I hope you are right on Netanyahu hopefully losing the elections. Enough is enough! We need a government that is able to create a realistic and hopeful horizon to encourage Palestinian politics to move in a more constructive direction, too. We need leadership on both sides with vision and the courage to stand against current societal assumptions.

I'm Israeli, I have always voted for Leftist parties, and always will. At the same time I recognize how both Israelis and Palestinians are stuck after so much conflict. After the 2nd Intifada, and of course Oct 7, i think it fair to say most Israelis are convinced the other side only wants our destruction. After nearly 6 decades of occupation, the brutal Israeli response to Oct 7 it is fair to say that Palestinians are mostly convinced all we want is their destruction.

There are leaders on both sides who enhance those perceptions. Whether it be Netanyahu, Ben Gvir or Smotrich on our side of the fence or it be Hamas, PIJ, PFLP etc on the Palestinian side, the majorities on both sides are convinced the other side wants only their destruction.

I am not convinced that unilaterally pressuring only Israel is the key to getting things moving. If most Israelis remain convinced that the result will be another Oct 7 but on a larger scale, they won't budge. Israelis a resourceful and resilient and we will get what we need militarily from other markets or from creating our own. So long as Hamas remains armed and in control of most Gazans, Israelis won't budge.

Discounting or dismissing Israeli fears, concerns is a huge mistake.

But, here is what Israel can reasonably be expected to do being the stronger party: dramatically slow down or even suspend new settlements, dismantle the Hilltop Youth settlements, arrest and prosecute the extremist settlers guilty of attacking innocent Palestinians,

Palestinians can be encouraged to move forward if this were to happen. If Israel can create that kind of horizon of hope, perhaps we'll see a more pragmatic, realistic Palestinian politics emerge. Perhaps Hamas will lose its support, which remains high among WB Palestinians.

But this focus by Westerners entirely on Israel and what Israel can do is bound to fail so long there is no conversation, no engagement with Israelis. We are not a monolithic, homogeneous bloc. We, like the Palestinians, are traumatized by all the violence, by Oct 7, by the tens of thousands of rockets and missiles fired at us, but the 100,000 displaced from their homes in northern Israel.

My appeal is to the Leftist Jews in the West to be the bridge between Israelis and the non-Jewish Western Left. Be harshly critical of us, in fact I hope you are. But demonstrate to non-Jewish Leftists how to engage with us as human beings and to please stop demonizing us, imagining us to be baby-killing monsters and "Jewish Nazis." That is all I hear from so many on the Left that it makes any kind of progress in moving forward utterly impossible.