Explore selected questions and topics across both documents.
Explore selected questions and topics across both documents.
Inherent worth and rejecting racism:
No person or group has more or less value based on ethnicity, religion, or any other trait.
Avoiding collective blame:
Individuals are responsible for their own actions. People should not be blamed or harmed because they share an identity with someone who did wrong.
Responsibility scales with power:
States with greater power have greater responsibility. Responsibility also increases with direct involvement.
Outcomes over stated intent:
Moral responsibility is based on real-world effects and harm to civilians, not on stated intentions or justifications alone.
It can sometimes feel like moral limits only apply in more stable or comfortable situations. When danger feels real, insisting on morality can be seen as naive. But moments of fear are often when moral principles matter most. If those principles are set aside when they become difficult to uphold, they stop being principles at all.
When we accept that some people’s freedom or safety can be sacrificed, it rarely stops there and can eventually put us all at risk. As Martin Niemöller put it, “...then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
In a world where power can shift over time and no group stays the most powerful forever, our protection cannot depend on who is in power at any given moment. Only a system based on principles that protect everyone can be relied on to protect anyone.
People often look for patterns in how groups behave. Some patterns come from cultures and circumstances that develop over time and can change. That's different from assuming those patterns reflect inherent traits.
People sometimes judge Palestinians as a group rather than as individuals. But people should be judged by their own actions, not by things they can’t control, like their identity or where they were born. That applies to everyone, including Palestinians.
Attacks on Israeli civilians are disturbing. Violence against civilians is always wrong.
In long conflicts, it’s not unusual for some people to turn to violence. But we shouldn’t define an entire population by what some people do.
Actions can be immoral or illegal, and they should be judged—but those labels apply to what someone does, not who they are. When we apply those labels to people instead of actions, it can lead to blaming people who haven’t actually done anything wrong. That also means we don’t excuse harmful actions because of someone’s identity.
Some people describe Israel as surrounded by enemies, but relationships between countries are not fixed. Many countries that were once at war later stopped fighting, which suggests that violence is not inherent to any people or society.
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Sometimes people try to distinguish between attributing negative traits to Palestinians themselves and attributing them to Palestinian culture, leaders, ideology, or religion. But those need explanations as well. Why did certain leaders or ideologies gain support? What conditions contributed to that political culture? Why do people follow certain religious interpretations over others? Are culture, political movements, ideology, or interpretations of religious texts fixed, or can they change? Treating any of these characteristics as fixed can't be separated from how we treat the people.
Someone might agree that these traits aren't inherent or fixed, but still believe that they are unlikely to change anytime soon. But that prediction needs an explanation too. What would keep them from changing? It’s more useful to ask what conditions might lead to change, rather than assuming hostility would persist even under conditions of equal rights and freedom that Palestinians haven’t yet experienced.
Recognizing that these traits aren't fixed or inherent also means opposing policies that treat them as though they are practically unchangeable. Expectations of continued hostility can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: denying people freedom because of those expectations can itself create more resentment and hostility.
We should recognize anti-Palestinian racism in Israeli culture. Hostility among Israelis toward Palestinians should similarly be understood as based on conditions rather than as fixed or inherent.
Parents naturally want their kids to have a normal life—school, safety, health, and a future. Even if some people hold harmful views, we shouldn’t generalize from them or treat children or entire families as responsible.
In long conflicts, anger often comes from lived trauma—including the loss of family members, military violence, and broader conditions like limited access to education and medical care, and restrictions on movement. These conditions can lead to anger and resentment.
Stereotypes and fear-based narratives also appear in Israeli and Jewish diaspora communities, where Palestinians can be portrayed as violent or threatening. It’s better to avoid those kinds of generalizations, no matter who they’re about.
Personally, I remember learning in Hebrew school that Palestinians are taught to hate Jews from a young age. It's ironic that we were taught to fear Palestinians as kids too. I think that encouraged me to see Palestinians mainly as a threat rather than as people just like anyone else, and to accept discrimination against them.
Overall, anger is a natural response to violence and loss, not something unique to any one culture.
Islam has over a billion followers worldwide, and their beliefs vary widely, just like they do in other religions. Many religious texts contain sections that can be used to justify violence, as well as sections that can be used to support peace, even within the same holy book. What really matters is which ones people actually follow and the choices they make as individuals.
I understand why peace can seem unrealistic after so many years of conflict.
There are Palestinians and Israelis who have experienced profound loss but still advocate for justice and work together at a local level. Hearing from each other directly can make it easier to empathize. Experiencing loss does not inevitably lead people to choose more violence. History shows that even long-running conflicts have moved toward equality and peace in ways that once seemed impossible.
It doesn’t seem accurate or fair to treat any ethnic group as if they don’t want peace. Palestinians are people with families, hopes, and fears, like anyone else. There’s nothing about any identity that makes people inherently more or less peaceful.
It's difficult to speak of Palestinians as having a single position on peace, since Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel live under different circumstances and do not share a single political voice or experience.
Lasting peace depends on fairness, which means addressing underlying inequalities and giving people a meaningful say in how they are governed. Given that Palestinians live under conditions of limited freedom and ongoing violence against them, it becomes harder to see them as the main barrier to peace.
In the West Bank, where Hamas does not govern and the Palestinian Authority has cooperated with Israel, Palestinians have still not achieved meaningful self-determination.
There have been Palestinian leaders who pursued diplomacy and cooperation, like Salam Fayyad, yet were undermined and did not achieve meaningful progress toward statehood. Marwan Barghouti remains imprisoned by Israel despite being seen as a potential unifying figure who could shift support away from more hardline factions.
Understanding history means considering recurring patterns of human behavior across different places and time periods, rather than relying only on the history of a single group. It also means considering how different people experienced the same events.
It can be more useful to ask, "What kinds of conditions tend to lead to certain outcomes?" rather than "What does this tell us about a particular group?"
For example, we can learn from history what conditions tend to lead people in many societies to abuse power, rather than conclude that particular religious or ethnic groups are inherently more likely to abuse power. We can also learn what conditions tend to lead to persecution, rather than seeing persecution as inevitable for particular groups.
Looking across different places and time periods, we can also see that people living under oppression have often responded with violence. Examples include Jewish armed resistance to the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the 1831 rebellion led by Nat Turner in response to slavery, the Haitian Revolution against slavery and French colonial rule, and the 1813 Red Stick Creek attack on Fort Mims in response to U.S. efforts to take control of their land. Seeing this pattern helps us focus on the conditions that produce armed resistance, rather than treating violence as evidence that a particular group is uniquely flawed or focusing on the specific sources of weapons or funding for armed groups.
Throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, European colonial powers settled in lands around the world where people were already living and often portrayed them as uncivilized or incapable of governing themselves to justify colonial rule.
No people are inherently incapable of governing themselves.
Recognizing this recurring pattern gives us reason to take seriously the perspectives of the people who were already living in Palestine before Zionists arrived, including how they described their own society, when evaluating the claim that Palestine was “a land without a people.”
During the colonial period in the Americas, Europeans often described Native Americans and Africans they enslaved as “savage,” “barbaric,” or “uncivilized.” In the Declaration of Independence, the founders referred to Native Americans as “merciless Indian Savages.” Across centuries of European colonialism, this kind of dehumanizing language accompanied horrific violence against native peoples around the world.
Understanding this history helps put similar portrayals in context. When these kinds of characterizations recur across different places and time periods, we should recognize them as part of a longstanding pattern of dehumanization. This includes similar caricatures of Arabs and Palestinians today.
It isn’t fair to take complex historical events and turn them into claims about people based on their identity. History shouldn’t be used to deny people basic rights or dignity or to define who people are, including those born generations later. People’s freedom and safety shouldn’t depend on how we interpret history.
When I hear arguments like ‘X group isn’t ready for freedom, democracy, or equality,’ it reminds me of language used during the Civil Rights era in the United States. At the time, many White Americans argued that Black Americans weren’t ready for full equality or political rights. Looking back, we can see more clearly that those arguments were based on fear or prejudice.
Noticing that pattern makes me wonder how similar arguments sounded to people at the time, before the benefit of hindsight. To me, it’s a reminder not to assume similar things about Palestinians.
Unequal systems are often defended by arguing that granting freedom would be too dangerous. Similar fears were expressed about ending slavery in the United States, ending apartheid in South Africa, and expanding political rights in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement. Those fears are often overstated, and expanding rights has often led to reduced violence.
It doesn’t seem fair to treat voting as making civilians responsible for everything a government does or justify harming them. People vote the way they do for many reasons, including limited alternatives. No one should be harmed because of how they voted, even if I don’t like who they voted for.
Basic rights and freedoms apply to everyone regardless of how they voted. No one has the right to decide that any group of people hasn’t earned their freedom. When people lack basic rights and any real path forward, support for militant groups can grow.
The last election in Gaza was in 2006, and many Palestinians today never voted at all.
Palestinian civilians and militants live together in densely populated areas under significant restrictions imposed by Israel. Individuals should not be held responsible for the actions of others in their group, even if they live in the same area.
People sometimes distinguish between civilians and militants, but still minimize or justify harm to Palestinian civilians.
For me, the moral question is whether we're valuing all human lives equally. Across cultures, people love, grieve, hope, and care for their families. Those common experiences matter more than the differences between us. People everywhere deserve dignity and safety, whatever their background, and I care about suffering wherever it happens.
It’s human to feel most affected when people we identify with are hurt. Still, it can be easy for people to see Israeli deaths as real tragedies, which they are, while seeing Palestinian deaths as an unfortunate part of war. It’s worth asking whether our reactions depend more on the identities of those involved than on the harm done to civilians.
When Palestinian deaths are minimized like this, it treats Palestinian lives as less valuable than Israeli lives. This is hard to justify if we believe that human life should not be valued differently based on ethnicity, nationality, or religion.
And it’s not just a moral question—it also affects what actually makes Israelis safer. Militant groups often gain support among people who have experienced violence or loss, so harming civilians can increase support for those groups and end up making Israelis less safe, not more.
We can imagine the situation flipped—for example, if a foreign military said it was targeting militants but ended up killing Israeli civilians. I’d want to look at that the same way, focusing on what actually happens rather than who’s involved, and valuing all people's lives.
Israel has faced real attacks. One question is whether Israel’s response actually makes Israelis safer.
When Israel's actions result in civilian deaths and suffering among Palestinians, they tend to deepen fear and anger, and often lead to more violence, not less.
If Israelis fear for their safety, do Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank feel fear as well? To me, fear seems real on both sides.
If Israelis have a right to defend themselves against what they see as threats, do Palestinians have that same right too? There should be limits on when force is justified, and it makes sense for those limits to apply to everyone—because those limits are what help protect people on all sides.
A lasting form of security would mean people on both sides don’t need to fight or risk their lives. It would not rely on Israeli military force indefinitely, which puts young Israelis in harm’s way through military service.
The language we use also matters. Whether violence is described as “self-defense” or “terrorism” often depends more on who is acting than on what happens to civilians. Applying consistent standards means we shouldn’t excuse harm to civilians on one side as “self-defense” while condemning it on the other as “terrorism.” The standard should be the same for everyone. What matters is that civilians are protected, and that anyone who harms them is responsible for their actions as an individual.
I also notice that we mainly hear sweeping claims about groups with less power, treating violence as a group trait, while violence carried out by more powerful groups is often explained by circumstances. It’s inconsistent to deny individuality to one group while recognizing it in another.
It's one thing to defend oneself against an active attacker. It's another to find out where that person is from and respond by destroying their town, including apartment buildings and hospitals.
It’s true that Hamas has attacked civilians. Attacking civilians is always wrong, and those responsible should be held individually accountable.
I’ve noticed some people assume that supporting Palestinians means excusing Hamas or attacks on Israeli civilians. When harm is treated as justified on one side, people can assume the other side must be doing the same. Harming civilians is wrong no matter who does it, and we don’t have to excuse anyone’s violence to care about innocent people.
What matters to me is that Palestinian civilians shouldn’t be punished for the actions of militants, just as Israeli civilians shouldn’t be punished for the actions of the Israeli military.
Understanding responsibility also means recognizing that those with greater power have a greater responsibility to prevent harm to civilians, including states with greater military power. As U.S. citizens, our government supplies weapons to Israel, so our responsibility includes pressing our government to protect civilians where we actually have leverage.
The question isn’t who is worse, but where we have responsibility and where we can actually make a difference.
There was Palestinian resistance before Hamas existed. In the West Bank, where Hamas is not the governing authority, Palestinians still have not made meaningful progress toward self-determination. Focusing only on Hamas may not address what is driving the violence. Even if Hamas were defeated, violence might not decrease, and other groups could take its place.
Sometimes people are asked to condemn the crimes of Hamas. I believe it's always wrong to target civilians.
Calling an act a “crime” implies a system of law. Legal systems put limits on people's behavior while also offering protections under those same laws.
But what happens when certain people don't receive those protections? Why should we expect them to accept the limitations of a legal system when they don't receive its protections? Law only protects us when it protects everyone.
In many conflicts, military efforts against armed groups operating among civilians have struggled to reduce violence over time. In places like Vietnam and Afghanistan, even when militants were targeted, harm to civilians often led to increased support for those groups. This pattern suggests that military approaches may not be effective in these situations.
Some Israelis believe that military force is necessary to achieve peace. What would success look like? What would have to happen for military force to no longer be necessary?
If attacks on Israeli civilians can increase support among Israelis for military force, then we can understand how attacks that kill Palestinian civilians can similarly increase support among Palestinians for fighting Israel. Can military force make peace more likely if harm to Palestinian civilians leads to more people fighting Israel?
Periods of calm can be interpreted as evidence that a strong military is keeping Israelis safe. But when Israelis are attacked, that can be seen as a reason to use even more military force. If military force is the answer in periods of both calm and violence, how can we tell whether that approach is actually working? What might lead us to reconsider it?
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Peace isn’t just the absence of fighting; it requires justice, freedom, and dignity for all people, including Palestinians. That’s what makes lasting peace possible.
Many Israelis are living in fear. That fear is real, and it deserves to be taken seriously.
When people talk about survival, it’s worth being clear about what we’re trying to protect. What matters most is that people are safe and protected. States and political systems are meant to protect human life, including Palestinian lives. The question is whether a particular form of government and its policies are actually protecting everyone.
In many cases, countries and societies have continued—either under the same name or a new one—even as their systems of government changed. There’s a difference between protecting people and preserving a particular political system.
One of my concerns is that we may one day look back on this moment and realize that suffering was accepted as necessary when it actually wasn’t, and that military force did not achieve the safety people hoped for.
Is harm on this scale truly unavoidable? I think there should be a high bar of certainty before supporting violence based on the belief that it prevents greater harm. The greater the amount of suffering we're asked to accept, the more confident we should be that it cannot be avoided. When the real-world consequences are this severe, it becomes harder to see how continuing the same approach can be justified by uncertain claims about what it might prevent.
I’d worry more about looking back and supporting something morally devastating than being seen as naive. I would rather oppose civilian suffering than accept or justify so much suffering as necessary.
What happened on October 7 was horrifying. Israeli civilians were killed, and that kind of violence is always wrong.
It makes sense that October 7 is a vivid reference point for many people. But even before that day, there had already been significant violence and loss of life over many years. If we value all human life equally, we can’t treat one moment as the starting point while overlooking the lives lost before it.
Understanding the October 7 attacks also means looking at the broader conditions that lead to violence. If those conditions don’t change, I’m concerned it will happen again. Harming civilians tends to lead to more violence rather than reduce it, which is part of why protecting all civilians is so important.
Just as I don’t think Israeli civilians should be killed because of what the Israeli military has done, Palestinian civilians shouldn’t be killed because of what Hamas has done. It’s one thing to focus on the individuals responsible for the October 7 attacks, and another to harm an entire population because of it. The fact that those responsible came from a particular place does not make the surrounding population responsible for their actions. Too often, anger and fear are directed toward people who had no role in the attack.
It was deeply disturbing when Hamas took Israeli civilians hostage on October 7. It is also deeply disturbing when Israel imprisons Palestinians without trial or transparent evidence, and often holds them for extended periods under its administrative detention system. Part of valuing people equally means caring about everyone's freedom from being taken and held against their will.
How can we know that Israel is actually trying its best to avoid civilian harm? Is that harm actually necessary? We can imagine how it might feel to hear that claim as a Palestinian who has experienced loss.
Without clear evidence, transparency, or accountability, it’s hard to rely on claims about necessity or “doing our best.”
When Palestinians are killed without clear accountability or transparency, their lives are treated as less valuable. That also makes it harder to accept claims that harming civilians is unavoidable, or to trust that enough is being done to avoid it.
When civilian deaths receive significant public attention but still lead to little meaningful accountability, that suggests accountability is even less likely when the victims are unknown.
Is there a point where the scale of human suffering matters more than any claims to minimize that suffering? What would that point look like?
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“What If the Government Targets the Wrong Person?”
Imagine living in a society where the government could attack anyone it accused of posing a threat, without having to show evidence or give that person any way to challenge the accusation, and without meaningful limits on harm to people nearby. Two things could happen: any of us could be targeted for something we didn’t do, and any of us could be harmed simply because we happened to be near someone else who was targeted.
Palestinians have engaged in nonviolent resistance. In large movements, it’s common for there to be a range of approaches rather than a strategy. When those with meaningful power don’t respond to nonviolent efforts, other approaches tend to gain traction.
Nonviolent movements like the U.S. civil rights movement and the Indian independence movement didn’t depend on millions of oppressed people to act perfectly. They focused on systems of power and their real-world impact.
If we hope Palestinians respond nonviolently, it’s reasonable to expect the same from others, including Israel.
These concerns show up in a few different ways:
“Criticizing Israel is antisemitic.”
“Protests against Israel are increasing antisemitism.”
“Protesting Israel makes Jews less safe.”
“Criticism of Israel feels like an attack on Jews.”
I take antisemitism seriously. It’s wrong when Jews are attacked or threatened.
It’s important to separate antisemitism, which targets people for being Jewish, from protests against the Israeli government’s actions. Those aren’t the same thing, even though they’re often mixed together.
If Jews and Israel are treated as the same, two things can happen: Jews are blamed or targeted for Israel’s actions, and criticism of Israel is dismissed as antisemitism. Instead, Jews should not be held responsible for Israel’s actions, and Israel should be open to criticism and held accountable for its actions.
Antisemitism is a serious form of discrimination. When the term is used too broadly, it can lose some of its meaning. That can make it easier for people to dismiss real concerns about antisemitism if they expect that label to be used regardless.
Criticizing a state’s actions is not inherently hostile toward that state or its people. In democracies, criticism is often part of political participation and accountability. Dissent has often been seen as patriotic. The same applies to Israel: criticizing the Israeli government’s actions is not necessarily anti-Israel or antisemitic.
And supporting Israel doesn’t rule out prejudice or hatred toward Jews. We should evaluate antisemitism based on how someone views and treats Jews, not on whether they support Israel.
Focusing on Israel or on Palestinian rights is not, on its own, evidence of antisemitism. In everyday life, people naturally focus on some issues more than others without implying bias or indifference to everything else. People can advocate for the issues they believe in, and their views should be evaluated based on what they’re actually saying, not on assumptions about the person’s motives.
For me, the deeper question is what actually reduces antisemitism. When people see Israel as committing serious abuses, they may feel anger toward Israel. Israel is also often viewed as representing Jews. That anger toward Israel can extend into hostility toward Jews. This can put Jews anywhere at risk. In many cases, spikes in antisemitic incidents around the world have followed periods of Israeli military violence. That doesn’t excuse antisemitism, but it helps explain why conflation is dangerous. Visible Jewish dissent against Israeli state violence can help weaken that association.
When dissent itself is treated as a threat, including within Jewish communities, efforts described as protecting Jews can end up targeting Jews who speak out. It can look more like defending the state as an end in itself than protecting Jews, especially when that excludes some Jews. Restricting pro-Palestinian speech puts Jews at risk because the same power to restrict speech can be used against Jews, even for speech unrelated to Israel–Palestine.
For some Jews, connection to the land is an important part of Jewish identity. Jewish identity has also been centered around Torah, ethics, customs, and community; these don’t depend on the actions of any particular government and have endured through changing political circumstances. Recognizing these traditions can help us realize that Jewish identity is deeper than any political system, which can change over time.
Throughout history, prejudice has often divided people who actually had shared interests and could have worked together. One example from U.S. history of people uniting across divisions is Bacon's Rebellion, where impoverished white indentured servants and enslaved Black people joined together against those in power who were exploiting their labor. Some historians argue that after the rebellion, those in power reinforced racial divisions to make similar alliances less likely.
The same principles that lead me to oppose antisemitism also lead me to oppose Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinian racism, and every other form of dehumanization.
Accusations of antisemitism have been misused to silence criticism of Israel; still, we should recognize antisemitism and take it seriously while also acknowledging the particular scale and urgency of Palestinian suffering.
Recognizing antisemitism involves judging someone’s words or actions as antisemitic without defining the person by them. People can learn, change, and repair harm.
Like other forms of prejudice, antisemitism can develop from the normal human tendency to generalize from what we experience or observe. The same tendency that can lead people to generalize about Palestinians can also lead people who experience or hear about Israeli state violence to generalize about Jews, especially when Israel is viewed as representing Jews. Recognizing this tendency in ourselves can help us understand how these assumptions develop in other people without seeing them as uniquely flawed. Just as assumptions about groups can develop from experience, they can also weaken through new experiences.
Antisemitic reasoning can include:
Using “Jewish” and “Zionist” interchangeably. This includes using “Jews” when referring to Israel, which can wrongly imply that Jews as a group are responsible for Israel’s actions. It also includes using “Zionists” as a substitute term for Jews. Most Zionists in the United States are Christian Zionists.
Assuming that someone supports Israel based on their Jewish identity. This treats all Jews as the same rather than as individuals with different beliefs. Treating criticism of Israel as prejudice against Jews can similarly assume that Jewish identity means someone supports Israel.
Making unsupported claims about hidden power or coordination. Language about “control” can reflect longstanding conspiracy theories, including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The United States government retains agency and responsibility for its own policies; influence should be described specifically rather than through vague claims that Israel or Jews “control” the United States. Money in politics and corruption are systemic problems in the United States. The Israel lobby is one example among many special interests that take advantage of that system to influence U.S. policy.
Attributing wrongdoing to Israel or Zionists without evidence. Criticism should focus on Israel’s well-documented atrocities rather than unsupported claims or speculation. Unsupported accusations can reinforce antisemitic conspiracy theories that attribute hidden power to Jews beyond what the evidence supports.
Opposing different forms of prejudice is part of the same vision of freedom and dignity for everyone. Movements can become stronger by recognizing shared interests and collaborating across issues.
Fear can come through in comparisons to past trauma, like the Holocaust, a sense that survival is at stake, or the feeling that a threat is constant or inevitable.
Jewish communities have experienced persecution and displacement in different historical contexts. For many Ashkenazi Jews, the Holocaust shapes collective memory and how threats to Jewish safety are understood. For many Mizrahi Jews, expulsion and displacement in parts of the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-20th century are central experiences.
I understand why these fears can feel real, given that history.
When people see Israel as important to Jewish safety, criticism of Israel can feel like a challenge to their sense of safety. When people are concerned about Palestinian safety, opposing Israel’s military actions can feel deeply important. If we hope others will take our concerns seriously, it helps to extend the same seriousness to theirs.
We can acknowledge that fear. We can also make decisions based on our values. To me, “Never Again” means never again to anyone.
This moment carries historical weight—not just for the U.S. and Israel, but also for us as Jews. One day, our children and grandchildren will likely learn about these events and encounter different perspectives. Jewish history has taught us what can happen when an entire people is treated as a danger. That’s why I feel strongly about not repeating that kind of thinking with anyone else.
I think about how future generations might look back and ask what it was like to live through this moment. I want them to see that I tried to speak out for what I believed was right, even in difficult circumstances. When the next generation studies this period, how do you hope they’ll see Israel’s choices? Our choices?
In moments of fear, societies often expand suspicion and restrict the rights of entire groups in the name of safety. Periods like McCarthyism, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the years after 9/11 show how accusations against certain groups can lead to collective punishment and restrictions on civil rights without making societies safer. Looking back, these moments are rarely seen as necessary or justified, even when the fear felt real at the time. In cases like these, trading freedom for perceived safety tends to leave people less free and less safe on all sides.
Palestinians, like anyone else, naturally want freedom and dignity. This desire is deeply human. Whether someone chooses to fight—Israeli or Palestinian—doesn't change that.
“Free Palestine” is a call for Palestinian freedom. “From the river to the sea” refers to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. People use the phrase in different ways, including as a call for equality across the land. Historically, expanding equal rights has often been met with fears that don’t play out as expected, which is one reason not to assume violent intent behind calls for equality.
Some people who have used these phrases have also supported or carried out violence. That doesn’t mean the phrases themselves are calls for violence. Allowing the most extreme interpretations to define a phrase would make many slogans hard to use in any movement. Rather than assuming violent intent, it’s important to ask what someone actually means by those words.
Part of respecting each other is listening to what people say they mean, rather than assuming or adding meanings they didn’t express. If we want others to hear what we mean by our words, it helps to show the same willingness to hear theirs. That includes listening to Palestinians and understanding that some symbols or expressions of support for Israel may feel upsetting to them, especially if they've experienced loss.
Treating antisemitism as inevitable shifts the explanation away from those who persecute Jews and toward Jewish identity itself. This way of thinking treats persecution as if it were inherent to Jews rather than explained by people’s actions and the conditions that lead to prejudice.
Jewishness itself doesn’t cause antisemitism.
Judging people by their actions rather than their identity means not assuming a group will be either hateful or hated forever.
More generally, once a group is seen as having defining inherent characteristics, individuals in that group can be judged in very different ways: as superior or inferior, virtuous or demonized, protective or threatening, trustworthy or deceitful, deserving of more rights or unworthy of certain rights. The very idea that Jews are inherently different—including the idea that Jews are uniquely vulnerable to persecution indefinitely—can reinforce the same way of thinking that has been used to persecute Jews. When persecution of Jews is treated as uniquely inevitable or practically permanent, it's also treated as if it were inherent to Jewishness.
A more durable protection against prejudice is rejecting the idea that groups have defining inherent characteristics in the first place and recognizing all people as individuals.
Identity can affect who we prioritize. But our sense of identity isn’t fixed—it can expand as we listen to others and come to see similarities we might not have noticed before.
It doesn't feel right to question whether a group really belongs somewhere based on how we think about their identity. People’s connection to land comes from where they grew up, and their family and community history. This can include things like homes passed down through generations, places of worship, and the burial sites of ancestors. These kinds of ties aren’t easily replaced.
If we recognize that Jews can maintain a meaningful connection to the land across generations, we should also recognize that Palestinians can maintain a meaningful connection to the places where their families lived until much more recently.
‘Arab’ is a broad category spanning many countries, similar to terms like ‘Hispanic,’ which describe shared language and broad cultural connections. Palestinian identity developed in a specific place and historical context. Being part of a broader Arab cultural and linguistic group doesn’t take away from Palestinian identity.
“Palestinian” is an ethnicity, not a militant group or an ideology. It’s something people are born into, not something they choose.
When the conversation shifts to where people can be moved, it treats them as a problem to be managed rather than as people with rights and ties to a place.
This kind of reasoning came up in early 20th-century Europe, when Jews were unfairly described as not really belonging, and that idea was used to justify discrimination and violence against them. Similar logic shouldn't be applied to anyone else.
It’s also true that other countries failed to take in Jewish refugees when they had the chance, and that had serious consequences. But it didn’t make those carrying out the violence any less responsible for the atrocities they committed.
I understand why supporting other Jews can feel important, but my responsibility doesn’t stop there. All people are my people. All people are created in the image of God.
I care about Israeli suffering too. I focus more on Palestinians because of the scale of harm they’re experiencing. There has been far greater loss of life among Palestinians, and the U.S. provides funding and weapons for actions that harm them. Because this happens with our tax dollars, through our elected officials, and because these policies are often justified in the name of Jewish safety, I feel a particular responsibility to speak up.
Focusing on Palestinians doesn’t mean I care less about Israelis. I don’t see those concerns as in conflict. Fairness matters more than the appearance of neutrality, including when it comes to criticizing Israel’s actions. Treating unequal situations as if they were equal can itself be unfair.
It also matters when people show care across group lines. When someone speaks up for those seen as “the other side,” it helps normalize seeing each other as human and shows that what we have in common matters more than what divides us.
Moral principles only have meaning if we apply them consistently, so I focus on where exceptions to those principles are being made.
I agree that Jews, like all people, have the right to self-determination.
What matters to me is that self-determination for one group doesn’t mean limiting or denying the same right to another. Freedom doesn’t mean having no limits—it means respecting everyone’s rights.
I’m reminded of the saying that one person’s right to swing their fist ends where someone else’s nose begins.
One useful test is to change the group and hear how the same principle sounds—for example, the idea of maintaining a religious or ethnic majority, or preserving that group’s character in a state. When those same ideas feel uncomfortable when applied to a different group, it suggests we should reconsider how we think about those political systems, even when they might at first seem to benefit a group we identify with.
Jewish perspectives on Zionism have always varied. From the beginning, movements such as the Jewish Labor Bund opposed it while still advocating for Jewish safety and collective rights for Jews, without denying those rights to others.
It can be helpful to consider how certain ideas sound when you change which group they’re about—like maintaining a religious or ethnic majority, or preserving that group’s character in a state. For example, some people in the United States want a White Christian nation and see growing immigrant and non-White populations as a threat to that vision. If we reject preserving a White Christian majority as a goal in the United States, we should also reject preserving a Jewish majority as a goal in Israel.
The term “Zionism” can mean different things to different people, but not all interpretations are useful for understanding it as a political movement. We should understand both its real-world effects on people regardless of ethnicity and our moral responsibility in supporting or opposing it.
When power and harm are unequal, an accurate and fair understanding involves considering that imbalance when deciding whose perspectives and experiences to center, including in our understanding of Zionism.
Those who commit violence often have incentives to justify their actions or downplay the harm they cause, and victims of violence experience its consequences directly. It’s important to begin from trust rather than suspicion when listening to victims; too much skepticism can cause even more harm to victims when they're treated as unreliable sources about their own experience, or when their suffering is minimized. Fairness means giving greater weight to the perspectives of victims, so it’s especially important to center the perspectives of Palestinians who’ve been harmed by the Zionist movement. A central source of that harm is the State of Israel and its goal of maintaining a Jewish majority.
The goal of the Zionist movement was to create a Jewish-majority state in a non-Jewish-majority land, and this was accomplished in large part through mass violence against Palestinians. As part of Israel’s founding, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly expelled or fled their homes in fear of violence and were not allowed to return. This ethnic cleansing is known as the Nakba.
This history shows that the goal of a Jewish-majority state was achieved through immense violence, and that violence has continued in different forms through today.
Could that goal have been achieved without violence or displacement? Can Israel maintain a Jewish majority while treating Jews and Palestinians equally? Is it possible for Israel to be both Jewish and democratic?
Demographic Ledger
In a democracy, a government’s purpose is to represent its people. Adding a mandate to maintain certain demographic goals complicates this purpose. This can be understood as a demographic ledger, where certain ethnicities are treated as demographic assets and others are treated as demographic liabilities. It’s hard to believe that a system like this can represent all of its people equally. Even without violence or expulsions, a system like this has a built-in incentive to make life harder for Palestinians, since their leaving would be treated as “improving” the demographic balance. Palestinians born into this system are treated as though their very presence is unwanted, and it’s hard to see how they could feel represented by their own government. A system that treats some ethnic groups as demographic assets and others as liabilities is racist at its core.
Demography and Essentialism
A deeper question is whether a demographic majority should be viewed as a source of protection at all. Ethnicities are vast groups of people who may share some common history and customs but have a wide range of values. People don’t choose their ethnicity. If we believe that people should be judged based on their actions rather than their identity, then it’s hard to see how we can make any broad assumptions based on ethnicity. These misguided assumptions include both trust in people of our own ethnicity and distrust of people of other ethnicities. We can’t assume that Jews will protect other Jews, just as we can’t assume that non-Jews will unite against Jews. Ethnicities are not organizations, and individuals do not act or think as a unified ethnic group. No ethnic majority should be viewed as inherently protective or dangerous.
We all hold many identities at once. Even a system designed to protect Jews from antisemitism doesn't necessarily protect Jews from discrimination for other reasons. A safer system for Jews is one that protects everyone from discrimination.
Democracy vs Demographic Majority
If maintaining a demographic majority is incompatible with democracy, how are Jews safe under democracy? Democracies provide equal rights to everyone, including minorities, and protect those rights through a combination of voting rights, checks on government power, courts, due process that limits arbitrary punishment, and freedom of speech. Equal rights can be protected by a constitution that requires broad consensus to change, so a simple majority cannot easily take away the rights of minorities.
Democracies need ongoing oversight, and democratically elected governments must still be held accountable. When governments are not held accountable, they can shift toward authoritarianism, putting minorities and eventually everyone at risk.
Unequal political systems are often unstable because people resist those inequalities. Lasting safety comes from equality and opportunity for all. Only a system that protects everyone can be relied on to protect anyone.
People and governments should be judged by what they do, not by who they are. That means not giving a pass for harmful actions because of identity. Israel should be judged based on what it does—not more harshly or more leniently.
All states should be open to scrutiny, regardless of how they define themselves.
In the West Bank, Palestinians live under military control of Israel, an external government. This is referred to as occupation.
Palestinians also don’t have the right to vote for the government that controls many aspects of their lives and are subject to a separate legal system from Israelis living in the same area, conditions referred to as apartheid. One way to think about this is to imagine a foreign military enforcing laws in a U.S. city without residents having any say in that government.
In Gaza, Israel controls the airspace and coastline and restricts the movement of people and goods. These restrictions are referred to as a blockade and have persisted since long before the October 7 attacks.
Palestinians in Israel have citizenship and voting rights, but continue to face various forms of discrimination.
These Israeli policies have imposed unjust political conditions on Palestinians.
B'Tselem is an Israeli human rights organization that has documented conditions in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza for many years.
Its report Our Genocide explains why B'Tselem reached the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Genocide is one of the most serious accusations that can be made, and the term shouldn't be used casually. People often look back on morally consequential historical events and wonder how they were understood at the time. Future generations may come to view Israel’s actions as genocide more clearly, and it’s worth understanding why human rights organizations and scholars are using that term today.
The goal is to understand the reasoning before deciding whether it’s persuasive. This can help avoid prematurely dismissing a claim of enormous moral significance.
Genocide is often not recognized by the society carrying it out while it is happening. It’s important to consider outside perspectives rather than relying only on how that society describes or justifies its own behavior..
It can be easier to evaluate wars looking back than in real time. Patterns become clearer: many wars presented as necessary or defensive were avoidable, counterproductive, or driven by incentives that weren’t in the public’s interest.
This does not mean that military force can never be justified. History gives us reason to approach claims of wartime necessity with skepticism rather than taking them at face value.
Once violence is labeled as war, it starts to be seen as tragic but inevitable. Civilian deaths become minimized as “collateral damage.” Soldiers’ deaths come to be accepted as unavoidable. Actions that would normally be condemned can start to feel justified when they are carried out under the banner of war.
We should resist these shifts in how we judge violence. War does not lower moral standards; instead, it makes it even more important to apply them carefully and consistently.
Pressures During War
Despite the moral language used to justify war (self-defense, liberation, protecting freedom, preventing greater harm), wars are often driven by pressures like:
Political incentives, like maintaining power by rallying public support.
Economic interests, like profits tied to defense spending or control over resources.
Geopolitical strategy, like signaling strength or influencing the policies of other countries.
Governments often have incentives to overstate necessity and downplay civilian harm. Because of these conflicts of interest, governments should not be treated as neutral judges of whether their own military actions are necessary or justified.
Reasons for Skepticism
Historian Howard Zinn and decorated General Smedley Butler, who later became a prominent critic of U.S. wars, both argued that wars frequently reflect political and economic interests of those in power, while ordinary people bear the human costs without receiving the benefits they are often promised. President Dwight D. Eisenhower similarly warned about the influence of the “military-industrial complex.”
Claims that military force is necessary or that it protects civilians should be evaluated against clear standards.
In particular:
Harm to civilians cannot be excused simply by calling it a war.
Claims of “doing our best to minimize civilian harm” shouldn’t be accepted at face value.
The scale of destruction matters, not just stated intent to minimize civilian harm.
Calling something a war does not lower moral standards. It raises them.
Genuine justifications are rare, and claims of military necessity should be questioned carefully given the real-world harm.
This perspective is often applied to modern situations, including Israel–Palestine, not because Israel is unique, but because it operates under the same pressures as other states that use military force.
Calling military violence ‘war’ does not make it justified. Even when violence is widely viewed as war, many wars are unjustified; claims of wartime necessity should be scrutinized carefully rather than assumed to be valid.
For most of history, there were few shared rules between states and few constraints on power. Stronger states would conquer weaker ones. There was a kind of anarchy—if something could be done, there was little to stop it, and limited concern for human consequences.
Over time, things began to change. The Second World War and the Holocaust made clear how destructive unchecked power could be, which led to efforts to prevent it from happening again.
Countries began establishing rules intended to limit the human cost of war so that power alone wouldn’t decide what was acceptable. Without shared rules, states with greater military power can impose outcomes on states and peoples with less military power. Rules are meant to set limits that apply to all states.
These rules included:
Borders would not be changed through force. This would avoid the disruption territorial changes can cause to people’s lives, and reduce the use of war for expansion, even when described as defensive.
Risks to civilians would be taken into account, placing limits on what military actions could be justified.
Justifications for military force would require clear threats, rather than vague or unverifiable ones.
These rules were meant to set limits on what countries are allowed to do, how war can be carried out, and when force is justified. Because the consequences of using military force are so severe, there should be high standards to ensure military force is used only when truly justified.
This leads to a broader question: do we want a world where shared rules set limits on what countries can do, or one where outcomes are determined by military power?
History shows that even the most powerful empires eventually lose their dominance, which suggests that systems based on shared rules may offer more long-term stability and protection for everyone, including those with greater military power today.
Explanations for violence can change over time. The question is whether the causes changed too, or whether only the explanation changed.
How violence is explained or justified often reflects what is considered acceptable at the time. To be persuasive, these explanations usually align in some way with social expectations at the time. Explaining why violence happens involves describing the conditions that lead to it; justifying violence involves judging it as acceptable or defensible.
Distinguishing between “explaining” and “justifying” allows for understanding the causes of violence without implying approval. This kind of reasoning can be seen even in statements by early Zionists and Israeli leaders.
In 1923, Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote “Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope… That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing.”
In 1956, Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan said: “Let us not cast the blame on the murderers today… For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and villages where they and their fathers dwelt into our estate.”
These statements describe the conditions that lead to violence without expressing support for it.
They differ from more recent explanations of violence that treat hostility as an inherent trait and often use terms like “extremism” or “terrorism.”
This shift in how violence is explained raises a few questions: when explanations change over time, how should we interpret that change? Were earlier explanations of violence simply wrong? Or did the underlying causes of violence actually change—from displacement and loss to inherent hostility?
If the explanations of violence changed while patterns of behavior remained similar, the change may be more about how events are described than what is actually happening. If what changed is how the violence is explained, we need a way to decide which explanations are more credible. If hostility were actually inherent, why wasn’t it described that way earlier? If earlier explanations were wrong, why? Do we apply the same level of scrutiny to explanations that feel familiar as to less familiar ones?
If the underlying causes of violence changed, we might expect a clear explanation of what changed and why earlier explanations no longer apply.
It seems more likely that the narratives changed more than the underlying reality did, and that explanations shifted to align with changing social expectations. Behavior is better understood as a response to conditions rather than inherent traits.
Another example of how narratives can shift over time is how Israel identifies its threats. At different times, the focus has been on various neighboring states, Soviet influence, Iraq, and Iran. As Israel’s strategic priorities change, we might expect some reflection—did addressing those threats actually improve safety for Israelis, or was their significance overstated? Instead, Israel’s focus often shifts to a new threat. When that pattern repeats, it raises the question of how seriously to treat claims about new threats when it’s not clear whether earlier efforts to address threats actually made Israelis safer.
These examples point to the importance of evaluating narratives in their broader context and over time, rather than relying on any single explanation.
It can help to look at a specific example when thinking about trust.
On August 25, 2025, Israel carried out two strikes on Nasser Hospital in Gaza that killed multiple people, including journalists.
Journalists are civilians whose role is to report on events, not to take part in fighting, and hospitals are civilian infrastructure.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially described the outcome as a “tragic mishap” (Reuters).
Shortly after, the Israeli military said the operation had targeted a “camera” that it said was being used by Hamas to monitor Israeli troop movements (X / IDF Statement).
Later reporting showed that the camera in question was likely being used by a journalist working with Reuters (Reuters).
The initial description as an accidental tragedy was quickly followed by a justification portraying the target as a legitimate military threat, which was later undermined by independent reporting.
An internal inquiry was also initiated to examine the decision-making process, suggesting that, by the military's own assessment, the incident warranted closer scrutiny. However, the inquiry did not clearly explain what happened or how the decisions were made in a way that answered the questions that scrutiny was meant to address.
When official explanations shift and do not explain why they changed, it raises doubts about whether those explanations reflect what actually happened or were constructed after the fact to make the action appear more defensible.
Also, simply labeling a person or object as “Hamas-linked” does not establish that it is a legitimate military target, especially when no supporting evidence has been made public.
Similar patterns have occurred for decades. After the May 2022 killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank, initial Israeli statements suggested Palestinian gunfire may have been responsible. Later, Israeli authorities acknowledged it was more likely that she was killed by an Israeli soldier.
It is also notable that Shireen Abu Akleh was an American citizen, yet her killing did not result in clear accountability from either Israel or the United States.
These examples highlight a few key principles:
Accountability and transparency are needed for trust
If no adequate investigation exists, that signals a lack of accountability. If one exists but is not made public, that signals a lack of transparency. Either way, the basis for reasonable public trust is weakened.
Regardless of how a military operation is described, it should be evaluated based on clear standards rather than accepted at face value.
If the killing was a mistake, that still raises a few questions: What made this operation worth the risk to civilians? How are risks to civilians factored into these decisions? Who made the decision, and how? Does this reflect an isolated error or a broader pattern?
If the killing was intentional, based on the belief that the target posed a legitimate threat, what credible evidence supports that belief?
In either case, meaningful accountability depends on transparent, evidence-based explanations.
Accountability can help distinguish isolated mistakes from intentional policy by showing whether errors are recognized and addressed, and whether they are treated as errors at all.
Highly visible cases show whether accountability is practiced
In this highly visible case, where Israeli forces killed journalists working for major news outlets and the incident received international public scrutiny, it is easier to see whether meaningful accountability is practiced, even when reputational stakes are high. When highly visible cases still do not result in clear accountability, it becomes harder to believe there are real limits on behavior at all, especially in less visible cases.
Patterns vs. isolated incidents
Similar dynamics have appeared in well-known incidents over time, including the killing of American activist Rachel Corrie, Palestinian professor and writer Refaat Alareer, journalist Anas al-Sharif, and many other incidents involving civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, and across the region. The recurrence of civilian deaths, including highly visible cases that did not result in meaningful accountability, makes it increasingly difficult to view these as isolated incidents rather than part of a broader pattern.
Evaluating Sources of Information
How do you decide which news sources you find most credible? For me, these are some things that make a source more credible: whether it cites evidence, acknowledges uncertainty or mistakes, fairly represents opposing views, and gives credit to the other side when warranted. It can also help to consider their reporting on other issues to assess their overall credibility.
What Information Would Change Your Mind?
For me, if the Israeli government were able to keep Israelis safe without harming Palestinians, I’d see that as real progress, and I’d be glad to give Israeli officials credit for making that happen. I’d be curious what might lead you to see things differently.