Whose Side Are You On?

On Friday, October 13, in the northern French town of Arras, 20-year-old Mohamed M., born in the North Caucasian region of Ingushetia, stabbed and killed a 57-year-old French teacher, Dominique Bernard, in a school courtyard. The investigation confirmed that the attack was linked to events in southern Israel and Gaza. On Monday, October 16, all high schools in France started classes two hours later. First, meetings were held between teachers, school administrators, and French authorities, where they could discuss the shock and fear that have become part of their profession, as well as the measures needed to prevent such incidents in the future. At 2 p.m., memorial ceremonies were held in all schools, including a moment of silence and a discussion with students. These discussions focused on the terrorist attack in Arras but naturally also touched on the harrowing events unfolding in the Middle East.

When my eleven-year-old daughter came home from school that day, she asked me at the door: "Are you for the Palestinians or for the Israelis?" The question was serious. She expected help and an answer that would help her understand a deeply troubling issue. Because she talks about it with her friends. Because she's getting all kinds of frightening information on social media. Because more and more people are dying in the Middle East. Because a teacher was killed in Arras. Because she's afraid.

Whose side am I on?

I stand in solidarity with the Palestinians. Because they have lived in exile or under occupation for seventy-five years. Because they have waited in vain all this time for the fulfilment of their right to existence and security, the right to their own state. Because they have endured many injustices. The routine of occupation and repression, as described by British historian Tony Judt, himself of Jewish descent: "Curfews, checkpoints, bulldozers, public humiliation, home demolitions, land confiscation, shootings, targeted assassinations." I stand with the Palestinians because their Arab neighbours, who attacked Israel in their name a few times to destroy it, left them more or less to fend for themselves after each defeat. I stand with the Palestinians who live in inhumane conditions brought about by both occupation and the incompetence, corruption, extremism, and factionalism of their leaders. I am horrified by the blood toll paid by innocent Palestinian civilians in Israel's response to the atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel. I respect and support calls to protect civilians and uphold international humanitarian law.

I stand in solidarity with the Israelis. Because I firmly believe they have the right to security and their own state, created because of centuries of suffering by the Jewish people, culminating in the Holocaust, in which six million were murdered. I stand with the Israelis because, from the moment they declared their state based on a UN resolution, they have had to defend their survival with arms multiple times. "Our goal is clear," said PLO founder and first president Ahmed al-Shukeiri at the start of the Six-Day War in 1967, "we will destroy Israel and its people; for the survivors, if any, we have boats ready for deportation." I am horrified by the inhumanity of the massacre planned and carried out by Hamas terrorists against civilians in southern Israel. I respect and support Israel's right to take action against the perpetrators and ensure its security, in line with international humanitarian law.

Solidarity with both is not an expression of moral equivalency or whataboutism that balances or excuses the injustices on one side with those of the other. It is simply an acknowledgment that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long, complex, painful, and all too often bloody roots, which many treat as a historical smorgasbord, selectively picking what suits their emotional and ideological appetites. But it is also true that on the seventy-fifth anniversary of Israel's founding, the parties to the conflict are not in an equal position. Israel is a successful economy and regional military power, proud of its democracy—though increasingly under scrutiny by its Western allies. On the other hand, the state has not only found itself in but has largely created a situation that former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban warned about as early as 1967: "A permanent rule over a foreign nation can only be justified by an ideology and rhetoric of self-glorification and exclusion, incompatible with the ethical heritage of prophetic Judaism and classical Zionism." Or as Prime Minister Levi Eshkol asked his adviser after the occupation of the West Bank: "Have you asked yourself how we will live with so many Arabs?" The answer came in decades of occupation that became a perpetual source of security risks for Israel and suffering for Palestinians.

Even in this long, painful, and tragic history, the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7 marked a new threshold. It was a meticulously planned operation in which civilians—families, elderly people, young concertgoers, children—were deliberately chosen as targets. A surgically orchestrated massacre, deliberately echoing the cruelty and inhumanity once inflicted on Jews, culminating in the Holocaust. This cannot be justified by anything, and any attempt to relativize this crime is, at the very least, morally unacceptable. The same goes for denying Israel's right to defend itself and do everything within international law to destroy Hamas and ensure its security. In this context, we should be deeply concerned about some views that have emerged in the Slovenian public: that Hamas mainly attacked military targets, or a columnist expressing outrage that young Israelis found it "unproblematic to attend an electronic music festival five kilometers from the barbed-wire fence that separates Israeli prosperity from the economic and social devastation of Gaza, where 3.5 million people live under constant Israeli military oversight." What does this imply? That they got what they deserved?

At the same time, it is also true that Hamas committed this crime with a specific intent: to provoke with unimaginable cruelty a wave of shock, pain, and rage that would override reason and push Israel into overreaction. U.S. President Biden warned of this during his visit to Israel: "I caution you—while you feel that rage, don't let it consume you. After 9/11, we in the U.S. were angry. And in seeking justice, we got justice—but we also made mistakes." Where such actions lead is highlighted by Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland: "The blockade of Gaza, which deprives more than two million Palestinians of food, water, and medicine… is not only immoral and contrary to international law, but also runs counter to Israel's own interests—because it weakens international support at the very moment it should be strongest—and undermines the goals Israel has set. If recent years have shown anything, it's that the more hellish life becomes in Gaza, the tighter Hamas's grip becomes."

Saying Hamas knew exactly what it was doing is not relativizing its crimes. It's a warning not to play the role the criminal has assigned you. That Israel has the right to defend itself is beyond question and should not be debated. How it responds, however, is a valid topic for discussion. The international community must exert more pressure on Israel and remind it of the responsibility it bears—toward Palestinians, toward its own security, and toward the world. So it doesn’t walk blindly into Hamas’s trap.

Likewise, it is essential to talk about a political solution to the conflict. And that solution must be based on acknowledging the complexity that Slavoj Žižek spoke about at the Frankfurt Book Fair—and for which he, unjustifiably in my view, received intense criticism and attacks, especially in Germany. The timing of Hamas’s attack was no coincidence. Along with its regional sponsors, Hamas wanted to sabotage new attempts at a lasting peace in the Middle East. Just as suicide bombings—with the help of Israeli extremists—undermined the Oslo peace process, they now aim to derail the normalization of relations between Israel and other regional states. If Israel is genuinely committed to destroying Hamas, not just militarily but also politically, then it must find adequate answers to the questions raised by Abba Eban and Levi Eshkol in 1967. Out of pain and rage must come a renewed resolve for a political solution—one that guarantees Israel’s right to exist and be secure. And one that also recognizes the same rights for Palestinians.

"Whose side are you on?" my daughter asked me.

"I’m on the side of the Palestinians and the Israelis," I answered. "And on the side of their right to live in peace, each in their own state."

"But is that possible?" she asked.

"It won’t be easy," I said. "But there’s no other way."

I spared my eleven-year-old my fears about what might happen if we don’t find that way.