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War & peace

18 October 2023

8 min read

Israel-Hamas war: the courageous leadership that might solve this most intractable of problems

Amidst the horror of the Israel-Hamas war Graham Tomlin recalls the revolutionary leaders who were prepared to take the bold path away from violence and bloodshed.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

People walk across the rubble beside a recently bombed building.

Residents of Gaza City walk past a recently bombed building.

WAFA.

How can you say something sensible about the horror that has unfolded in Gaza and southern Israel? The actions of Hamas on October 7th were deplorable. Whatever the perceived justice of a cause, using rape as a weapon of war, kidnapping and killing babies and children, parading terrified kids as trophies of war in a pre-meditated campaign is abhorrent and indefensible. However sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, surely no-one who can imagine the terror felt by teenagers taken hostage, parents fearing what is happening to their children, or the notion of cutting the head off a fellow-human being can celebrate the actions taken by Hamas. The irony of western liberals expressing loud support for Hamas, an Islamist group that is fundamentally opposed to all the ideals of western liberalism is a strange quirk of our confused contemporary moral life.

Of course, these developments need to be seen in the light of the long-running hostility between Palestinians and Israelis, and their supporters elsewhere in the world. The issue cuts right along the already existing fissure of the culture wars, with those on the left generally supporting the Palestinians, sometimes veering into outright anti-Semitism, as the Labour party has discovered, and those on the right supporting Israel, sometimes veering into uncritical support of any action by the current Israeli government – a concession few would offer to any other national government worldwide.

The result is a depressingly familiar pattern. Since then, Gaza has endured constant bombardment, food and power shortages, death, destruction and huge suffering. The infrastructure of the enclave has been destroyed yet again, although more severely this time, leaving the problem of rebuilding hospitals, schools, houses, sewage systems that take years to construct. The people who suffer, like the Israelis who have had loved ones cruelly taken from them, are the ordinary people of Gaza. It may lead to the satisfaction of having punished the perpetrators, but will leave behind a legacy of continued hatred and resentment of Israel that will only erupt again in a decade or so’s time.

The idea that Nelson Mandela would one day wear a Springbok rugby shirt, the symbol of the oppressor, was unthinkable for the young ANC activist – as unthinkable as an Israeli Prime Minister wearing an Arab keffiyeh, or an Arab leader waving an Israeli flag.

Successive world leaders, American Presidents and international commissions have tried to solve this most intractable of global problems. And failed.

Yet other seemingly intractable problems have managed to find a way forward. Tensions between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland haven’t gone away but the violence that accompanied them has largely ceased. Racial inequalities in South Africa remain, but apartheid as a policy is discredited, and again, the threat of violence has diminished.

The common denominator in these places where deep divisions have found some resolution, is a new, re-imagined and bold leadership - on both sides of each dispute. It required a willingness to think the unthinkable and do the undoable. In South Africa it was the courageous and mould-breaking leadership offered by both Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk. Both did things unimaginable in their respective camps beforehand. The idea that Nelson Mandela would one day wear a Springbok rugby shirt, the symbol of the oppressor, was unthinkable for the young ANC activist – as unthinkable as an Israeli Prime Minister wearing an Arab keffiyeh, or an Arab leader waving an Israeli flag. The idea that FW de Klerk would dismantle apartheid, free Mandela and fully back an election that he was likely to lose to the ANC was again inconceivable when he took power as Prime Minister in 1989.

Similarly in Northern Ireland, the idea of Ian Paisley the embodiment of Protestant ‘No Surrender’ and Martin McGuiness, second in command of the IRA in Derry at the time of Bloody Sunday in 1972, shaking hands and sharing power was literally unimaginable when the troubles were at their height. These were all flawed men, each with some measure of blame for the suffering involved in their countries, yet who saw a better way and had the courage to take it.

Israeli soldiers console each other while searching a home attacked by Hamas.

Two soliders console each other as they search a house that has been ransacked.

Israeli soldiers console each other while searching a house attacked by Hamas.

As is often observed, if the Palestinians had had wiser leaders, there might have been an independent Palestinian state years ago.

Of course, these very public gestures of reconciliation took years of careful negotiation and sensitive diplomacy to achieve. Yet they happened. And they happened because these leaders gradually recognised that the path they were walking down would only lead to ongoing mutual destruction, continued conflict and suffering. As the saying goes, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

This is what has been lacking in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinian people have been badly let down by the ineffectiveness and corruption of Fatah, and the senseless Islamist terror of Hamas, exploiting the understandable sense of injustice in Gaza in particular for violent ends. Hindsight is a great thing, but if the Palestinians had had wiser leaders, there might have been an independent Palestinian state years ago, whether through the UN Partition Plan in 1947, which offered 46 per cent of the land to an Arab state, in the 1990s through the Oslo Accords or other opportunities in between.

On the Israeli side in recent years, Prime Ministers like Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu have played on the (to be fair, often justified) fear of Israelis, to offer themselves as the security candidates who can keep Israel safe by building a wall or enact tight border controls around Palestinian communities, restricting their movement, as if long-standing Palestinian resentment at the loss of their land will just go away one day if you keep the pressure on long enough.

If his vision of Zionism had won out over the more aggressive version of David Ben Gurion, might this long history of conflict have been avoided?

There have been glimmers of hope. In the lead up to the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, the Zionist philosopher and politician Martin Buber argued for the right of Jews for a homeland, yet also believed the moral test of that homeland was going to be the way they would treat their Arab neighbours. For him, the call on the new Jewish state was bigger than just to provide a safe place for Jews to live, but, in alignment with the Old Testament call on the people of Israel, was to be a blessing to the nations. As he wrote in his visionary book A Land of Two Peoples:

“A true Zionist wants not to rule over his Arab brothers but to serve together with them.”

If his vision of Zionism had won out over the more aggressive version of David Ben Gurion, might this long history of conflict have been avoided?

In the 1980s, Anwar Sadat moved from being the leader of Egypt’s attack on Israel in the Yom Kippur war of 1973 to the architect of a ground-breaking peace treaty with Menachem Begin, Israel’s Prime Minister at the time. Later still, the Oslo Accords of the 1990s offered the possibility of a resolution – land for peace. Yitzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat shook hands on the White House Lawn, as hopes began to rise of a new dawn for the Middle East.

Yet in both cases it cost these leaders their lives. Sadat’s assassination by an Islamic extremist in 1981, Rabin’s assassination by a Jewish militant in 1995 and the subsequent refusal of both sides to build on these delicate beginnings effectively put an end to the fragile hopes for peace.

Over many visits to that extraordinary land, I have experienced two communities with much in common, living alongside one another, yet with little direct interaction, and often living in fear of the other. Many Jews believe all Arabs want to kill them. Many Gazans think all Israelis want them dead. Of course, some do on both sides, but most people simply want to live in peace without the threat of explosions or being killed, or home demolitions and feeling like second class citizens.

If I have a prayer for the land of Israel/Palestine, it is for bold, imaginative leaders. There was once such a Jewish leader in Israel. There were at the time, as now, fights over who really owned the land - the Jewish people with their roots in the story of Abraham, Moses and King David or the Gentile Roman empire, with might on their side. The question of how should you deal with your enemy was a live one. Different Jewish groups argued that you should hate the Gentile enemy and kill them (the Zealots), blend in with them (the Herodians), avoid any contact with them (the Pharisees), or feel superior to them (the Sadducees). Jesus of Nazareth came up with the crazy idea that you should love them and pray for them, and thus be true children of the God who made both you and your enemy.

Unrealistic? Maybe. And also today, perhaps much too early to talk about such a thing when emotions are so raw. Such a call doesn't deny Israel’s right to reasonable self-defence and the Palestinian right to legitimate protest. But this was the basic idea that lay behind the revolutionary leadership of Nelson Mandela, FW de Klerk, Martin McGuiness and Ian Paisley. Here were leaders who were prepared to take the bold path away from violence and bloodshed.

In each case, it took leaders on both sides to find a way forward. A commitment to such a path on one side alone is not enough. If that is all you have then you get killed, just as Jesus did. And of course, such a path does not avoid the possibility of suffering and even death, as both Sadat and Rabin found out. Yet, in the strange mystery of God’s working, even that - especially that - was the path to peace.

In the depressing cycle of hatred and death, the grieving families of Israel and Gaza, the weeping sons and daughters of Isaac and Ishmael, we can only pray for new leaders who will walk the difficult yet fruitful path of making enemies into friends.

Article

Character

Culture

Leading

Virtues

19 September 2024

6 min read

What is Putin thinking? And how would you know?

The self-centeredness of modern culture is antithetical to strategic thinking.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson writes on geopolitics. He is also a business executive and holds a doctorate in theology.

Preisdent Putin stands behind a lectern with a gold door and Russian flag behind him.

What is Putin thinking?

In a world of Google Maps when walking on city streets, or of Waze when driving, it is difficult to ever become lost.

The AI algorithm provides us with the shortest route to our destination, adjusting whenever we make the wrong turn. We do not need to think for ourselves, technology instead showing the way forward.

But there are times where it is possible to get lost. This happens less in a city with its clearly set-out streets, and more so when taking the wrong turn in open expanses: hiking in the mountains, traversing farmers’ fields or while navigating at sea. In each of these situations, a miscalculation may lead to peril.

It is in these situations that we must carefully think through our steps, determining how to proceed, or whether to turn back. Often, these situations are ambiguous, the right way forward unclear.

Much of life – perhaps more than we wish to acknowledge – is like this, more akin to a walk across an open field with multiple possible routes forward, than a technology-enabled walk through a city.

When making important decisions, our grasp of a given situation, of others’ intentions and motives, and the networks facilitating and constraining action, are less evident than we may initially think.

This acknowledgement of uncertainty is no reason for delay, but rather a basis for careful deliberation in determining what to do, and how to proceed. It is necessary if we are to pursue what we believe is right, in a manner that may produce positive results.

In a recent interview with the BBC Newscast podcast, University of Durham Chancellor Dr Fiona Hill – who previously served as White House National Security Council Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs, and currently as Co-Lead of the UK’s Strategic Defence Review – provides listeners with a powerful reminder on how to proceed within ambiguous situations, especially in navigating the choppy seas, or rocky terrains, of human relationships.

Strategic empathy requires self-restraint when natural impulses urge a person to make rapid conclusions about the reality of a given situation – the default human tendency.

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Dr Hill uses the term “strategic empathy” to consider how the political West might proceed in its relationship with Russia, and specifically with Vladimir Putin.

Strategic empathy is a serious commitment to understanding how another person thinks, considering their worldview, their key sources of information (in other words, their main three or four advisors, who have a person’s ear), and other emotional considerations that underpin decision-making.

It is much more than just putting oneself in other’s shoes, as is often said about empathy. The approach is one of realism, suspending judgment based on self-protective or self-aggrandising illusions, in favour of what is actually the case.

In the case of Putin, Dr Hill helpfully reminds listeners that his worldview is drastically different than that of Westerners, and that significant intellectual effort (and specifically, intellectual humility in setting aside one’s own default frames of reference) is necessary to consider decisions from Putin’s perspective, and so make the right decisions from ours.

Technology is here an assistant but not a cure-all. Whereas AI might – based on a gathering of all possible publicly available information written by and about a particular person – help to predict a person’s next move, this prediction is imperfect at best.

There are underlying factors – perhaps a deeply engrained sense of historical grievance and resentment in the case of Putin – that shapes another’s action and that can scarcely be picked up through initial conversation. These factors may not make sense from our perspectives, or be logical, but they exist and must be treated seriously.

This empathy is strategic, because effective strategy is the “How?” of any mission. Whereas a person’s or organisation’s mission, vocation or purpose (all words that can be used relatively interchangeably) is the “Why?” of a pursuit, strategy is the “How?” which itself consists of the questions “Who?” “What?” “When?” and “Where?”

To understand how to act strategically requires a prior effective assessment of reality. This requires going beyond what others say, our initial perception of a situation, any haughty beliefs that we simply know what is happening, or even the assessments of supposedly well-connected and expert contacts.

Dr Hill’s strategic empathy is an appeal to listeners to ask questions – digging as much as possible – to arrive at an assessment that approximates reality to the greatest degree possible. This exercise might be aided by AI, but it is at its heart a human endeavour.

Strategic empathy requires self-restraint when natural impulses urge a person to make rapid conclusions about the reality of a given situation – the default human tendency. The persistent asking of questions is difficult – requiring mental, emotional and intellectual endurance.

There is considerable wisdom in Dr Hill’s reflections on strategic empathy, which extend well beyond the fields of intelligence, geopolitics or defence. The idea of strategic empathy helps show us that in much of modern culture – which glorifies the self, individuals putting their wants, needs and desires before those of others – developing strategy is very difficult.

The key then, when deliberating on potential right courses of action in ambiguous situations, is to not begin believing that the right way is clear. It rarely is.

Why is this the case? When popular culture favours phrases such as “You do you,” the you becomes a barrier to asking questions, with some aloofness to the situation, necessary for understanding how another thinks. People are encouraged to focus on themselves at the expense of others, and so fail to understand others’ worldviews and ways of operating.

Simply put, the self-centeredness of modern culture is antithetical to strategy. It impedes deliberation, which involves patience in the gradual formation of purpose for action. It wages war against the considered politics or statesmanship that many want to see return. In place of this is crisis or catastrophe, in which self-focus leads to clashes with others that could otherwise be avoided or worked through carefully.

The Biblical story of the serpent in the garden is another vantage point for the idea of strategic empathy. Soon after Adam and Eve eat the apple in the garden and become “like gods, knowing good and evil,” God searches for them and asks “Where are you?”

It is right after individuals try to become the judges of good and evil – “like gods,” that Adam and Eve find themselves lost: God’s “Where are you?”

Put differently, when a person is convinced they are right, but without asking questions, they make mistakes, they likely suffer unnecessarily because of this, and then become anchorless – the “Where are you?”

This applies to countries as much as it does to people: the more they moralize, seeking to become the judges of good and evil in a complex geopolitical landscape, the more they drift from their sense of purpose.

The key then, when deliberating on potential right courses of action in ambiguous situations, is to not begin believing that the right way is clear. It rarely is. A belief in evident rightness often leads to error, whereas the ability to suspend such judgment helps reveal – often gradually – the right path forward.

The strategic empathy approach requires both assertiveness – in asking good questions and maintaining persistence in doing so – and self-restraint in the face of believing that the right answer is clear.

The glue between assertiveness on the one hand and restraint on the other is faith, which helps a person to move forward in a trusting manner, but without exerting oneself so much so that they become the centre of the situation.

So, while Google Maps, Waze or other technologies might be at our disposal in our travels, both real and metaphorical, these technologies only get us so far.

The right way forward is seldom initially clear when navigating ambiguous situations, the frequency and stakes of which increase as we embark boldly – with faith – on the adventure of life.

Dr Hill’s strategic empathy – asking questions, listening carefully, suspending a self of sense, seriously considering diverging worldviews, and adjusting as necessary – helps us to achieve the understanding and direction we need.

Indeed, this approach is fundamental to a more effective and resilient political West. It is necessary for sounder deliberation, better strategy and statesmanship, in an increasingly ambiguous world.