Julia Ioffe despairs of Israel ever coexisting peacefully with its neighbors:
Unfortunately, I’ve learned that ideology, for both the left and the right, is far more important than human life. How many times have you heard the left say that there are no civilians on the Israeli side, because they are all complicit in “settler colonialism”? Or heard from the right that civilians in Gaza and southern Lebanon are all complicit in the crimes of Hamas or Hezbollah? Suddenly, in a region of millions and millions of people, there are no true civilians anywhere, not even among children.
I wonder: Will Israel, which was created as a safe haven for Jews, always be like this? Will it always be destined to fight wars or maintain a military occupation over millions of people while squinting and pretending that it is a first-world, democratic country and a delightful place to live? How many Israelis—at least those who aren’t messianic zealots and psychopaths—will want to keep having children whose destiny is manning checkpoints and protecting settlers in the West Bank, or participating in yet another “limited operation” in Lebanon, the way their fathers did, or, for that matter, dismantling Hamas—or whatever organization replaces it—for the hundredth time?
The Gaza war is 368 days old, and shows no sign of getting better.