I was either 26 or 27 when I first learned what the Nakba was. Do you know what Nakba means? It translates literally as disaster, catastrophe, or cataclysm. The word feels like a gash. It is the Palestinian name for the period during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948.

I work on refugee issues in my job and have learned about what defines and causes refugees. The idea of losing home, safety, any sense of stability also feels terrifyingly understandable now that I live an independent life and have to provide for myself. Refugees don’t just happen – there has to be something that they are seeking refuge from.

Now, can you imagine leaving your home, your life, willingly?

I am angry that I was brainwashed because I was pretty much taught that Israel could do no wrong. I appreciate that I learned that Israel is vital for the world, for Jews, for me.

It is vital, but when one lets go of tribalism, it is very clear that Israel is capable of doing plenty wrong. It ultimately is a nation, like any other, and while I am proud to be Jewish and consider its moral teachings a light to the world, a Jew is is by nature no better nor worse than any other human even if preschool at the Jewish Community Center, 9 years of Jewish summer camp, and 12 years of Hebrew school may have led me to believe differently.

The same political and moral laws that apply to all nations, all leaders, must apply to a Jewish nation and Jewish leaders. Benjamin Netanyahu is not exceptional just because of what he does as leader of Israel.

I do not despise nor pity everyday people who defend him for any which reason because I too did not know nor think I had to know what al-Nakba means until I was physically in a place to know.

My Jewish education began so early and was always intertwined with Pride in Israel and the moral imperative to Never Forget that teachings from the Torah, the magnitude of the Holocaust, and love of Israel and knowledge of its history all resemble inherited myth, more than philosophy or history. They are inexorably intertwined with my development at its most formative.

But we grow.

Our identities become so much more than what they were at our start.

I remember, not sure how early, when I was told in Hebrew School that Palestinians voluntarily left their homes in the land that is now Israel because the surrounding Arab nations told the Palestinians that they had to leave in order for the Palestinian civilians to not be caught in the war about to be waged on a nascent Israel in which many Jews would assuredly be killed so soon after the Holocaust.

I was also taught that Tel Aviv was a Jewish Shangri-La on the beach, rising out of desert and surf. A huddle of Jewish pioneers breaking ground with nothing around.

On and on and on.

Later, I learned that many Palestinians were forced away or scared away from home due to armed Jewish militias.

Tel Aviv’s founding photo was creatively taken (or described) so that the ancient city of Jaffa – of which Tel Aviv was a suburb which would gobble up the Arab city – was hidden from view.

Foreign policy, conflict, and the status of refugees are complex things. Just like Jews are a people like any other, there have and always will be Jews who are good people and Jews who are bad people. To claim Israel’s founding was not without sin or that it was absolutely justifiable, disregards the influence of propaganda and ignores the desperation and possibly terrible acts of a people escaping and emerging from deep trauma.

What is the ultimate difference between the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Irgun, a former Jewish paramilitary group, now lionized for their role in Israel’s founding, but who bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 and massacred innocent Palestinian villages in several occurrences. The PLO high-jacked planes and carried out bombings. Both transformed into accepted political organizations.

If all acts can be explained by a Jew as self-defense, does that label a whole people as enemies? Does it force one to believe in the infallibility of men long past because they share ancient genetic or cultural ties?

With that established, it is vital to recognize that conflict happens and eventually ends. To reject Israel as an idea or deny its current right to exist – denies reality. Israel does exist and for that, I am grateful.

Gratitude needs to be accompanied by responsibility. If Israel is my “birthright”, as declared in ancient biblical text and the Israeli Declaration of Independence – I have a choice. I can accept or reject my birthright and a responsibility for it.

I grew up during the era of the Oslo Accords, a peace agreement that led to something that truly approached peace between Jews and Palestinians. It embraced coexistence fostered by an underlying optimism and benevolent view of two states and the lives they shape.

I only understood Yasser Arafat, the leader of the PLO, as a statesman and Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, was a Lincoln to David Ben-Gurion’s Washington. Then Rabin was a Lincoln.

And then there was that afternoon in Hebrew School when the Rabbi, the Principal, and my teacher all gathered around a blurry TV. I remember myself as the only young person in the room. A wave of suicide terrorist bombings were gashing through Israel. People I was raised to think of as distant family were dying.

The Second Intifada – Jews were dying again.

My Jewish maturation and global education have both continued since then – every now and then in concert. I learned from other distant family in Argentina why a refuge from violence and persecution, a homeland, is still needed.

I traveled to Israel three times, twice under the forced fog of propagandist programming. I crossed into Palestine and walked through a refugee camp.

I learned and I dug in deeper, in a critical manner, and became even more tied to the unique history that has gifted me the opportunity to become who I am.

And now?

I accept my birthright, but not because I am Jewish but because I was taught Jewish values such as Tikkun Olam – repairing the world – by the same stories that now tear my heart over Israel.

I do not know the experience of living through the Second Intifada firsthand and having people I know die in a coffee shop or on a bus. Nor do I know the experience of growing up in refugee limbo, with no nation caring about me or my family. However, I do know what it is like to have a story of deep and recent loss as part of my heritage.

As Israel transforms, or not, with the reelection of an indicted man who would partner with racist religious extremists because “politics” and who continues to lead a government that supports a de facto annexation of the West Bank – I choose to accept my given responsibility.

I grew up with Israel and a sense of pride and belonging to it. Its what American Jews experience for the most part. And now, between the pain of loss with letting Israel go or disappointment in Israel’s actions, with the possibility of another day always tomorrow – I will always choose the possibility promised by tomorrow.

At the end of the Passover Seder, we proclaim, “Next Year in Jerusalem” – an optimistic ode to a better world escaped from bondage. In Deuteronomy, it is stated, “Justice, justice, you shall pursue.” No matter the darkness, both of these phrases call us to keep faith in our ability to work towards and demand a better home and world.