If you want to know how the debate about Gaza went terribly wrong, a controversy over a lyrical essay published in an online literary magazine provides clues.

Joanna Chen, who emigrated to Israel from Britain, translates Hebrew and Arabic poetry by Israelis and Palestinians into English. She also transports Palestinian children through checkpoints for life-saving treatments, unavailable in Gaza, at Israeli hospitals.

After the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas the trips were suspended, but eventually resumed under far more dangerous circumstances. Her essay for Guernica published in March is a sensitive exploration of the difficulties in maintaining ties with friends on both sides of a profound divide who’ve suffered grievous harm, including murders of family members.

For her trouble, she was denounced by members of the Guernica staff, including its co-publisher, who claimed the essay “attempts to soften the violence of the colonialism and genocide” by Israel. The magazine “retracted” the piece, whatever that means in the online world; it’s still available.

A month later, the editor who approved publication also resigned, saying delicately that the magazine’s “writing on war, injustice, and oppression has evolved away from commitments I consider essential.”

The message is clear: There is no middle ground, no subtleties, no meaningful distinctions to be made. It’s time to choose up sides and start blasting those who disagree.

So it was on dozens of campuses as spring unfolded. Pro-Palestinian students, organized online, began protests and occupations eventually dispersed by police.

Their narrative was familiar from much leftist thought, dividing the world and its history into “oppressors” and “oppressed,” with all other considerations discarded. There is much about the plight of the stateless Palestinians, surely oppressed by the Israeli government, that fits this dichotomy.

Since Israel conquered much of historical Palestine in the Six Day War of 1967 — seizing the West Bank from Jordan and the U.N. mandate of Gaza from Egypt — it’s refused either to allow Palestinians a path to citizenship, the “one-state solution,” or relinquish territory to the Palestine Authority as agreed in the 1993 Oslo accords — the “two-state solution.”

The result has been continuing regional warfare, terrorist attacks and reprisals, and now the murder of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas on Oct. 7.

Demonstrators deal with these facts by ignoring them, contending that Israel’s response in Gaza, while hugely disproportionate, killing more than 30,000, had no cause at all.

Just as the claims Israel’s defense of its citizens is “genocide” against Palestinians creates a false narrative, so is the counter-claim that criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and its war aims amounts to “antisemitism.”

The United States has been Israel’s protector since its founding in 1948, a history that cannot be wished away. But the two nations’ interests have diverged sharply since Netanyahu returned to power in 2009, and his reckless response to Oct. 7 puts them under tremendous strain.

It’s naïve to think any American president could dictate Israel’s actions. Yet even so staunch a supporter of President Biden’s domestic policies as Sen. Bernie Sanders affirmed a reporter’s suggestion that Gaza is “Biden’s Vietnam.”

Vietnam was a profound reckoning with the projection of American power abroad in a colonial war fought primarily by Americans — 540,000 at its peak — with often reluctant participation by South Vietnamese allies.

Ultimate defeat was as inevitable as the fruitless effort to keep the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan, abandoned jointly by Biden and Donald Trump after two decades of occupation.

During Vietnam young Americans were drafted and sent to their deaths whether they supported the war or not. Anti-war protests involved clear issues, with identifiable leaders and demands — including an end to the draft — the government could and did heed. None of this is true of the Palestinian demonstrations.

The Gaza analogy that does makes sense is one Biden himself made when he flew to Jerusalem — the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 American civilians, and the overreaction by President George W. Bush that followed.

Not only did Bush dispatch troops to Afghanistan with unclear aims, but he launched the disastrous invasion of Iraq, which had nothing to do with Sept. 11 and no weaponry threatening the U.S.

The result was empowerment of Iran as the strongest regional force, and it remains the greatest threat to American interests.

No one can say how Gaza will end — whether Israel can achieve reasonable objectives, such as return of hostages and sidelining Hamas leaders, and forego Netanyahu’s impossible demand for “elimination.”

An outcome not involving thousands more civilian deaths in Rafah would be far more likely if Americans start talking, not shouting, about what we can do to help.