Hot Take, Cold Reality: Israel, Palestine and the Mess We're In

​If the Israel–Palestine conflict were an “Am I The Asshole?” post, my response would be: Everyone Sucks Here.

There. I said it. But unlike Reddit, where the stakes are whether someone should apologize for eating their roommate’s leftover pad thai, this conflict isn’t about who's the asshole—it’s about generations of trauma, colonial entanglements, unresolved grief, broken promises, stubborn nationalism, unspeakable atrocities, and two peoples who both deserve peace but have been forced to choose between pain and survival. And every time I try to talk about it, I feel like I’m walking into a bar fight wearing a prayer shawl and a target.

I’m Jewish. I’m also a post-Zionist. That might sound contradictory to some people, so let me explain what I mean.

Zionism began as a reaction to persecution. After millennia of pogroms, blood libels, expulsions, ghettos, forced conversions, quotas, genocides, and finally the Holocaust—the mechanized, industrial, bureaucratic erasure of one-third of our people—the idea of Jews needing a homeland wasn’t some imperialist pipe dream. It was survival. It was life or death. And let me be crystal clear: Jews have the right to self-determination. A nation carved from the ashes of Auschwitz wasn’t just understandable—it was necessary.

But the problem isn’t that Israel exists. The problem is how it came to exist, and how it has continued to exist at the expense of another people. The Nakba—the mass displacement and dispossession of over 700,000 Palestinians in 1948—was not just a tragic byproduct of war. It was, for many, an act of ethnic cleansing. Whole villages were razed. Families scattered. Their descendants still live stateless in refugee camps or under occupation, told they don’t exist, that their history is fabricated, their grief inconvenient. That’s not justice. That’s not sustainable. That’s not Jewish values.

So when people say “Free Palestine,” I don’t flinch. I agree. But I also don’t believe “Free Palestine” should mean “Destroy Israel.” The two are not synonymous. Yet I’ve seen too many people on the Left—people who claim to care about nuance and justice—flatten the situation into good guys and bad guys. Too many hot takes. Too many purity tests. Too many people with zero connection to the region deciding who gets to live and who doesn’t based on vibes and Twitter threads.

Then came October 7th, 2023.

Hamas’ brutal attack was not “resistance.” It was terrorism. It was wrong. I shouldn’t have to say that. But I do, because apparently in some corners of the internet, condemning the massacre of civilians makes me a Zionist bootlicker. Spoiler: it doesn’t. I oppose the targeting of civilians—full stop. That includes Palestinians and Israelis. That includes the slaughter of children in kibbutzim and the children buried under rubble in Gaza. That includes elderly Holocaust survivors taken hostage and Gazan medics blown apart by airstrikes. If your justice requires dead babies and dead grandmas, it’s not justice. It's just vengeance.

And vengeance is what Netanyahu is dealing out with horrifying precision.

Let me be perfectly clear: Netanyahu does not represent me, or Judaism, or even the majority of Israeli Jews. He’s a corrupt, authoritarian opportunist who clings to power by stoking fear and loathing. His government’s response to October 7th has been a disproportionate campaign of collective punishment, a litany of war crimes masquerading as national defense. Thousands dead. Hospitals destroyed. Aid blocked. Children starving. This isn’t security—it’s cruelty. It's not about protecting Jews. It's about Netanyahu protecting himself. And the international community, including the U.S., has enabled it for far too long.

But just when I start to think the loudest voices are finally calling for accountability… some of them say things like, “Israel shouldn’t exist,” or “Just send the Jews back to Europe.”

Excuse me?

Do you hear yourselves?

That’s not decolonization. That’s just new antisemitism dressed up in keffiyehs and Instagram carousels. Jews aren’t “settler colonists” in some monolithic way. Many Jews were indigenous to the Middle East long before the rise of Islam. Others were refugees from Arab countries who were expelled after 1948—about 850,000 of them. And telling Jews—especially Mizrahi Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Holocaust survivors—to “go back to where they came from” is not only historically ignorant, it’s deeply racist.

Also: let’s talk hypocrisy.

People shouting “Dismantle Israel now!” from the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—do you hear yourselves? You live on colonized land, built over Indigenous blood, and you have the audacity to demand that only the Jewish state must cease to exist? You think Jews, uniquely, should not have sovereignty or safety? You think peace will come from booting six million Israeli Jews back to countries that already failed to protect them once?

Bitch, please.

Britain, the OG colonizer, drew these borders. The West armed the players. And now some of the same Westerners who haven't even heard of the word “Mizrahi” and can't find Gaza on a map want to abolish Israel from the comfort of their cozy armchairs while scrolling TikTok.

Enough.

We need a different path—one grounded in truth, empathy, and repair. I don’t know what the exact answer is. I’m not a policy expert. I don’t have a perfect roadmap to peace. But I know that whatever the solution is, it must include justice for Palestinians and safety for Jews. It must include dismantling apartheid systems, ending the occupation, recognizing Palestinian statehood, and building actual infrastructure for coexistence—not just slogans. Some form of two-state solution or the newer, shared “Land for All” model might be imperfect, but it’s a start. It’s something.

What I do know is that expecting every random Jew on the internet to engage in Israel–Palestine discourse on demand, with graduate-level nuance, is both absurd and antisemitic. I’m not an ambassador. I’m not the Israeli government. I’m a Jewish trans guy with a lot of feelings and a chronic internet addiction. And I’m exhausted. You cannot claim to fight for justice if your first step is to dehumanize someone like me because I don't want to talk about Israel and Palestine every five minutes. That’s not activism. That’s bullying.

I believe in Jewish survival. I believe in Palestinian liberation. I believe they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. I believe that Muslims and Jews are cousins—literal family. I believe we remember our way back to each other, not through hatred, but through healing.

So I end with this:

Y’hi shalom b’cheilech, shalva b’armonotayich.
​
Peace be within your walls, O Jerusalem. Peace be in all our hearts. May we reach the day when we no longer see each other as enemies, but as siblings who have wept long enough.