Horrified by a war with no end in sight

I am Jewish. I am not a religious Jew, but a cultural Jew — proud of my heritage and my family’s beliefs.

That said, I am writing to express my horror and discomfort over what’s happening in Israel and Gaza. I have always been against what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. It had always been my hope that Israel would have learned from its past and become a better people than the people who tried and are still trying to eradicate them. I was never in favor of the West Bank settlements and the subsequent displacement of the people who called that area home.

I know Hamas and other extremist groups will settle for nothing but death to Israel, but I don’t believe the proper response to that is death to all Palestinians. My heart aches for all the innocent people killed in any war. I don’t claim to know how a people should respond to an attack on its sovereign shores, but I would like to think that in the 21st century, there are better answers than the wholesale killing of women, children and those who are fighting.

To say I am a pacifist is too simplistic. There is so much that we “little” people, governed by “big” people, don’t understand, lacking in information, that I wonder who and what are behind these wars. There are always larger, darker, more sinister forces at work. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I read articles from many sources, and I know there are many opinions, so my head is not stuck in the sand.

At my dinner table, we have spirited discussions about what it means to be accepting, to be against war, to want to live in a nonviolent world. We also wonder to what lengths we should go to defend ourselves. It is my fervent hope that these conversations are happening everywhere, and that one day, there may be some answers we can all live with.

Barbra Nightingale, Hollywood