It’s all but impossible to write about Israel without some readers losing their minds because you haven’t adhered to their us-or-them tribalist ideology, but sometimes the gravity of the situation demands a response, if only on moral grounds. The political follows inevitably from that, and that’s why, no matter what new rules universities lay down, righteously indignant students will find ways to vent their frustrations and register their objections even as they too have lost their minds in trying to boycott or banish Jewish organizations and harass Jewish individuals for their association with Israel.

Most Jews are no more responsible for the actions of the Israeli government than most Americans are for the crimes of Donald Trump. But Americans, Jewish and otherwise, pay taxes that provide weapons for Israel to defend itself and to kill terrorists and anyone else within the blast radius of U.S.-made bombs. And that, not just antisemitism, is what makes Israel so much more subject to American protest than, say, the aggressions of Vladimir Putin or other murderous dictators. We are implicated in Israel’s bombing of civilian targets and its fiendishly ingenious military-terrorist operations like exploding pagers that incidentally kill and maim bystanders, including children, as well as Hezbollah fighters. We, even at this distance, are collateral damage. We are morally wounded by association with our country, and with its ally and dependent Israel.

I am appalled almost every day to see the Sentinel’s front page splash the deadly score from Lebanon or the West Bank or Gaza and to know that I have contributed to the arming of Israel — not just with my taxes but with my moral support for its citizens, most of whom are too young to have participated in its founding and were born there or sought refuge there through no fault of their own. I believe Israelis have the right to live peacefully with their neighbors and not be constantly subject to lethal attacks. Gaza and the West Bank aside (because they are far too complicated to discuss here), Israel has the right to exist because it does exist — just as the United States tragically exists on a conquered continent. History is not everybody’s fault, and not every historical crime is inherited by blood.

But we are participants in history and must try to sort out our own understanding from conflicting information and different, equally valid perspectives and whatever allegiance we can find when nobody can claim to be innocent because there’s blood on everyone’s hands. If all that matters is what tribe you belong to, then it doesn’t matter what side you’re on because they’re equally doomed since time immemorial to neverending cycles of violence.

The conservative classicist Victor Davis Hanson has argued with scholarly authority that warfare has always been endemic to human society, and that to opt for pacifism in the face of war is to forsake your moral obligation to defend your country. A pacifist might reply that refusing to participate in further slaughter is an act of conscience meant to stop the perpetual cycles of bloodshed. I believe it is ethical for individuals to opt out of violence without illusions that it will make any difference to the fighters everywhere determined to keep on fighting.

If I thought I knew how to correct such terrible truths or had a foolproof recipe for peace I would run for office and try to pass legislation disarming everyone. But that would be delusionally messianic. I think Americans should be welcome as individuals or private organizations to send their money to Israel, but I don’t think our government should be subsidizing mass murder in the name of self-defense because the prime minister is trying to stay out of prison by keeping the country perpetually at war — a war without end that endlessly replicates itself generation after generation by attempting to annihilate the adversary and having the opposite effect of creating more and more warriors.

Stephen Kessler is a Santa Cruz writer and a regular Herald contributor. To read more of his work visit www.stephenkessler.com