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At the time the Palestinians drew my attention most of all, because their culture was the most foreign; because they were killed far more often and yet their slaughter was treated more casually, packing lower news value; because they were trapped both by Israel and by their own leaders, their own killers.

But I am haunted now by Israelis. By the overlay of realities, the way they knew, and didn’t know. Like the people in Kfar Saba, they lived right next door, there and not there. They ignored it, or they told themselves stories that made it all right, horrible stories, and worst of all the stories were true—the injustice and blood of Jewish history.

And yes, Israel has a reason for everything, and there is a national myth that theirs is the most humane army in the world. But in Jerusalem I learned that good intentions and lofty ideals are among the most dangerous tools of all in a war, because they blind people to what they are doing, to the blood on their hands.

One morning I got to work early, and found nobody there except Abby, the office manager. Abby was hyperactive and giggly and screechy. She wore crazy socks and wild clothes in orange, purple, and lime green, and she bought us little treats like chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter. She had three kids at home but she never seemed tired or down. At least, she hadn’t until today.

Abby had seen a documentary on Israeli television the night before. It was about impoverished Palestinian children who picked a living out of a garbage dump near Hebron, waiting for trucks to haul in the trash of Israeli settlers. The kids combed the settlers’ garbage, looking for scraps of edible food, foraging for clothes, hunting for a living. The settler garbage was the best, the kids said, because the Palestinians don’t have much to throw away. Abby had tears in her eyes. Abby had never been in the territories, and she seldom talked about politics, but now she wanted to know if what she had seen was true.

“It was just like the ghetto,” she said quietly. “Is this true? Is this what we’ve come to? Our families left Poland because of these things, and now we are doing the same to other people?”

“Well,” I said uncomfortably. “I’ve never seen that place, but I’ve heard about it. The situation is not good there.”

“I know, I know,” she said, swiping at her eyes. “Oh my God. What’s going to happen to us?”

After September 11, many Israelis said to the Americans, now you know what terror means. And soon the United States, too, had an occupation of its own, and then a second occupation. We lived even farther away from our wars. Israel built a fence; we had an ocean. But the comparison was there. Some Israelis wanted badly to believe they could be all right one day in spite of the anguish in their backyard, others were hardened beyond caring. They ignored it as best they could, sealed themselves into Israel, but it was always there. As the intifada grew more violent, the use of sedatives rose and more Israeli husbands battered and killed their wives. Soon a spike of suicide and rapes among American soldiers would tell the statistical story of our own trauma. You can overcome the things that are done to you, but you cannot escape the things that you have done.

Here is the truth: It matters, what you do at war. It matters more than you ever want to know. Because countries, like people, have collective consciences and memories and souls, and the violence we deliver in the name of our nation is pooled like sickly tar at the bottom of who we are. The soldiers who don’t die for us come home again. They bring with them the killers they became on our national behalf, and sit with their polluted memories and broken emotions in our homes and schools and temples. We may wish it were not so, but action amounts to identity. We become what we do. You can tell yourself all the stories you want, but you can’t leave your actions over there. You can’t build a wall and expect to live on the other side of memory. All of that poison seeps back into our