On Tuesday, June 3, I went downtown to a 5:30 demonstration against the current Israeli policy of starving the people of Gaza. There were only about 200 protesters, but then the event was poorly publicized. Most of the protesters were either quite old or quite young. Many were Jewish; some were people of color. One, a lovely young Asian woman, said it was the first time she could allow herself to be photographed without a mask at a protest. She had just become an American citizen. Now she doesn’t have to be afraid of deportation for protesting a war crime.

We had been asked to wear black and bring an empty pot. I understood the black: we were mourning tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. The pots were to bang on, it turned out. The symbolism was wasted on passersby, and there was quite enough noise without the banging.

My protest buddy said she agreed with about 60% of what the speakers said. I agreed with about 80%. Some of them spoke about the 1400 medical workers killed in Gaza since the Hamas attack of October 7, the journalists killed, the international journalists prevented from reporting on the scene. One of them, the angriest, was the only speaker I’ve heard who seemed to support Hamas. He was listened to, but the crowd murmured, and didn’t bang on their pots when he finished.

Some of the signs: “Gaza Genocide: we can’t say we didn’t know.” “Let the children eat.” “Gaza: the graveyard of international law.” One tee shirt quoted George Carlin: “I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the Government tells me.”

A man in a MAGA hat tried to ride his bicycle through the crowd. The monitors stopped him, politely, but he wanted to argue. “Now you’re behind me, and I’m feeling threatened!” he said, and added, “You judge me because I’m wearing a hat?” He kept getting louder. A youngish man stepped up, telling the guy he was going to change his mind. The monitors asked the two men to take their argument further away from the speakers, which they did.

For the next half hour, the two men continued their discussion to one side of the protest. The older man mentioned Dresden and Nagasaki as the kind of horrors that are sometimes necessary in war. He said he had seen videos of Hamas hijacking aid trucks. At one point I heard the younger man say, “I’m hearing a little too much dry drunk right now.” Finally they shook hands, and the MAGA guy rode away on his bike. I doubt his mind had been changed. But he clearly felt that he had been given a respectful hearing.

I remember, wistfully, an occasion nearly a year ago when I had a good conversation with a Zionist Jew on the Harvard campus. We disagreed on most things about this war, though we agreed on many other issues. We came up with the idea of the university holding a series of informal meetings on Gaza, to be called “Let’s Just Talk.” We parted amicably. But the last time we saw each other on opposite sides of a protest, he hissed at me, “So you support terrorism?!”

Our opposing sides are operating with two different data sets. Two different sets of photos, videos, eye witness accounts, casualty numbers: everything. We really, really need to just talk.