Choosing Sides

​“Which side are you on?” The question in the old ’60 song is repeated. It seems in this binary world, choosing sides is the name of the game. It starts early. Skin or shirt? College or work? Liberal or conservative? Gay or straight? Gender at birth or something different? The list goes on. Not to choose is also a choice, we’re told. You just can’t opt out, it seems...

Right now, we Americans are divided over the Israel-Gaza war. If you’re a Jewish American, the presumption is—even if you can’t stand Bibi Netanyahu—that you’ll support Israel. If you’re an Arab or Muslim American, by contrast, the expectation is that you’ll back the Palestinians in Gaza. Initially, everyone seemed to side with Israel who, their lauded intelligence and military prowess notwithstanding, were successfully invaded by Gazan commandos, with some 1,200 nearby Israeli citizens, including women, seniors, and children, brutally murdered and another 240 or so kidnapped back to Gaza. That October 7th, 2023 attack became Israel’s 9-11 moment. The country unleashed its vaunted military against the tiny, crowded territory of Gaza, with its two-plus million inhabitants, mostly civilians eking out a living, first with long-range artillery and what seemed like indiscriminate bombing. By the time of this writing, a day after Christmas, 2023, more than 20,000 Gazans had been killed, mainly civilians with an outsized proportion of women, old people, and children. Most of the population had fled their homes—homes no longer habitable, with hospitals reduced to unstocked morgues, with body bags crowding the floors. This unremitting retaliation had certainly gone well beyond an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

As a birthright American Jew, one might expect me to side with “my people.” Well, I do side with them, except my answer to the question “Who are your people?” is “all people everywhere, no exceptions.” I also side with peace rather than war and negotiation rather than revenge. In fact, my favorite Jewish heroes are Joseph, Ruth, Esther, and above all Jesus—the peacemakers, not the warriors. In addition to being a Jewish convert since graduate school to Christianity, I am a long-time (62-plus-year) practitioner of a Sufi-style spiritual practice founded by an Indonesian Muslim. As someone raised by an African-American woman, I subscribe to the Black sayings “God don’t make no junk” and “All God chillen got wings.” As human beings we are all A.I.T.s—Angels-in-Training. Alas, too often we act like conscripts in the Devil’s army.
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I can understand why the Hamas attackers did what they did. Most Palestinians in the Holy Land have been forced off their traditional lands and housed in effect in reservations. They are frustrated. I can also understand why the Israelis reacted as they did after October 7th. We can only pray for a two-state solution once the current conflict ends. And, more broadly, we can pray that an increasing number of the world’s people come to the realization that we are all really one people and should celebrate our differences as diverse approaches to life on Planet Earth.

Hands are for holding, not hitting.