An imam told a room of mostly Jewish attendees that Jewish discomfort with the Palestinian cause is a colonial hangover. I didn’t correct him on stage. Here’s why, and here’s what I’d say now.

Last week I sat on a panel in Manchester with an imam, Nasser Kurdy, and a rabbi, Dovid Lewis. The two have built a project out of their own friendship. They travel together and speak at schools, giving Muslim students a chance to meet a Jew, often for the first time, and ask him whatever they want.

I said yes to this panel mostly for that reason.

Children, unlike adults, prioritize friendship and human connection over being right and proving a point, the rabbi told me. That’s how he and Nasser have stayed close. Not by deciding who’s right, but by deciding the friendship matters more. Nasser isn’t an ordained religious authority. He’s a trained doctor, born in Syria like me, who leads prayer at his local mosque and carries the title “imam” from that role.

Before the event we agreed to be mindful of our statements, to avoid offending anyone. I’ll call it what it was: to avoid offending Muslims. That’s a hard needle to thread. Radical Muslims will always find a reason to be offended. Some lines are obvious. Others move depending on who you ask: Erdogan, Nasrallah, Khamenei, child marriage, the full face veil, the definition of terrorism itself.

But one line holds steady across nearly every Muslim community, Sunni or Shia, Arab or not, religious or secular. The Palestinian cause.

That’s the fault line the whole panel sat on. Since October 7th I’ve become a public figure who sides with Israel, in spite of, or maybe because of, my own background. Half Syrian. Half Lebanese. Half Sunni. Half Shia. I knew walking in that I was on thin ice. I trusted the rabbi to be the buffer.

There was one other Muslim in the room: a reporter,........

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