It’s not easy being in the middle. Yet here I find myself taking the middle view of the conflict in the Middle East, the war between Israel and Palestine that has been going on since before I was born.
I feel like the Fiddler on the Roof, precariously balanced because I can’t go along with the extreme views on either side.
I can’t support the Israeli government that refuses to concede to, or even consider, the demands of the Palestinians. Not having ever been to Israel, I don’t know exactly what the conditions are there. But the information I have received about the deprivations under which the people of Gaza live, and the militarized society in which the Israelis live, both sound unacceptable to me.
I also believe the reports that Hamas puts Israel in constant jeopardy. Who can live decently when Hamas makes no secret that it wants to destroy Israel, and possibly all Jews?
Fighting has to stop on both sides. At some point, somebody has to dare to trust the other side. I think the people of Israel have to elect a better government. That government has to listen to the Palestinians, and Hamas has got to go.
I am sickened by the reports of anti-Jewish incidents around the world –even here in the U.S. I am repelled by the way that “progressives” have either been ignoring these incidents or implying that they are “staged” to gain sympathy for Israel and to divert the conversation from the “real” oppression: namely the Palestinians.
Which Side Is Right?
There is a war going on in social media, as my friends on the Left post photos of horrific mutilations and articles that blame Israel 100 per cent for everything, while my friends who are pro-Israel post articles in praise of the IDF.
I have seen editorials that sound equivocal. Most of what I read is slanted one way or the other. The factoids pile up. Accusations fly on both sides: Hamas uses human shields. No, they don’t. Hamas doesn’t use human shields but Israelis do. The U.S. funds Israel’s army, making it one of the strongest in the world (making it difficult to believe they would need to use children as shields). The Palestinian death toll exceeds the Israeli death toll. Therefore, they are the victims and Israel is the aggressor. Israel is only trying to defend itself. Hamas started it. Israel started it. If Jews are so religious, why do they do this kind of thing? Why are Jews in denial?
I was particularly upset recently by an email exchange with a pro-Palestine partisan who among other things suggested that my confusion was the result of a conflict between my Jewish upbringing and “what deep down [I] know is right.”
I am not letting anyone get a pass on putting down my upbringing. I am proud to be Jewish. That has nothing to do with the situation in the Middle East. As for “right,” does anyone have a handle on what “right?” is?
The definition of “Manichaeism” is that history is a struggle between forces of good and evil. To quote from an article in Psychology Today:
“In the rhetoric of evil, Manichaeism is harnessed for political purposes—one’s own group is claimed to embody the forces of good, and the opposing group, the forces of evil.”
I don’t think any group is all good or all evil. We are all a mixture of good and evil. We are not perfect.
Wars are stupid and unnecessary. We fight over what we perceive to be right. But our perceptions cannot ever be absolute. So I am in the middle. It’s not the most comfortable place to be, but it seems to me to be the only “right” place I can be.
