goes unpunished.  For years I’ve admired the struggle of the individuals and organizations who endeavor to transcend politics and to act in a humane manner – friends who drive to the border to pick up Palestinians and take them for treatment in Israeli hospitals, for example.  Usually the treatments are complex and unavailable except in very  specialized centers.  I cannot imagine how many people have died since these volunteers have found it difficult to sympathize after October 7 and do not participate in transporting and accompanying Palestinians, even after the government has begun to allow it again.  The revelation that some patients also planned terrorist attacks came out long before that but didn’t stop the volunteers.  But the mutilation in the massacres made it more difficult to sympathize.  Joanna Chen published a piece in Guernica about the renewal of her ability to empathize and return to her volunteer activities – and the journal was forced to remove the article because of objections at the ‘blatant zionism.’   

In short, there is no way a Jew – especially one living in Israel – can come off as a human being.