One of my facebook friends, a young Jewish woman, has had some difficulty figuring out her place in this whole struggle. When I first "met" her, she was lamenting the way she was being treated by other Jews. She was utterly sick and tired of being called things like "self-hating Jew" because of her activism for human rights. I told her at the time to just know that she had my profound gratitude for her courage.

Later on, she went totally in the other direction and started to feel really hemmed in by the anger people are showing towards Israel and the kinds of people we have been talking about here who don't differentiate between the oppressors in Israel and Jews generally. She started getting very involved in organizations that are more of the "Israel, right or wrong" variety. And she told me she feared for world Jewry. I told her I understood, and that wherever I see that kind of behavior, I do my best to nip it in the bud. That was a couple of weeks ago.

Last night, after she saw a picture of the young woman who lost her eye when an Israeli border police shot her in the face with a tear gas canister, she became very emotional and started going totally in the other direction again. She said, "I can't seem to get this blood off my hands. Israel, you've broken my heart." And then she said, "I will always remember what (a friend) said to me... silence = death."