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שלום לקנאים

Book by Amos Oz · 6 quotes · Dear Zealots, Extremism, Fanatics

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שלום לקנאים Quotes

“A prominent israeli writer, Sami Michael, once told of a long car journey with a driver. At some point, the driver explained to Michael how important, indeed how urgent, it is for us Jews “to kill all the Arabs.” Sami Michael listened politely, and instead of reacting with horror, denunciation, or disgust, he asked the driver an innocent question: “And who, in your opinion, should kill all the Arabs?” “Us! The Jews! We have to! It’s either us or them! Can’t you see what they’re doing to us?” “But who, exactly, should actually kill all the Arabs? The army? The police? Firemen, perhaps? Or doctors in white coats, with syringes?” The driver scratched his head, pondered the question, and finally said, “We’ll have to divvy it up among us. Every Jewish man will have to kill a few Arabs.” Michael did not let up: “All right. Let’s say you, as a Haifa man, are in charge of one apartment building in Haifa. You go from door to door, ring the bells, and ask the residents politely, ‘Excuse me, would you happen to be Arabs?’ If the answer is yes, you shoot and kill them. When you’re done killing all the Arabs in the building, you go downstairs and head home, but before you get very far you hear a baby crying on the top floor. What do you do? Turn around? Go back? Go upstairs and shoot the baby? Yes or no?” A long silence. The driver considers. Finally he says, “Sir, you are a very cruel man!” This story exposes the confusion sometimes found in the fanatic’s mind: a mixture of intransigence with sentimentality and a lack of imagination.”

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“To imagine the inner world, both intellectual and emotional, of the other. To use our imagination even in times of strife. To use it also, primarily, in moments when we feel a surge of fury, insult, loathing, righteousness, and the certainty that we have been wronged and that justice is entirely on our side. Perhaps also to ask, once in a while: What if I were her? Or him? Or them? To step, for a moment, into the other's shoes and under his skin, not in order to cross the river or be 'reborn,' but simply to understand, to sense, what is there. What is beyond the river? What do they have in their head? How do they feel over there? And what do we look like from there? Perhaps also to try to find out how deep the dividing river is. How wide? How and where might we build a bridge? This curiosity will not necessarily lead us to a conclusion of sweeping moral relativity, nor to self-abdication in favor of the other's selfhood. It will lead us, sometimes, to an exhilarating discovery, which is that there are many rivers, each of whose banks can show us a different landscape that may be fascinating and surprising. Fascinating even if it is not right for us; surprising even if it does not appeal to us. Perhaps, indeed, in curiosity lies the prospect of openness and tolerance.”

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“Literature and gossip are closely related. People who are curious and imaginative long to know 'what it's like for other people.' This longing can be satisfied in its basest, most banal form through gossip, just as it can attain a more refined and complex gratification in art. Both gossip and literature, each in its own way, are capable of offering a partial antidote to fanaticism, because they both relish the fascinating differences between people.”

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“Curiosity and imaginative power: these two things may give us partial immunity to fanaticism. ... [T]he fanatic is uncomfortable imagining the details of the act he eagerly volunteers to perform. He is comfortable with the slogan, as long as the slogan doesn't translate into shouts, pleas, dying gurgles, puddles of blood, brains spilled out on the sidewalk. It is true that there are sadists in the world who would actually be excited by close-up pictures of abuse and dismemberment, but most fanatics are not driven by sadism but by lofty ideals, a longing for redemption and a desire to mend the world, which necessitate 'getting rid of the bad ones.”

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“Contending with fanaticism does not mean destroying all fanatics, but rather cautiously handling the little fanatic who hides, more or less, inside each of our souls. It also means ridiculing, just a little, our own convictions; being curious; and trying to take a peek, from time to time, not only through our neighbor's window but, more important, at the reality viewed from that window, which will necessarily be different from the one seen through our own.”

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“Curiosity and imagination are bound together. The age-old human urge to peek behind other people's drawn shutters, the eagerness to compare one's own intimate secrets with the secret intimacy of others, is an urge that may serve as an antidote to the fanatic's lust to murder the difference between himself and others. Or to kill anyone who refuses to change and declines to be exactly like him.”

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