Every period produces its own divisions — ideological, political, social; but this moment feels different: the fractures run deeper. The world seems more fractured than ever before, and the ruptures run deeper. Today’s social media and journalism have blurred the line between news and opinion, following the tone set by podcasters and influencers, many of whom traffic in a far more divisive register. The tail now wags the dog.

I feel this most acutely as a Jew engaged with Israel and the Middle East. In the aftermath of October 7 and the war in Gaza, bridging that gap has become harder than ever. My wife and I have found ourselves in painful conversations with longtime friends who describe Israel as racist, colonial, or genocidal — and we have had little success in conveying the complexity of a conflict now more than a century old.

In one recent exchange, my wife offered what seemed like a reasonable starting point: that two truths can coexist. Israel is a racially mixed democracy in which Arab citizens hold equal rights, while Palestinians in the West Bank live under conditions that are genuinely complex and often harsh. Yet even this attempt at balance was met with deflection. Address the racism charge, and the conversation shifts: What about the occupation? What about white colonialism? It begins to feel like whack-a-mole. Answer one argument, and two more appear in its place.

Too often, our debates operate on the assumption that if one side is partly right, the other must be entirely wrong. This pattern points to something deeper than disagreement over facts: a failure of framework for debate.

What might help, I think, is a different approach: one grounded in prima facie reasoning. A prima facie claim is one that........

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