In our increasingly polarized world, people are constantly asked to pick a side on just about everything.

And what people usually mean by “pick a side” is, are you on the good side or the bad one?

But when it comes to human worth. Human dignity. Peace. Maybe there’s a third way.

A side where none of us have to decide which humans matter more.

As Dr. Cornel West once told me at a dinner a few years ago, an Israeli baby and a Palestinian baby have the same worth.

Sit with that for a minute.

And yet most of us spend so much time promoting “our side” that we end up invalidating — and often dehumanizing — the “other” side.

I’m Jewish, and I’ve watched many of my own community invest in narratives that suggest there are no innocent Palestinians.

One person pointed out that no Palestinian civilians “ratted out” Hamas terrorists who kidnapped Jews. Complicit, they say. So they deserve to die, too (how many of us would stand up to terrorists with guns).

Another argued that because Hamas embeds itself among civilians, the only way to fight them is to level entire communities. Where all the civilians live. So if Hamas is under a hospital or a school, then the hospital or school is fair game, regardless of who’s inside. What else, they ask, can stop a maniacal death cult from committing more horror?

Others turn a blind eye to anything Israel does wrong. On October 7, Hamas murdered more Jews in a single day than at any time since Hitler. So, fuck ’em all, some say. If civilians die from mass bombings, it’s on Hamas, not Israel. If Israel kills 10,000 kids, it’s on Hamas, they say.

And then, to top it off, some claim Palestinians aren’t even a real people. That their identity is manufactured — defined only in opposition to Israel. They’ll ask why Palestinians didn’t protest when Jordan controlled the West Bank from 1948–67, or when Egypt controlled Gaza during that same period. All designed not to grapple with the reality of today, but to justify never having to create a landscape of co-existence. “They don’t belong!”

Stack all of that together, and then watch Gaza reduced to rubble, and it becomes disturbingly easy to forget that the people who lost loved ones, homes, businesses, family photos, heirlooms — entire lives — are human beings.

Instead, we sit around and debate the legal definition of genocide.

Then on the Palestinian side, you see something different, but no less troubling.

You have people protesting war while chanting “from the river to the sea,” which geographically means eliminating Israel. So… pro-war, just with a different winner?

You have protesters waving Hamas flags on college campuses, effectively signaling support for a group that kidnapped, raped, and murdered civilians.

You have so-called pro-Palesstinians insisting Jews are foreign colonizers in their ancestral homeland, as if Jews in Judea are the same as the British in Ghana. All while the Al Aqsa Mosque sits atop the ancient ruins of the Jewish-Judean Temple.

Others bizarrely claim Israel is a white supremacist project, ignoring that a majority of Israelis are the same skin tone as Palestinians, Iraqis, Moroccans, and some other Middle Eastern populations. Funny how Jews weren’t considered white enough for Hitler, but are now somehow white supremacists.

And all of this gets used to justify removing Jews from the land by any means necessary. Kidnapping. Rape. Murder. Bombs. “Resistance,” they call it. Catchy,

The result?

One side shrinks Palestinians into something less than human and undeserving of any land their grandparents and great grandparents lost. So when they die or are displaced, no tears are shed.

The other side reduces Jews to false caricatures — KKK, colonizers, outsiders— until their humanity disappears too.

And once there are no humans left in the story, anything becomes justifiable.

Kidnappings. Bombings. Mass death. Destroying entire cities. Kids dying.

Everyone has a reason.

Animal versus animal.

That philosophy doesn’t work. It’s a blueprint for endless war.

So try this on for size:

I am pro-Israel.
And I am pro-Palestine.

I can honor the Jewish connection — my connection — to Israel. The deep, historical, spiritual pull of a people who have said “Next year in Jerusalem” at the end of their Passover seders for over 2,000 years. It’s our origin story.

I can believe Israel has a right to exist in peace and security, free from terror.

I can be outraged that Hamas murdered 1,200 people on October 7. I can be sickened by the massacre at a music festival. I can be furious about the kidnapping, rape, and killing of civilians. And even want Hamas gone.

And at the same time —

I can honor the Palestinian connection to that same land. A place where generations of families lived, worked, built lives — and lost them.

I can respect that their love for that land is no less real and genuinely felt.

I can be outraged that Gaza was leveled in the supposed name of eliminating Hamas (which didn’t happen anyway). I can reject the idea that mass civilian death is just unimportant “collateral damage.” I can condemn settlers who terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank and Netanyahu’s right wing government that allows it to take place.

I can be frustrated that bad leaders on both sides of the conflict cannot — or will not — figure out how to share the land. Because doing so would require valuing human dignity over total control. Over land.

A Jewish baby and an Arab baby have the same value.

Until we reach a place where we stop choosing sides and start demanding dignity for all, we are just fueling more death, more destruction, and more grief.

Choose humans.

That’s why I’m pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.