My friend heard it from Wilbert Rideau, a writer she admires. He was commenting on the constraints that shape certain prison writers’ perspectives. “They can only see the world,” he said, “through the lens of their own pain.”
Some of us are imprisoned by iron and stone, some by cages erected in our own minds. When you are so identified with your own story that you can admit no other truth, pain owns your vision. The only antidote is awareness, which can sometimes be activated by glimpsing a wider lens (check out the wise writings I’ve linked at the end of this post).
I’ve put off writing about Israel and the Gaza flotilla, even though they are much in my mind, because I didn’t want to rattle people’s reactivity, unleashing the friend-or-foe perspective so often seen through the lens of pain. But then this statement was posted to a progressive Jewish e-list: “Maybe I live too much now in the 1930’s and am experiencing these times as 1938.”
Since Israeli troops landing on the Mavi Marmara at the end of May killed nine protestors, there has been a flood of such messages. When online exchanges reach a certain level of impassioned belligerence, I can’t help myself: I have to stop lurking and chime in. Last week, I posted twice to the aforementioned e-list. I’m going to include excerpts from my messages, so you can judge for yourself the character of my statements.
The day after the Mavi Marmara incident, I wrote in hope of short-circuiting an escalating competition, in which political disagreement had devolved to ad hominem challenges. One list member posed to another a set of questions mimicking his own draft board’s interrogation during the Vietnam era. In those days, draft boards asserted that one couldn’t support a claim for exemption from the draft on the grounds of conscientious objection unless absolute pacifism was proven. They commonly asked young men if they would rise in defense if their mothers or sisters were attacked by a rapist. A “Yes” would disqualify them for C.O. status. The aim was to authorize as few C.O.s as possible, so draft boards set the bar sky-high by focusing on purely personal questions, even though the issue was conscientious objection to war. My response included these paragraphs:
Now, the world faces an explosive international incident around the Israeli raid on the flotilla attempting to break the Gaza blockade, and part of this online dialogue seems to be turning on challenges to individuals very like the challenges draft boards issued to applicants for conscientious objector status 45 years ago. Why? My guess is that it is so much easier to focus on such detail than on the real and painful questions at hand. In such situations, what happens between individuals does seem to mirror the larger debate: loudly opposing opinions fill the air. Each side cites history in its defense. Accusations of bad faith and hypocrisy are flung. Everything seems to turn on details, while the big picture is lost.
As always, many things are true simultaneously. Israel has taken steps that now attract a flood of horrified criticism. (Personally, the best light I can put on this is as a grotesque miscalculation in the service of a counter-productive policy, but the details of my opinions don’t matter any more than any other individual’s.) There is no question that world opinion judges Israel more harshly than other nations, and people feel the unfairness of this. In the U.S., many people focus on Israel’s transgressions with a vigor and venom that far exceeds the attention they give to other nations’ misdeeds, including their own. Some people seem to think the remedy for this is to back off, granting Israel the same indifference that allows other nations to imprison, kill, or torture with impunity. To me, it seems quite clear the moral response is to hold all nations to the same high standards.
A few days later, I wrote again in response to a list member posting a Web page picturing market stalls in Gaza, heaped high with food and consumer goods. This elicited bitter sarcasm about the need for aid. I used a Web utility to translate the page from Arabic, learning that the photos had been taken in November 2009, during preparations for Eid ul-Fitr, the festival marking the end of Ramadan. My message pointed out that no picture tells the whole story (in most American cities, for instance, it is possible to take pictures of extreme abundance, then drive a short way and capture images of blocks that resemble the aftermath of bombing raids); and that if abundant market stalls are a reason to withhold aid, then it should be withdrawn from many relatively prosperous countries, including Israel. I continued:
Third, intimating that aid is conditioned entirely on economic need evades the underlying questions raised by a blockade, which have more to do with autonomy, access, and freedom of movement than with the availability of fresh fruit. Whether or not you think the evidence is there to support dire economic need is one question. Whether or not you support the boycott is another. Would you willingly submit to a blockade so long as you had enough consumer goods? Most of us value our freedom more than that.
Finally, if you think it is valid to question aid based on indicators of material need, then it is your obligation to consult agencies and indicators that offer fuller and more objective evidence. There are many international bodies, both secular and faith-based, that publish regular reports on poverty levels and other measurable indicators. If you want to challenge aid to Gaza (or Israel, or any nation) based on these, that is at least defensible. This is not.
After each message, I received quite a few private replies thanking me for offering a balanced perspective, while a couple of people replied to the whole list defending Israel against the attack they perceived in my words. I feel certain that the positive responses were private because their authors did not wish to open themselves to censure from those who view the world through pain-ground lenses, those who experience all divergent views as attacks.
The person who compared our own times to 1938 wasn’t responding to me, but to another contributor who’d posted a condemnation of a crude video parody of “We Are The World,” portraying anti-blockade protestors as con artists.
In Germany in 1938, a nearly unanimous popular referendum granted sole political power to the Nazi Party and approved the annexation of Austria. The terrible pogrom of Kristallnacht initialized the binge of killing, imprisonment, and confiscation that led to systematic genocide, with the SS, Gestapo, and Hitler Youth rounding up 30,000 Jews in a single night for shipment to concentration camps.
It takes my breath away to imagine viewing the world through the lens of inherited pain that distorts the present climate for Israel into something that can be compared to that defining moment, the last German election until the war’s end, in which a vast population consented to tyranny and gorged on blood.
But the legacy of inherited pain isn’t confined to Jews. This distorted vision is epidemic, virulent, and terrifyingly widespread around the globe, affecting Israelis, diaspora Jews, Palestinians, and their advocates along with so many others. It generates a chain-reaction, with each set of blind spots and reactivity triggering the other. Outside the Mideast, the war of words escalates; on the ground, the weapons are more damaging, but the pattern is the same.
The miracle and saving grace is that not everyone has succumbed. I want to commend you to three pieces of writing that shed light, by authors who perceive many shades of truth, not just black and white.
On June 1, the New York Times published an op-ed by Israeli writer Amos Oz, whose family emigrated to Israel from Eastern Europe in the mid-1930s, warning of the intoxication with force and its consequences. On the same day, U.S. journalist George Packer posted a New Yorker blog entitled, “Israel Takes the Bait.”
On June 5th, Israeli writer Uri Avnery, whose family fled to Israel from Nazi Germany, who founded the peace organization Gush Shalom, published a remarkable essay about the British blockade intended to prevent ships of Holocaust survivors from landing in Palestine, and how it backfired. That same day, the 86 year-old author was physically attacked as he attempted to make his way home from a large peace demonstration in Tel Aviv’s Museum Square.
Each piece’s perspective is its author’s, none identical, but they all make the point that certainty of one’s rightness (and of the other’s evil) is dangerous to both parties’ well-being, and indeed, to survival. The danger applies equally to those who see Israel as justified in any action they deem defensive (which too often includes all actions); to those who excuse suicide bombings; to those who ignore the damage done by our own nations’ definition of national and corporate interest. The Sermon on the Mount seems apt: “First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
In any debate conducted in the polarized light of lenses ground by pain, one evergreen tactic is questioning people’s right to an opinion. If you don’t live here, each person says, pointing to a particular patch of ground or even to a particular shape of flesh and blood, you can’t know, you can’t say, so back off and shut up. It’s an all-purpose argument that can be deployed to any end. During the sixties civil rights movement in the American South, white supremacists said this to discredit freedom riders and other northerners who came down to Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama to support the movement. Later on, Black nationalists said it to exclude white activists from a movement that they believed should be led exclusively by people subject to the oppressions it arose to defeat. Women said it to question anti-choice men’s right to have a say on abortion. Israelis say it to question others’ right to speak about their country’s policies.
So in addition to the words of Oz and Avnery, who have certainly earned their bona fides as Israelis, I want to end with a quotation from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (commonly, Rav Kook), the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British-controlled Palestine. He died in 1935, but his vision of righteousness still seems futuristic when compared with the policies of virtually all existing nations. These are excerpts from a longer essay which, while written with specific reference to the Jewish state, seems well worth pondering for everyone, everywhere:
There is a certain convention that has become accepted by practically the entire human race, and that is the right of every nation to aggrandize itself at the expense of other nations. Even supposedly righteous rulers are guilty of having shed blood to bring enhanced material prosperity to their nation, without so much as a thought to the havoc wreaked on surrounding nations. Even though human decency dictates that the individual not pursue success through the destruction of fellow humans, on the national level—so according to conventional wisdom—there is free license to achieve success, come what may. Even those who shun military exploits, are incapable of desiring the success of other nations to the same degree they seek their own nation’s advancement. The most righteous of individuals would find strange the thought that all human beings be given the same advantage seeing as one God created us in His image. This chauvinist thinking is so ingrained in human nature, that even the great champions of justice defend this notion by saying that the scientific and material development of the world requires that nations compete against one another.
Now one might receive the mistaken impression that the Torah endorses this attitude, whereby we should assign a greater value to our own people’s good than to the welfare of others. After all, the Torah commands the Children of Israel to conquer the land from the indigenous nations. But this is clearly unacceptable! How could God, Whose mercy extends to all His creations, oppress His own handiwork?! How could the Most High command that we remove from our hearts the well being of the entire human race for our own selfish good?! Therefore, at the time the covenant was first established with our ancestor Abraham, a divine protest was lodged: The very thought of nationalism is despicable to God, for He equates all mankind. The goal is to seek the true success of all God’s creations. True justice means that one views with equal concern the advancement of the entire human race.
If we try to see Rav Kook’s words through the lens of our own pain, they are written in invisible ink. This is my prayer, that this message will be read and heeded in my own country, the United States, in Israel, in Palestine, in all the nations of the earth. I don’t imagine it is easy to enlarge even a single individual’s sight, let alone to shift entrenched ideas of national interest, only that there is no alternative if we wish to live in peace.
Dear Arlene,
I have worked hard to absorb enough information from many perspectives about the Flotilla & the blockade and about the points of contention and contact between Palestinians and Israels and those of us residing beyond the daily realities of the situation to at times enable me to hear all the voices screaming in my head. At other times I listen with the heart that Leah Green taught me how to use to decifer the layers of meaning and truth that represent so much violence and hatred and fear and love too. If you don’t know Leah, she is the Director of the Compassionate Listening Project and just finished leading her 20th anniversary delegation through all the minefields of feelings expressed by a crossection of Israelis and Palestinians. I appreciate your words as I read them this moring along with those of Rav Kook on the Shalom website and thought you would appreciate Leah’s sentiments as she rode north to visit friends after shepherding another group on a journey of the heart:
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Nostalia and thoughts from the bus
I have weeks of editing and writing from the delegation to catch up with for the blog. This, however, is a personal entry. I am sitting on an Israeli bus. My destination is the beautiful hills of Galilee, overlooking the Sea. I’m going north for an interlude with dear Israeli friends for a couple of days to visit and relax.Without being too scientific about it, I figure this must be about my 30th trip to Israel. And, sitting on this bus, I’m nostalgic. On my first flight over at age 19, I was sitting towards the back of the plane, engaged in conversation with a group of young travelers like myself. I was the only “first-timer” to Israel among them, so I was eager to pick up any tips and insights I could. After several hours of conversation, one of the guys looked at me, shook his head sadly, and said, “Israel is going to eat you up. You’re too nice for this country.” That worried me.
But it turned out that he was wrong. Not because I was too nice, but because I found myself in a nest of nice Israelis. I ended up on a small kibbutz in the Judean hills, with kind Europeans, and sweet Israelis who valued my presence and made my time there a memorable experience that I’ll be forever grateful for. One of my former bosses in the orchard became a friend, and I even bring delegations to the kibbutz every few years, to walk the ruins that date back 3,000 years, meet some kibbutzniks, walk in their beautiful, intentional community and gardens, and listen to their stories. But everyone here knows that the kibbutzim are (were) a different and unique slice of Israeli life. Especially the small, less wealthy ones where you didn’t find snobbery and rank issues that persisted elsewhere. That was the first Israel that I came to know, and it was a fit. My love for the ancient “bible” terraces, archeology, and the Jerusalem hills was born that year.When I returned to Jerusalem at age 22, I met a vastly more multidimensional Israel, and it was a shock. I can’t tell you how many buses I missed, on account of the Israeli habit of pushing and shoving themselves through the bus doors as if their lives depended on boarding. It was not uncommon to see buses drive off with limbs and body parts hanging out of the hydraulically controlled doors. Boarding my bus today, at the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem, brought it all back. The fight to board is something that is hard for me to engage in. And the cost of not engaging is that you may be left behind. My tiny, even insignificant experience at the bus station today, is a part of daily life for many Israelis, who use the practical bus system extensively in their small country. I’m afraid I didn’t do any better today than I did all those decades ago. And I nearly got left behind. As it turned out, I did discover at age 22 that I was too sensitive to live comfortably in Israel. Nothing in my younger years had hardened me for the daily realities here. That year, it was Israel’s first invasion into Lebanon, and all of the horrible events that followed. I remember bursting out in tears on buses frequently – usually on the hour when the news came on and had nothing positive to offer. One time, just after the Sabra-Shatilla massacre, an elderly Israeli man called out to the bus driver, “Turn down the news – it’s making this girl cry!” Yelling seemed to be the national outlet – for everything. The wars, the holocaust, two thousand years of “issues.” I tried to stay emotionally stable despite the daily dose of yelling. Anyone who remembers life in Jerusalem 30 years ago may smile with a shared memory. I was yelled at in all the places where one engages in regular life – there was no way to avoid it…I was yelled at in the grocery store, at the bus stop, book stores, the clothing stores, in the streets, even in the library…My own mother once broke off an engagement because her fiancé yelled at her. I managed better than she would have. But I won’t deny the toll it took. I never asked for citizenship here, but the problem was well acknowledged among those who did. Many new immigrants from North America did not last more than a year here, because of the aggressiveness of society. Maybe some will remember the campaigns to help Israelis learn to treat others kindly. I remember a radio jingle from that campaign that ended with a melodic plea to “be pleasant!” But I had already purchased my exit ticket. No need to go into all of the reasons why there is such aggression here – it’s been studied and explained for decades. People are much more courteous than 30 years ago. But it can still be hard for a softy like me. On this bus I’m riding on, half of the passengers are soldiers with their guns awkwardly tucked to their sides or between their legs. Israel is a militaristic environment, with more and more sophisticated weapons. Right now I’m surrounded by M-16s.. I’m now 45 minutes North of Jerusalem, and the highway is paralleling the “Security Barrier”. The earth is mounded up on this side of the highway about 20 feet high, to make the part of the Wall that’s showing look like a low fence with barbed wire and surveillance cameras on top. It’s even painted in places with pleasant scenes to help the drivers keep their anxiety levels down. But I am looking beyond the Wall (as I’m prone to doing), at the West Bank towns of Qalqiliya and Tulkarem, just meters away behind the Wall – crowded and poor. The Walls here don’t give me a feeling of security, and I’m always thinking about the people on the other side. As my friend Zoughbi likes to say, “Good neighbors make good fences,” and I wish this were the reality that both people could feel here.Two days ago in the hair salon, cramped into a corner near the hair-washing basin, I got into a conversation with an Israeli woman as she was enjoying her shampoo and cream rinse. All of the talk is about the flotilla these days, and speculation about the Turkish and Iranian threat. At one point in the conversation, she said to me, “I’m so tired of Israel always having to apologize to the world for everything we do. No matter what, we always have to say ‘I’m sorry…I’m sorry – we’re sorry for our existence!” At that point she closed her eyes to enjoy a few pleasant moments of the hot water rinse. I know she speaks for the far majority of Israeli Jews. Israeli friends have spoken to me this week about the existential fear that the flotilla event triggered for them. Activist friends who have worked for years for Palestinian justice and a homeland, say that for the first time, they truly feel fear that the world is so angry, that there will no longer be support for the Jewish right to a homeland. One friend, upon hearing an American journalist telling Israeli Jews this week to go back to Germany and Poland, said, “And where shall the Americans go back to? Wasn’t that a takeover too?” I look around the bus, at all of the beautiful faces – black Ethiopian Jews, brown Jews from Middle Eastern countries, lighter-skinned Ashkenazi Jews, Jews from Russia, and dubious looking “Russian Jews” who may have used the Jewish card to escape their empty shelves, cold winters, and challenging economy. There are also Palestinian Israelis on this bus, who make up 20% of the citizens in Israel (I’m not talking about the 4 million Palestinians living in the West Bank, E. Jerusalem or Gaza here). What helps me to understand the societal aggression here is the comment spoken in the hair salon. Forget the wars, the militarism, the army. Just imagine how a whole people might behave if they feel that whatever they do, the world will not love them. Okay, forget love, that’s too idealistic. Let’s try “accept”. I’ve heard it said here for decades by Israelis – that “it doesn’t matter what we do – whether we’re nice or not to the Palestinians and to our other Arab neighbors, the whole world hates us and will always hate us.” Put the long history of anti-Semitism in the mix and you can see the ramifications.Israelis and Palestinians are now in a permanent state of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Some psychologists have made the connection between PTSD, and the “addiction” to the adrenaline state, thus concluding that both sides unconsciously perpetuate the high conflict state. And Israelis will be the first to admit that they shine during wartime – the tribe knows how to pull together for the sake of collective survival. Their endless factions and internal conflicts for the most part melt away during wartime, for the sake of the tribe. A cynical observer might conclude the leaders know it’s in their interest to hold the population on the brink of war. One of the Israelis we listened to last week told our group, “It’s much easier to control the general population when they are afraid.” Another Israeli friend – an astute psychologist, warned me about discounting the scapegoat phenomenon…of course the occupation needs to end, as well as the siege of Gaza. And at the s
ame time, how easy it is for Americans and other nationals to ignore their own countries’ violence and aggression, and look to Israel as the only violent country on the block. Now, passing the sign for Jenin, (the northernmost Palestinian city in the West Bank), my battery is running out, and the hills of the Galilee are before me. It’s time for a mental vacation from “hamatzav” (the situation). So I’m going to relax for the rest of the ride, and be grateful that I won’t have to push to get off of the bus. I’ll happily wait, and will exit last.