“After almost two years of war, tens of thousands of killed, hundreds of soldiers dead, live hostages still in captivity, thousands starving, cities reduced to rubble – the current discourse around the destruction in Gaza continues to be extraordinarily polarized.

On one side, despite the undeniability of the scope of the destruction we continue to hear voices saying: “There are no innocents in Gaza” or “Gaza must be flattened.” Some justify this using halakhic concepts like milhemet mitzvah (“commanded war”); or liken Gaza to the ir nidachat—the city led astray by idolatry, which must be destroyed entirely; or describe Palestinians as the “seven nations,” or even as Amalek, whom we are biblically permitted or even commanded to kill, including women and children.

On the other side, from critics outside Israel since the war began and now occasionally within Israel, a diametrically opposed view has taken hold: that all Gazans—even Hamas operatives and terrorists—are innocent, because they act within a reality of colonial oppression. According to this view, full responsibility for every act of violence lies with the occupier, and those who are colonized cannot be held morally accountable.

The extreme distance between these two perspectives—each of which erases moral responsibility from one side and places it entirely on the other—creates a dangerous vacuum. It eliminates the possibility of true ethical deliberation and instead fosters patterns of vengeance, denial, and dehumanization.”

Read Shoshana Cohen’s full op-ed on Times of Israel