Wow. Just beautiful. I laughed the first few times you stopped and defused a possible boogeyman argument in grey - you saw them coming and batted them out of the ballpark. This Jew is glad to live in a country with you.
A really powerful, and beautifully articulated piece, Mo. I hope many people read it, take stock of it, and act accordingly. The world would be a better place if they did.
I love that the Arabic saying is “from your mouth to the door of the sky.” You probably know that we Jews say “from your mouth to God's ear” and I extra love that they are almost the same thing. We are cousins.
Mo, a profound thank you for saying the words that I have been unable to articulate for so long, because of the cruel binary terminology being imposed on us, that has lost its meaning completely. My voice has been sabotaged by it. The language has also been co-opted and weaponized by Christian fascists to fan the flames of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hatred and aid in the tearing down of our universities and our democracy. It is poison.
This progressive Jew was taught by my Yiddish-speaking peace activist grandma that “Never again means for no one”. My Jewish identity is exclusively linked to the principle of defending human rights and fighting the oppression and subjugation of ALL peoples, and it has guided my actions since my youth. My Jewish identity is in complete shambles right now. Our multi-generational family stopped celebrating Passover 3 years ago because we could not reconcile with celebrating Jewish liberation while Palestinians were being cruelly flattened.
In 2015 I travelled to West Bank to listen and bear witness to the extreme cruelty of the settlements. A few days later I toured Yad Vashem. I have never recovered from the mindfuck of seeing those juxtaposed horrors. Everything you say, I feel it in my bones.
So aside from complaining about your discomfort as a Moslem and desire to be loved and accepted, what are YOU doing about the vicious violence of your Islamic brothers?
Perhaps you are new to Mo's writing. Anybody who has followed him for a while knows how consistently he speaks out against anti-Semitism. I don't hear a whole ton of Arab voices doing so, and I respect the courage of each of them who do so. Those that I am aware of, I follow, and they set a morally upright example inside their culture and to all of us, with their voices.
And yet the equation of Jew hatred to dislike of Muslims is a distortion. Muslims were never persecuted like Jews were, except perhaps by other Moslems, and certainly not by Jews. Yes there is hatred of Arabs in Israel, but some, and yet coexistence thrives, despite the heart breaking conditions that stimulate the hatred.
Likewise. I grew up in an activist family marching and working for indigenous rights, women’s rights, justice for refugees, peace etc. Always because of our Judaism and history of oppression. Every Passover the story was read and the message was because of this we fight for freedom - for ourselves and for the whole world.
Watching our rich and beautiful history weaponised and made so ugly and brutal in Israel is horrific. To feel the lurch to the right of the Jewish community in Australia even before Bondi breaks my heart.
Oh another “good Jew” who wants to be ever so “nice” so he denies his own people’s experience while supporting poor victimised Moslems. I love the Bundist Yiddish speaking Jews but there is such a thing as denying your own heritage, giving it away and allowing others to trivialise it . Just a reminder, “nice, good “ Jews like you were also exterminated in Auschwitz, likely the majority of them.
The problem with “good Jews” like you is that you are very spoiled and have no idea, just really cannot fathom what victims if Islamists suffer, in Israel, in Iran, in Africa. You are like those government officials who were told about what was going on in concentration camps but simply did not believe it.
Very sad that Moslems feel Uncomfortable these days after Islamic terrorism started in the west (9/11 fir instance) but unlike the Jews who were persecuted for merely existing, the Moslem discomfort stems from actual activities of Moslems, in following if their religious teachings
Mo, this is in the, like, top three things I’ve read on this, maybe ever. I think you have at least 2 and maybe 3 different essays here; there’s the one on conflation; there’s the one on words and their meanings, or lack thereof, and the communal deafness, conflict, and pigeon holing that results; and there’s the one on committing to the humanity of all peoples, refusal to “flatten,” in your words, and to holding the inevitable complexity that such a commitment requires. And, with apologies for the unsolicited suggestion, maybe by breaking them up in this way more people would actually read it. It’s so worth it. Thank you.
Leslie, thank you. That is a generous read and a useful one. You are not the first person to tell me there are two or three essays braided in here, and I think you are right — I wrote it as one because I needed all of it to land in the same breath, but I can see the case for letting each piece breathe on its own. Something to think about for the next round. Thank you for taking the time to say so, and for reading it the way you did.
I love that you’ve combined them all into one super powerful piece - that honestly needs to be seen by the people in power both politically and leading all sorts of institutions worldwide.
But I think there’s a case to ALSO break them up into the 3-4 different ones, maybe between them it might just reach a few more eyes and minds, and that’s what matters.
I think Leslie made a great point. People who get fixated on one point may not read the whole thing, and that would be a great loss. Giving each section space to breathe would also give people who get stuck space to process that and possibly respond before reading more.
I shared this with fellow Jews who oppose Jewish supremacy and support Palestinian liberation (a wordy and more specific replacement for non- or anti-Zionist) and I was surprised at their intense opposition to your saying that flattening one people is the same as flattening another - “there’s no acknowledgment of the power differential!”, “false equivalency!”, and I think my response will be that I’m sure you have a strong analysis and that’s not the point of this essay as I understand it. We all already know about the injustice and power differentials. You’re addressing something that goes more to the root of what it means to remain human in the midst of it.
Yes hearing almost word for word statements about false equivalency from both camps directed at each other just leaves me weary and frustrated. It’s part of why I love Mo’s ability to articulate it so clearly for everyone to see.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful work. I'm palestinian and deeply resonate with all of it... only in my case when I was 16 years old, I changed my name to a white name to escape the racism. In the last 2 years. I had worked through enought of my trauma to be brave enough to start revealing who I really am. It really does all come down to humanity for all.
And how you brilliantly explained the nuances hopefully helps people to understand so you cannot persecute an entire group of people because of the extremists, bias, etc.
Another great essay. Peoples’ view of the conflict (and others, for that matter) have gone from a grayscale image with 4096 shades of gray to one of only black and white. We’re cursed with leaders who behave like social media algorithms brought to life, amplifying the most extreme views to enhance their “brand.” Yeats was prescient with his line “the best lack all conviction/while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” This is one reason that I think organisations like Standing Together and A Land for All are so important—they don’t treat the conflict as a zero-sum game. At the end of the day, millions of people from both camps need to find a modus vivendi. Oh—one small edit: the finance minister you refer to didn’t just refer to himself as a “proud fascist”—it was a “proud fascist homophobe.” Inspiring, isn’t he? Thanks again for your writing.
I feel like you are the only person who has taken all the things crowding my own mind and heart and arranged them in ways I have been unable (or scared) to and I am grateful for your words.
It expressed very clearly the world view of "live and let live" that I hold very close to my heart. I live my life according to that principle.
I'm a UK-born Jewish Israeli almost about to mark 40 years living here. Unbelievably.
Over the past two and a half years my life, as well as innumerable others have been upended, swept in a torrent of incredulity built upon the abhorrent things we have seen humans do to each other along with the self-interested ways in which our leaders have operated and continue to operate.
I grew up as an optimist, perhaps a naive optimist, living my life in, what I considered a liberal democracy - of course, with its problems, but a functioning society. I actually was born into a golden age of peace in the beginning of the 1960s in London in which war and conflict were distant and obscure. As a kid and young adult there, I thought that this was the way of the world. It isn't. It never has been.
These past years have jaded that optimism and left me, despite demonstrations, remonstrations and calling for a modicum of societal and political normalcy, feeling helpless and hopeless.
It is all so sad.
In the description you wrote about yourself in your Substack, you said, "I write and rant about stuff". I happened upon your post as it was shared by a lifelong friend of mine, a Jewish, ex-Israeli who, despite the fact that he, you and I all are basically espousing the same thing, his actual rants and tirades have made it almost impossible for me to continue a relationship with him, let alone a conversation.
This, too, is so sad.
I'd never heard the word shibboleth before I read your piece. But yes, it rightly anchors everything you are talking about as a convenient, maybe even trendy vehicle for disavowing another, robbing them of their agency and voice. How may we find ways to embrace the other as different? How may we find the courage to challenge our narrowmindedness?
All that, I get. Even if my friend would calm down a bit and enable a normal conversation, what then?
I understand and espouse the fact that we must hold two or more mutually exclusive ideas, thoughts, truths, values, behaviours at once. Once we do that, what do we do with that?
Let's say that in the next elections in Israel, Netanyahu is defeated. Let's say that in his place comes someone who is willing to take a different approach - not that much different, because, as you say, the population of Israel is wounded and hurting following the massacres of October 7th. But at least someone who has the courage to approach this conflict differently. Let's just say.
By itself, this cannot bring about change. You need an interlocutor from the other side too. A courageous individual who will also be willing to stand up to the powers and emotions and tragedies that their people are suffering.
Your piece raised before me a mirror, expertly and insightfully written, reflecting an ideal. How do we translate that ideal to reality? Real reality.
Thank you for this. I am writing to you from inside the same room you are describing, and I do not have a fix either. I just needed to put the floor down somewhere, even though I do not know how to build the house yet.
The part about your friend is the part I am sitting with hardest. I have lost friends the same way, and the thing that makes it unbearable is exactly what you named — that you and he are mostly saying the same thing, and the difference between you is the temperature of the saying. Tirades make people unreachable, even when the tirade is on the side of the angels. I wish I knew what to do about that. I do not.
What I can offer, which is small but real, is that you are not the only one in this room. There are more of us than the public conversation makes it seem, and the quiet ones are still showing up. Forty years in. I cannot imagine the weight. Thank you for writing to me, and for still being in the room.
Thank you for this. I am writing to you from inside the same room you are describing, and I do not have a fix either. I just needed to put the floor down somewhere, even though I do not know how to build the house yet.
The part about your friend is the part I am sitting with hardest. I have lost friends the same way, and the thing that makes it unbearable is exactly what you named — that you and he are mostly saying the same thing, and the difference between you is the temperature of the saying. Tirades make people unreachable, even when the tirade is on the side of the angels. I wish I knew what to do about that. I do not.
What I can offer, which is small but real, is that you are not the only one in this room. There are more of us than the public conversation makes it seem, and the quiet ones are still showing up. Forty years in. I cannot imagine the weight. Thank you for writing to me, and for still being in the room.
What I know is the world has been ok with dead Jews since the dawn of time. Justifying my existence for over half a century stopped on 10/7, but the 54 years of my existence prior always produced a head tilt, followed by do you support something a world away. What I also know is there are 1.8 BILLION self proclaimed Muslim people around the world and 15 MILLION Jewish people. 50+ predominantly Muslim countries and one Jewish country. I don’t think any country should be religious. I want everyone to have a roof over their head, food on the table, healthcare, education, and to live in safety. But I’m done justifying my existence regardless.
I hear you, and I am not going to ask you to justify anything to me.
The whole point of the essay was that you should not have to, and the fact that you have spent fifty-four years being asked to is exactly the cost I was trying to name.
You are done. You should be done. Nobody who has been doing this for that long owes anyone another round of it, and certainly not me.
The list you wrote at the end — roof, food, healthcare, education, safety, for everyone — is the same list I am working from. We are on the same floor. I am sorry the world has spent your entire life making you stand on it alone.
Thank you for reading, and for telling me where you have landed. I am glad you are still here.
I’m glad I read this. I can’t even press like on it because the land really does need to be divided between two sovereign nation states at least until active peace is learned and probably until the world is very different in how it conceives of Jews in an unconscious civilizational-memetic sort of way. Jews cant be really safe without a state regardless of the “but they aren’t safe now, especially in Israel” arguments; the nakba is not meaningfully different as such for a 1940s population that lost their homes in a conflict; connected to this, Antizionism has its own triumphalist and pretty much inevitably Jew-oppressing logic that cannot be disentangled from claims of a right of return to Israel proper; etcetera, etcetera, Im not actually trying to convince you; but yes, Kumbaya progressivism is still fatally naive and will get more people killed than almost any alternative because the way these things works is that it emboldens the Ben Gvirs and Sinwars that much more when the failures happen; and even if my diagnosis is only 50% likely (and is it really responsible to estimate lower than 75?) to ask Israeli and in this case by extension all Jews to take that risk given all of what I just said is simply not ok, no matter how agitated post and anti-Zionist zoomer Jews are about their progressive purity bonafides in a world that is not the one they not only wish it was, but are so constantly incentivized against ever seeing differently.
All that said: you’re trying, you’re really really trying in realms where most people on either side don’t. You get what it means to actually be pro-human instead of just huffing media fumes in the key of humanistic outrage, putting on your war chimp tribal colours, and becoming one more awful part of the problem. And when I use that analogy I very much do not just mean the pro-Palestinians who do this.
I hope your binationalism doesn’t win because it’s inevitably a greater injustice than the lesser injustices still available. But as far as your humanistic clarity - more of this, please, among everyone.
Thank you for this. You are arguing in the register I wish more of this conversation lived in, which is the one where you can disagree with me on the political form and still see what I am actually trying to do, and I see what you are actually trying to do too.
For what it is worth, I am genuinely uncertain about the form. The essay is deliberately agnostic on it because I do not think I am smart enough to know which arrangement actually delivers the floor I am insisting on, and I am suspicious of anyone on any side who is sure.
Your case for two states is the serious version of the case, and I take it seriously, and I am not going to pretend the risks you are naming are not real risks. They are. I just do not know how to weigh them against the risks on the other side, and I am wary of any version of certainty here that has not been earned by living inside the consequences.
What I am sure of is the floor, and you and I are standing on the same floor even if we disagree about the house we want to build on it. That is more than most exchanges in this conversation manage, and I am grateful for it.
If everyone is guilty no one is guilty. If it’s even-steven there is no resolution. Of course there are good and evil people on both sides. But how many? Islamophobia and antisemitism are not equal perversions or inversions. The horrid hill boys on the West Bank are not as horrid or as influential as Hamas and the Moslem Brotherhood. Nonetheless, I want exactly the same things you do. I was hoping progress towards those auspicious goals would begin in 2005, when Israel got out of the way in Gaza. Hamas had other ideas. Now, twenty one years later, Gazans should be given the chance to de-radicalize, build sound institutions, and develop a healthy political economy. The burden of proof is on them, and Israel should watch vigilantly but not get in the way if progress is being made. If it works in Gaza, and it might take the same half century that it took the Jews (and yes, let’s cease with the term Zionism which indeed has become worse than meaningless), it may spillover to the West Bank. As for Netanyahu, Diaspora Jews, and Israel’s shortcomings see: davidchinitz.substack.com
Thank you for reading and for engaging seriously. One small correction first: I am not arguing even-steven, and the essay says so explicitly in the passage where I write that the scale, the state power, and the body count are not the same and that I am not making that argument. I am making the narrower one about the logic of collective punishment. The asymmetries are real and I am not interested in flattening them. I am interested in not letting them justify a logic that has only ever made things worse.
Where I do agree with you, fully, is on Netanyahu and on the cabinet of fanatics around him, who I think have done more damage to the long-term safety of Jewish people in Israel and in the diaspora than any of Israel's external enemies have managed in seventy-seven years, and I think the historical reckoning will eventually catch up to that. We are on the same page there.
Where I would push back, gently, is on the framing that puts the burden of proof on Gazans to de-radicalize before being permitted a future. I understand why the framing is appealing — it preserves a moral order in which the people who suffered the most violence on a given day are the ones whose conduct is on trial — but I do not think it survives close inspection, and I think reaching for it has been one of the things that has made the last twenty years harder, not easier. The burden of proof in any negotiation belongs to the party with the most power, because they are the only party in a position to actually deliver anything. That is true in 2005 and it is true now. I do not think this is a disagreement we are going to resolve in a comment thread, and I am not going to try. But I wanted to name the place where I cannot follow you, because I do not want my agreement on the Netanyahu point to be read as agreement on the framing point. They are different questions and I want to keep them separate.
Thank you again for reading carefully enough that this kind of exchange is possible.
Thanks for your considered reply. To clarify, I didn’t mean the burden of proof is on the Palestinians in order for them to be granted hope. As I’ve written, one of Netanyahu’s gross sins is not to have used his “great” rhetorical skills to stress that, for example, the Abraham Accords could redound to the benefit of the Palestinians instead of practically gloating over those accords having sidelined the Palestinian issue. I meant that once granted hope, the Gazans would bear the burden of proof to bring that hope to fruition.
David, that is a meaningful clarification and it does narrow the gap considerably. The Netanyahu-and-the-Abraham-Accords point is exactly right, and the gloating is one of the parts of the last several years that I think historians are going to be cruelest about. He had a real opening to braid the Palestinian question into the regional normalization story, and he chose instead to use the normalization to bury the question, and the cost of that choice is going to keep compounding for a generation.
On the narrower point you are actually making — that once hope is on the table, Gazans would bear the burden of bringing it to fruition — I can meet you most of the way. Any people, given a real opening, has work to do to make something of it, and the work is theirs to do because nobody else can do it for them. That much I agree with. Where I would still hold a small line is on the word "burden," because in the framing as you originally wrote it the burden was being asked to come first, before the hope, and burdens that come before hope tend to function as gatekeeping rather than as responsibility. Once the hope is real and the conditions for building are actually in place, I am with you that the building is theirs to do. The order of operations is the part I needed to hear you on, and you have given me the version I can stand next to.
Thank you for clarifying. This is the kind of exchange that actually moves something, and I do not get many of them.
Mo, sending thanks and respect for your wise words, from a mixed town in Israel where some Jews and some Arabs / Palestinians are trying to build a shared society together.
James, thank you. TBH and IMHO the mixed towns are where the actual future is being built, by the people who are already doing the daily work of figuring out how two communities live in the same place without flattening each other. I think about that work often and I think the people doing it do not get nearly enough credit for what they are holding together.
Sending real respect back to you and to the people you are doing it with.
What a treasure that there are people like you who can hold competing truths fiercely and see our crazy, chaotic and contradictory world in all its messy complexity. I'm sure you come in for more than your share of excoriation for refusing to flatten out these lumpy complexities (it's so much easier to be lazy), but from me you'll get only admiration and appreciation. Thank you, Mo. I don't know you personally (yet), but you feel like a friend.
Wow. Just beautiful. I laughed the first few times you stopped and defused a possible boogeyman argument in grey - you saw them coming and batted them out of the ballpark. This Jew is glad to live in a country with you.
It’s basically picking your way very slowly through a minefield. :)
https://substack.com/@lottiemc/note/c-243637465?r=2f4nt4&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
A really powerful, and beautifully articulated piece, Mo. I hope many people read it, take stock of it, and act accordingly. The world would be a better place if they did.
Thank you, Jamie. From your mouth to the door of the sky, as we say in Arabic. :)
I love that the Arabic saying is “from your mouth to the door of the sky.” You probably know that we Jews say “from your mouth to God's ear” and I extra love that they are almost the same thing. We are cousins.
Deborah… from my novel (which I am trying to find an agent for):
https://substack.com/@lottiemc/note/c-243637465?r=2f4nt4&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Yes, very powerful and clearly written. And you are very correct about the laziness of those who just parrot and complain (among other lazy things!).
Very well said Jamie 👍🏽
Mo, a profound thank you for saying the words that I have been unable to articulate for so long, because of the cruel binary terminology being imposed on us, that has lost its meaning completely. My voice has been sabotaged by it. The language has also been co-opted and weaponized by Christian fascists to fan the flames of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hatred and aid in the tearing down of our universities and our democracy. It is poison.
This progressive Jew was taught by my Yiddish-speaking peace activist grandma that “Never again means for no one”. My Jewish identity is exclusively linked to the principle of defending human rights and fighting the oppression and subjugation of ALL peoples, and it has guided my actions since my youth. My Jewish identity is in complete shambles right now. Our multi-generational family stopped celebrating Passover 3 years ago because we could not reconcile with celebrating Jewish liberation while Palestinians were being cruelly flattened.
In 2015 I travelled to West Bank to listen and bear witness to the extreme cruelty of the settlements. A few days later I toured Yad Vashem. I have never recovered from the mindfuck of seeing those juxtaposed horrors. Everything you say, I feel it in my bones.
Sending you love, sister. May we all live free and in peace.
So aside from complaining about your discomfort as a Moslem and desire to be loved and accepted, what are YOU doing about the vicious violence of your Islamic brothers?
Perhaps you are new to Mo's writing. Anybody who has followed him for a while knows how consistently he speaks out against anti-Semitism. I don't hear a whole ton of Arab voices doing so, and I respect the courage of each of them who do so. Those that I am aware of, I follow, and they set a morally upright example inside their culture and to all of us, with their voices.
And yet the equation of Jew hatred to dislike of Muslims is a distortion. Muslims were never persecuted like Jews were, except perhaps by other Moslems, and certainly not by Jews. Yes there is hatred of Arabs in Israel, but some, and yet coexistence thrives, despite the heart breaking conditions that stimulate the hatred.
Likewise. I grew up in an activist family marching and working for indigenous rights, women’s rights, justice for refugees, peace etc. Always because of our Judaism and history of oppression. Every Passover the story was read and the message was because of this we fight for freedom - for ourselves and for the whole world.
Watching our rich and beautiful history weaponised and made so ugly and brutal in Israel is horrific. To feel the lurch to the right of the Jewish community in Australia even before Bondi breaks my heart.
Oh another “good Jew” who wants to be ever so “nice” so he denies his own people’s experience while supporting poor victimised Moslems. I love the Bundist Yiddish speaking Jews but there is such a thing as denying your own heritage, giving it away and allowing others to trivialise it . Just a reminder, “nice, good “ Jews like you were also exterminated in Auschwitz, likely the majority of them.
The problem with “good Jews” like you is that you are very spoiled and have no idea, just really cannot fathom what victims if Islamists suffer, in Israel, in Iran, in Africa. You are like those government officials who were told about what was going on in concentration camps but simply did not believe it.
Very sad that Moslems feel Uncomfortable these days after Islamic terrorism started in the west (9/11 fir instance) but unlike the Jews who were persecuted for merely existing, the Moslem discomfort stems from actual activities of Moslems, in following if their religious teachings
So simple, and yet…sigh. I beg you to keep putting this out there anyway, however dense our species might be.
Thank you, Carol! I will do my best :)
Is there an emoji for a standing ovation ? You earned it. Thank you.
Thank you, Rabbi. Much love to you and yours.
Mo, this is in the, like, top three things I’ve read on this, maybe ever. I think you have at least 2 and maybe 3 different essays here; there’s the one on conflation; there’s the one on words and their meanings, or lack thereof, and the communal deafness, conflict, and pigeon holing that results; and there’s the one on committing to the humanity of all peoples, refusal to “flatten,” in your words, and to holding the inevitable complexity that such a commitment requires. And, with apologies for the unsolicited suggestion, maybe by breaking them up in this way more people would actually read it. It’s so worth it. Thank you.
Oh and maybe another one on shibboleths, although maybe Smith already did that.
Leslie, thank you. That is a generous read and a useful one. You are not the first person to tell me there are two or three essays braided in here, and I think you are right — I wrote it as one because I needed all of it to land in the same breath, but I can see the case for letting each piece breathe on its own. Something to think about for the next round. Thank you for taking the time to say so, and for reading it the way you did.
I love that you’ve combined them all into one super powerful piece - that honestly needs to be seen by the people in power both politically and leading all sorts of institutions worldwide.
But I think there’s a case to ALSO break them up into the 3-4 different ones, maybe between them it might just reach a few more eyes and minds, and that’s what matters.
I think Leslie made a great point. People who get fixated on one point may not read the whole thing, and that would be a great loss. Giving each section space to breathe would also give people who get stuck space to process that and possibly respond before reading more.
I shared this with fellow Jews who oppose Jewish supremacy and support Palestinian liberation (a wordy and more specific replacement for non- or anti-Zionist) and I was surprised at their intense opposition to your saying that flattening one people is the same as flattening another - “there’s no acknowledgment of the power differential!”, “false equivalency!”, and I think my response will be that I’m sure you have a strong analysis and that’s not the point of this essay as I understand it. We all already know about the injustice and power differentials. You’re addressing something that goes more to the root of what it means to remain human in the midst of it.
Yes hearing almost word for word statements about false equivalency from both camps directed at each other just leaves me weary and frustrated. It’s part of why I love Mo’s ability to articulate it so clearly for everyone to see.
And why there’s so much resistance!
Thank you for sharing this beautiful work. I'm palestinian and deeply resonate with all of it... only in my case when I was 16 years old, I changed my name to a white name to escape the racism. In the last 2 years. I had worked through enought of my trauma to be brave enough to start revealing who I really am. It really does all come down to humanity for all.
And how you brilliantly explained the nuances hopefully helps people to understand so you cannot persecute an entire group of people because of the extremists, bias, etc.
Cindy!!! Sister, Thank you for the kindness. Sending you all the love!
I'm feeling it and grateful brother. Thank you for being a remarkable voice amongst the noise
Another great essay. Peoples’ view of the conflict (and others, for that matter) have gone from a grayscale image with 4096 shades of gray to one of only black and white. We’re cursed with leaders who behave like social media algorithms brought to life, amplifying the most extreme views to enhance their “brand.” Yeats was prescient with his line “the best lack all conviction/while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” This is one reason that I think organisations like Standing Together and A Land for All are so important—they don’t treat the conflict as a zero-sum game. At the end of the day, millions of people from both camps need to find a modus vivendi. Oh—one small edit: the finance minister you refer to didn’t just refer to himself as a “proud fascist”—it was a “proud fascist homophobe.” Inspiring, isn’t he? Thanks again for your writing.
COULDN’T POSSIBLY AGREE MORE…. I think Land for All is the way and am on the National steering committee for Friends of Standing Together USA…
This may be the most eloquent, honest, balanced, and important essay I have ever read. Thank you.
Thank you, Tammy!
I feel like you are the only person who has taken all the things crowding my own mind and heart and arranged them in ways I have been unable (or scared) to and I am grateful for your words.
this world is lucky to have you.
You are super kind! Thank you! Genuinely grateful for your words.
Dear Mo,
Thank you for this piece.
It expressed very clearly the world view of "live and let live" that I hold very close to my heart. I live my life according to that principle.
I'm a UK-born Jewish Israeli almost about to mark 40 years living here. Unbelievably.
Over the past two and a half years my life, as well as innumerable others have been upended, swept in a torrent of incredulity built upon the abhorrent things we have seen humans do to each other along with the self-interested ways in which our leaders have operated and continue to operate.
I grew up as an optimist, perhaps a naive optimist, living my life in, what I considered a liberal democracy - of course, with its problems, but a functioning society. I actually was born into a golden age of peace in the beginning of the 1960s in London in which war and conflict were distant and obscure. As a kid and young adult there, I thought that this was the way of the world. It isn't. It never has been.
These past years have jaded that optimism and left me, despite demonstrations, remonstrations and calling for a modicum of societal and political normalcy, feeling helpless and hopeless.
It is all so sad.
In the description you wrote about yourself in your Substack, you said, "I write and rant about stuff". I happened upon your post as it was shared by a lifelong friend of mine, a Jewish, ex-Israeli who, despite the fact that he, you and I all are basically espousing the same thing, his actual rants and tirades have made it almost impossible for me to continue a relationship with him, let alone a conversation.
This, too, is so sad.
I'd never heard the word shibboleth before I read your piece. But yes, it rightly anchors everything you are talking about as a convenient, maybe even trendy vehicle for disavowing another, robbing them of their agency and voice. How may we find ways to embrace the other as different? How may we find the courage to challenge our narrowmindedness?
All that, I get. Even if my friend would calm down a bit and enable a normal conversation, what then?
I understand and espouse the fact that we must hold two or more mutually exclusive ideas, thoughts, truths, values, behaviours at once. Once we do that, what do we do with that?
Let's say that in the next elections in Israel, Netanyahu is defeated. Let's say that in his place comes someone who is willing to take a different approach - not that much different, because, as you say, the population of Israel is wounded and hurting following the massacres of October 7th. But at least someone who has the courage to approach this conflict differently. Let's just say.
By itself, this cannot bring about change. You need an interlocutor from the other side too. A courageous individual who will also be willing to stand up to the powers and emotions and tragedies that their people are suffering.
Your piece raised before me a mirror, expertly and insightfully written, reflecting an ideal. How do we translate that ideal to reality? Real reality.
I'm sad to say that I'm still at a loss.
Dear David,
Thank you for this. I am writing to you from inside the same room you are describing, and I do not have a fix either. I just needed to put the floor down somewhere, even though I do not know how to build the house yet.
The part about your friend is the part I am sitting with hardest. I have lost friends the same way, and the thing that makes it unbearable is exactly what you named — that you and he are mostly saying the same thing, and the difference between you is the temperature of the saying. Tirades make people unreachable, even when the tirade is on the side of the angels. I wish I knew what to do about that. I do not.
What I can offer, which is small but real, is that you are not the only one in this room. There are more of us than the public conversation makes it seem, and the quiet ones are still showing up. Forty years in. I cannot imagine the weight. Thank you for writing to me, and for still being in the room.
Yes Mo, we can only do what we can do. And one of those things is, as you say, to be in the room.
Grateful for the cohabitation!
( It's Neil, by the way! :) )
Hey, Neil! 🙏❤️🙏
Dear David,
Thank you for this. I am writing to you from inside the same room you are describing, and I do not have a fix either. I just needed to put the floor down somewhere, even though I do not know how to build the house yet.
The part about your friend is the part I am sitting with hardest. I have lost friends the same way, and the thing that makes it unbearable is exactly what you named — that you and he are mostly saying the same thing, and the difference between you is the temperature of the saying. Tirades make people unreachable, even when the tirade is on the side of the angels. I wish I knew what to do about that. I do not.
What I can offer, which is small but real, is that you are not the only one in this room. There are more of us than the public conversation makes it seem, and the quiet ones are still showing up. Forty years in. I cannot imagine the weight. Thank you for writing to me, and for still being in the room.
What I know is the world has been ok with dead Jews since the dawn of time. Justifying my existence for over half a century stopped on 10/7, but the 54 years of my existence prior always produced a head tilt, followed by do you support something a world away. What I also know is there are 1.8 BILLION self proclaimed Muslim people around the world and 15 MILLION Jewish people. 50+ predominantly Muslim countries and one Jewish country. I don’t think any country should be religious. I want everyone to have a roof over their head, food on the table, healthcare, education, and to live in safety. But I’m done justifying my existence regardless.
I hear you, and I am not going to ask you to justify anything to me.
The whole point of the essay was that you should not have to, and the fact that you have spent fifty-four years being asked to is exactly the cost I was trying to name.
You are done. You should be done. Nobody who has been doing this for that long owes anyone another round of it, and certainly not me.
The list you wrote at the end — roof, food, healthcare, education, safety, for everyone — is the same list I am working from. We are on the same floor. I am sorry the world has spent your entire life making you stand on it alone.
Thank you for reading, and for telling me where you have landed. I am glad you are still here.
You are a green flag 💕
I’m glad I read this. I can’t even press like on it because the land really does need to be divided between two sovereign nation states at least until active peace is learned and probably until the world is very different in how it conceives of Jews in an unconscious civilizational-memetic sort of way. Jews cant be really safe without a state regardless of the “but they aren’t safe now, especially in Israel” arguments; the nakba is not meaningfully different as such for a 1940s population that lost their homes in a conflict; connected to this, Antizionism has its own triumphalist and pretty much inevitably Jew-oppressing logic that cannot be disentangled from claims of a right of return to Israel proper; etcetera, etcetera, Im not actually trying to convince you; but yes, Kumbaya progressivism is still fatally naive and will get more people killed than almost any alternative because the way these things works is that it emboldens the Ben Gvirs and Sinwars that much more when the failures happen; and even if my diagnosis is only 50% likely (and is it really responsible to estimate lower than 75?) to ask Israeli and in this case by extension all Jews to take that risk given all of what I just said is simply not ok, no matter how agitated post and anti-Zionist zoomer Jews are about their progressive purity bonafides in a world that is not the one they not only wish it was, but are so constantly incentivized against ever seeing differently.
All that said: you’re trying, you’re really really trying in realms where most people on either side don’t. You get what it means to actually be pro-human instead of just huffing media fumes in the key of humanistic outrage, putting on your war chimp tribal colours, and becoming one more awful part of the problem. And when I use that analogy I very much do not just mean the pro-Palestinians who do this.
I hope your binationalism doesn’t win because it’s inevitably a greater injustice than the lesser injustices still available. But as far as your humanistic clarity - more of this, please, among everyone.
Thank you for this. You are arguing in the register I wish more of this conversation lived in, which is the one where you can disagree with me on the political form and still see what I am actually trying to do, and I see what you are actually trying to do too.
For what it is worth, I am genuinely uncertain about the form. The essay is deliberately agnostic on it because I do not think I am smart enough to know which arrangement actually delivers the floor I am insisting on, and I am suspicious of anyone on any side who is sure.
Your case for two states is the serious version of the case, and I take it seriously, and I am not going to pretend the risks you are naming are not real risks. They are. I just do not know how to weigh them against the risks on the other side, and I am wary of any version of certainty here that has not been earned by living inside the consequences.
What I am sure of is the floor, and you and I are standing on the same floor even if we disagree about the house we want to build on it. That is more than most exchanges in this conversation manage, and I am grateful for it.
If everyone is guilty no one is guilty. If it’s even-steven there is no resolution. Of course there are good and evil people on both sides. But how many? Islamophobia and antisemitism are not equal perversions or inversions. The horrid hill boys on the West Bank are not as horrid or as influential as Hamas and the Moslem Brotherhood. Nonetheless, I want exactly the same things you do. I was hoping progress towards those auspicious goals would begin in 2005, when Israel got out of the way in Gaza. Hamas had other ideas. Now, twenty one years later, Gazans should be given the chance to de-radicalize, build sound institutions, and develop a healthy political economy. The burden of proof is on them, and Israel should watch vigilantly but not get in the way if progress is being made. If it works in Gaza, and it might take the same half century that it took the Jews (and yes, let’s cease with the term Zionism which indeed has become worse than meaningless), it may spillover to the West Bank. As for Netanyahu, Diaspora Jews, and Israel’s shortcomings see: davidchinitz.substack.com
Thank you for reading and for engaging seriously. One small correction first: I am not arguing even-steven, and the essay says so explicitly in the passage where I write that the scale, the state power, and the body count are not the same and that I am not making that argument. I am making the narrower one about the logic of collective punishment. The asymmetries are real and I am not interested in flattening them. I am interested in not letting them justify a logic that has only ever made things worse.
Where I do agree with you, fully, is on Netanyahu and on the cabinet of fanatics around him, who I think have done more damage to the long-term safety of Jewish people in Israel and in the diaspora than any of Israel's external enemies have managed in seventy-seven years, and I think the historical reckoning will eventually catch up to that. We are on the same page there.
Where I would push back, gently, is on the framing that puts the burden of proof on Gazans to de-radicalize before being permitted a future. I understand why the framing is appealing — it preserves a moral order in which the people who suffered the most violence on a given day are the ones whose conduct is on trial — but I do not think it survives close inspection, and I think reaching for it has been one of the things that has made the last twenty years harder, not easier. The burden of proof in any negotiation belongs to the party with the most power, because they are the only party in a position to actually deliver anything. That is true in 2005 and it is true now. I do not think this is a disagreement we are going to resolve in a comment thread, and I am not going to try. But I wanted to name the place where I cannot follow you, because I do not want my agreement on the Netanyahu point to be read as agreement on the framing point. They are different questions and I want to keep them separate.
Thank you again for reading carefully enough that this kind of exchange is possible.
Thanks for your considered reply. To clarify, I didn’t mean the burden of proof is on the Palestinians in order for them to be granted hope. As I’ve written, one of Netanyahu’s gross sins is not to have used his “great” rhetorical skills to stress that, for example, the Abraham Accords could redound to the benefit of the Palestinians instead of practically gloating over those accords having sidelined the Palestinian issue. I meant that once granted hope, the Gazans would bear the burden of proof to bring that hope to fruition.
David, that is a meaningful clarification and it does narrow the gap considerably. The Netanyahu-and-the-Abraham-Accords point is exactly right, and the gloating is one of the parts of the last several years that I think historians are going to be cruelest about. He had a real opening to braid the Palestinian question into the regional normalization story, and he chose instead to use the normalization to bury the question, and the cost of that choice is going to keep compounding for a generation.
On the narrower point you are actually making — that once hope is on the table, Gazans would bear the burden of bringing it to fruition — I can meet you most of the way. Any people, given a real opening, has work to do to make something of it, and the work is theirs to do because nobody else can do it for them. That much I agree with. Where I would still hold a small line is on the word "burden," because in the framing as you originally wrote it the burden was being asked to come first, before the hope, and burdens that come before hope tend to function as gatekeeping rather than as responsibility. Once the hope is real and the conditions for building are actually in place, I am with you that the building is theirs to do. The order of operations is the part I needed to hear you on, and you have given me the version I can stand next to.
Thank you for clarifying. This is the kind of exchange that actually moves something, and I do not get many of them.
My thanks to you as well and I feel we are close to, if not actually, on the same page. Go well
Mo, sending thanks and respect for your wise words, from a mixed town in Israel where some Jews and some Arabs / Palestinians are trying to build a shared society together.
James, thank you. TBH and IMHO the mixed towns are where the actual future is being built, by the people who are already doing the daily work of figuring out how two communities live in the same place without flattening each other. I think about that work often and I think the people doing it do not get nearly enough credit for what they are holding together.
Sending real respect back to you and to the people you are doing it with.
What a treasure that there are people like you who can hold competing truths fiercely and see our crazy, chaotic and contradictory world in all its messy complexity. I'm sure you come in for more than your share of excoriation for refusing to flatten out these lumpy complexities (it's so much easier to be lazy), but from me you'll get only admiration and appreciation. Thank you, Mo. I don't know you personally (yet), but you feel like a friend.
Honored by your work, Avril! IRL one of these days :) Much love to you, sister!