Empathy needed to end Israel-Palestine violence
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/25/empathy-needed-to-end-israel-palestine-violence Version 0 of 1. The certainty with which your editorial (If one can kill with impunity then can one lie without consequence?, 23 January) labels the Gaza border violence “protests” is alarming, considering that they are orchestrated by a terror regime with the openly stated goal to “take down the border” with Israel and “tear out their [the Israelis] hearts”. This, while the same radical Islamist regime violently suppresses genuine protest against itself. In expressing concern for Gaza’s youth, you say nothing of the systematic brainwashing of young people to hate and murder, the proactive bussing of them to the border, and the financial incentives for them to storm the fence, though the regime knows full well that Israel must protect its frontier. Given the Guardian’s robust condemnation of terrorists and regimes using children “as combatants and in other roles” (Editorial, 16 January 2017), this omission is striking. Even more troubling is your perverse inversion of “ethnic cleansing” (among other tropes) against the very state that took in 850,000 Jews fleeing Arab lands facing precisely that fate, and the thousands more forced to flee their homes by invading Arab armies seeking to annihilate the fledgling Jewish state. A day prior to your editorial, you published Simon Baron-Cohen’s piece that identified empathy between Israelis and Palestinians as “a necessary step” for peace. Given that the sentiment of your editorial expresses no empathy whatsoever for Israel’s very real security concerns, and will only stoke Palestinian intransigence, may I humbly suggest taking that advice?Mark RegevAmbassador of Israel to the UK • The current Israeli government has conducted itself poorly on some issues, particularly on settlement expansion – which I oppose – but it is hardly “killing with impunity”, or “conducting a war over the airwaves” as some despotic, tyrannical regime might. Your editorial is so simplistic, so black-and-white, so sensationalist. Indeed, to depict Israel in such a firmly dark way is worthy of a tabloid. The situation in and around Israel is deeply complex; cheap, populist, attacks on Israel (while totally neglecting to analyse the crimes of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran) are as tiresome as they are offensive.Sebastian MonblatBrighton, East Sussex • Your editorial is welcome in its robust criticism, but fails to follow on by asking what the international community can do to restrain Israel’s continuing war on the Palestinians. With the US endorsing and funding Israel’s actions, and in the absence of any willingness on the part of European governments to do more than gently admonish while continuing in practice to collude, civil society has only one course of action. The worldwide growing calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions are powerful non-violent means of putting pressure on the Israeli state (which has had to set aside substantial sums to fund its propaganda war against the BDS movement) and of making Israeli citizens conscious of the opprobrium in which its government’s policies are held. Is it not now time for the Guardian to support our movement? Some of us are old enough to remember the role of civil society’s BDS movement against apartheid South Africa and how eventually governments were shamed into imposing sanctions and compelling change. We should take inspiration from that victory.Hilary Rose and Steven RoseLondon • Simon Baron-Cohen’s proposal for empathy-building between Jews and Palestinians is a welcome contribution towards establishing a just and sustainable peace. But for it to gain traction, the stories we tell each other – and ourselves – must be as complete as possible. By placing responsibility for initiating empathy-building with Israelis, “because they are the stronger party”, Baron-Cohen’s argument for “rehumanising the other” makes a rare acknowledgment of the power disparity at the heart of the Israel-Palestine trauma. Rare too is his foregrounding of the Palestinian experience: his story describes the devastation wrought on a people who have paid a huge price for but played no part in the Holocaust. However, for each people to work with the other’s painful history, more needs adding to the mix: that Zionist leaders untruthfully “sold” Palestine to desperate European Jews as a “land without a people for a people without a land”; that in Baron-Cohen’s “two major waves of antisemitism”, the majority destinations of choice among Europe’s fleeing Jews were English-speaking countries, not Palestine; that millions of Israel’s Jews come from other Middle East countries, with a story largely ignored by Israel’s Holocaust-based narrative. There’s also a more extensive Palestinian experience. Where are the millions of Palestinian refugees and children of refugees within Baron-Cohen’s vision? And though surely unintentional, when he named “Israelis” as the “stronger party”, he wrote out of the empathy stakes the Palestinian 20% of Israel’s citizens. Always treated as second-class, Palestinian citizens of Israel are now legislatively reduced to interlopers within their own country by the new and nakedly racist nation-state law.Naomi WayneLondon • Simon Baron-Cohen writes that “five Arab armies invaded” Israel in 1948. What actually happened was that Arab armies moved up to the borders allocated to Israel in the UN partition plan to prevent the Israeli army taking over areas allocated to the Arabs. They failed, of course, and as a result Israel expanded its territory by 23% in 1948 at the expense of the Palestinians, and added the rest in 1967. Baron-Cohen’s plea for empathy has a hollow ring to the parents of children deliberately killed by Israeli snipers. No value would be served in the conflict by encouraging Palestinians whose casualties run into thousands to empathise with the tiny percentage of Israelis in former Arab towns near Gaza who are affected by rockets. And clearly, if the Israeli army instituted an empathy programme among its soldiers it could no longer do its job of oppressing Palestinians. Karl SabbaghAuthor, A Modest Proposal … to solve the Palestine-Israel Conflict • As a mediator with a longstanding interest in empathy in conflict resolution, I agree with Simon Baron-Cohen. The understanding of an enemy’s experience can be transformative. By listening and being listened to, each side, which previously demonised the other, has the opportunity to discover a shared humanity: what seems to divide also unites. Out of this recognition arises a desire to solve problems and reach agreements for the benefit of both. Jo Berry, founder of Building Bridges for Peace and daughter of the late Sir Anthony Berry, who died in the Brighton hotel bombing, states: “If I empathise with you … I am going to want for you what I want for me and my loved ones: your human rights, your dignity, your security, all your needs met.” Jo’s work is another “drop in the desert”, as Baron-Cohen puts it – along with many groups of like-minded individuals joining together within divided communities and across the world. That is where our hope lies.Laurel FarringtonHitchin, Hertfordshire • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com • Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters Israel Middle East and North Africa Palestinian territories Gaza Psychology letters Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on WhatsApp Share on Messenger Reuse this content |