This will seems too simple, and speaking of another person or another people too simply is a cruelty, I know. But I have to start thinking somewhere.#
The suffering of two people or two peoples cannot possibly be the same, cannot possibly be equal. To speak of suffering with the tools of mathematics is, I think, a fresh brutality.#
The suffering of two peoples is not equal, but I start thinking, because I have to start somewhere, with what two peoples have in common.#
The first is an illustrated directory of historical synagogues of Europe, written by C. H. Krinsky. It was published a couple of decades after World War II. Open to almost any page and you will find evidence of the creativity with which human atrocities are invented by the worst among us. Something different on every page. I haven't tried to read the book yet, I just open it at random from time to time. There is a page where I learn of paving stones being removed from streets that were paved during German occupation; the stones, which had first been grave stones, were being preserved now in the vestibule of a synagogue that had been restored to serve as a museum of witness. Even a cemetery could be an affront to the Nazis; even the grave markers had to be laid low one way or another, had to be flattened, de-spiritualized, de-historicized, de-personalized. Made lowly and mundane, made coarse by walking over and driving on.#
The second text near me at the desk is not equal to the first, because saying one life is equal to another is vulgar and grotesque:#
In the 1950s, a reporter for The New Yorker, A. J. Liebling, interviewed a retired Turkish military officer who when he was a younger man marched his troops through Gaza toward Egypt. His approach to Gaza, he said, was to leave no house standing. Liebling reports that the fellow, who things have been named after since those days . . . the fellow accompanied his comment about leaving no house standing with a gesture of his hand, moving horizontally across the space in front of him, implying a land where things have all been flattened.#
In a time of war that follows decades of animosity and war, it's difficult to imagine the emissaries of two peoples meeting at a grand table to talk meaningfully about peace. What could they have in common, except the one thing: Putting the < and > and = signs away for now, both peoples have been the victims of atrocity. I reach this question:#
Has that common ground ever been enough to start a conversation about making a shared future? How would a conversation starting there possibly go? I don't know.#
This will seems too simple, and speaking of another person or another people too simply is a cruelty, I know. But I have to start thinking somewhere.#
The suffering of two people or two peoples cannot possibly be the same, cannot possibly be equal. To speak of suffering with the tools of mathematics is, I think, a fresh brutality.#
The suffering of two peoples is not equal, but I start thinking, because I have to start somewhere, with what two peoples have in common.#
The first is an illustrated directory of historical synagogues of Europe, written by C. H. Krinsky. It was published a couple of decades after World War II. Open to almost any page and you will find evidence of the creativity with which human atrocities are invented by the worst among us. Something different on every page. I haven't tried to read the book yet, I just open it at random from time to time. There is a page where I learn of paving stones being removed from streets that were paved during German occupation; the stones, which had first been grave stones, were being preserved now in the vestibule of a synagogue that had been restored to serve as a museum of witness. Even a cemetery could be an affront to the Nazis; even the grave markers had to be laid low one way or another, had to be flattened, de-spiritualized, de-historicized, de-personalized. Made lowly and mundane, made coarse by walking over and driving on.#
The second text near me at the desk is not equal to the first, because saying one life is equal to another is vulgar and grotesque:#
In the 1950s, a reporter for The New Yorker, A. J. Liebling, interviewed a retired Turkish military officer who when he was a younger man marched his troops through Gaza toward Egypt. His approach to Gaza, he said, was to leave no house standing. Liebling reports that the fellow, who things have been named after since those days . . . the fellow accompanied his comment about leaving no house standing with a gesture of his hand, moving horizontally across the space in front of him, implying a land where things have all been flattened.#
In a time of war that follows decades of animosity and war, it's difficult to imagine the emissaries of two peoples meeting at a grand table to talk meaningfully about peace. What could they have in common, except the one thing: Putting the < and > and = signs away for now, both peoples have been the victims of atrocity. I reach this question:#
Has that common ground ever been enough to start a conversation about making a shared future? How would a conversation starting there possibly go? I don't know.#