A reflection on Israel/Palestine, the meta-crisis, and the call to maturation

There are some conversations we have learned not to have. Some conflicts that shut down dialogue before it begins. Israel/Palestine is one of them.

I find myself in what feels like an impossible position—and perhaps you do too.

I honour the Jewish faith and its profound contributions to human wisdom. I recognise the reality of Jewish historical trauma—the pogroms, the Holocaust, the persistent shadow of antisemitism. I acknowledge that Israeli citizens face genuine security threats.

And yet I cannot accept what is being done to Palestinians. I see the occupation, the displacement, the suffering—and I see how criticism of these policies gets labelled as antisemitism, shutting down the conversation before complexity can be held.

This collapse—this inability to hold multiple truths simultaneously—is itself revealing something.

When the Sacred and Secular Collapse

We have been taught to separate the secular from the sacred, the political from the spiritual. This false dichotomy reaches its breaking point in Israel/Palestine.

On one side: sacred narratives of promised land, chosen people, millennia of persecution. On the other: different sacred narratives of ancestral lands, holy sites, the trauma of dispossession. Both real. Both carrying unbearable weight.

Then we overlay these with secular imperial logic—strategic interests, resource control, “CEO-political” thinking that treats land as asset and people as resources. The sacred gets weaponised for secular ends. Legitimate spiritual traditions become justifications for expansion. Genuine security concerns become pretexts for domination.

And criticism of the secular (state policies, military actions) gets shut down by invoking the sacred (antisemitism, religious duty, historical trauma).

This collapse reveals something about where we are as a civilisation.

The 10,000 Year Pattern

Israel/Palestine is not just a regional conflict awaiting a political solution. It is a concentrated, highly visible manifestation of a trajectory our species has been on for roughly 10,000 years—since we forgot we were part of a planetary and cosmic ecosystem.

Before the Agricultural Revolution, humans lived embedded in ecological cycles. We knew ourselves as participants in living systems, not separate from them.

After settlement came:

  • Ownership of land
  • Walls and cities
  • Hierarchies of human over nature, civilised over barbarous, chosen over other
  • The logic of separation, domination, fortification, expansion

Every empire since has followed this pattern. Israel/Palestine concentrates all of it:

  • Genuine trauma meeting genuine dispossession
  • Sacred narratives colliding, both claiming absolute truth
  • Technology of separation (walls, surveillance, AI targeting) as evolution of civilisation’s impulse to control
  • Forgetting of the actual ecosystem—olive groves, aquifers, living land—which becomes mere strategic asset

The same pattern appears everywhere: climate crisis, biodiversity collapse, extractive economics, AI without wisdom. We have spent 10,000 years perfecting the logic of separation from the living whole.

And we are discovering that separation is not a sustainable strategy.

The Call to Maturation

Here’s what this means: It’s time to grow up.

Not grown-up as in cynical realism—that’s often just disguised childishness. But grown-up as in:

Taking responsibility for being part of the living whole, not separate consumers of it.

Holding paradox without collapsing into false equivalence. Honouring both Jewish trauma AND Palestinian dispossession. Maintaining moral clarity while refusing simple good-guy/bad-guy narratives.

Recognising our participation in the systems we critique. None of us stands outside the meta-crisis. We are all implicated.

Moving beyond tribal identity as primary organising principle, while still honouring particular traditions. Being able to say “I am [identity] AND I oppose this action” without experiencing it as betrayal.

Facing what we’ve done—10,000 years of separation and domination—without despair. Looking clearly at our trajectory, feeling its weight, and still choosing life.

This is species-level maturation. We’ve been in prolonged adolescence—experimenting with power, acting as if actions have no consequences, believing cleverness will always save us.

The capacity for grown-up consciousness is already present. This isn’t about acquiring something new. It’s about maturing into what we already potentially are.

The Test

If Israel/Palestine is microcosmic—reflecting where civilisation has led us—then our response becomes a test.

Can we witness this suffering without:

  • Retreating into tribal certainty
  • Weaponising the sacred
  • Reducing complexity to comfortable positions
  • Using ideology as protection against feeling

Can we instead:

  • Feel the full tragedy without turning away
  • Recognise the 10,000 year pattern while honouring specific humans now
  • Hold both/and rather than either/or
  • Act from participation in the living whole rather than separation from it

This isn’t about solving Israel/Palestine through political arrangement. Every “solution” presupposes separation—distinct peoples, separate territories, defended borders.

The way forward requires becoming the kind of humans who could hold this complexity with wisdom and compassion. Not solving from outside, but transforming ourselves such that new possibilities become visible.

What It Asks

Growing up is not optional. The meta-crisis will force maturation—through wisdom or catastrophe, choice or collapse.

We begin where we are:

  • Notice when we retreat into tribal certainty
  • Catch ourselves weaponising the sacred
  • Recognise our own patterns of separation
  • Choose relationship over control
  • Act from participation even when we can’t see the whole

We speak. We refuse to let conversation be shut down. We insist it’s possible to honour sacred traditions AND oppose imperial policies. We model the holding of paradox.

We connect. We find others attempting this maturation. We create spaces where complexity can be held, where tribal identities don’t dominate, where the living whole is remembered.

Not as escape from crisis, but as rehearsal for needed capacities.

The Question

Many people feel trapped between impossible choices—forced to pick sides when the sides themselves are the problem. Many sense that something deeper is at work, that this conflict reveals something about our species and moment that transcends regional politics.

If you’ve read this far, perhaps you’re one of them.

The question isn’t whether you agree with every word. It’s whether this framing opens something—creates more space for complexity, more capacity to hold multiple truths, more willingness to grow up into the wisdom our moment demands.

Israel/Palestine won’t be resolved by better arguments. It asks something more fundamental: Can we remember we’re part of the living whole while caught in systems built on the forgetting?

That remembering—that growing up—is the work.

Not someday. Now.

This is an abbreviated version of a longer reflection. Read the essay here for deeper exploration of these themes, including the collapse of liberal mythology and practical implications for our response.

For more on relational integrity and living from the inside of a living world, explore the Four Invitations or download the chapbook “Four Movements Toward Relational Integrity.“