Mary Margaret McCabe
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Thebes and Gaza

2/9/2014

5 Comments

 
The destruction and the hatred that underpin the situation in Gaza are mirrored in the discussion of what is happening there.  For the rights and wrongs of what is happening, and the background to ceasefires and their fracture, are rehearsed and retold and fought over, with the same old stories of heroes and villains that have become familiar for the last half-century and more.  The hatred on the ground is replayed in the media, sides taken and sides attacked in a replica of the conflict on the ground.  To dare to say anything is to join a side; and to join one side invites attack from the other.  This has the effect of polarizing opinion; and of silencing all but the hardiest of commentators.  Indeed there are heroes and villains here: but now most of all there is grief and pity for the awful loss of life in Gaza, and the brutalizing of the participants, as the horrific events continue.  And that grief and pity may drive a new account of heroes and villains, and serve to make things worse, and break the fragile efforts for peace. But there is something desperately wrong here in how evil and harm and injustice are conceptualized, a wrong which will perpetuate the tragedy of what is happening there indefinitely. 

Tragedy, however, might help us to see things rather differently. Sophocles’ Antigone describes the aftermath of a civil war in Thebes, the city of Oedipus.  Of Oedipus’ two sons, the elder, Eteocles, was challenged by the younger, Polyneices, for the kingship (this is another tragic tale: Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes), and in the ensuing carnage both were killed, amid the slaughter of many others.  The Antigone describes the struggles of the return to the rule of law in the city, as Creon, Oedipus’ brother and now king, decrees that the body of Eteocles should be honourably buried, but the body of Polyneices, the upstart invader, should be left for carrion.  In opposition to Creon, Antigone, Oedipus’ daughter, insists on giving burial rites to her brother: the action of the play turns on the conflict between Creon’s absolute insistence on the rule of law, and Antigone’s equally absolute insistence on her family duty.  In the end no-one wins: Creon condemns Antigone to death, and with her dies Creon’s son. The impasse of the two opposed positions of principle constitutes the tragedy of the play: no good at all can come from it, and whatever the outcome, the lives of all concerned are irretrievably marred. Humanity, as the Chorus observes, may be too clever for its own good.

Many are the things of terror and wonder, yet none is more terrifying and wonderful than man. (Antigone 334)

The tragedy of the Antigone illuminates some of the passionate debate about Gaza.  Sophocles’ play is contextualized by its past, by the fate of Oedipus and the pollution of his family. It revolves, thus, around its characters’ repeated representations of the past – representations of what has happened, of what is owed to justice, whether human or divine, insistent claims about who has wronged whom and why that matters.  We see, here, just how pernicious these appeals to past wrongs can be – how the constant repeating of who did what to whom, and who did what first, itself drives the action of the play.  The very insistence on justice looks to the past: and it is a backward look that blinds the protagonists to the future so far as to eliminate their future altogether.  It is this very insistence on being right, on one principle trumping another, on taking sides and having a final ordered answer that precipitates the tragedy. Humanity is indeed too clever for its own good.

Whoever thinks that he alone is wise in thought or that in speech or spirit he has no peer – such a man will be laid bare, revealed as empty. (Antigone 705 ff., Haemon speaking to his father)

Recent discussions of the Israel/Palestine conflict seek to show justification for the actions of one side or another by describing the appalling wrongs that have undoubtedly be perpetrated by both sides. This description is itself taken to appeal to justice; and such appeals seek to enlist the observers on one side or the other, to adjudicate just who is the villain and who is the victim, on pain of a charge of inhumanity (if the appalling sufferings of Gaza are ignored) or of bigotry (if Israel’s right to self-defence is ignored).  The disputes in the media echo the struggle on the ground; and they seem as irreconcilable. But this appeal to justice may do immeasurable harm. For, as Sophocles shows, thinking about justice in this way focusses the whole discussion on the past, and makes it blind to where the future might be reconstructed, from where things are right now. Justice, however, need not be – only or at all – about retribution.  Instead, it can look to the future, to the ways in which a proper settlement may respect each of the citizens of each side, and may give each a life worth living.  Justice of this kind should not insist on its past. Conflict and the search for retribution are about what each party has done; peace and the justice of fairness must be about the future.  It will only be possible when the past is not brought in as a constant refrain, when retributive justice is not the dominant theme, not only of the conflict itself, but of the commentaries about it.  History may be a lesson; but it is a dangerous ground for complaint.

The appeal to retributive justice not only focuses attention on the past; it also makes us forget the lessons of tragedy – that the human condition is one in which there may be no right answers, nor complete solutions, but where any outcome is mired in regret and muddle and compromise. For compromise may be the best we can manage in situations such as this.  Here again some of the commentary on the situation is Gaza misleads us into thinking that there may be a determinate solution, a way of calculating what to do next.  In part this is a question of taking sides; and in the present situation in Gaza, that serves to proliferate the problems (of victimization, of destruction, of bigotry and prejudice on either side). But in part it is encouraged by the commentaries which attend to numbers – the numbers of the dead, of the combatants, of the square miles of Gaza, of the years of the blockade, of the genocide of Jews or Palestinians present or past, of the executed, of the enlisted, of the cost of these wars to either side. 

For the most part, these numbers are hard to comprehend. Do we really attend to the difference between the death of ten children and the death of twenty? Is the death of ten less appalling, really, than the death of twenty? Surely both are morally and emotionally shocking, in ways that are not quantified at all? But the numbers – and the fruitless debate about proportionality (on this see the sane remarks of Frances Kamm, http://www.bostonreview.net/books-ideas/fm-kamm-taking-just-war-seriously-gaza, who nonetheless encourages the quantitative approach) -- suppose that there is an answer to the question whether the death of ten Palestinian children is or is not proportionate to Israel’s reasonable need to protect itself.  Surely that question just does not have an answer that could be understood by a sane person? The practical calculation of action and outcome in terrible situations carries terrifying assumptions with it – assumptions that Sophocles, again, may help us to unthink.

The debate about ‘proportionality’, about whether the response of one side to the action of the other is ‘proportional’ and therefore somehow ‘morally permissible’, has the implication that if proportion is observed, then the action in question cannot be included in the list of the wrongs done by one side since it is somehow permissible ‘in the rules of war’.  This making of a list of wrongs is, if I am right, itself responsible for precipitating tragedy: and the talk about the conflict itself precipitates its becoming worse. Moral philosophers are fond of thinking about such questions in ‘what if?’ ways: what if you are able to divert the train at the points and save five lives at the cost of one; what if to save those lives we need to murder someone else, and so forth.  But in the dreadful case of Gaza, the ‘proportionality’ question seems to look like this: how many civilians (or children) is it permissible to kill in self-defence? Or how many lethal rockets fired into your territory is it proportionate to ignore?  Or how many spies can you execute without trial without turning the balance of world opinion against you forever? Such questions are, surely, utterly grotesque.  To suppose that they have a quantitative answer is, I suggest, itself a source of evil.

The grotesquerie arrives, I think, further back in the thinking about impossible situations like this, situations where the appeal to justice, to past wrongs and past crimes, pretends to be a proper accounting.  Those appeals suppose that there is an answer to the summing of evils, that there is a right way out of here by exacting the right sort of penalties and acting in proportion.  In the situations described by Sophocles there is no such right way; the tragedy arises from the assumption that there is, and from the assumption that appeals to the past can vindicate. The lesson, we might think, should be learned in the rhetoric about Israel and Gaza: both are wronged, and both are wrongdoers. There is injustice here, everywhere and at every turn. But tragedy resides in insisting that this is where the story ends.  The possibility of peace, on the contrary, lies in the protagonists’, and their supporters’, finding it possible to stop counting, to stop rehearsing the wrongs done, to forget the past and its wrongs and shames, and to think instead about just distribution for the future – the future that some of the children of Palestine will not see.




5 Comments
Phyllis Stein
2/9/2014 04:27:31 am

South Africa is the paradigmatic example of the value - and also the pitfalls - of reconciliation without retribution.
But reconciliation was only possible after clear condemnation backed by sanctions.

Reply
Steve McGrath
2/9/2014 06:10:35 am

“Such questions are, surely, utterly grotesque. To suppose that they have a quantitative answer is, I suggest, itself a source of evil.” This is the core of the issue.
This is war. War is hell. To think otherwise is preposterous. As long as we think it possible to conduct war in such a way that civilians (children) are unharmed, that only bad guys die, then we are lulled into accepting the grotesque, and war is perpetuated. Our smart bombs and our autonomous drones will not, cannot create a clean war, with precision surgical strikes that avoid what we euphemistically call collateral damage.

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Zeyad el Nabolsy
2/9/2014 06:50:20 am

I think that you are right to point out that trying to keep an account book of the harms done and suffered by both sides is a grotesque undertaking. Theoretically, I am committed to justice in a derivative sense, i.e. only in so far as justice is conducive to human flourishing (which is a commitment that you seem share). However, as you clearly point out a lot of the discussion is centered on an unconditioned commitment to retributive justice. Nonetheless, while it is certainly problematic to obsess over the past, I cannot help but think that simply forgetting the past will not do. I think here I can draw upon my personal experience as a descendant of Palestinian refugees, for as Palestinians we have to find a way to come to terms with the past (I would like to be understood to be using the word 'we' in a rather weak sense, since I would not dare presume to speak for others. Nonetheless, there is a sense in which there has been a collective trauma such that one can use 'we' in an intelligible way). Especially since the 'Nakba' is part of our collective narrative, perhaps even the pivotal element in our collective narrative.
If I have understood you correctly, you are claiming that the parties to the conflict have a choice between tragedy on the one hand and peace on the other hand. The problem with this claim is that we have to account for the fact that the trauma of the Nakba is a constitutive element of contemporary Palestinian identity, in an analogous manner to the way that the Holocaust is a constitutive element of contemporary Jewish identity. So forsaking the past (as in forgetting the past), without first (and perhaps, continually) coming to terms with it, is simply not an adequate remedy. I think that the problem that you identified is the problem of how can we come to terms with the past in such a way so that it does not swallow up the future.
I do not really have a solution to this problem, but I think that we may have to acknowledge that the choice is not between tragedy and peace, but rather between two kinds of tragedy. The first kind of tragedy would be the kind of tragedy that you identified where we keep brooding over the injustices that have been done, who started what, etc and never arrive at peace. The second kind (a sort of tragic narrative) would be one where forgiveness takes place and serves as a way by which the protagonists come to terms with their (common) history, but only through acknowledging that transgressions took place whose legacy cannot be resolved(if by 'resolved' we mean unmade). I am here thinking primarily of the colonial transgressions against the Palestinian people (because I think that this is the crux of the whole issue of coming to terms with the past). I call this alternative tragic simply because one would have to admit (if one takes this path) that the resolution of the colonial legacy is not really possible. We (Palestinians) would still have to tell a tragic narrative about ourselves. I do think that we have to look to the future, but at the same time, I think that tragedy in narrative form is unavoidable. The issue is whether we can construct a tragic narrative that allows for forgiveness. To be honest, I am not sure that we can. Especially if forgiveness requires forgetting.
(I apologize in advance for the length of this comment and for any misrepresentation of the content of the post).

Reply
Anna
3/9/2014 03:02:50 am

Fantastic article, I am so happy to read something constructive on this issue, that is thinking of the future & not merely trying to score points. If only all leaders had to study greek philosophy!
However as you argued against a quantative approach to the tragedy of the deaths, it would be more correct to end by saying "the future that some of the children will not see", as unfortunately there were child casualties on both sides.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/day-46-hamas-vows-revenge-fires-rockets-kills-collaborators-after-strikes-on-its-terror-chiefs/

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Fanis Missirlis link
8/9/2014 03:26:47 am

I visited modern Thebes, which includes some of the ruins of the Ancient city, this July and I read Antigone in class some 23 years ago and watched the play in Epidaurus more recently. One thing that distinguishes tragedies from real life is divine action - used by Sophocles and other to resolve the conflicts in a just manner.

"Many are the things of terror and wonder, yet none is more terrifying and wonderful than man" - his (her) wonderful side suffers from the terror of inequality and oppression in every geography where people's guard is low.

Looking into the past, present and future is necessary for reconciliation; but as you say, before anything can progress in a direction of cooperation we should help resurrect the ideal of peoples friendship.

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