It was like a football game of the damned, played in hell. You kept checking the score, every half hour. It was 14 dead, no, 22; no 35; no 42; no 55.   Meanwhile, 30 miles away, Ivanka Trump, justly described by Michelle Goldberg as a Zionist Marie Antoinette, was prancing and fluttering around the new US embassy in Jerusalem, toasting the murder of any chance of a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. And apres Marie Antoinette, as they say, comes le deluge.

I don’t think the Israeli Palestinian conflict has ever made me angrier, and what was particularly infuriating was the vast number of commentators and acquaintances of mine who wanted to blame the victims, and called them Hamas terrorists or dupes of Hamas, denying the protestors their agency and more importantly, their humanity. With the events of this week, I have a deeper appreciation of how basically decent people can condone the worst forms of evil.

I view most things through the lens of the struggle of black people in the United States for their freedom and citizenship. If we would return to the part of the country I live in now, South Carolina, in say, 1950, what you would have found everywhere was an oppressive system of discrimination that blighted the lives of African Americans. Most whites were of one of two positions; either they liked the current system just fine, or they wanted to reform and change it around the edges, and make things a bit more tolerable for blacks. Neither position was valid. The evil system of white supremacy could not be maintained, and could not be reformed. It had to be smashed, overturned, destroyed, smithereen by smithereen.   Now, this sort of happened, and sort of didn’t happen. Its framework was destroyed, and serious efforts were made to ameliorate historic injustices, but too many white people became afraid of the implications of real equality, and they had the numbers and the power, and with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, America started down a path that culminated in the election of the Monster 2016, some sort of cosmic revenge for Rosa Parks’s decision not to sit in the back of the bus. And the Monster’s comment a few days that Mexicans are animals is just the point. The way people, decent people, can live in positions of power in an unjust society is to deny the humanity of those who they are dominating. (Though as someone pointed out, if the IDF had shot 60 dogs in cold blood there would likely be more outrage by Israelis than the murder of 60 Gazans.)

What am I saying about Israel and Palestine? I am not sure. But I am increasingly skeptical if Israel can just be reformed; it needs to be made over and transformed in such a way that Palestinians can lead decent lives, and have effective citizenship. Negotiations toward a peace process is over and done. Violent resistance will not work. This leaves only the sort of non-violent protests we saw this week, and much as the civil rights movement was dogged by accusations of Communism, the movement in Gaza for many has been reduced to Hamas. Hamas has something to do with these protests, just as there were plenty of ex-communists in the civil rights movement, but that isn’t the point. This week’s events highlight the potential for radical non-violence as a tactic for the Palestinians. I think Israel could much more easily absorb another war in Gaza or Lebanon, or another intifada, than a few more weeks of demonstrations of this sort. Radical non-violence, contrary to what some seem to think, is not protesting meekly. It is really annoying those with power, and putting yourself in harm’s way. And one needs to keep in mind that this is a discipline, to be practiced with those who have trained for it. In a situation of this sort, it is unrealistic to expect every demonstration against heavily armed men and women who are unafraid to use deadly force to be entirely peaceful. Something revolutionary, that somehow respects the rights of all, is needed.

Israel is strong, and getting stronger. The Palestinians are weak, and getting weaker. I don’t know what is going to happen. I think often of what is probably my favorite passage in Torah, Abraham’s challenging God over the destruction of Sodom, asking God to spare the city if there were enough good people in Sodom to make this possible. In the end, there weren’t enough, and Sodom was destroyed. I think what God was telling Abraham was, “look, I can help, and make things better, but you have to work with me. Even God can’t fix some of the messes humans make of their lives. Respecting the humanity of others, and not trying to justify what can’t be justified, is a good place to start. And sometimes you just to throw out everything you know, and everything you think you know, and start over.”