratic, liberal society in Israel/Palestine

Look, we’ve lived through a horrific year filled with tremendous darkness and despair, but we cannot allow ourselves to be pulled into the abyss by the forces of hate. We must remain steadfast in our dedication to loving one another and protecting the values that define who we are as beautifully interdependent human beings. 

May 5785 bring more love, more light, and more peace to the people of Israel, the people of Palestine, and to our entire global family. 

With love,

Gene

P.S. This piece, intentionally, does not enter the murky “Head” territory that deals with the complexities of military strategy, unavoidable moral tradeoffs, regional war, etc. If you feel like we’re on the same side of the red lines described above and curious about how I see some of these more complex issues, take a look at this explainer I wrote for my parents’ friends in the opening month of the Gaza war. Unfortunately, eleven months later, too much of it remains relevant.