Everyone wants to ‘free Palestine.’ Who has an actual plan?

The people who will live with the consequences deserve more than a slogan that fits on a protest sign.

photo: Abdul-Aziz Munj/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Iola Kostrzewski, a writer, organizer, and Jewish community advocate exploring faith, identity, and civic life.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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There are people I owed apologies to before Yom Kippur. There are relationships I needed to examine if some need to outright end. Things I said too sharply. Things I should have said sooner. Times I was wrong. Times I was right but cruel about it. Times my ego mattered more to me than repairing something.

That is what teshuvah required of me.

But this year I realized there is somebody else I owe an apology to: to myself.

I owe myself an apology for every inch I gave to people who proceeded to take a mile. I owe myself an apology for believing that everybody who approached me wanting to “have a conversation” actually wanted a conversation. For the hours I spent explaining Jewish history to people who had already decided what Jewish history was. For explaining Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews to people who had already decided every Israeli was a “white European settler.”

I owe myself an apology for watching people who spent years telling everyone to “believe Black women” suddenly discover approximately 17 exceptions to that rule the moment the Black woman speaking was also a Jew. Apparently, “believe Black women” came with an asterisk: unless she disagrees with me about Israel.

And I am tired. Because after hearing “Free Palestine” thousands of times, I have started asking what should be a very basic question: Okay, what does that mean?

Not what is the slogan. What is the plan? What does Palestinian freedom actually look like? What happens to Israelis? What happens to Hamas? What happens to Palestinian leadership? What borders are they proposing? How are Palestinians protected? How are Israelis protected? What happens the morning after everybody gets the thing their Instagram graphic says they should get?

I am not asking because, if they are going to claim Palestinian freedom as their cause, I think they should care enough about Palestinians to have thought beyond the slogan.

Instead, too often, I ask what comes next and eventually we arrive at Jews being “white colonial settlers.” And suddenly I am explaining Jewish ethnicity, migration, exile, North Africa, the Middle East, and antisemitism to somebody whose education on this subject seems to have occurred almost entirely through social media.

Sometimes the conversation gets racist astonishingly fast. That has been one of the stranger experiences of the last few years: watching people who have built entire identities around being anti-racist become remarkably comfortable explaining my identity back to me because my Blackness and my Jewishness have collided in a way that inconveniences their politics.

I am a Black Jewish woman. My Jewish family is Moroccan. I have been to Israel. I plan to return to Israel. I hope one day to live there. Israel is part of my Jewish life.

None of those things means they have to agree with my politics. They don’t make me a spokesperson for Israel. And my identity does not automatically make me correct. But if their understanding of Israel requires pretending Jews like me don’t exist or explaining to me why my Jewishness doesn’t count in quite the way I think it does, maybe their framework needs some work.

Because I have spent years listening. I have listened to Palestinians. I have listened to Muslims. I have listened to Israelis. I have listened to Jews who disagree profoundly with me. I have listened to people advocating two states, one state, confederation, separation, coexistence, and things far messier than anything that fits onto a protest sign. And listening has changed some of my thinking. That is what listening is supposed to do.

There are people who have challenged me and made me reconsider things I thought I understood. There are Palestinian perspectives I needed to hear. There are Jewish perspectives that have made me deeply uncomfortable that I still needed to hear.

But I have also learned that there is a difference between someone challenging me and someone waiting for their turn to tell me why I am wrong. There is a difference between activism and performance. There is a difference between criticizing Israel and deciding Jews are uniquely undeserving of complexity. And there is an enormous difference between wanting peace and wanting their side to win.

So these days I have another question: What are they building?

Because I know what they want to tear down. They’ve posted it. They’ve marched it. They’ve hashtagged it. They’ve screamed it at city council. They’ve put it in my comments. They’ve sent it to my inbox. I understand what they oppose, but what are they building?

Where are they when Israelis and Palestinians are actually doing coexistence work? Where are they when people are doing the boring, frustrating, imperfect work of building relationships? Where are they when nobody gets to be completely righteous? Where are they when peace requires acknowledging both Palestinian suffering and Israeli humanity? Where are they when the solution doesn’t give them a villain uncomplicated enough for an Instagram post?

Peace is boring. Peace is compromise. Peace means sitting across from someone whose historical narrative makes you uncomfortable. Peace means accepting that two peoples can carry histories that collide without requiring either people to disappear. Peace means acknowledging Palestinian suffering without requiring Jewish disappearance. Peace means acknowledging Jewish history without requiring Palestinian suffering. And none of that fits particularly well on a protest sign.

And I don’t say any of this because I think peace means sitting around a table agreeing with each other. I have actually sat across the table from Palestinians who want change in Gaza; from Palestinians I did not agree with on everything; and from Palestinians who certainly did not agree with me. There were moments in those conversations when I wanted to jump across the table because I felt insulted, dismissed, and furious.

But I stayed at the table. And so did they. We did not walk away agreeing. We did not solve the Israeli-Palestinian over lunch. Nobody had some beautiful kumbaya moment where we suddenly realized we had misunderstood each other and everything was fine. It wasn’t fine, but it was a start.

At least we were sitting across from actual human beings whose lives, identities, and ideas were more complicated than the version of each other we could have created online. At least we were willing to hear something we absolutely did not want to hear. At least we were doing something considerably harder than reposting people who already agreed with us.

And that’s why I get so frustrated with the “pro-Palestinian” community. Most of them haven’t sat across from the people they have spent years talking about. They haven’t had to look somebody in the eyes while they tell you something about your history that makes your blood pressure rise. They haven’t had to decide whether they’re going to get up from the table or stay there long enough to understand why they believe what they believe.

But they have posted, they have commented, they have shared an infographic. They have told Jews what Palestinians believe. They have decided who the “good Jews” are, who the “bad Jews” are, which Palestinians deserve amplification, and which ones become inconvenient the moment they complicate their narrative.

And somehow, from their couch, they have achieved a level of certainty that I have never managed to achieve after actually sitting at the table. Maybe that’s because sitting at the table does something that social media doesn’t: It complicates people. And peace, if we are ever going to have it, is going to require people willing to be complicated.

I have watched Americans spend countless hours demanding symbolic ceasefire resolutions from municipal governments thousands of miles away. Fine. Participate in local democracy. Make your position known. But when it’s over, I still want to know: What changed? Who was fed? Who became safer? Which Palestinian gained political freedom? Which hostage came home? Which Israeli or Palestinian became one step closer to a durable future?

Symbolism has a place. Symbolism cannot become a substitute for outcomes.

I am done confusing volume with commitment. I am done assuming someone cares more about Palestinians because they post about Palestinians more frequently. A flag is not a master’s degree. A hashtag is not foreign policy. And outrage is not expertise.

Most importantly, Palestinians deserve better than being props in somebody else’s identity designed to make the feel like a “good person.” Their lives are real. Their grief is real. Their political future is real. Israeli lives are real. Israeli grief is real. Jewish fear is real. None of those things becomes less real because acknowledging all of them makes one’s politics inconvenient.

And maybe that is where Yom Kippur entered this year for me. Teshuvah asks something difficult of us. It asks us to look directly at ourselves. Where did I cause harm? Where was I wrong? Where do I owe an apology? Where did my ego keep me from repairing something? And, most importantly, if I am placed in the same situation again, will I behave differently?

For me, the answer this year is yes — I would leave sooner. That might be the apology I owe myself most. I kept believing one more explanation might change things. One more conversation. One more benefit of the doubt. One more source. One more piece of myself. I kept giving inches. And some people took a mile.

So this year, I am taking the mile back. Not because I have stopped caring about peace, but because I care about it too much to confuse shouting with peacemaking. Not because I have stopped caring about Palestinians, but because Palestinian humanity deserves something deeper than using their suffering as social currency. And not because I am unwilling to be challenged.

Challenge me. Bring evidence. Bring history. Bring Palestinian voices. Bring Israeli voices. Bring uncomfortable facts. Bring the things that complicate what I already believe. Just come prepared to listen too.

Somewhere along the way, social media convinced us that expressing an opinion creates an entitlement to a response. It doesn’t. Someone can say something wrong about you and you can leave it sitting there. Someone can misunderstand you and you can let them misunderstand you. Someone can confidently explain your own identity to you and you can decide that their ignorance is no longer an assignment you have been given.

Not every opinion deserves a response. Not every accusation deserves a defense. Not every question is being asked in good faith. And not every person demanding your emotional labor is entitled to receive it.

Dialogue requires another person. We cannot have dialogue with someone who has already written our lines for us. And perhaps that’s something worth carrying into this Jewish New Year. We spent the last few days thinking about what we need to repair. Maybe we should also think about what we need to release.

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