I guess that if you’re reading this, you’ve read about my kippah. The one with the Palestinian and Israeli flags on it. You’ve read that I have worn it for many years, and that last week, while sitting in a café in Modi’in, I was detained by the police because my kippah apparently broke the law. You’ve read that an Israeli police officer only returned the kippah to me after cutting the Palestinian flag out of it.
Oh, and you’ve probably seen all the memes, jokes, and cartoons about it, too. There’s the one about the New York Yankees and Mets, the one with the swimming costumes, the one about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hosting President Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) on Balfour Street, and many more.
But there’s one piece of the story that I would like to clarify: I also don’t want to be killed.
Those who disagree with my kippah’s message usually tell me some version of the following: That flag is the flag that Hamas marches under. That flag is brandished by people who want to kill us just because we are Israeli, or even just because we are Jewish. That flag is the flag of the terrorists who committed the massacres of October 7 and other atrocities in both Israel and the Diaspora. So how can I wear it on my head?
I hear that argument very clearly and profoundly. I, like every Israeli, know people who lost loved ones on October 7 or in the war thereafter. Hamas is my enemy: an enemy who seeks my destruction, an enemy who is not interested in coexistence, an enemy whose continued presence is a danger to my security and my future. Hamas, along with Hezbollah, and their sponsor, Iran, are a threat to anyone – Jewish, Muslim, Israeli, Palestinian – who genuinely wants peace in the Middle East.
Like you, I don’t want to be killed by terrorists, and I don’t want my children to be killed by terrorists.
Multiple truths about the conflict
But we must hold multiple truths at the same time. Truth #1: Palestinian and Islamic terrorism is real, and Israel must take its threat with absolute seriousness.
Truth #2: There are many Palestinians who want to live in peace with us. According to recent surveys, they are a minority right now, but historically, they have been a majority, and that means that they could become so again. To say that they do not exist is not only empirically incorrect, it is strategically foolish.
Here are another couple of truths that we must hold at the same time. Truth #3: Palestinians have agency. The progressive, anti-Zionist Left of the world ignores that, and too easily excuses, with a racism of low expectations, the contributions that the Palestinians make to the ongoing conflict. There are many steps that Palestinian society, politics, and religious leadership need to make in order to deradicalize, reform their curricula, and communicate more clearly that they are ready to live in peace side by side with Israel.
Truth #4: Israel has done everything it can to reduce the agency and impact of moderate Palestinians. We continue to castrate the Palestinian Authority at every opportunity, preferring to see Hamas rise again in Gaza so that we can smugly say that “there is no partner.” We continue to nourish a context in the West Bank and Gaza that makes it much more likely that a young Palestinian boy will become a Hamas terrorist than a peace activist.
Two aspects of the conflict
My very first published op-ed appeared in this newspaper in 2006. In it, I argued that in order to solve the conflict in the Middle East, we must realize that there are actually two conflicts, or two prisms through which the conflict plays out.
There is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the Palestinians are the vulnerable party and Israel is the oppressor. I am sorry if that word upsets readers of this paper, but we must come to terms with it: What goes on in the West Bank on a daily basis leaves room for no other descriptor.
But there is also the Arab-Israeli conflict, in which Israel is the vulnerable party and the Muslim world, led by Iran (though they are Persians, not Arabs), is the oppressor.
All previous peace processes have failed because they have only addressed one of those conflicts. Oslo failed because it only addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the Abraham Accords failed because they only addressed the Arab-Israeli conflict. We will only achieve peace when we address both the Israeli-Palestinian and the Arab-Israeli conflicts simultaneously.
So I do not wear the Palestinian flag on my kippah naively. I do not ignore the pain and suffering of my fellow Israelis who have lost loved ones to Palestinian terrorism. I do not dismiss the very real challenges that lie before both peoples if we are to achieve peace.
But my kippah does remind me, and I hope it now reminds you, that there are two peoples here. They both, through the ironies of history, have a legitimate historical connection to this land. They both have a right to national self-determination. And we – Zionist Jewish Israelis – will never live in peace until the Palestinian people, in the State of Palestine, do too.
The writer is an adjunct lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an educational consultant, and the author of the novels Perfect Enemy and Everybody's Hero. He lives in Modi'in, Israel.