I have long aspired to uphold Passover’s teaching to have compassion for the stranger. But the noise surrounding Israel’s war with Hamas has drowned out my capacity for empathy.

On a recent walk near my home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, I passed a 20-something man with a dark beard. Embroidered on his black leather jacket was a tiny facsimile of the Palestinian flag.

What do you mean by displaying that flag? I wanted to shout. Don’t you know what happened on Oct. 7?

My response to the flag was disconcerting. I have done organizing work to promote a Palestinian state in the West Bank, which would fly the white, green, black and red standard.

But the waving of Palestinian flags at anti-Israel protests around the city has unleashed a Pavlovian response of rage whenever I see the emblem. Rage, anger and frustration have been my default response to 10/7.

Most of my wife’s family is Israeli and we visit them often. Many of my relatives share my liberal Zionist values. I marched with some of them in a Jerusalem protest against the Bibi Netanyahu government.

Israel is central to my identity. Unlike New York, with its multiple religious and ethnic categories, in the Promised Land my Jewishness never makes me........

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