I wondered how long it would take her to block me on social media and she finally did. Her position on Israel & Gaza has been loud and strident. I knew that my belief that armed conflict and murder rarely solved anything irritated her. I pushed back a little on some of her more aggressive posts.

She felt that she knew more than me and truth is, she’d been in the thick of it, so she had far more experience. But she could not accept that others (including me) would not accept her view. Of course, we aren’t in her shoes. It looks different to us.

Not an easy road

Holding pacifist views is not easy or even clear some of the time, especially in the Middle East. It can seem naive, because sometimes there’s nothing you can do but fight back, as with Nazi Germany. That problem had to be eradicated and the wrong-doers held accountable in a big way. Capital punishment? Another dicey concept for me.  I just don’t think the State has the right to kill anyone. If they’re wrong just once, it’s too many times.

But that’s me. And let’s go back to the original topic.

I have Jewish friends. I have Palestinian friends. People I care about deeply, people whose lives, histories, and families are tied to a place that right now feels unbearably heavy with grief. Maybe it’s always felt that way.

The tribal bonds run very deep. I get it. So when something terrible happens in the Middle East, the world often demands that we pick a side instantly, loudly, and absolutely.

But the truth is that when you know and love people on both sides of a conflict, what you feel first is not certainty.

It’s sorrow.

Sorrow for innocent people who are afraid.
Sorrow for families who are grieving.
Sorrow for children growing up surrounded by fear, anger, and loss.

The pain is not abstract when it belongs to people you know. It has names. Faces. Stories. Generations of memory and trauma carried forward.

I don’t pretend to have answers to a conflict so complex and so old. What I do know is this: the suffering of one people does not erase the suffering of another. Compassion is not a limited resource. We can hold grief for many at once.

So these days, I’m holding my Jewish friends in my heart.
And my Palestinian friends too.

And I’m wishing, perhaps naively but sincerely, for a world where fewer parents have to bury children, where fewer children inherit hatred, and where humanity matters more than the lines we draw between us.

If only.