I’m a proud Jewish Israeli American advocate. I refuse to give up hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. That refusal sometimes gets me in trouble. Some think I’m betraying my own people when I voice criticism of government policy. But protecting our humanity means we don’t look away from hard reality. We confront it fully.

I visited Dachau in 1987. I stood in the courtyard, looking at the sign that read “Never Again.” To me, it meant never again for anyone, especially the people with the least power to protect themselves.

That word, “never,” came back to me recently when a friend described how scary it was to see a banner reading “Destroy Israel,” unfurled before thousands at the San Fermín festival in Pamplona, Spain. It made me wonder whether European Jews will ever truly be safe. I suggested that perhaps rhetoric like that grows out of despair: ongoing wars, civilian casualties, land expropriation in the West Bank, the absence of any political solution for millions of Palestinians. I wasn’t excusing it. I was naming the ground it grows in. My friend recommended I watch Eran Riklis’s Lemon Tree. I went in guarded. I was surprised by what I saw.

There’s a scene near the end I still think about. Mira Navon, the Defense Minister’s wife, stands at her window looking out at the wall built to protect her husband. Behind it: Salma’s lemon grove, pruned to stumps. Mira is powerless in her own way too, on the other side of a very different fence. Riklis has said the film is about solitude, and he’s right. But solitude is only half the story. It’s the half that’s easier to sit with.

Tzrifin, Israel is the place of birth on my passport, where my parents........

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