This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- Some of My Best Friends Are...

Some years ago I wrote something that caused a bit of a dumpster fire here and I promised myself that I would never post another word about it. No, I'm not discussing my semi-recent romantic catastrophes. I'm talking about the recent events that have ignited the tinderbox that we know as the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

The event from a few years back wasn't because of anything that I said. Rather, I wrote a heartfelt post about how complicated and literally biblically tragic the whole situation is. Well, people from different parts of my life went to war in the comments section. I had to unfriend two people for making comments that some people perceived to be antisemitic. Two friends who are relatives of one another got into a knock down-fall out read on the thread and I don't know if they sit next to one another on Passover dinner to this day. And even I got unfriended for being a friend of someone who said something rude.

Never again, I said.

I grew up in an historically predominately Jewish community outside of Detroit, Michigan, that was changing from Jewish to black -- and quickly -- and a lot of my lifelong friends are Jewish. This extended into my college years, in which I joined a fraternity that was about 90% Jewish. Following this, I cultivated some semblance of a career in media, which has a strong presence from this community as well. And I am very protective of my Jewish friends. It's not a "some of my best friends are..." kind of thing. It's an "almost all of my best and oldest friends are...." kind of thing. So I correct people in other areas of my life when they say things that they may or may not realize are ignorant or downright antisemitic and acknowledge the high holidays because I have had the fortune of being invited to many religious ceremonies and dinners by my friends.

The values in this community -- education, philanthropy, the arts, self-deprecating humor -- are very much in line with my own. When I was a child, I often wished I were Jewish myself.

Personally, I will never understand antisemitism. There's no way to say why without basically insulting the hell out of everyone who isn't Jewish. I think they're an incredible group of people and their history is as tragic as it is almost magical when considering the astonishing achievements of so many Jewish people. And, yes, I understand not liking some groups. My own, particularly, can be challenging to love. But that's another conversation. What I also don't understand is why -- no matter how you feel about the Middle-East's most enduring conflict -- it is seemingly only worth a shrug to some people that innocent civilians are being shot without warning in numbers reaching the hundreds, women and children are being raped, kidnapped and killed, and none of these people have any influence over the decisions made by the state of Israel. These are just everyday people. Beautiful, young, talented people living their lives just like you did today if you made it home to read this. They happen to be Jewish and happen to live in a place embroiled in a seemingly unresolvable conflict. But they are just like you and I. And yet the only people who seem to be upset enough to speak sympathetically on this horrific tragedy in large numbers on social media, this unthinkable act against mankind, are the Jewish brethren of these victims.

Another reason I don't speak here on the Israel/Palestine conflict is because I'm not informed enough. I do probably read and know more than the average non-Jewish or Arabic person, though. And I ask my friends challenging questions about it. And one thing I do know is that it's not as simple as a lot of the people here on FB want to make it every time there's an event in that region, as in, "These people came in and put the inhabitants of an already established place in an enclosure and they tortured them for decades and then now act like victims when there's retaliation." That seems to be the running narrative from a lot of people, particularly the liberal woke crowd. And, unfortunately, optically it's very valid -- if you want to think in black and white, or in the big block letters you find scattered on nursery school floors.

For the nuanced thinker, however, this crisis bleeds infinitely more pus from a deeply infected moral and social quandary: Two groups of humans have a religious identity fundamentally rooted in the same place and yet are at odds with one another on historical, ethical, and existential terms. No outside president is ever going to resolve this Solomon-like crisis because both sides believe what cannot and should not be shared is their own. Both. Sides.

That's fucked up.

But fucked up as it may be, no side is entitled to terrorize innocent civilians to make a point or mark their grievance. If you think Israel is committing apartheid or there's a stink of white supremacy at the root of this and dark-skinned person subversion going on here because your history is largely informed by American history or anti-black racism, I implore you to investigate this further. This is not our story over there. Aligning yourself with a darker people because they look more like you is the same thing you are accusing anyone who is a white supremacist of doing.

More importantly, I wish more people could appreciate that when human beings kill or terrorize others because of who they are, it sets an unsustainable and universally immoral precedent for how the rest of us should expect to be treated or resolve conflicts. We don't all have to like one another, but we do have to tolerate each other. This massacre is not just a Jewish tragedy. It is a human tragedy. If you're human, you should be angry. And if you're not angry, you shouldn't be human