1 -- UNDERWAY
What better guest speaker to launch this blog than Amos Oz? I’m hopeful he would not mind being enlisted to smash a bottle of virtual champagne across the bow of this craft and speak a few words as it slides into the water.
Here’s Israeli writer Oz at some length from his memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness, taken from our copy, with signature and Shalom, a souvenir of his recent visit to
“In the lives of individuals and of peoples, too, the worst conflicts are often those that break out between those who are persecuted. It is mere wishful thinking to imagine that the persecuted and the oppressed will unite out of solidarity and man the barricades together against a ruthless oppressor. In reality, two children of the same abusive father will not necessarily make common cause, brought close together by their shared fate. Often each sees in the other not a partner in misfortune but in fact the image of their common oppressor.
“That may well be the case with the hundred-year-old conflict between Arabs and Jews.
“The
Often the first and never-noticed error of those sitting on the edges of today’s pitched battles, be it “just politics” or armed and lethal fighting, is to assume that the conflict is binary: us-them, Red vs. Blue, rebels against the government, Israelis and Palestinians, a pair of opposites locked in the arena.
As Oz suggests, the realities are always different (at least so far I’ve found no exceptions). The wars in
Why is this important? Because it means that among other problems:
· one cannot easily pick out the good guys from the bad guys – and having identifiable villains is usually a prerequisite for outside intervention whether from the UN, the
· negotiations between the pair of antagonists who headline the bill will not solve the underlying problems that are preventing peace; and
· one side cannot “win” by crushing another with a military campaign.
Conclusion: we’re going to need a different kind of approach to building the foundations of peace if we are to help get ourselves out of the multiple deadly conflicts that are killing so many people and their societies today. The familiar strategy we’ve been trying – military power and negotiation – may be part of the answer, but misapplied makes the problem worse.
Thanks, Mr. Oz.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home