GUEST ROOM | Palestinians and Israelis Both Deserve to Thrive

I have been a supporter and a critic of Israel nearly as long as I could spell its name. For nearly the whole of its existence, it has represented complexity to me. It is promise and hope, but also cruelty and idiocy. It is besieged but also discriminatory. It has a right to exist and to defend itself; it has an obligation to change and to reform itself. I defend it; I condemn it.

All this time, I thought I could maintain these positions, not simply in my head but in the world. But lately, it seems I am not sufficiently Zionist to be a Good Jew, and not sufficiently radical to be a Good Progressive. I thought I was both, but in a one-eyed world, the two-eyed are freaks.

The terms of membership have changed. I have long thought Palestinians should be free from the river to the sea. I have long believed Jews should enjoy the exact same freedom. Apparently, one is now forbidden to hold both thoughts simultaneously. I am quite sure I have not moved from my long-held positions, yet the ground on which I once stood has disappeared, and for months I have been falling.

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