I wish I didn't believe that the events now unfolding in the Middle East are too complicated for unalloyed outrage. I wish the arguments of only one side rang wholly true to me. I am the first to accuse myself of paralyzing moral generosity -- the fatal empathy that terrorists prey on. But ambivalence is not the same as moral equivalence, and holy war, no matter who is waging it, makes my flesh crawl. Full Story »
Posted by Barry Grossheim
this is an excellent and responsible opinion piece, showing both sides of the question, pros and cons. Rather than a polemic attempting to sway the reader to come down for one side or the other, it displays the complex mix of interpretations a healthy adult would have given a complex situation which has not presented a solution for over half a century.
I wish I didn’t believe that the events now unfolding in the Middle East are too complicated for unalloyed outrage. I wish the arguments of only one side rang wholly true to me.
There are definitely a lot of people who seem to be that fortunate, and for some reason they seem to fixate on one side or the other of the Israel/Palestine conflict. You’d think it would be relatively easier to find unadulterated outrage in something like Darfur or Rwanda or the Uganda Liberation Army’s attacks on Ciongolese villagers, but something draws them to see simple answers in Israel/Palestine.
I sympathize with the author of this piece; there are atrocities and generosities on both sides; instrasingents and conciliatories, doctrinaire xenophobes and tolerant visionaries, so that the question of right cannot be based on historical assignment of guilt. What's needed is for those on either side who are more interested in a future, even if it's just for their own people, than in redress for ancient insults to join together and get support from those outisde the battle.