Sally Abed is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, and Jess Bricker is a Jewish citizen of Israel. Together, they engage in a dialogue about questions and dilemmas around Israel-Palestine, grassroots activism, and possibilities for justice, peace and equality. Their conversation, recorded from a place of distance from the frontlines of ongoing violence, unfolds on the podcast The Long Answer.
The experiences of Palestinians and Israelis are profoundly asymmetrical: Palestinians live under discrimination, military occupation and/or siege, with their lives heavily restricted and under the constant threat of violence, while most Jewish Israelis live under civil law in relative security. This conversation does not equate these realities. Instead, it explores questions of human pain, moral and political dilemmas, and the challenges of imagining a future in which safety, dignity, and civic rights are possible for everyone.
As the destruction of Gaza continues, any framing that places the Hamas attacks on the same material scale as the ongoing annihilation of the Palestinian people risks obscuring the deeper enduring structures of power, occupation, and systematic dehumanization at work. This podcast cannot—and should not be expected to—serve as a token gesture or a dilution of collective trauma. It is, however, a conscious political choice: part of a strategic effort to imagine new forms of collective life grounded in shared public interests. Such imagination does not replace the urgent demand for liberation—it depends on it, and must emerge in its wake.
Grief in Israel and Palestine is profoundly politicized. As assistant professor of history at the University of Chicago and the editor of Dissent Gabriel Winant notes that Israel functions as a machine that converts Jewish grief into political power and military force, linking mourning to state legitimacy. Public expressions of grief over Israeli-Jewish deaths are inevitably entangled with the state’s use of violence, while Palestinian deaths remain largely invisible and uncommemorated. How to grieve, what meaning to give those tears, Winant insists, are cruelly political questions—whether one likes this fact or not.
Publishing this conversation on October 7 requires careful contextualization. This date marks a memorial for Israeli victims, and it is crucial that the occupation and ongoing violence against Palestinians is not obscured or diminished. Editorial notes by the AWC team accompany this version in brackets. Edits have been made exclusively for the purpose of clarity and readability to the original transcript. You can listen to the original conversation directly here.
It is likely too soon to let empathy prevail above all. However, this discussion is especially relevant for readers seeking to understand and reflect on these issues from a mediated or distanced perspective—far from the daily realities of destruction, displacement, and precarious survival.
We would like to thank Nadav Golan from Standing Together—a grassroots movement uniting Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in the pursuit of peace, social justice, and climate action—for connecting us and making the publication of this transcript possible. Some lessons take longer to learn than others.
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Jess Bricker: We’re recording this on a really difficult morning. We just woke up again to the news of intensive bombings last night in Gaza City—bombs that we actually could hear from Tel Aviv. That’s the reality we’re in.
Sally Abed: A huge number of people who were already displaced are living in tents without shelter, with barely any food, and now they’re being displaced again.
JB: On top of that daily reality, it’s been two years since October 7, which, for some people, is a memorial day marking that horrible attack. For others, it marks two years of genocide, two years of war, or two years of hostages in captivity.
SA: For people in Gaza, it’s two years of unimaginable reality, without knowing when it will end.
JB: For many people, both here and abroad, life has looked incredibly different since that day. I recently had a conversation abroad where I said we’ve been witnessing the worst thing we’ve ever seen through our phones for two years. At the end of the call, one participant challenged me, saying that, for them, the worst thing they’ve ever witnessed was October 7. My first reaction was, how? Not to diminish the horrors of October 7—I’ve seen the images, read the stories, heard the testimonies, spoken to friends who lost loved ones—it was horrific, unimaginable. But every day since, I’ve woken up to videos of Palestinian babies killed, entire families wiped out, the systematic annihilation of a people. I couldn’t understand how anything from that day could be worse than the collective trauma of the past two years.
Then I thought, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, as a Jew or as an Israeli, I’m supposed to perceive my people’s suffering as worse than that of others. Maybe I mixed up empathy and mourning. It speaks volumes about the different worlds we live in and how we can witness the same events yet tell ourselves very different stories. As we do in each episode, we ask each other a personal question related to these topics. I think about how it feels to live here, witnessing the worst that has happened to your people every day. Any time you talk about it, someone feels like you’re dismissing their pain. How do you see that? How do you grapple with it daily?
SA: It’s exhausting. Israeli society expects me to prioritize its trauma over mine. I’ve actually lost a friend over this—maybe she’s listening. After October 7, I was traumatized. I went to funerals constantly, being present in the grief of others. It became clear she couldn’t reciprocate for me. She couldn’t empathize with Palestinian suffering in the same way she could with Jewish suffering. As a Palestinian, I provoke them by demanding empathy. I don’t want to demand it—I want it to be recognized without justification. In my role as a council member [of Haifa Municipality Council], these backlashes also appear in the media or during interviews. I rationalize it. I try to navigate it—it feels like part of the job. But the most impossible mission is the personal one. Living a personal life in a mixed city like Haifa is incredibly difficult.
JB: Abroad, people often get told who to empathize with based on power structures. I remember the day after October 7, a friend posted an Instagram story about the Nova Festival attack, saying they had no empathy for the teenagers who were murdered there because they were near a concentration camp. These people abroad were young people who attended festivals, acknowledged their settler status, but somehow decided those victims didn’t deserve empathy because of identity or nationality.
Since then, we see people choosing empathy based on who they think deserves it—who can use force, who can’t, who can be a victim of force, and who can’t.
SA: Here, we’re looking at two sources of empathy: one from ideology and collective narrative, and one from human interaction and simply recognizing human suffering. These can conflict. Ideology sometimes prevents us from empathizing with human suffering. Social media often shows that ideological lens, which is predictable and synthetic. But personal interactions can be surprising—even when it doesn’t seem “rational” to empathize with your neighbor’s kid in Gaza.
JB: As a soldier?
SA: Yes, as a soldier. It’s irrational to perform empathy, not because I don’t feel it, but in the sense of shared survival, practical relationships, or because others demand it—even when my own soul is shattered and crushed with emotions. But that’s different than what I’m talking about: when I see a 19-year-old soldier killed in Gaza, my heart genuinely breaks for him, for his family, for his mom. It catches me by surprise. He shouldn’t die. That’s the irrational part of empathy.
JB: If I were a Palestinian in the diaspora, I think I’d struggle with that: the fact that you feel emotional for an Israeli soldier who participated in Gaza.
SA: Why is that hard to say?
JB: I guess...because you’re seeing someone who did terrible things, yet you feel for them. How do you explain that?
SA: I said it’s irrational. But I think of that soldier as a human being, even if they’re committing war crimes. They are real people who are a product of a very cruel society. I expect the same complexity of empathy for Palestinian youth in Hamas. It’s about holding space for humanity on both sides, even amid atrocity.
JB: Many would find that comparison hard to hear.
SA: Yes. We do not seek to justify, and context is everything. There’s no room for context in Israel, but there should be room for that abroad; we can create that space. In our movement, our activism, our culture of solidarity, we try to create that space.
JB: A few months in, in December 2023, I argued with a friend about wanting a full ceasefire. He said he had friends fighting in Gaza. I said I have Palestinian friends. That tension—different groups we empathize with—stopped the conversation. How do you approach that? Should I find empathy for him? Convince him to find empathy for this group, or abandon that hope?
SA: This big gap highlights the tension between empathy as human beings and empathy as a moral, political demand. Demanding empathy can be seen politically almost as moral lecturing, which often isn’t constructive in practice. As organizers, we focus on mobilizing people around shared interests. We should ask ourselves: should we have hundreds of thousands of people in Israel mobilize every week against this government and around the collective self-interest of the Israeli people—for the hostages, security, and economic concerns, [but] not necessarily all of them for us Palestinians? Or, would we rather put our efforts into invoking empathy for us, Palestinians, as a people who are hurting?
JB: Why is a ceasefire and a hostage deal in Israeli self-interest?
SA: This is exactly the point. Early after October 7, talking about a hostage deal and a ceasefire was explosive and very unpopular—0.1% support. Today, over 74% of Israeli society supports a hostage deal. Most of them aren’t there for the Palestinians, but this isn’t necessarily conflicted. A majority agrees now that this genocide needs to end, and we are closer today to our goal than if we demanded empathy in the first place. It’s not instrumental. We genuinely represent the interest of returning the hostages and ending the war. Mobilization works when framed as shared interest, not as moral demand.
[Editorial note: By July 2025, support for a comprehensive hostage deal in Israel had reached 74%, with 12% opposed, according to the Jerusalem Post. A poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute in September 2025 found that 66% of Israelis believed the time had come to end the war in Gaza, up from 53% the previous year.]
JB: Abroad, the self interest that influences people’s desire to join movements is sometimes more camouflaged. People join struggles out of a feeling of identification with the morality of the cause, but often there’s more to it. For example, If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace garnered a lot of support through slogans like “not in my name”, and this in itself hits at people’s self interest—American Jews did not want to organize [only] because they were disgusted with Israel’s actions, they also had a clear interest in [the violence] not happening in their name; a desire to disconnect themselves from it. On the ground, for people in Gaza or Israel, self-interest is survival—being safe, putting food on the table, not being killed. All of these realities are drastically different. These are the things people here are thinking about. That is what we need to concentrate on if we wish to create change on the ground.
SA: One is part of a larger story.
JB: But the way people feel can’t be argued easily. That’s what they’re thinking about first and foremost. And that’s why we need to focus on self-interest when mobilizing and organizing people on the ground.
SA: We talked about the limitations of empathy abroad—less interactive, less complex—but it has mobilized so many people. The Palestinian solidarity movement around the world is unprecedented in terms of prolonged engagement. Of course, it’s tied to the level of atrocities, but it’s also about what the conflict represents: the [nexus] of power, society, economics, the Middle East, the West, energy, weapons, colonization, imperialism, capitalism—they all intersect in this small piece of land.
I do think, however, that a lot of the problems with toxic discourse abroad—the lack of empathy, the narrow lens—aren’t just about self-interest. Especially when you see a Palestinian from Israel abroad and try to boycott her on a campus. You’re a white girl with privilege, and you’re boycotting me for speaking about my self-interest while existing as a Palestinian in Israeli society. The lack of empathy is stark. We need a new story, one that allows us to feel human pain without weaponizing it or using suffering cynically to serve a narrative.
JB: What is this new story we want to tell? As we approach this [second year of genocide], countless narratives and perspectives have been surmounted. What story do we want people to tell? What do we want our communities to learn?
SA: I think it’s difficult. I think this is something we’ll explore throughout the season [of podcasts]. At its core, it’s about human pain and suffering—acknowledging it while also acknowledging history and context. Contextualizing without excusing. We’re approaching two years, and the Israeli government is cynically using [their Jewish citizens’] human pain while erasing Palestinians from public discourse and the land. On the other side, failing to empathize with Israeli hostages or the victims of October 7 feeds the dangerous narratives of extremist leaders and people in power. Leaning into that lack of empathy only strengthens these toxic, violent cycles. That’s extremely frightening.
JB: It works both ways. A lack of empathy for Palestinians enables the government to act with impunity, while a lack of empathy for Israelis [and Jews, abroad] fuels fear, insecurity, and justification for violence.
SA: It’s not even about feeling safe—just surviving.
JB: Exactly. And whether the threat is immediate or perceived, it drives behavior and perpetuates dangerous cycles.
SA: When we talk about empathy, we’re not suggesting moral equivalence between the two sides. Of course, the reality is more complex. There’s immense inequality, hegemony, and a monopoly over violence, but the moment we abandon empathy for human suffering while we contextualize it, we enter a dangerous space.
JB: The [days leading up] to October 7 is so difficult to bear for so many people. You can feel it in the air and in conversations. I hope people feel space for their own grief, wherever it naturally lies, and that empathy can expand to include more and more people. There is room to feel empathy for all people simultaneously. May that grief and mourning push us toward an end to suffering, a political horizon that ensures safety, freedom, and equality for everyone.
I want to acknowledge that we began with a personal question, and our conversation evolved into self-interest, activism, and societal change. Many sensitive topics came up. When we listen back, we may hear things we’d phrase differently, and I’m sure listeners will resonate with some parts and feel discomfort with others. This is an imperfect conversation—and that’s exactly what we want from this podcast. Please write to us. Give feedback. Ask questions. We want to bring you into this conversation and incorporate your perspective. DM us: <info@standing-together.org>
