The Hazards of (Unconditional) Love
The last few months have been strange. As an introvert knucklehead who used to be able to write with the comfortable freedom of no readers, having a piece of writing go viral is a very disorienting experience.
Because when no one is really reading your stuff, you can write whatever you want without worrying about how it lands.
Suddenly ‘having an audience’ is crippling for me because, like most people, I want to be liked, but saying the things one wants and needs to say when one is worried about how they’ll be perceived is kinda paralyzing.
In the end, I’ve realized that I can’t write FOR other people; I can only write FOR myself. My only responsibility is to state my ‘truth’ (insofar as anyone’s subjective perspective can be called anything like ‘truth’) and let the chips fall where they may.
That Little Souvenir Of A Terrible Year
It has been a brutal fucking year for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Even in the context of the decades of brutal fucking years in this brutal fucking conflict, this year rises head and shoulders above a crowded field.
It is a year in which I have quite often found myself in a lonely position…
…because I share in the mourning and condemnation of senseless death on all sides of this latest sideshow carnival of carnage and suffering in this stupidest and most epically disastrous of probate cases.
…because I can hold the murders of every innocent as callous, senseless, and inhumane without having to first check that their histories, politics, religion, citizenship, or ethnicities align with mine.
It is a year in which I have found myself accused of both sidesism… of being a tool of the Israeli government (Fuck Netanyahu all the way to hell)… of being a Hamas sympathizer (Fuck everyone in Hamas all the way to hell)… of being an antisemite… of being too-Western and assimilated… of not being Palestinian enough… etc., etc., etc.
You name it, I’ve been called it. Trust me.
My reality is simple.
For me, each life lost, whether Israeli or Palestinian, is a tragedy.
For me, each family torn apart by violence, regardless of their background, deserves our empathy and compassion.
For me, every death… every injury… every hateful act extends the conflict… some by minutes… some by hours… many by decades.
I’m not morally superior to any of you; I’m not better, more ethical, or more aware. I feel the same pangs and tribal pulls. I feel the same knee-jerk hatred and anger… but
It may just be that I am more bone-weary tired of this conflict than most.
It has been going on for my entire life, and what I know is that there is no path forward that doesn’t begin with a mutual recognition of our shared humanity.
There’s no path forward that doesn’t begin with a genuine understanding of the reality that grief knows no borders and that pain doesn’t discriminate based on nationality or faith.
There’s no path forward without learning to see the faces of our own loved ones in the face of every single victim of this senseless conflict, regardless of their origins or tribe.
So yeah. Feel free to call me anything that makes it easier for you to get through the night. I literally could not care less. I just want the suffering to stop. All of it. Not just for Palestinians. Not just for Israelis. All of it. For everyone.
You Don’t Know How It Feels
It’s been a couple of weeks since Hamas murdered some of its Israeli hostages. Since their needless, horrible deaths (and since October 7th, in general), I’ve seen pro-Israel folks rightfully mourning these deaths and laying blame on Hamas (and its allies) and (to some limited extent) on the Netanyahu government.
It’s been a year of the death toll in Gaza grinding up to the tens and tens of thousands of needless, horrible deaths. And it’s been a year of watching pro-Palestine folks rightfully mourning those deaths and laying blame on the Netanyahu government (and its allies) and (to a far more limited extent) on Hamas.
And here’s the thing: in a vacuum, both views are completely right, and proper, and justified, and utterly understandable.
And it’s hard for any compassionate human to criticize the outrage and grief each side expresses and the feelings of sadness and mourning they are having to deal with.
My issue is not that either side is wrong to feel these feelings.
My issue is that neither side has realized that the only way out of this conflict is to understand that the feelings you have for your tribe are mirrored, just as fervently and just as genuinely, by those you oppose (but on behalf of their tribe not yours).
My issue is that each side’s inability to see this and, more critically, understand this blindspot keeps the conflict grinding on and on.
On the pro-Israel side, there is a glaring absence of concern or empathy for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians in both the West Bank and Gaza, those held in ‘administrative detention,’ and the many thousands whose lives have been lost or destroyed in the crossfire of this stupid conflict.
Seen through an Israeli lens of selective empathy, their lives are less valuable, their deaths are less tragic, and that same selective empathy lens allows for the justification of these actions as a cost of survival or as retribution for Israeli suffering. It is a point of view that, were it to be directed at Israelis, they would find it utterly unhinged and inhumane.
On the pro-Palestinian side, there is a glaring absence of concern or empathy for the Israeli hostages, the Israeli civilians killed in terror attacks, and the many others whose lives have been destroyed in the crossfire of this stupid conflict.
Seen through a Palestinian lens of selective empathy, these Israeli lives are less valuable, their deaths less tragic, and that same selective empathy lens allows for the rationalization of those deaths as a cost of resistance or as retribution for Palestinian suffering. It is a point of view that, were it to be directed at Palestinians, they would find it utterly unhinged and inhumane.
Each side has become fluid and adept at the dehumanization and devaluing of the other in a mirrored and flipped selective empathy that only serves to perpetuate the endless spinning of this, the world’s worst fucking Merry-go-Round, where retribution follows outrage follows retribution, on and on and on until the end of fucking time.
Each side focuses solely on their losses and justifies the other’s suffering while the body count continues to rise and the sadness and vengefulness escalate.
Pro-Israeli zealots devalue Palestinian suffering.
Pro-Palestinian zealots devalue Israeli suffering.
Meanwhile, those in charge rub their hands with glee as the perennial conflict continues to cement their grip on power by adding more dead to the butcher’s bill while idiots argue about God, Bronze Age haplotypes, what words to use, and who got here first.
It would be funny if it weren’t so serious. In a conflict where the only solution is each side’s acknowledgment of the other’s traumas, fears, rights, hopes, and dreams, each side is steadfastly committed to absolutely-positively-never-ever-in-a-million-fucking-years-and-not-in-your-wildest-dreams doing that.
Two people are engulfed in flames. Each has a fire extinguisher they know they can only use on the other, but each is purposely going out of their way to avoid spraying the other.
Each side, and their many allies and supporters, trade barbs and policies and aggressions in a fucked-up stock market that decides the values of individual or collective lives, picks whose life deserves grief, who gets to be a victim, and who is relegated to the realm of tragic inevitability.
Is it “brave Israeli soldiers” versus “no innocents in Gaza,” or is it “brave resistance fighters” versus “Zionist Colonial settler oppressors.”?
Are you Team Kaffiyeh or Team Kippah?
This mutual indifference to the other’s suffering allows both sides to continue the cycle of violence without fully grappling with its human cost. It nurtures and allows narratives that justify the morally unthinkable and reprehensible because it asks us to believe that the suffering of one people is more worthy of our sorrow or that certain deaths warrant more space in our collective hearts than the other.
It’s a trap.
It’s a dead-end turn-off to nothing but more conflict, more loss, and so much more grief.
We must, both peoples, come to a shared recognition of our shared humanity.
We must, both peoples, learn to mourn every lost life, regardless of nationality or faith.
We must learn, both peoples, to see the faces and names of our own children in the faces and names of every victim, whether they’re from Tel Aviv or Ramallah.
When we learn to weep for all the dead…
When we can feel the loss of every life with equal weight…
Then, we can move forward in the only possible way: together.
The Hazards of (Unconditional) Love
The knee-jerk instinct to protect “my people,” twists and distorts what should be a universal ethic of care.
This “ride or die” mentality—where we defend our own uncritically and shield them from accountability—is toxic, morally corrosive, and utterly self-defeating.
Love for your community is NOT “never allowing that community to be questioned or held accountable.”
The extremism that festers on all sides of this conflict thrives and grows unchecked precisely because of this mindset.
Whether it’s strains of Islamic fundamentalism, the dehumanization of Israelis and Jews, or the glorification of violent resistance and martyrdom in Palestinian culture…
Whether it’s strains of Jewish supremacy, the oppression and dehumanization of Arabs, and the rationalization of vengeful violence against them in Israeli culture…
…both sides are shielded by a near-impenetrable tribalism that conflates love with unquestioning loyalty.
There is a false dichotomy, a notion that we must either stand with Israel or stand with Palestine, that shrinks the conversation to specious binaries, which inevitably strip away the humanity of everyone involved, diminishing both sides till we are both nothing but the bloodlusting monsters that we each imagine the other to be.
It narrows our empathy and turns our attention to the abstractions of borders, governments, and ideologies rather than the very real people who are living and dying in the crossfire.
You. Don’t. Have. To. Pick. A. Side.
To me, picking a side in this conflict is a moral cop-out. It’s the easier and less dissonant path that allows us to absolve ourselves of deeper responsibility—framing our solidarity with one nation or one group as a form of righteousness. It’s a righteousness that is a comforting falsity… a dangerously seductive mirage.
To me, if your solidarity doesn’t extend across borders, cultures, and religious lines, then you are failing to stand for the only thing that matters in this conflict: humanity.
And yeah, I get it… of course I do.
There is an all-too-human tendency, in moments of crisis, to drop into a defensive crouch and protect the tribe, but I would argue that we too often forget to ask the essential question: Who exactly is my tribe?
Is it a shared religion, shared ethnicity, or shared national identity that defines them? Or is your tribe simply other human beings struggling to survive and find dignity in a world that seems hell-bent on denying it to them?
This is where the failure lies — when we decide that “our tribe” stops at national borders or ethnic divisions, we fail everyone.
Supporting Israel at the expense of Palestinian lives or supporting Palestine while ignoring the suffering of Israelis is not only a failure of empathy but a complete abandonment of any meaningful commitment to peace.
The mothers mourning their lost children in Gaza and Tel Aviv and the fathers burying their families in Hebron and Haifa are equally shattered, and their grief is equally profound.
And yet, somehow, we’ve allowed ourselves to believe that certain griefs carry more weight than others, and that is a moral catastrophe.
The sad reality is that the various systems of power, be they Israeli or Palestinian, are ab ovo built on a perpetuation and ‘monetization’ of conflict and stasis and eternal division.
Many are convinced by those ‘in charge’ that peace is impossible unless one side “wins” over the other.
And that is the falsehood that stands in the way of resolution, powering the heart of the conflict and perpetuated by those in power.
The endless cycle of violence benefits only those who seek to cement their grips on power while the people suffer, and if you’re supporting those systems unquestioningly, you’re supporting the violence that destroys lives, homes, and futures.
So Far Away
There’s another deliciously unhelpful layer of complexity that makes everything that much harder: the weird, near-blind, and uncritical support for one tribe over the other that seems to manifest most starkly outside the region.
Many pro-Israelis are more fiercely defensive of Israel’s government policies than Israelis themselves. While Israelis are out in the streets protesting for a ceasefire or demanding accountability from their leaders, pro-Israel Americans accuse other Americans calling for a ceasefire of being antisemitic (even when those voices are fellow Jews or even Israelis who are calling for a path to peace.)
It’s been ‘interesting,’ to say the least, watching one of my Israeli friends (someone who has worked on resolving this conflict for most of her life) get called out as an antisemitic and self-hating Jew by Josie from Indiana who isn’t “…Jewish but as a Christian woman…” is a committed Zionist (insofar as it’s an accelerator for the next Jesus World Tour, I assume).
While Palestinians on the ground protest both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority for their corruption, maximalism, violence, and their many, many failings, pro-Palestinian supporters abroad are more maximalist than on-the-ground hardliners in their demands and are dismissive of any call for nuance or context.
It is insane to brand someone who does not join you in trying to rationalize Hamas (WTAF??) or its many horrific actions as “a pro-genocide colonialist baby-killer.”
As a Palestinian-American who moved to the US (from the Middle East) in adulthood and whose family is still largely in Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza, it is a near-hallucinogenic experience to be lectured on the rights of the Palestinian people and the righteousness of their struggle for liberation and self-determination by some dude named Chad who’s breaking in his new kaffiyeh while giving me chapter and verse on the politics and culture I grew up in.
“With respect,” as my teen likes to say when he delivers a crit, “chill with your shit, Josie, and kindly sit the fuck down, Chad. Neither of you is helping.”
The past year has made it incredibly clear to me that there are many who, far from the daily realities of violence, war, and occupation, feel the urge to be the most uncompromising in their support, but that’s an easy (if profoundly unhelpful decision).
Refusing to compromise is easy when you don’t have to live through the consequences of your intransigent maximalism.
For those on the ground where the stakes are very literally life and death, pragmatism is not a betrayal; it’s a necessity.
What is Love? (Baby, Don’t Hurt Me!)
True love isn’t actually unconditional. Blindly endorsing everything done in your name is reckless and (quite frankly) fucking nuts.
True love challenges, it confronts, and it refuses to let harm go unchecked. It is possible — necessary, even — to love your tribe while insistently demanding that they be better.
Love without accountability is just fanaticism in a prettier wrapper.
The only unconditional love that I can summon is a love for humanity. A love that demands that we reject the easy comfort of picking sides. A love that demands that we sit in the discomfort of complexity and the trauma of our ‘enemies’ to acknowledge that justice will never be achieved by blindly supporting one nation, one ethnicity, or one religion.
Tell Me What You Want. (What You Really Really Want.)
Do you want a dominant Israel? An Israel that is “secure”?
A nation reliant on military might, always living in fear and constantly bracing for the next attack? A nation that justifies its suppressions, oppressions, and policies on the grounds that it must protect itself from existential external threats? A dominant-religion state where dissent is crushed by the extremists in control, and under the sway of a narrative of conflict that justifies religious and political oppression, and where peace is built on hatred and violence?
Do you want a Palestine that is dominant? A Palestine that is “free” from occupation? A nation under the governance of those who see violence and intimidation as tools of control? A nation that justifies its suppressions, oppressions, and policies on the grounds that it must protect itself from existential external threats? A dominant-religion state where dissent is crushed by the extremists in control, and under the sway of a narrative of conflict that justifies religious and political oppression, and where peace is built on hatred and violence?
Because those really are the options… neither of these people is headed in the direction of liberal democracy. Neither of their current national aspirations is built on a commitment to tolerance, cooperation, and coexistence.
When you support one or the other side, these are the questions you should be reckoning with. Because it’s not just about abstract concepts of nations or co-religionists or ethnicities or tribes. It’s a decision to support systems of power that have failed both sides and continue day by day and minute by minute to fail both sides in ever more spectacularly deadly and bone-headedly stupid ways. That is what you are supporting with blind allegiance: a future where fear, hatred, and division continue to define every life in the region.
Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)
The path to peace, the only way to break this cycle, is to choose humanity first… to choose an unconditional love for people — all people — that transcends borders, flags, and ideologies.
This kind of love is not easy.
It is a love that demands accountability.
It is a love that demands that we challenge the structures of power.
It is a love that centers tolerance and works to de-escalate the existential stakes.
It’s a love that calls out error, fault, or immorality without checking to see if it’s delivered with a Hebrew or Arabic accent.
We must be willing to hold both Israel and Palestine to the same standards of morality, justice, and behavior.
We must demand that Israel stop the occupation, stop the violence, stop the expansion of settlements, and recognize the full humanity of the Palestinian people.
We must demand that Palestine’s leadership reject extremism, stop the violence, recognize the full humanity of the Israeli people, and work toward building a state that values the dignity and freedom of all its citizens.
Peace will never be achieved through dominance and oppression. You cannot build peace on a foundation of hatreds.
You cannot build peace by supporting one side over the other when assholes lead both sides, and both societies are, to some extent, under the sway of said assholes.
Peace will grow from the space where we find the grace to extend unconditional love only to humanity itself.
Peace will grow in the narrow and uncomfortable spaces where we finally embrace the difficult, uncomfortable work of holding everyone accountable.
Peace will grow from the light that allows us to recognize that the life of an Israeli innocent and the life of a Palestinian innocent are equally sacred–that Avi’s death is no more sad or senseless than Abdullah’s and that Dorit’s life is no more valuable than Dima’s.
It’s easy to pick one side or the other side.
It’s infinitely harder to pick humanity.
Let’s do the hard thing for a fucking change. Please.
(And In) The End (The Love You Make Is Equal To The Love You Take)
Yes. I get it. I am taking a fucking wrecking ball to the janky Jenga tower of complexities in this conflict.
Fuck the complexities. We’ve been living in the complexities for generations, and it has gotten us exactly nowhere. Well, nowhere good, at least.
We’ve spent literal generations playing semantic and historical games with biology, religion, migration patterns, historical claims, covenants with the various Gods, legal definitions, and UN resolutions. And we’ve gained nothing but more broken bodies, more trauma, more wrecked lives, more enmities, more orphaned children, more pain, more hatred, more suffering, and a set of two peoples who have probably never been further from a solution to the conflict.
Working backward from complexity has been useless. Utterly useless.
So while I studied all this shit in college and am happy to get into an academic conversation about the minutiae of history, I’m fairly fucking confident that you do not need a Ph.D to address issues of basic human dignity and empathy.
So yeah. I’m simplifying. But I’m doing it because before worrying about borders or refugees or sacred spaces, it’s good to focus on some (at least to me) pretty basic shit.
- An Israeli life is not worth one picogram more than a Palestinian life.
- A Palestinian life is not worth one picogram more than an Israeli life.
- Both peoples have the right to live without the fear of violence and annihilation.
- Pain is pain. Grief is grief. Suffering is suffering. They are not quantifiable. This is not a fucking sports game.
- You don’t win by suffering more, and you certainly don’t win by inflicting more suffering than you have received.
- No one's trauma justifies the infliction of trauma on anyone else.
The fact that this list of fairly obvious shit is even controversial (and I promise you that to the partisans in this conflict, it is!) is a big reason we are in this mess.
I’m not saying ignore the complexities. I’m not saying Kumbaya.
This isn’t about dumbing shit down. This is about stripping away the bullshit that we’ve used to treat each other like garbage. This is about remembering that between every slogan and every act of violence, there are human beings who just want to live their lives in peace.
In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
It’s long past time for us to find the simplicity on the other side of this mess.
It’s time we remembered that before we’re Israelis or Palestinians, we’re human beings.
And if we can’t start there, friends, then we are well and truly and utterly fucked.
_ _ _ _
With thanks to my friends who have helped me make my jumbled thoughts into something coherent, and with much to all of you for reading this.
Peace. Soon, I hope.
