I stood in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah reflecting on words Jews have recited for generations: “And concerning the countries, on this day it is determined which is for the sword and which for peace, which for famine and which for plenty.”
They are ancient words. But in 2026, they do not feel ancient at all.
Ukraine remains at war. The Houthis have turned international shipping lanes into a battlefield. Iran and its proxies have spread violence across our region. Antisemitism has again become frighteningly comfortable. The Middle East is still living with the events of Oct. 7, 2023.
It is quite a world to bring before the Judge.
Another thought struck me: While the nations are being judged, they have become remarkably comfortable judging the Jews.
For example, the 2024 documentary film “No Other Land” became an international sensation, presenting the struggle over the hamlets at Masafer Yatta near Hebron overwhelmingly through the lens of Palestinian dispossession and Israeli power. Palestinian suffering deserves to be seen and heard, but so does Jewish suffering.
Israel is not morally infallible. Jewish sovereignty gives us responsibilities as well as rights. If innocent Palestinians are attacked, we must confront it. But Jewish suffering cannot simply disappear from the moral frame because Jews have acquired the power to defend themselves.
The Jews murdered on Oct. 7 deserve to be seen. The hostages dragged into Gaza deserve to be remembered. Israelis who endured suicide bombings and years of rockets deserve to be heard. The Hebron Jewish community destroyed in 1929 is part of this story too.
Palestinian suffering does not erase Jewish suffering. Jewish suffering does not erase Palestinian suffering. Every victim deserves a place inside the moral frame.
Now comes “NAZA,” a film by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the Israeli journalist-filmmakers behind “No Other Land.” Its official Venice synopsis speaks of systems behind Israel’s “calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians.”
At almost the same moment, political language has hardened. Britain’s Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, speaking as a “proud British Jew” whose grandmother found sanctuary in Israel after the Nazis murdered his grandfather and 60 other family members, declared that the British government believes there is “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank—perpetrated by settler terrorists.” Britain announced an import ban on settlement goods and sanctions targeting specified activities supporting settlement expansion.
Norway has traveled a similar road, describing settler violence as reaching “extreme levels” and proposing a ban on trade with Israeli settlements. It then joined Britain and 10 other governments in announcing or considering restrictions on trade with the settlements.
Notice the progression: A Jewish extremist commits violence. It becomes “settler violence.” Settler violence becomes linked with settlement expansion. Settlements become displacement. And eventually the Jewish presence itself becomes associated with “ethnic cleansing.”
My Arab neighbors are not abstractions in somebody else’s peace plan. They are my neighbors.
If a Jew attacks an innocent Palestinian, arrest him. Prosecute him. Punish him. But surely judgment requires one moral standard. An innocent Palestinian is not responsible for Hamas because he is Palestinian. We are constantly—and correctly—reminded to distinguish Hamas from Palestinians, but in return, others must distinguish Jewish terrorists from Jews. A Jewish family does not become collectively guilty because violent criminals share their ethnicity and the world has labelled them all “settlers.”
Here, I see a deeper moral inversion. Europe knows what a world without Jews looks like. Jews were persecuted and expelled from their lands for centuries, culminating in the Holocaust. Ancient Jewish communities also disappeared from much of the Arab and Muslim world.
So, the Jews came home to Jerusalem, Hebron and Judea. Yet somehow the people who returned to their ancestral homeland became the “colonizers.” I don’t want an Arab-free Israel. So, why does peace so often seem to require a Jew-free Palestine?
The Ten Days of Repentance (Teshuvah) interrupt my argument. Judaism does not give me the luxury of spending these days examining everybody else’s sins. Teshuvah begins with ourselves. In the prayers of these 10 days, we repeatedly encounter Isaiah’s extraordinary vision: “For My House shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” For all peoples.
My Arab neighbors are not abstractions in somebody else’s peace plan. They are my neighbors. Our lives are already far more intertwined than the language of separation suggests. Perhaps that is what we should build upon: more prosperity, more opportunity, more shared spaces, more security and, as peace allows it, more freedom for all of us. Peace must have a dividend.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook understood teshuvah as not only personal but also national—a people rediscovering its purpose and confronting what it must become. Perhaps this reflection itself has been an exercise in teshuvah.
I began by questioning Britain, Norway, leftist filmmakers and a world that I believe has inverted the Jewish story. But teshuvah turns the judgment back on us.
Perhaps there are five places to begin:
Remember. Know who we are and why we are here.
Speak. Tell the whole story, including Jewish suffering, which cannot disappear simply because Jews can now defend themselves.
Decide. Stop allowing permanent ambiguity and other governments to determine our future by default.
Build. Build upon the prosperity, opportunity and shared life already around us.
Be worthy. Exercise Jewish power with justice, confidence and responsibility.
Teshuvah for injustice—yes. Teshuvah for Jewish violence—yes. Teshuvah for our failures as a nation—yes. Teshuvah for coming home? No.
I don’t yet know what political map follows from that. That debate is coming, and perhaps it is long overdue.
But I know something more fundamental: We are not colonizers in our own story. Jerusalem is not foreign soil. Jewish sovereignty is not a sin for which we must seek forgiveness.
The task is not to repent for our return. It is to decide what kind of nation we intend to build now that we are home.
