How should we think about our enemies?

Moral Maze

BBC

Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 609 Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The surprise attack by Hamas was devastating, leaving hundreds of Israeli civilians dead, injured or taken hostage. Israel’s response was swift, with airstrikes on Gaza killing hundreds of Palestinians, including children.

The scale of the attack was unprecedented, but the cycle of violence and escalation is all too familiar in this land that has been contested for more than a century. Now another generation sees the bloodshed at first hand.

Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, so for many Jews this is about survival. At the same time, many Palestinians have come to see Israel as a brutal oppressor. Each side sees the other as an existential threat. Even those who refuse to define their neighbours across the Gaza border as ‘the enemy’ may find themselves defined in those terms against their will – and threatened with death.

How should we understand conventional rules of morality in such intractable circumstances? What is a proportionate response to an act of aggression? And what conditions are necessary for a realistic peace process to take hold?

Perhaps the most radical statement in all of human history is “love your enemies”. Those who are pessimistic about peace in the Middle East might dismiss that as naïve. But there are some who can give us real-life examples of the human capacity to rise above anger and grief for a greater good.

How should we think about our enemies?

With Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer, Atef Alshaer, Gabrielle Rifkind, Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin.

Producer: Dan Tierney.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:05.2	Good evening. President Biden's called the Hamas attacks on Israel, sheer evil.
0:10.7	It's certainly difficult, even obscene, to try to justify the butchering of babies on the grounds of historic injustice or daily suppression,
0:18.7	though there are those there and here who do.
0:21.9	The Israeli response has been savage and threatens to be apocalyptic for the two million
0:26.0	Gaza Palestinians, packed, besieged and bombarded in a territory the size of the Isle of
0:31.1	White. The cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, now at least three generations
0:36.5	old, has reached a crescendo.
0:38.9	Many on both sides regard the other as either brutal oppressor or bloodthirsty terrorist,
0:43.8	a threat to their very existence. Those that don't see their neighbours as enemies are themselves
0:49.3	trapped in a narrative shaped by history and grievance, murder and retribution.
0:59.7	Where is the scope for conventional morality in such an intractable situation?
1:04.1	What's a proportionate response to indiscriminate cruelty and killing?
1:07.6	Above all, what has to happen for things to change?
1:09.4	That's our moral maze tonight.
1:11.1	The panel, Mona Siddiqui, Professor of Islamic and inter-religious studies at Edinburgh University, Sonia Soda, columnist, author, former
1:16.4	Labour Party advisor. The historian Tim Stanley and the Anglican priest and commentator, Jars Fraser.
1:22.9	Mona, Mona, Siddiqui, what did you make of what happened at the weekend and since then?
1:27.6	Well, I can't presume to understand what people are feeling in Israel or Gaza, shock, sadness.
1:33.7	From this comfortable distance, all these words sound glib with a huge loss of life.
1:39.1	But I do wonder what this means for another generation of young people gripped in violence and despair.
1:44.6	Giles, you're not Jewish yourself, I know, but you are married to an Israeli and two of your children who are Israeli citizens, I think.
	...

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