A tragedy is a fight in which the two quarrels are right. Parents and children, for example: parents are right to want to protect their children, because they feel that they cannot protect themselves; Children, on the other hand, reject the protection of their parents: they want to emancipate themselves from them, because they want to become who they are. Both are right, but their reasons are opposite, and their quarrel is tragic and inevitable (perhaps even necessary). Such ethical conflicts are, however, very rare in politics; There, we abuse the word tragedy: in most so-called political tragedies, one side is right (even though both are right). What most resembles a real political tragedy right now is the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians. That's why it's so hard to solve.
I'm not an expert on the subject (not on this one or any other): I only follow it through the press; and I have only once visited Israel and the occupied territories: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ramallah. But it is enough to have set foot there to understand the obvious: that Israel's governments, in addition to failing to comply with UN resolutions on the conflict, treat the Palestinians abjectly, the vast majority of whom survive in miserable conditions, without a glimmer of hope; And, at the same time, a minimum of decency and knowledge of history is also enough to accept that Jews deserve a piece of land where they can live in a dignified and safe way. In other words: the Hamas terrorists are not right, but the Palestinian citizens are; and vice versa: the Government of Israel is not right, but the Israelis are. No equidistances, however; even in evil there are gradations (and those who do not understand this understand nothing): as the Israeli novelist David Grossman, a bitter critic of his government, has written, "the occupation is a crime, but to tie up hundreds of civilians, children and parents, old and sick, and to pass from one to another to shoot them in cold blood is a more heinous crime." That said, what else can be added? Me, nothing. But since the war broke out, I have not stopped remembering some words of Amos Oz, also an Israeli novelist and as critical as Grossman of his country's leaders; the quote is from 2004 and it is long, but please read it carefully, because Oz addresses you and me: "There are many people who have become walking exclamations, in Israel and Palestine, but also in Madrid. It's very easy to be a slogan. I don't mean to rebuke the bad guys, like a Victorian governess. Our intellectuals and Western intellectuals have different traditions. (...) We live on different planets, because for them the most important thing is to decide who are the good guys and who are the bad guys; They sign a manifesto, express their condemnation, their outrage, their protest, and then go to bed knowing that they are on the side of the angels. (...) For me, the important thing is not to know who the angels are. I'm not asking who was at fault, I'm asking what I can do now. It is easier for me to dialogue with pragmatic Palestinians than with dogmatic pro-Palestinians in Madrid. Fortunately, I have to negotiate peace with the Palestinians, not with the Spanish friends of the Palestinians." Then Oz, who had just promoted the Geneva Treaty, written by Palestinians and Israelis and supported by 40% of their populations, predicted peace: "I don't know when it will come, but I can promise, on behalf of Israelis and Palestinians, that, if Europe took more than 1,000 years to end wars and create the EU, we will do it faster and shed less blood than Europe. Have a little patience and don't have an attitude of condemnation, indignation, paternalism. Don't tell us we're terrible. Try to help. Give both sides as much empathy as you can."
Do not become walking slogans, do not give in to the miserable pleasure of a good conscience, do not fall into paternalism, do not give lessons, try to understand, do not judge, do not condemn. That's what Oz was asking for. I don't think we're fucking paying any attention to it.
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