Here’s a question we Israelis won’t ask ourselves about the Palestinians, especially not about Gaza. The question is taboo. Not only won’t anyone ask it out loud, but very, very few people will dare ask it in the privacy of their own minds …
… The question we have to ask ourselves is this: If anybody treated us like we’re treating the people in Gaza, what would we do?
We don’t want to go there, do we? And because we don’t, we make it our business not to see, hear or think about how, indeed, we are treating the people in Gaza.
All these shocked dignitaries, all these reports, these details, these numbers—thousands of destroyed this and tens of thousands of destroyed that. Rubble, sewage, malnutrition, crying babies, humanitarian crises—who can keep up? Who cares? They did it to themselves. Where to for lunch?
Rattling the Cage | Larry Derfner
Interesting. The question of empathy is everywhere in a suffering world. Israel presents us with a special picture precisely because of the overwhelming suffering of the Jews. Okay, sixty years ago, but clearly, something snapped in the Zionist brain. Trauma will do that—and I, for one, can attest to PSTD lasting a lifetime. Why? Because trauma occurs somewhere out of ordinary time, and is by nature unclassifiable, overwhelming. If the mind could deal with it, we wouldn’t have PSTD, now, would we. In some remote part of memory, the original event continues to thrive afresh, stimulated by reminders large and small. And traumatized people hurt other people. It’s a pity, but it happens.
But what happens when a nation, an entire people, turn upon those whose suffering so painfully replicates their own? Apparently so much so that from the get go, the Holocaust survivors—the most displaced souls on earth, then—couldn’t for the life of them understand why the Palestinians might have been a teensy bit upset at the loss of their homeland. Talk about acting out. Talk about unbearable ironies. When does post-trauma turn into villainy? When are people responsible for behaving well toward others—meaning, with empathy—for transcending their own pain?
For this is what we ask of adults, in this world.
Which is not to say that any of this is easy.
{from the March 2010 notebooks}
Very thought provoking and honest. When we become the enemy what have we gained?
This is poignant and powerful. And beautiful, as writing.
It’s an axiom of abuse that something vital in the character of the abused has to be destroyed in order for the victim to survive. It might go like this (if it was a reasoned thing, which it emphatically is not): “This is a world where people suffer and no one stops it. I see. A thing may kill a human, but, if it doesn’t, then pain, suffering, and sorrow are not such a big deal. No matter what people say. People don’t really care about suffering. I am a person. Suffering imparts certain rights that belong to the sufferer, but no one else will protect those rights, so it is up to the sufferer. Act or be acted upon yet again.”
That’s not quite it, but it is some of it. I recently read Bart Ehrman’s God’s Problem. Ehrman says the Bible, a Jewish book with a little history of the Christian church added on, does not answer the question of human suffering. The God of the Bible doesn’t seem to prevent suffering and doesn’t intervene. God does seem to enact a righteous vengeance upon some at the hands of His People…somewhat arbitrarily.
Maybe that’s one area where Buddhism has it all over Christianity …
When presented with this kind of argument, say role reversal in Palestine or the USA treated the way we treated Iraq, adherents of either policy usually (always?) list with great earnestness the reasons why such a reversal CAN’T happen and thus need not be considered. Blissfully unaware (sometimes) that they are basically claiming that the victims of these policies are somehow less than human and thus they brought it on themselves. Israel is especially the master of “blaming the victims,” it would be awe inspiring if it didn’t result in such evil.
Hey, Zo,
Nice to see you in motion on the videos from THE HILLSIDE CLUB!