Yes but for as brutal as South Africa could be they weren’t in the throes of active genocide. The overwhelming majority of their people weren’t okay with the extermination of entire races. Or at least they didn’t say so out loud, proudly. Expecting them to live in harmony with the people whose blood they are braying for seems foolhardy to me. Expecting those whose children have been murdered in mass in front of them to just politely join hands with the people who celebrated the murder of their children with Glee seems again, foolhardy.
I’m not expecting harmony immediately, I’m advocating for a political project with outside pressure to get to it eventually.
Israelis like to talk about deradicalization of the Palestinians, but Israeli society itself needs to be deradicalized.
There is nothing cosmically exceptional about this conflict compared to other conflicts. If Bosnia and Herzegovina can be a society for Bosniak, Serbs and Croats and if Rwanda can find reconciliation after a genocide, so can Palestinians and Israelis.
If we can’t imagine this horizon and if we don’t have the courage to work for it, what are we even doing? If all we can imagine is death and hatred, we are creating a self fulfilling prophecy and precluding ever going beyond it. We need moral courage and ambition, that’s all I’m saying.
Yes but for as brutal as South Africa could be they weren’t in the throes of active genocide. The overwhelming majority of their people weren’t okay with the extermination of entire races. Or at least they didn’t say so out loud, proudly. Expecting them to live in harmony with the people whose blood they are braying for seems foolhardy to me. Expecting those whose children have been murdered in mass in front of them to just politely join hands with the people who celebrated the murder of their children with Glee seems again, foolhardy.
I’m not expecting harmony immediately, I’m advocating for a political project with outside pressure to get to it eventually. Israelis like to talk about deradicalization of the Palestinians, but Israeli society itself needs to be deradicalized.
There is nothing cosmically exceptional about this conflict compared to other conflicts. If Bosnia and Herzegovina can be a society for Bosniak, Serbs and Croats and if Rwanda can find reconciliation after a genocide, so can Palestinians and Israelis.
This: “Why Rwanda is held up as a model for reconciliation, 26 years after genocide” | CBC Radio https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/why-rwanda-is-held-up-as-a-model-for-reconciliation-26-years-after-genocide-1.5842139
If we can’t imagine this horizon and if we don’t have the courage to work for it, what are we even doing? If all we can imagine is death and hatred, we are creating a self fulfilling prophecy and precluding ever going beyond it. We need moral courage and ambition, that’s all I’m saying.