At breakfast on Thursday, we knew that a plane had gone down in Ukraine, taking more than 200 lives with it. By lunchtime, it became clear that it was shot down by a missile.

Then, by late afternoon, Israel fulfilled its promise to invade Gaza.

Not all the details are yet known, but some basic facts about the struggles that gave rise to these actions are known.

What these things have in common is a struggle for survival. Although Russia seems like the aggressor in Ukraine, whose very name means “borderland,” the truth is that Russia has been invaded numerous times with devastating effect, most recently in World War II, through Ukraine. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, see Russian fears as another word for Russian oppression. But not all Ukrainians feel that way; some are tied to Russia by blood and language, and want to be that borderland for the Russians.

The ancient struggle for Israel, the modern struggle for Palestine, has a base not only in ancient religious struggle, but also in far more recent colonial struggle, involving pre-World War I world powers such as England, France, and the Ottoman Turks. A decision was made by the colonial powers for a region to establish a new state, without consideration for the people who had been living there for generations. The horror of World War II precipitated it to be sure; but the Jewish state was not located in the nation that should have paid for its actions during the Holocaust. By all rights of warfare, the Jewish state should lie between Munich and Linz today, not between Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan. The Palestinians want their lands back; the Israelis want security. Both have a fundamental right to exist, and both have to be brought to recognize that.

It is very difficult to watch what is going on in Ukraine and in Israel, but these are just two of the latest places where the struggle for survival has been paired with unimaginable violence on all sides.

In the end, we are all helpless, captive observers of the human condition in these places, far removed from most of our experiences. Those of us who have had some experience in these lands are even more distraught, because we recognize the basic goodness of the people involved, goodness that is being swept away in a bloody tide of politics and nationalism, fear-mongering and terrorism.

But while we can and should and must make our grief and horror clear at these actions and reactions, we must also recognize that we do not live there. It is not our children who are being killed; it is not our security that is being threatened daily; it is not our independence that is being scuttled because of another nation’s fears.

What we can do as a nation is offer our services as an honest broker, to bring both sides together, and help the combatants see the other side’s legitimate points of view.