Let Humanity Trump Conflict

Friday, September 8, 2006 My family has always taught me to appreciate the little things: a pat on the back, a thank you, a smile. In my lifetime, I have felt closer to and have developed strong relationships with people who appreciate the same little things that I do. My version of “little things” extends to the mannerisms my friends and I share when speaking to our families on the phone, the way we don’t sleep on long bus rides, and our self-deprecating senses of humor.. I mention all this because of an experience I had just a few weeks before the fall semester began. Whenever I take the Greyhound bus from my home in New York to my other home in Washington, D.C., I make it a point to stir up conversation. I played my cards right on the first Thursday of last month. As I rushed to catch the 7 a.m. bus from Port Authority I grabbed The New York Times to catch up on news from the ongoing crisis in the Middle East. The front page that day had an image of the Israeli military at their northern border readying for another day of war. When I stepped onto the bus there was only one seat remaining next to a tall man whose tan told me he was of Middle-Eastern descent. I noticed the headline of my newspaper caught his eye. With a hint of an accent he introduced himself as Dan and said he was from Israel. When I asked what he did for a living, he quietly pointed to the front page of The New York Times and said he was an Israeli soldier. He arrived in the States just two days before hostilities began. I couldn’t believe that before me lay a genuine opportunity to have a discussion about an issue that I felt so strongly about with someone so close to it. Throughout the bus ride, we each spoke very candidly about our views on the ongoing conflict between the two nations. He expressed very sincerely his mixed emotions: On the one hand, he wanted the conflict to be over by the time he returned to Israel, but on the other he wished to be alongside his fellow soldiers. At one point, Dan commented that he and his friends never really understood why the United States supports Israel as strongly as it does, but that he certainly didn’t mind it. The best parts of our conversation, however, did not revolve around politics. We spoke about sports, Judaism and Islam, his family in southern Israel and even his struggles with a long-distance relationship. Dan and I shared many laughs together over the ride, gave each other advice on how to deal with the opposite sex (some I could use), and even shared workout tips (again, I need all the help I can get). We made fun of each other and of ourselves, had the same tone when speaking to our families during the snack break and definitely did not get any sleep on the bus. When I retold this story to my dad and he asked what I got out of this experience, I realized something I had always believed but have very often failed to demonstrate. For whatever reason — and I too am guilty of this — we fail to attach humanity to what we see in the news. The 30-second sound bytes do not give us much of an opportunity to do that, and over time we’ve become desensitized. I’m sure everyone can say that they are sick of hearing about the turmoil in the Middle East and other places in the world. But would we be sick of this if we attached names and faces to the hundreds of headlines we have ignored? Often we forget that families just like ours have been affected by war and politics. On every side of any possible conflict (especially the Arab-Israeli conflict) there are people just like us who endure what no one should ever have to. There are people very passionate about international issues at this university and throughout the world, but it is of utmost import that we do not place issues ahead of people. If believing in something so strongly means compromising our humanity, then we are not doing as good a job standing up for our issues as we think. This is not a question of being naïve or overly sensitive but rather of putting things in a human context. Earlier this week, the Students for Justice in Palestine invited the Georgetown-Israel Alliance to a prayer for peace. For this, both organizations deserve credit for putting aside their strongly-held political differences to come together as members of this campus community. That is the very least we could ask of ourselves and of each other. Dan and I were both disappointed when we reached our stop. Upon our arrival, he did three things: He patted me on the back, thanked me for a great conversation and smiled. Abed Z. Bhuyan is a junior in the School of Foreign Service and is the President of the Muslim Students Association.