After Israel Part 2:

Hostages' Square

A friend sends me an email and says she wants to have a “Come to Jesus” conversation with me about my support of Israel. I understand the colloquial meaning of the phrase, but I also understand that like all the literal “come to Jesus” conversations I’ve had with Christian friends, this will be a conversation in which someone who isn’t a Jew will explain to me why my being a Jew, or the way I am being a Jew, is wrong. I agree anyway because she’s a friend of many years.

On our last day in Israel, we visited Hostages’ Square. It was the place that felt most familiar to me; I’m enough of an old lefty to be deeply at home in spaces that mix art and protest. At the entrance, there is a countdown clock. Then, it had already been 159 days. Now it has been 171.

This is the third such conversation I’ve had, and I know how it will go. My friend will explain to me, as if I am an idiot, all of her reasons for believing that Israel is an illegitimate state, and why it’s clear to her that Israel is responsible for the violence in the region now and since its inception. All of the things she says will be either factually untrue (for instance, that Israel is an apartheid state or that the IDF raped women during its raid on Shifa Hospital), or utterly disregard the complex history of the region (she insists Jews are not indigenous to the region and that Israel and Israel alone is responsible for the plight of Palestinian refugees). I make weak offers of the truths she’s overlooking; I already know she can’t or won’t engage with these complexities.

There is a Shabbat table set for the hostages. At one end, there are places set for those who have been released.

At the other end, the table is set for those who remain in captivity.

My friend wants me to understand that she has always stood with oppressed people, and that Israel—and by extension, Jews who support Israel—are oppressing the Palestinians. This, she says, makes Hamas’s actions not just justified, but righteous. “The Palestinians have a legal right to armed struggle,” she tells me.

A man, Gal, from Kibbutz Nahal Oz sits in one of the tents on Hostages’ Square, asking people to support the effort to bring the hostages home. I ask if I can film him, and he readily agrees. After the filming is over, he says “Tell the people back in the US that the return of the hostages should come above any political consideration, and our government—the whole thing—seems to have forgotten that. Please ask your government to remind them.” I say I will. I send this video to my senators, and to their primary opponents.

My friend wants me to know that she hopes, but doubts, we can salvage our friendship. I say “of course” but I already know that we can’t. This is the third such conversation I’ve had since October 7th, and so I know what happens we hang up the phone. We won’t unfriend each other on social media, but we will quietly block one another’s posts. There won’t be any more texts or invitations to see one another when we’re in the same city; not from her, but also not from me. I can remain friends with people whose understanding of what is happening is so flawed that they don’t know where to stand; I can’t be friends with people who stand with Hamas.

There is a reproduction of one of the tunnels in Gaza where the hostages are held. I walk through it, and I find that I’m not frightened in the way that I thought or would be, or that others have said they were. It is a short section of tunnel, and it never gets particularly dark. At first, I think that might be why. It’s only later that I realize, when watching the video, that I realize it was impossible to feel isolated when all along the way I could hear the voices of these young Jewish men singing in Hebrew. Walking through this narrow place, I always knew that I would come out into the sun. That’s not a thing the hostages know, and it has not been true for many of them.

I have another of these calls on the horizon. Maybe this one will go better than the ones before it, maybe it won’t. I keep trying because I really do value these friendships, right up until the moment that I’m asked to believe that the brutal murder of other Jews is an act of liberation in which we should rejoice. (I keep the friends who only say, “I don’t know,” or “this is so hard to understand,” or “I just can’t stomach what I’m seeing.” I don’t ask others to be brave for us. I only ask that they not revel in our deaths. I’ve stopped being shocked when even that low bar is too high, but I will never stop being saddened.) Mostly, I keep to myself these days.

There is a piano in the middle of Hostages’ Square, set up by the parents of Alon Ohel, a gifted pianist who was captured at the Nova Festival. People stop by to play it. On top, there is a sculpture that reads “You Are Not Alone.” I find it hopeful. I wonder if I will be able to find it so if Alon does not come home alive?