Why Him and Not Me?: Speaking of Home, An Update

Eyal and I could have easily met across a trench with rifles in our hands and darkness in our hearts. We met, instead, to build a bridge between us in the hope that it can be strong enough to carry us and the people we love across floods, through fire and brimstone.

IN LATE OCTOBER 2023, EYAL AND I BEGAN A correspondence. We generated two publications and a film about our histories. In the process, something began to cohere between us. Our dialogue revealed a common humanity. He was willing to understand and change, and so was I. On a personal level, we found a way to forge a bond. On a collective level, he is Israeli. He comes from that group and belongs to it. I am a displaced Palestinian who comes from and belongs to a group that is being decimated by what is best described as a massive war crime being committed by Israel in response to a brutal and gruesome attack by Hamas fighters that killed 1,200 Israelis. Israel has been relentlessly bombing Gaza for almost two years now. The body count on the Palestinian side is around 100,000. People are being starved, with scores of children dying in their parents' arms from malnutrition, injury, and shock. The highest percentage of child amputees in the world is in Gaza; the highest numbers of orphaned children are in Gaza; more than 20,000 children are dead. A population of 2.2 million people is being tortured and erased in front of our eyes. The world yawns in indifference and Israel is gripped by what is best described as genocide fever. More than 82% of Israelis support the genocide and displacement of Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank, and 56% of Israelis support the expulsion of non-Jewish citizens from Israel (Palestinian Israeli citizens). These are the facts. We can dress them up any which way we want, but numbers don't lie.

Eyal and I have been meeting for the past 18 months on Zoom every other week, and we see each other every few months where we engage in extended recorded conversations. We have