Cops will tell you that domestic disputes are the most dangerous situations they deal with. A man may be beating a woman but if you get between them she may attack you. And maybe she has been poisoning him or hurting the kids. Maybe she was beating him five minutes ago. The unknowns and the virulence of intimate relationships are much harder to parse and more explosive to deal with than arresting an ordinary criminal.
Gaza is domestic violence at its worst.
The burn unit at the hospital is where healing is as excruciating as it gets. The dead skin must be removed. New skin must grow. It takes a long time and every day is full of terrible pain as nerve endings become sensitized. It takes heroic work by doctors and nurses and the patients themselves to go through this. Selfishness and “how I got burned in the first place” are irrelevant. Getting better is torture.
And the healing we must do is like that.
In Gaza, they are shooting and no one has been made any safer. Everywhere else we are all shouting and no one is made any wiser. We have solved no problem and are no closer to a common language about how to undertake the terrible and noble task of trying to heal, together.
Before you start shouting at me about how quickly my analogies break down (I know they do), or before I go further into them over the next few days, I wonder if I can ask you just to sit with this first point: The shooting is not making anyone safer; the shouting is not making anyone wiser.
Because I think we have to start there.
Thanks.