9/11, Gaza, Beirut, Fallujah

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.