Life is non-binary, but it is human nature to want to choose a side. Black hats and white hats, good guys and bad guys. My country right or wrong, painting the humans on the other side of a dispute as the evil incarnate. It may be natural, but it is something we need to work to overcome. Simple answers to complex questions are almost always wrong.
I saw part of an interview with former US president Barak Obama. He talked about complexity – about how there is always a history and a context to every conflict. As he put it, no one has clean hands.
It is not my intention to start a debate about the thorny situation in Israel/Palestine. I do, however, want to encourage you to think carefully about how we handle complexity in life in general – do we tend to flatten complex situations into simple yes/no, true/false, good/evil binaries? How much nuance and history do we erase in the process? Slogans are catchy, but do they mask the truth?
Black and white thinking is typical of adolescents – I remember a sign on the refrigerator in my mother’s kitchen that read “Teenagers! Be sure to leave home and make your own way while you still know everything!” Or to quote Mark Twain, “When I was 17, I thought my father was the stupidest and most ignorant man alive. When I was 22, it’s amazing how much the old man had learned in five years”.
Joking aside, it is a sign of maturity to be able to consider complex situations in context, to avoid choosing sides like a football game, and to keep in mind, at all times, that everyone involved in the conflict is human. There is no evil incarnate, even when people do terribly evil things. No population is entirely identified with their leaders, especially when those leaders follow their own agenda rather than that of the people for whom they are supposedly responsible. The innocent always pay the heaviest price, and that has been true since G-d killed all the firstborns of the Egyptians so the people of Israel might go free.
Every human on this beautiful green Earth is made in the Divine image. Sometimes, in the dark moments, we can lose sight of that. Let us help each other remember.
