Israel/Palestine is one subject that is almost impossible to address conscientiously and coherently. That is especially true at a time such as this, when our feeds and news outlets are flooded with images of atrocities, amplified at a scale that is only possible in a digital era. We also have friends and colleagues and loved ones of loved ones in Israel, and we have in the past closely followed civil society in Palestine, especially in Gaza, so it is an especially difficult time in which to feel or express anything but horror and grief.

So this essay is not one of my usual synthesized essays. Instead, reflecting the prismatic horrors of the moment, it is fractured. I don't think anything that claims synthesis right now, or a unitary point of view, is honest or even sensitive.

First fragment: the images of Jewish civilians held or bound in contexts of unmitigated sadism, against a background of formerly peaceful civilian streets, felt to me, as it did to many Jews no doubt, like images from 1939-1940 Europe, but colorized.

I wrote on Twitter that these images and the attacks across on Israel's southern border, would force a sea change among American Jews. We have had a good, safe, thriving 80 years or so, in the United States. So we've had the privilege of not being forced to vote at the level of survival.

I was struck that President Trump, whom I have been taught to hate, was welcomed incredibly warmly by religious Jews at a speaking event which I attended; these were Jews who remembered Europe, remembered the pogroms, remembered the time when "in every generation they rise up to destroy us". As I wrote in the linked essay, I'd been impressed to reflect on the fact that President Trump had moved the Israeli Capitol to Jerusalem, brought about the Abraham Accords - which did in fact create a fragile peace, which peace was good for Palestinians as well as for Israelis - - and that he had been an unshakable and very strong ally for Israel.