I’m angry about Gaza. Angry at Hamas scum who fire rockets at families. Angry at parents who ignore leaflets and text messages and let criminals turn their kids into human shields. Angry at journalists who call Jew-hating murderers “militants” and diplomats who urge Israel to negotiate with terrorists. The blood of Gaza’s children is on their hands.

I can’t stop thinking about them. Gaza’s dead children. Born into a ghetto ruled by thugs. Caught in a crossfire older than their parents. Robbed of life, then reduced to grim tallies and talking points.

I’m angry at those whose only answer to their deaths is to insist that Israel has no choice, who shrug their shoulders when kids die, because Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorists who hide in schoolyards and hospitals, terrorists who worship death and value slaughter. I’m angry because of course that’s true – all of it is true – but it won’t bring back the children who perish amid shades of grey while the rest of us pretend that the moral universe is black and white.

I’m angry at those who accept, without question, Israel’s claim that it does as much as it can to reduce civilian casualties, even as bombs land in schools and children die on beaches. I’m angry because there is no other government in the world that receives so much benefit of the doubt from so many of the smartest people I know, people who should know better; who should know that Israel has one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world; who should know that it could have done more to reduce the carnage, but it didn’t, and those kids are dead and Hamas is responsible, but so is Israel.

I’m angry because Israel is right, but it isn’t blameless, and I’m angry because, as a Zionist, as a Jew, it seems so impossible to say so.

I’m also angry at myself. Angry because I feel compelled to defend the same Israeli tactics that I oppose. Angry because I can’t accept the comforting simplicity of “moral clarity,” of a world reduced to good and evil, of the reassuring falsehood that, in war, there are no bad acts, only bad actors.

I’m angry because I think the same convictions that compel me to take Israel’s side also require me to condemn its failures, and I’m angry because I don’t think that’s a contradiction, but the headlines and the editorial pages keep insisting that it is.

I’m angry at myself because I want to be a good partisan and explain the unexplainable, but I can’t stop thinking about those children, even though Hamas aims rockets at kibbutzim and makes war from inside hospitals and mosques and schools and apartment buildings, and even though terrorists are evil and Israel is good. I’m angry because, in spite of everything, I still believe that Israel fights to prevent death and Hamas fights to create more of it, and I’m angry because Israel keeps taking the bait and children keep dying. I’m angry because I love Israel, but I can’t just accept the deaths of innocent children, even if its enemies are murderers.

I’m angry because for every child that dies in Gaza, there are a dozen more who lose a friend, a cousin, a sister. I’m angry because if I were one of those kids, I would be so consumed by anger and hate and spite that I wouldn’t accept what I know is true – that Hamas is responsible for those dead children; that Hamas wants as many dead children as possible. I’m angry because instead of blaming their neighbours and rebuilding schools and hospitals, those broken children will grow up to dig new tunnels and dream of killing more Jews, and all this carnage will have been for nothing.

I can’t stop thinking about them. I can’t stop being angry about them. And I’m not less of a Zionist for saying so.

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