My favorite piece this week was the excerpt from Parallels and Paradoxes. There were a few fascinating parts that really spoke to me.
The first was Said's observation that "there is a lot of sentimentality about 'homelands'" that he said he didn't care for. So many people, myself included, were/are raised with some sense of history and family ties to something--religion, geographic location, professions or other traditions passed down through generations. These are mostly arbitrary connections, and as we grow older we are more and more able to sincerely question their validity and their meaning and the place that we want them to occupy within our own lives, separate from the lives of our other family members/community members. This is obviously a common trope when discussing the I-P conflict, and it leads perfectly into the next section in the reading that I want to explore.
If one comes to the conclusion that historical connections and loyalties to places and religions and even family members is arbitrary and meaningless, one runs the very real risk of then delegitimizing the thoughts, feelings, and values of anyone who disagrees or identifies even a little bit with any of these connections. Pages 8, 9, and 10 address the concept of the "other" and how a shared experience (even one as small as citizens from two different countries playing the exact same notes at the exact same time) can break down those arbitrary walls between people who were told they should be enemies and believed that.
I usually zoom out at the end of my reading responses and try to think about how the lessons learned on the smaller, situational scales of the readings could be applied to the larger populations of Israel & Palestine (and areas elsewhere in the world, of course). This week, the questions on my mind are similar to some of the things that we've recently been discussing in class.
How can we create shared experiences on large scales, for example in a busy market street in Jerusalem or a shopping center in Tel Aviv or even--and this is a little crazy--in the settlements between Israeli settlers and Palestinians living behind the Green Line? Another question that follows, then, is about whether or not the problems between the two populations are trivialized by the attempt to create dialogue and friendship on a person-to-person level. After all, isn't that the best way to start building peace(this is not a rhetorical question)?
Sophie,
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate you respect for others connections and beliefs, and the sentiment of this post made me feel good about our future. I hope more people will learn to have the same respect for each other's views.
Thanks for this post, Sophie. I agree that as we grow older, we are better able and more willing to question and challenge the ideas and traditions that have been passed down to us by our parents. In response to your last question, I don't think at all that creating dialogue on a person-to-person level trivializes the I-P conflict and the problems stemming from it. In fact, I think it's critically important. There can never be a durable peace between Israel and Palestine until the people of the two nations realize that they can and should embrace each other and live together peacefully. This is the case no matter what kind of political/diplomatic accord is reached at the national level. An accord will mean nothing if the people on both sides of the conflict don't respect it or acknowledge its worth.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, guys! Brian, I'm glad to hear that you don't think dialogue trivializes the I-P conflict. It's an opinion that I've encountered a few times and just can't fully get behind. Like at all. Amen!
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