The Israel-Palestine conflict is often presented as a zero-sum game, an existential struggle between Jews and Arabs dating back to 1948. As the son of an “off-the-derech” (secular) Arab Muslim and an Ashkenazi Jew from Pennsylvania, and as a student at UCLA—a campus at the heart of the pro-Palestine student movement—I’m often asked for my perspective on the war. My response is: “I have two reasons to want peace.”
My paternal family hails from Egypt. My great-grandfather grew up in a farming village in the Nile Delta, where he memorized the Qur’an as a teenager, qualifying him to practice Islamic law. He gained recognition representing Munira al-Mahdiyya, the preeminent Egyptian popular singer of the 1920’s. My grandfather (Geddo in Egyptian Arabic), a professor of aeronautical engineering, and my grandmother, the first woman political cartoonist in the Middle East, were faced with the challenges of Nasser’s repressive and authoritarian regime due to their refusal to align with the ruling Socialist Party. When my father was four years old, they were forced to flee Egypt, seeking refuge in Nigeria. There, Geddo taught at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, a former Biafran stronghold. My father, raised with the expectation of emigration, came to the United States alone at 16. He earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering at the University of Florida and later met my mother while pursuing a second master’s in computer science at the University of Minnesota.
My mother, by contrast, grew up in an established East Coast Jewish family. Her father and grandfather were both medical doctors, and my mother’s grandmother was the first female president of a Conservative synagogue in the U.S. Her commitment to Jewish continuity and women’s inclusion in formal ritual are likely part of what influenced my mother to pursue a PhD in women’s literature. When my mother was forbidden from having a Bat Mitzvah by her own mother, who had converted to Judaism to marry my grandfather but grew resentful of it after their divorce, her grandmother found a way around it. She taught my mother to receive an aliyah to the Torah, treating it as a sufficient rite of passage, and only explaining its significance after the fact. Interestingly, when my mother first met my father’s family, she expressed interest in seeing my paternal grandmother’s political cartoons, but my grandmother assumed that their anti-Zionist themes would be offensive to my mother as a Jew.
Multiculturalism was something I took for granted during my childhood; my family’s mixed heritage was just a fact of life. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area—an epicenter of the global tech industry—diversity wasn’t just celebrated, it was essential to the economy, so I had no reason to see my background as unique. Surrounded by coexistence, I didn’t view identity as a source of division; the tensions between the two peoples with whom I identify felt distant. It wasn’t until my arrival at UCLA—marked by October 7th, the ensuing war in Gaza, and the wave of protests that followed—that I fully understood the friction between the two peoples with whom I identify. Conversations that once felt abstract became personal.
As ongoing conflict continues to perpetuate suffering and division, It has become clear that the status quo in Israel-Palestine is not sustainable. The cycle of violence and retaliation has led to deep-seated mistrust between communities, preventing any meaningful progress toward coexistence. My own background—shaped by both Jewish and Arab history—shows that such division need not define us. Lasting stability cannot be achieved through force or suppression. Instead, genuine dialogue and mutual understanding are essential for breaking this cycle. The experiences of those affected by the conflict underscore the urgent need for meaningful conversation at the grassroots level about both the Zionist and Palestinian aspirations. This need is evident both in the Middle East, and on the American university campuses that have become a proxy for the ongoing war. None of us alive today are responsible for the current situation. We inherited it.
My dual heritage compels me to advocate for peace with an urgency that transcends academic discourse. I am forced to view Israel-Palestine directly, rather than from across the sea, atop an ivory tower. As a child of an Arab Muslim father and a Jewish mother, I have two reasons to want peace: my Arab and Jewish identities both demand it. The future of the region hinges on our collective ability to transcend division and embrace a narrative of shared humanity. Peace isn’t just a distant hope for me, it is a necessary foundation for my own sense of self and for the future of those who, like me, are caught between worlds.
The views expressed in this post reflect the views of the author(s) and not UCLA or ASUCLA Communications Board.
