Recent events in the Middle East – and over the decades preceding October 7th and the Israeli war in Gaza – have given me pause to consider a dense thicket of ideas as I try to understand conflicting viewpoints.  It’s a controversy that many people come to from a deeply personal place; but I’m not one of them, and in considering so deep and fraught an issue as Israel/Palestine, affecting so many people, the personal only goes so far. Which is, in fact, the main point of this post – but I’ll get back to that in a moment.