An old man sits amid the destruction on what’s left of a wall and lets the tears stream from his eyes. He seems not to have the strength to dry them. Maybe he means never to dry them. A woman clutches her head, not knowing which way to turn. She has lost her children. There is no one near to help her find them. She won’t find them. I don’t know that for sure but my fears for her authorise me to say it. We are in a world emptied of good fortune, never mind God, where children aren’t found and husbands and wives don’t come back.
As always, Howard, you write in a way that communicates with the deepest part of ourselves. The true part. Think it’s less about pity and more about incredulous disbelief at abhorrent human behaviour. For me there are no sides, just innocents paying the price and the rest of us poisoned by the ugliness of human cruelty. Makes no difference the distance between over there and over here, we are scratched by the violence, it infects us and makes the whole world sick.
Thank you for your succinct words Mr Jacobson. I was interested to read your words about pity as I have been chewing over a passage from Philip Roth's 'Letting Go' in the last few days. It's the following:“We feel a debt, I know, hearing of the other fellow’s sorrows, but the question I want to raise here is, What good is the bleeding heart? What’s to be done with all this pitying? Look, even my mother had it, she pitied my father. Isabel Archer pitied Osmond. I pity you, you may pity me. I don’t know if it makes any of us behave better, or wiser. Terrible struggles go on in the heart, to which the heart itself will not admit, when pity is mistaken for love.”
As far the the left woke crowd go I have been asking myself what pity does for the pitier? It seems to me that psychologically speaking, it puts them on moral highground, on the side of the righteous, it gives them the opportunity to wear their ‘look how much empathy I have’ T-shirt and then go home and polish their haloes. However, in this case, pity looks more like self-righteousness and perhaps also a way to expunge the guilt of privilege.
Please don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not denying that one should try to help the poor folks in Gaza but I think that if one does truly wish to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians, one should pause the pity party and examine one’s motives. Only once they have been checked against the narcissim of self righteouness can clear-headed thought follow about how the Palestinians, and a potential peace process, might best be served.
There seems to me to be such a disconnect here. I can't fathom why the left do not seem to ask why the Palestinians have aligned themselves (Chomsky himself declared the elections free and fair) behind a party that has chosen the path of terrorism, with self-avowed genocidal intent, when there are heroic and successful examples of non-violent resistance à la Mandela or à la Gandhi that could more likely pave the way for liberation and peace?
Oy, what a pickle, where is a messiah when you need one?
I read this with real interest, today of all days. There is much here with which I would take issue, but I want to focus on just one issue. Why have the Palestinians "aligned themselves behind a party that had chosen the path of terrorism?" I am writing on Substack in response, check later today of you have time and want an answer!
As always, Howard, you write in a way that communicates with the deepest part of ourselves. The true part. Think it’s less about pity and more about incredulous disbelief at abhorrent human behaviour. For me there are no sides, just innocents paying the price and the rest of us poisoned by the ugliness of human cruelty. Makes no difference the distance between over there and over here, we are scratched by the violence, it infects us and makes the whole world sick.
Thank you for your succinct words Mr Jacobson. I was interested to read your words about pity as I have been chewing over a passage from Philip Roth's 'Letting Go' in the last few days. It's the following:“We feel a debt, I know, hearing of the other fellow’s sorrows, but the question I want to raise here is, What good is the bleeding heart? What’s to be done with all this pitying? Look, even my mother had it, she pitied my father. Isabel Archer pitied Osmond. I pity you, you may pity me. I don’t know if it makes any of us behave better, or wiser. Terrible struggles go on in the heart, to which the heart itself will not admit, when pity is mistaken for love.”
As far the the left woke crowd go I have been asking myself what pity does for the pitier? It seems to me that psychologically speaking, it puts them on moral highground, on the side of the righteous, it gives them the opportunity to wear their ‘look how much empathy I have’ T-shirt and then go home and polish their haloes. However, in this case, pity looks more like self-righteousness and perhaps also a way to expunge the guilt of privilege.
Please don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not denying that one should try to help the poor folks in Gaza but I think that if one does truly wish to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians, one should pause the pity party and examine one’s motives. Only once they have been checked against the narcissim of self righteouness can clear-headed thought follow about how the Palestinians, and a potential peace process, might best be served.
There seems to me to be such a disconnect here. I can't fathom why the left do not seem to ask why the Palestinians have aligned themselves (Chomsky himself declared the elections free and fair) behind a party that has chosen the path of terrorism, with self-avowed genocidal intent, when there are heroic and successful examples of non-violent resistance à la Mandela or à la Gandhi that could more likely pave the way for liberation and peace?
Oy, what a pickle, where is a messiah when you need one?
I read this with real interest, today of all days. There is much here with which I would take issue, but I want to focus on just one issue. Why have the Palestinians "aligned themselves behind a party that had chosen the path of terrorism?" I am writing on Substack in response, check later today of you have time and want an answer!
Magnificent.💔
The paragraph about the educated Gazan woman needs editing; it doesn’t make sense.