DEAR AMJAD IRAQUI, YOSSI KLEIN HALEV, & EZRA KLEIN:
I am writing this letter to you after having listened to two episodes of the Ezra Klein podcast as follows:
- The November 7th episode where Ezra interviews Amjad, and
- The November 10th episode where Ezra interviews Yossi.
Thank you all for availing yourselves to these conversations which in turn allows me to confront and grapple with the difficult and conflicting narratives surrounding the current state of the Middle East.
OCTOBER 7th
October 7th is fresh on my mind because it seems like it happened just yesterday. My body responded to that day with my jaw dropping, my eyes weeping, and my heart aching for the people murdered and tortured by Hamas. Today, it's almost two months past October 7th. And before we know it, we will see October 7th shapeshift as it drifts farther away from us. As i see the brutal retaliation by Israel with countless deaths of innocent Palestinians, my jaw drops, my eyes weep, and my heart aches. My soul shakes into a single-word prayer on repeat. That single word is: Please. In Spanish it's por favor. In Korean, it's 제발.
To try to understand WHY October 7th happened, I know I need to understand a story that doesn't begin on that date. It begins more than 75 years ago, maybe longer than that, back to 1917 when Palestine was under British rule, and the British announced a "national home for the Jewish people" to be developed within historic Palestine (Balfour Declaration, November 9, 1917).
A student of mine who is of Arab descent joined me in taking on the challenge of also listening to your interviews, examining your conflicting narratives, and writing among many things in her paper that "both Palestine and people of Jewish descent share indigenous roots to this region and there needs to be a mutual agreement on this from both parties."
Let's assume that everyone can agree to that. Even with such an agreement there have been bad behaviors that get in the way of long-term hope for peace because no one seems to be able to move past the bad behaviors and the insatiable thirst to exact the next best revenge.
BAD BEHAVIORS
Bad behavior #1 of many: Israelis have been militarily occupying Palestinian territory. Extremist religious settlers have invaded much of this territory, inch by inch, in a way that threatens the very existence of the Palestinian people and subjugates their daily existence in oppressive and humiliating ways. Yossi: Even you point out that you (along with many Israelis) who have opposed Netanyahu and his regime's oppressive treatment of Palestinians were marching in protest against Netanyahu all the way up to October 6th, with the threat of an Israeli civil war in regards to this injustice, moving increasingly toward the realm of possibility. And how after October 7th, all of that changed, as the trauma inflicted by Hamas has banded Israelis together to respond not to what was immediately in front of them pre-October 7th but what they see immediately in front of them post-October 7th: fear and terror.
Bad behavior #2 of many: With the departure of Israelis from Gaza in 2005, Palestinians voted in Hamas to lead Gaza. Yossi: you describe Hamas as the materialization of an idea—that Israel needs to be destroyed—a materialization that views armed terrorism as a tactic that you, Amjad, characterize as being the only viable tactic that Hamas believes in, because Hamas believes other tactics as having been ineffective. When I listen to your explanation of this, I have to remind myself that what may sound logical on paper is illogical in real life. I reject the notion that armed terrorism is a tactic equally weighted and therefore interchangeable with other tactics.
PEACE & LIBERATION
My student who has seen in the media, the relentless bombing of Gaza, argues that Israel is now acting beyond the scope of self-defense and says, "This is not self-defense, it is execution for Palestinians." She further points out the irony of an Israel set on destroying Hamas since as Yossi points out, Hamas is not just a militia, but an idea. And ideas cannot be destroyed. Especially through bombs. My student concludes her piece fueled by righteous anger that "Peace isn't the answer; liberation is."
I understand her rage. Though I have never lived under occupation, my parents have. From 1910 to 1945, Japanese colonizers occupied the people of Korea, including my mom and dad. And on August 14, 1945, Korea became divided into a North and a South, split along the 38th parallel, marking the surrender of Japan and ushering in the end of WWII. This division was intended to be temporary. Some 78 years later, "temporary" can be used to describe the division ironically, certainly not realistically. It is a division that makes we Koreans fear half of ourselves and distrust and begrudge neighbors who look more like us, eat more like us, and have cultural mannerisms more like us than most of the world. And despite the sameness, they for 35 years colonized us. Occupied us. Humiliated us on the daily.
OCCUPIERS & OCCUPIED
As author Kathy Park Hong points out in her book Minor Feelings, Koreans are a people who have always been on the run as we:
... first went to Manchuria to escape the Japanese occupation, then to Seoul to escape the Soviet invasion, then to Busan to flee North Koreans, and finally to the United States to escape the South Korean dictatorship. And in this 21st century, we know that life in North Korea remains a nightmare, causing people who choose the potential terror that will be theirs if caught defecting, to try anyway.
How can neighbors with an ancestry so similar have constructed relations where one became occupier and the other occupied? This is a question that can be asked not only of the Japanese and Koreans but also the Israelis and Palestinians. How can neighbors who hold legitimate indigenous roots to a region and even share a Semitic identity (i.e., Semites are people who speak Semitic languages especially Hebrew and Arabic) be at once occupiers and the occupied?
I think there is a growing societal sentiment that in order to pursue justice, we need to become agnostic toward the idea of compassion. More and more, I see jaws not dropping and hearts not sinking unless there is assurance that it's safe to do so; that is, as long as the suffering can be framed to keep a pure tribal fidelity of narratives that say who is qualified to be viewed as victims and who is not. It is a rigid binary that I am sure exhausts even the most fervent tribal leaders.
GEORGE FLOYD
When the George Floyd murder happened a few years ago, the pain in the community had people saying assorted things. One thing that some people said was "defund the police." Other people said other things that weren't as sensational, which was essentially, to improve the police. And to improve human connection. To get people talking and interacting and connecting and caring to combat loneliness and to foster belonging. To get bad cops out of the force and to get leadership to negotiate and collaborate and create new and better ways of policing.
THAT IS MY UNCLE
Before George Floyd was Rodney King. During the civil unrest that exploded in response to King's unwarranted beating by police in 1992, a weird tension developed between African Americans and Korean Americans in Los Angeles. Korean businesses were being looted and vandalized, with a narrative that justified this action, pointing to Koreans' stoic and unfriendly demeanors, along with their businesses profiting from African American patrons. There were ridiculous and hurtful sentences hurled from both communities.
Why do I bring this up? Because in that moment, I felt there was a hopelessness kicking in with people starting to believe that peace was less important than liberation. I felt a desperation when my uncle decided to arm himself to protect his business in Los Angeles as he and his community were being targeted as the oppressive enemy. On the one hand, I wanted to shout to my uncle: "Stop! We are in the same boat as them!" And on the other hand, I wanted to shout to the African American community: "Stop! That is my uncle! That is not Laurence Powell! That is not Daryl Gates!"
And the entire experience had me ask: How can freedom have value when the context is violence and terror?
I thank you for giving these interviews so that I can have the opportunity to strengthen my thinking. As President Obama recently stated, there is no way to speak the whole truth at once. We can speak a slice of truth. And if we dare to be truly brave, we can listen to, and grapple with other slices. I realize that to speak even one small slice, a lot of time and energy is required. I thank my student and also my trusted colleagues for joining me in investing this kind of time and energy at this moment. Perhaps they will join me and perhaps you will also join me in my current single-word prayer to God who I think can be accessed through many paths:
Dear God:
Please. Por favor. 제발.
Hear my prayer.
Amen.
Sincerely,
Jenny
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Amjad Iraqui is editor at +972 magazine and policy analyst at the Al-Shabeka think tank. Here is the link to his interview with Ezra Klein.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Here is the link to his interview with Ezra Klein.
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