From the outside, observing a horrendous conflict in which the enmity stretches back for millennia, it’s tempting to throw up one's hands in frustration and disgust, muttering, “A plague on both their houses!” Nobody is innocent, not even the observer. But in the spirit of the core tenets of all cultures—love, fellowship, generosity to strangers and the poor, a total way of life dedicated to our truest natures—there’s no option, however hopeless, but to search for our commonality, our shared humanity. Yes: it’s far less fraught, far more facile, to see as an bystander. But it is there.

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