During Shabbat services last week at my Park Slope synagogue, my rabbi led a prayer for both the Israelis killed by Hamas and the innocent Palestinians “caught in the crossfire.” I admired my rabbi’s empathy for Gaza’s non-combatants, yet while reciting the prayer I could focus only on the Jewish victims.
Most of my wife’s family lives in Israel, and we visit them often. I feel a close bond to them, forged by personal chemistry, kinship, and my visceral attachment to their country.
I have long been active in organizations promoting a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I am embarrassed by Israeli settlements, which I blame for much of the discord between Jews and Arabs.
My revulsion at Israel’s mistreatment of West Bank Arabs focuses on my discomfort with Jews being responsible for this injustice, rather than on my sympathy for the Palestinian victims of Jewish extremism. I felt the same way during previous military campaigns in Gaza when it appeared innocents were unnecessarily killed. When Israel acts cruelly or callously I question the moral code underlying my heritage and my pride in being Jewish.
Despite my lack of empathy for Gaza’s civilians, I know intellectually that the killing of Jews and the killing of Palestinians are both tragedies. Adding to my inability to think of Gazans as “human animals” (as Israel’s defense minister called them) is that 20% of Israelis are Arab.
When I encounter Arabs in Israel, mostly as shopkeepers or taxi drivers, I remind myself that I am in their country. I find it morally repugnant that the last few governments have chipped away at the civil rights of their Palestinian citizens. Yet, my emotional tie to Israel comes from its association with Jews, not Arabs.
Some Jews dismiss sympathy for Palestinians by highlighting the antisemitism that pervades the Arab world. Many Gazans undoubtedly buy into Hamas’ hate-filled propaganda. But I can not judge the sentiments of people who have lost homes and loved ones to IDF assaults, even if I can justify the attacks as self-defense.
Besides, there are Palestinians who have preserved their humanity despite the decades of bloodshed and poisonous rhetoric. My daughter’s child care provider in Brooklyn was an Arab-Israeli, and a devout Muslim. The one time we discussed Israel she mournfully told me that she prayed for co-existence. Talking with her made me wish I knew more Palestinians, so I could relate to them better.
I do know many Jewish-Israelis. The more I have interacted with them, however, the more I realize how differently we see their country. While I view it as the embodiment of my religious heritage; they experience it as their home. I regard the streets and sidewalks of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as a kind of miracle; they see them as the mundane walkways of their everyday lives. I feel ethnic pride for Israel’s accomplishments; they express a deeply-felt patriotism, most obviously displayed in their near universal military service.
Adding to the gap between myself and Israeli Jews is that about half of them trace their roots to Arab countries, following customs foreign to most American Jews. While I worship at a Conservative synagogue every Saturday, non-Orthodox strains of Judaism (Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist) are barely represented in the Jewish state. These differences made me wonder whether the connection Jews like me felt to their Israeli counterparts was more than a function of imagination.
I live thousands of miles away from the Jewish state and my relatives were unharmed by Hamas’ attacks. Yet ever since 10/7 my household has been gripped by anxiety, anger and sadness.
Although diluted by distance, culture, language, and nationality, the invisible connective tissue linking one Jew to another — like the entangled particles of quantum physics that move in unison with each other, despite being light-years apart — forms into an unbreakable chain when Jews are murdered for being Jews.
The tribalism unleashed within me by this crisis has created an emotional myopia making me unable to absorb the suffering of people who have done Israel no harm. Israelis in uniform — which include my relatives — are my sole concern.
Still I keep thinking about the prayer my rabbi — a passionate Zionist — offered on Shabbat. Her sentiments reflected the best of Judaism — a humanistic outlook that is aspirational for me.
I want the Jewish state to be the light upon the nations, of biblical prophecy. In the horrible days ahead people like me will be challenged to hear the universal language of grief above the din of sectarian allegiance. My hope is that someday soon the prayers being recited in houses of worship everywhere will be said for all the victims of hate and indifference.
Krull is a lawyer and writer.
Ben Krull
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