I am a Jew, trying to deal emotionally both with what Hamas may have done to distant members of my own family, and also with the great cruelties inflicted by Israel, the country they went to at the time of Nakba, on an innocent people who have done nothing to deserve the horrors they faced then and face now. So I found myself writing, as I tried to calm myself earlier today, this secular prayer. It may mean something to others, or nothing at all:

AN ENGLISH JEW PRAYS FOR PALESTINE

May peace return to Palestine

After its long and painful absence.

May the Palestinian people be free

To live without fear in their own land.

May there be an end

To their anger, their despair.

May they no longer have to pay in blood

The cost of crimes they did not commit.

May Israel also be freed from

The rule of lies, greed, corruption, and fear.

May Palestine yet prosper.

May Israel yet let Palestine live.

May Palestine yet prosper.

May Israel yet let Palestine live.’