An article in Saturday’s LA Times about Maronite Catholics and their dying language sparked a vivid memory of attending a Church service at the Maronite Church in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, many years ago.

My father’s family…Arab Christians…emigrated to the U.S. in 1913. Their village Jdita, Lebanon, is on the road from Beirut to Damascus. Back in 1913 it was shown on maps as part of Greater Syria. Adjacent, was Greater Palestine. Both lands were then part of the Ottoman Empire. After World War I, the British and French were give mandates to rule these lands and decide their future. I wonder what might have been if the British had decided the Jewish people who lived in this region had more right to self-determination than the Arabs. The result of this mindset was the Balfour Declaration. The rest, as they say, is history.

The village of Jdita is just 50 miles north of Lebanon’s border with Israel. (The distance from Boston to Worcester). I’ve checked the maps to see where bombs haven fallen during the current war, supposedly between Israel and Hamas, but in truth between Israel and many Arabs who want nothing to do with Hamas. No matter. I’ve seen photographs of the people caught in the crossfire between the two warring parties. I’ve seen a little girl who looks like me when I was a little girl. I’ve seen old women who look like my grandmother.

So many have suffered and died. Those who criticize Netanyahu’s scorched earth conduct of this war are labeled anti-Semitic. What an irony. As the term “semitic” (now considered obsolete) by linguists referred to people whose languages (Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic) can be traced back to the same origins…the language spoken in the Middle East at the time of Jesus.

The culture of Arabs and Jews is similar in some fundamental ways (aside from religion). The warmth and generosity of spirit, the traditions of close-knit families and open-handed hospitality, kindness, intellectual curiosity, willingness to work hard, determination to get things done, fierce independence. All this I’ve observed in Arabs, who are my family, and Jews, who are my friends.

Whenever I encounter a stranger who hails from Lebanon or, if we get involved in a conversation, we end up calling each other “cousin.” I’ve had that same feeling of being kindred spirits often-times with Jewish women–and men. I attribute this to the reality that we are, in fact, more closely related than peoples from other lands. (I say this even though I am only 50 percent “Arab.” If it’s just my imagination, so be it!)

Whatever our ethnicity, we all watch, heartbroken as this terrible war in Gaza grinds on. 

I think of Master Sgr. Roddie Edmonds, who was the senior noncommissioned officer among a group of prisoners of war in Germany’s Stalag IXA. It was January of 1945. The Germans had were singling out Jewish POWs. Edmonds ordered all of his soldiers to stand together in front of their barracks. “We are all Jews,” Edmonds told the German officer, who was threatening him with a pistol. The officer did not shoot. He stalked away.

If only we all had the courage…and the opportunity…the courage…and the power…to stand before the decision-makers in this current conflict, hundreds of us, thousands of us, millions of us, who fervently wish this horror would end.

If only we could speak in unison and say:

We are all Palestinians.

We are all Jews.

[I did not intend to write an essay this morning about my heritage and heartbreak, watching strangers halfway around the world suffer and die. But this story sparked thoughts that are never far below the surface…for all of us, I think…as we go about our day-to-day lives. We see innocent people suffering and think: There, but for the grace of God, go I.]