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I want to thank all who sent me comments on my last blog about the pain I have been experiencing.

Some of you asked how it can be that people who experienced the Holocaust can treat the Palestinians the way some of us, Israelis, do.

Here is a possible explanation, not an excuse.

The Jewish people are a traumatized people. Two thousand years of being burned, gassed, murdered. The Inquisition. Pogroms. The Holocaust. And that includes Jews who came from Muslim countries as well. Almost every Jewish family in Israel carries memories of persecution, loss, or death because they were Jewish. In my family, we count 108 of the extended family who were gassed and burned alive.

Traumatized people live in fear. This fear is augmented by the belief that radical Muslims are on a mission to spread their religion worldwide and that Israel is an obstacle to realizing their goal. And the Palestinians are a serious threat too. They have claims to return to what they believe was theirs. And terror is their means to chase us away.

People who live in fear use power to protect themselves. The Holocaust and the nonstop threats to their lives have closed some of their hearts.

When people close their hearts, they stop feeling. And when they stop feeling the pain of others, atrocious behavior might happen.

Not all Israelis persecute the Palestinians. Those committing acts of persecution are a small group of hotheaded young religious zealots who want to take over what was part of the Jewish nation two thousand years ago. Although they are a small minority, the racists see all Israelis as part of this group. Worse, some see Jews worldwide as Nazi-Jews.

And antisemitism is rising.

And rising.

The same racist bias exists on the Israeli side.

Some Israelis see every Palestinian as a murderer, as a Hamas terrorist. And that is simply not true. Some Palestinians are seeking peace. There is a group of Israeli and Palestinian grieving mothers who come together to support each other. Mothers who have lost their children. Mothers who understand each other's pain because they have experienced the same unbearable loss. Although the group is small, it can grow with the right approach and treatment of the problem.

There will be no peace in the Middle East until both sides stop making racist generalizations, open their hearts, and start feeling each other's pain.

Palestinians must realize that Jews have had enough pain, enough persecution, enough being hunted and murdered simply for being Jewish. They will fight to the death to have a piece of land where they will fight to survive. A tiny piece of land, much of it desert, with almost no natural resources. But it is the land they have been praying to return to for two thousand years. In every prayer. Every day.

And Israelis must feel the pain of people who lost their homes, many of whom live in refugee camps with little hope for a future for themselves or their children.

I want to share an experience I had sixty years ago that keeps me supporting the Palestinian cause to have a land of their own, next to Israel, in good partnership. I have designed a plan that I truly believe can make the Middle East a dreamland, a plan I have been promoting in my past blogs which has not been accepted because of the current attitude towards the Palestinians.

As a student at Columbia University, I lived at International House, a dormitory for foreign students. Several Palestinians lived there.

As someone who was saved during the Second World War by Albanian Muslims, I do not feel animosity toward Muslims. On the contrary. I feel gratitude. So, I tried to make friends with the Palestinian students.

No chance.

I was Israeli.

The enemy.

I play the accordion, so I tried to get their attention by playing some Arabic songs. They could not resist. It worked. We started talking.

I asked one of them, a student on a United Nations scholarship, where he was from.

"From a refugee camp in Jericho," he answered.

"Where were you from before?" I asked.

"Haifa."

I already felt a bit uncomfortable.

"Which street?" I asked.

"Abbas Effendi."

"What number?"

"32A."

That was the house my family had moved into in 1948 when we came to Israel after the Holocaust.

The very same house. There were still dishes on the table. They apparently hurried to escape and left with just whatever they were wearing at the time.

We were the same age. I could imagine him as an eleven-year-old boy, running for his life. Crying. Frightened. Losing his home. Spending his life in a refugee camp, hoping for a better life somehow, somewhere.

And then I thought of myself.

I, too, had been a refugee.

I, too, had been running for my life.

I, too, had been searching for a safe place to call home.

I had found a home.

But he had lost his. And has none.

The Palestinians did not cause the Holocaust. Yet they are paying a price for it.

I hope and pray that a new Israeli government committed to shinuy—change—will not interpret change as merely changing who governs Israel.

I pray for a change in what drives our decisions. A change that sees Palestinians not only as villains, but also as victims.

A change that recognizes that security cannot come from power alone. It must also come from mutual recognition, mutual respect, and the willingness to feel each other's pain.

Maybe, just maybe, we can open our hearts.

No more death.

No more orphans.

No more mothers burying their children.

No more children growing up learning to hate because they have never known anything but fear.

We ALL have had enough.

Enough suffering.

Enough hatred.

Enough fear.

It is time to move from fear to faith.

Faith that we can live together.

Faith that the pain of the past does not have to determine the future.

Faith that we can finally stop passing our trauma from one generation to the next.