Mary Hall: Circles of empathy

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Published: 12-06-2024 8:30 PM |
I was privileged to spend some time in Amman, Jordan in the spring of 1991. I had no language and was impaired, but tried to learn as best I could. I encountered a number of Palestinians. At one point I was convinced every cab driver was a Palestinian engineer. At the amphitheater, I would see young men offering maps for sale of Palestine, pre-Israel.
A recent glance at demographic information has shown me that Jordan has integrated Palestinian refugees into the country more than Lebanon and Syria have. It is surely a challenge to the region’s governments to manage. Anyone can argue till the cows come home what has caused Palestinian displacements from what is now Israel. If Zionism had not brought Jews to create the modern state of Israel, those Palestinian refugees could have remained in their ancestral homes.
I think we humans may have what I call circles of empathy: There are those we recognize as fellow people, and very often there are other members of our species for whom we do not extend care. This phenomenon was horribly evident under Nazism, but it is part and parcel of what we call racism, here at home. Now we see it playing out again, whether under Putin or under the current Israeli government. Maintaining circles of empathy from which people are either included or excluded has a certain logic to it. It would seem that any of us can only care so much for others; and if one’s own group does not stay inside of circles of empathy, one may expect to be subject to the politics of exclusion, which are not fun for anyone who is subject to them.
I would encourage asking to what extent it serves the safety of Jews everywhere to let the state of Israel continue to wreak havoc against everyone in its neighborhood in the supposed interest of protecting the lives of Jews. Yes, Oct. 7 was horrible. And yes, everything since then has compounded that horror exponentially in the eyes of anyone who does not exclude Palestinians from their circles of empathy.
Mary Hall
South Hadley