Rising above binary thinking

As the Gaza War unfolds, people on all sides of the conflict are increasingly cleaving to partisan camps, shouting slogans: I stand with Israel, Free Palestine, Stop the Genocide, No to antisemitism.

This tidal wave of simplified advocacy masks the fact that many people are wrestling with ambivalent feelings about both sides of the conflict.

The official line run by Jewish community leaders is singular – just as the lines run by Palestinian advocates are one-sided – but many Jews are wrestling with more complex attitudes.

We know that Israel is neither a monstrous perpetrator nor a powerless victim, that Palestinians are not wholly represented either by the vicious terrorists of Hamas nor the innocent civilian victims whose faces crowd the media.

The most difficult moral challenge of this war is the task of trying to hold two or more contradictory perspectives in your head at the same time. Psychologists label it “cognitive dissonance”. It is an essential test of humanity.

On the one hand, Israel’s military campaign to destroy or neuter Hamas is legitimate. Hamas cannot be allowed to remain sufficiently intact to mount another massacre like that of October 7, or to present an ongoing threat to Israel.

On the other hand, many of us feel sick about the massive loss of Palestinian life in Gaza that has resulted from Israel’s offensive. Part of that is the result of Hamas’s disregard for the lives of Palestinians by embedding itself within civilian infrastructure. But whether the fault lies with Palestinian leadership or Israeli military action, we wish it were otherwise and hope that future casualties can be drastically minimised.

On the other hand (yes, a third hand – there are more than two sides to this debate), those of us who support the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel the Palestinians and other relevant parties feel deep disappointment at events which have put back the cause of peace, probably by a generation.