A Human Conflict

I was experimenting with an internet chat room the other evening and found myself in conversation with an 18 year old Israeli who now lives in Germany. The conversation was casual and lighthearted until I asked him how he was now living in Germany. 'Because my parents were both killed in Israel by a terrorist bomb on a bus when I was six years old. I moved here to live with my grandparents.' My fingers were still on the keyboard but it was some moments before I could think how to respond. I felt stunned. I had worked in a Palestinan hospital some years ago and seen life through the lens of Palestinian experience. This conversation reminded me how important it is to see conflict as multi-dimensional and human. News reports sanitise us to the true nature of conflict with clinical expressions like 'surgical strike' and 'collateral damage'. I'm reminded that its real people who are the perpetrators and victims of conflict and that to take sides in a closed-minded way is to do violence to our common humanity.