At the end of August, I emailed to an American friend Israeli writer Amira Haas's Haaretz piece "Can you really not see?" I also forwarded an ironic email from a Belgian/Moroccan friend pointing to an apparently serious proposal on the Jerusalem Summit wesite for a "humanitarian solution"
to the Palestinian problem by disbanding UNWRA and causing all
Palestinians to emigrate. This is a delayed attempt to reply to both
friends, -- amidst the emotions of the summer's violence in Lebanon,
Gaza, and Iraq -- with a plea from both mind and heart.
Reason and sympathy. The crux of the argument that I wanted to make to my first friend's email is that
understanding the violence we read about from day to day requires both reason
and empathy. He and I look similar on a
little political orientation measure because we both value reason. We understand that the current political
system offers poor candidates, deceptively described, who are elected into jobs
where they serve not the general good but various special interests. We would
both like a more open system in which the best of available information is
brought to bear on each important decision, and policies are honestly assessed
with respect to their consequences. There's something else at issue, though, when we try to understand the
difference between, say, Americans' reactions to a picture or news story of a
suicide bomb attack in which Israeli children have been killed, and a story
about Palestinian or Lebenese children's deaths as a result of Israeli bombing – or Iraqi
deaths as a result of an American attack. I don't want to oversimplify an important matter, and I suspect there
are multiple reasons for responding differently to these two images – (and of
course there are many people who find both images bring sadness, anger, and a
resolve to try to work for peace.
Generally, though, for Americans there is an "empathy
gap" in the typical ways we respond to Israeli/Jewish and to Arab/Muslim
suffering, and it is related to the much greater likelihood that we in America
will know people who are like the people victimized in terrorist
assaults on Israelis than we will people who are like the people victimized in
terrorist assaults on Arabs – and, as you know, I use the word “terrorist” to
describe attacks on civilians designed or certain to cause terror, whether
the destruction is brought by someone boarding a bus with a basket bomb or piloting an
aircraft loaded with cluster bombs.
I’ve been brooding about the way personal experience shapes,
and sometimes derails, the discussions we’ve been having with American friends. Susan and I know a
good deal about Morocco,
the Arab world, and Islam at a factual level, but when you push us we always
seem to revert to telling stories about people we know, friends from Sidi Kacem or Rabat or Taroudant. Our readiness to do that is a natural result of the fact that we have
known our close Moroccan friends for as long as most of our close American
ones. It means, however, that we often seem to forget the larger point being discussed and to try to make
folks with no first hand experience of that part of the world and with very
little empathy-producing exposure to fiction and film about it understand 40
years' worth of such personal moments – moments in which we knew that our
Moroccan friend was as smart, as sane, as humane as anyone we talk to at
home. So obvious, but painfully hard to get across in the face of the spin our
media and leaders put on Middle East events.
The URL that my Moroccan-Belgian friend had pointed me to
was, of course, sent ironically by him. The "solution" proposed by the Zionist think tank is
structured like a plausible argument, and seems to advance by reasonable claims
based on its own statements of fact (e.g., that the Palestinians reject
every opportunity for peace and fail repeatedly to establish democratic
self-government). At the level of human
culture, however, it is implicit that while Jews as a unique
cultural/religious/ethnic group need/deserve a homeland in which they are the near-exclusive
occupants, Palestinians need not be distinguished from any of the other Arabs
amongst whom they might be sent to live when Israel is a fully Jewish state.
Emotion and empathy. Here's an exercise I recommend, to observe your own empathy
regarding a stranger's tragic death. Think for a moment about the fact that the anecdote to which I'm about
to direct you is part of an archive of over 1200 accounts of victims of the
9/11 World Trade Tower attacks and their families, and notice that this is a
man mourning a woman he never married, but with whom he planned to spend the
rest of his life. As you open the
account and read the short description of Richard A. Pecorella's feelings about
Karen Hawley Juday, read of his determination to find pictures of her at work,
and notice your own emotions as you get to his description of the two pictures
he has found of her at the Towers:
He has long quested for images of Karen on the 101st floor of the north
tower, where she worked, “and there’s one picture of her at the window
in her navy blue sweater top and cream-colored pants,” he said. “And
there’s one of her falling. Same clothing. She’s covering her face.”
If your breath catches, your pulse
quickens, and as you feel the
sting of tears at your eyes you hear the beginning of a gasp from
your
mouth you are, I will contend, having an empathic reaction to the
imagined pain
of two strangers: Ms. Juday, who died jumping from the flaming World Trade
Center on
9/11/01 and Mr. Pecorella, who mourns her. I suspect that most of us do
have such feelings in relationship to this
story and others that came out of 9/11, and millions around the world
reacted
to the images of 9/11 victims with empathic feelings of grief and
sorrow.
By way of comparison, see Baghdad blogger "Riverbend" on the 3rd anniversary of 9/11.
September 11… he sat there, reading the paper. As he reached out for
the cup in front of him for a sip of tea, he could vaguely hear the
sound of an airplane overhead. It was a bright, fresh day and there was
much he had to do… but the world suddenly went black- a colossal
explosion and then crushed bones under the weight of concrete and iron…
screams rose up around him… men, women and children… shards of glass
sought out tender, unprotected skin … he thought of his family and
tried to rise, but something inside of him was broken… there was a
rising heat and the pungent smell of burning flesh mingled sickeningly
with the smoke and the dust… and suddenly it was blackness.
9/11/01? New York? World Trade Center?
No.
9/11/04. Falloojeh. An Iraqi home.
In relation to what examples do we understand the victims of
the Palestinian-Israeli or the Iraqi-American crises? Beyond
our reasoned sense of the historical claims and statistical characteristics of
these two peoples, what examples come to mind as we think about the individuals
who have suffered as a result of the constant violence there? If it is relatively easy for you to come up
with an Israeli example that lets you know as you think about it that you are
engaging these poor victims of murder as fellow human beings, I think you have
passed an essential test for empathic engagement with the welfare of others in a world we must share. We
react to these murder victims as fellow human beings – parents, children,
colleagues – with whom we feel some of the sorrow and pity appropriate to their
tragedy.
But what about the Palestinians? Does an example come to mind of any
particularly characteristic Palestinian participant or victim? If so, what was it? If you have two vivid examples, one from each
side, do they feel similar to you? If
not, how do they differ? I suspect most of us will have more trouble
coming up with poignant examples of Palestinian than of Israeli suffering at
this personal and empathy-inducing level. If my example is a good one, it will make people wonder about this
"empathy gap" and it might partially prepare them for an
empathy-inducing experience from the other side. And, if my example is useful, it
should do as much good for folks who have a problem coming up with an
empathy-inducing example of Israeli suffering. God knows, there are enough of them.
Of course, to really close the empathy gap we have to build
bridges between the kind of sympathetic experience most people I know have had,
if not with Israelis, then with their many American Jewish friends who are deeply
sympathetic to Israel. But what really
interests me is the wealth of resources available to any literate person
in our society by which they might come to sympathize deeply with the Jewish
people and with at least some Zionist aspirations. Don't we assume that the Jews of Israel are
in important ways like our own Jewish friends? And do we not know these people to be warm, intelligent, loyal, liberal
(usually) – indeed, model friends and
neighbors? I'm trying to imagine a
century of American experience that increasingly has included Jews as
neighbors, and friends, and teachers, and favorite authors, and entertainers,
and artists. Surely their history among
us has been one of the proudest legacies America can celebrate. Can we not imagine reaching a similar level of both sympathy and empathy for the
millions Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims living among us in Europe and America, and for their relatives in the Middle East? Can we, literally, not imagine it? If so, I suggest we get to work on finding
some examples that open our fellow citizens to the shared humanity of these
others.
I think that's enough for now.
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