When I was in middle school, my family lived for a little over three years in the city of Rehovot, about an hour south from Tel Aviv by bus. We moved there because of my dad’s job: a nuclear physicist, he worked for the Weitzmann Institute of Science. I have fond memories of Rehovot—of the fields on the edge of town around which my cross-country team would practice, of roller-skating down the empty streets with my friends on Yom Kippur (since there was no traffic for that one day each year), and of occasionally picking wild (and very seedy) oranges from the trees on the Weitzmann Institute premises.
On June 15th, an Iranian missile hit the Weitzmann Institute, destroying multiple buildings. It was obviously no accident. As EuroNews explained in its coverage of this strike, this targeting makes perfect strategic sense:
The Weizmann Institute is one of the most important scientific centres in Israel and the world. Its roots date back to 1934, when it was founded by Chaim Weizmann under the name "Daniel Seif Research", before it was renamed in 1949 after its founder, who later became the first president of Israel.
Today, the institute is home to approximately 2,500 researchers and staff, offering advanced master's and doctoral programmes in fields such as mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, and computer science. It has more than 30 scientific laboratories, a vast library, as well as residential and lecture facilities.
But the institute is not just an academic facility; it is seen as part of Israel's national security infrastructure, playing a pivotal role in supporting the military through advanced research and technology.
Israel’s attack on Iran and Iran’s response in kind make one thing quite clear: The war is escalating. So how does one respond to something like this—the partial destruction of a science research facility located in a residential city? Here’s one response: a video of a scientist playing the piano in a destroyed building on premises has been making rounds on Twitter. Shared by Creative Community for Peace, it is a telling reminder of the need for humanity in our response. War is evil. It shouldn’t make us evil in response.
When we consider what war does to us and our affections, it is important to remember the humanity of all involved. As ancient historians, like Thucydides, already recognized, war has a tendency to dehumanize everyone who participates in it—albeit in differing ways. At the most obvious level, the attackers dehumanize the attacked. But no less significant, bystanders can dehumanize one party or the other by selecting one side as right and ignoring the very humanity and personhood of the other. In a world where we can all follow a war in real time from half a world away, this is a real danger—and one that can shape us to a level of cruelty that dehumanizes us too in the process.
The devastation of civilian lives since October 7, 2023, in Israel, Gaza, and now Iran is tragic. It is easy to be angry and to desire to pick a side—just one side—that is surely right. If we look at any one side in detail, we can find justification for this. The events of October 7 were astonishingly cruel, and there is absolutely no way to condone the callous murder and torture of men, women, and children that happened. The fate of Shiri Bibas and her sons, killed by their captors in Gaza with their bare hands, is perhaps the most astoundingly awful of all.
And yet indiscriminately bombing civilians on any side of this war—whether Israel bombing Gaza and now Iran, or Iran bombing Israel—is also awful and should make us mourn. Except, the question is also: How can Israel defend its right to exist? How might Israel take steps to protect its own citizens from another October 7?
The more one digs into the history of the region, going back a century or more, the more complicated matters look, with truly shocking atrocities on multiple sides. And yet in every country, most residents are simply ordinary people, trying to live their lives as best they can. This is true in Israel, in Gaza, and in Iran. And so, it is one thing to speak of Arab Israeli Wars in the abstract. It is another to consider individuals who are trying to live their lives, get married, raise their children. For millions of people, the warzone that is the tiny and overpopulated country of Israel, is simply home. Allegiances and wars stand in the way of perfectly ordinary human flourishing that most people so desperately desire.
One street in Jerusalem exemplifies particularly clearly this desire of ordinary people to live ordinary lives in the midst of the extraordinary violence that they never chose. Assael Street in Jerusalem has been quite literally in the middle of war for much of its existence. From 1948 to 1967, the street was divided by barbed wire—separating Israeli West Jerusalem and Jordanian East Jerusalem until the two halves were reunited after the Six Day War. But the street’s combination of Arab and Israeli neighbors living in close proximity together continued.
In his book tracking the history of the Arab-Israeli Wars through this one street, A Street Divided: Stories From Jerusalem’s Alley of God, journalist Dion Nissenbaum tells the stories of its inhabitants, Jews and Arabs, many of whom have now lived on this street for generations. These are stories of kids’ playdates and letters, of people throwing freshly baked bread to each other over the barbed wire, of sending rogue chickens who crossed an international border back home to their owners, and people seeing each other primarily as neighbors and friends rather than enemies, even as heartbreak and tragedy have also befallen them at times.
There are no easy resolutions to the present conflict. But in the midst of ongoing tragedies, especially when watching them from afar, it is important to remember the humanity of all sides—and to keep our own.