Time to amplify moderate voices

So much is written on the present crisis in Gaza that I'll not pretend to offer any previously unknown insight. It would appear I'm not alone in having nothing new to offer, as most of what's available in English could have been said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a few generations now (here's a useful history of the issue from The Economist). In terms of weaponry and organization the Israelis have always been vastly more advanced while the Palestinians have never wanted for that special mixture of fearlessness and hopelessness which lends itself to shocking and destructive self-sacrifice. With mindsets so notably and carefully attuned to particular readings of the past, it's not likely that the present crisis will do much to alter the entrenched positions on either side. Humans everywhere continue to suffer from that primitive delusion that the pain and suffering of those similar to them is somehow more significant and worthy of attention, not to mention vengeance, than the pain and suffering of those outside their herd.

It's been asked before but bears repeating, how is it that two groups of people who have experienced (and experience) such injustice and hardship fail to find a common ground of empathy and understanding? What will bring about such a revision? For one thing, the current crisis highlights that elusive and rare personality trait which, though appearing in a small minority on either side, lends itself to empathy, compassion and understanding; the knowledge that the sufferings of others are just as vivid and significant as your own. Thankfully, there are indeed both Israelis and, if not Palestinians then more broadly Arabs and Muslims of other ethnic and geographic varieties, who are swimming against their respective currents and who offer more than your standard "us vs. them" bullshit.

The photo above shows ultra-orthodox Jews in Jerusalem in a march of protest against the violence. Their "empathy" may very well stem from the injunctions of their God, but it still works. A more secular initiative has also sprung up in Israel and a petition, which compares the situation to South Africa's apartheid regime, to stop the shit-kicking is being organized here. Many editorials are also echoing a reasonable and humane perspective, though often with highly qualified arguments which support Israel's invasion. An editorial in Haaretz today stated that "The government must give a cease-fire a chance, to avoid getting dragged down militarily, and also morally, not only in the eyes of the world but in our own eyes." Enough death surely brings us to these moments, when the weight of the corpses takes on that intangible quality, the one that follows you home after work and reminds you about shattered children as you lay awake in your bed.

Moderate voices also exist on the other side, though these have been harder to find (might have something to do with lack of English-media capability and my own mediocrity as a superficial googler). A group of students from Iran condemned Hamas for their barbaric employment of civilians, including women and children, as human shields. Also in Iran, a newspaper sharply criticized Hamas during the conflict's initial days but was promptly shut down by authorities. Arab women in Israel have also organized to condemn the violence outright. Let's not forget, Palestinians (a minority is not nothing) themselves have regularly tried to buck Hamas from control of Gaza.

Western media is surely capacious enough to include more than boilerplate regurgitations of tried and true hatreds, what Kiran Desai has called "endlessly retreivable hatreds." Whether they be eloquent PR people for the Israeli government cooly laying down "the facts" which led to the "inevitable intervention," or hysterical old women weeping over the coffins of their dead family members, I've had enough of the opinions of those who feel themselves caught in some ineluctable historical process. There needs to be more time and space given over to people whose voices have broken the cycle of their fathers' hatreds. Moderation, justice, compassion and understanding are not simply shallow nouns and adjectives, they are powerful concepts which our news media should do more to air.