Crossing Divides

Dear Eyal,

It is very hard to find a beacon in such dark times. I am glad we have decided to talk to one another while acknowledging how impossible it might be. The Palestinians in Gaza are being mass-murdered and ethnically cleansed as I write these words. And the basic humanity of the Palestinian people is being systematically erased via a coordinated campaign of suppressing any mention of their humanity, their history, their plight, their pain. I object.

What is unfolding in Gaza is linked to the unbelievable suffering your people were made to endure. The fact that Israel is creating a humanitarian catastrophe by decimating a helpless population does not change the basic facts of anti-Semitism, dispossession, and the genocide your people endured in Europe. The active position of fomenting genocidal intent and engaging in genocidal actions is linked to the passive position of having been exposed to genocide after a millennium of racist oppression. Are we doomed to repeat and in the process break the whole world? It is not looking good right now.

Much has been written about “the conflict.” None of it has reduced it or made it less malignant. To think that you and I, two individuals, can move the needle toward recognition and cooperation is…necessary despite the impossibility.

I am interested in taking the issue up analytically. The typical ways have failed. We need something new. I feel some glimmer of hope here, as I think our nascent conversation will help me learn more about psychoanalysis, cooperation, and liberation.

I came into the field of analysis because I thought the ideas were fascinating, and the opportunity to help people reach new depths of understanding and new ways of engaging the world and expressing themselves drew me. More importantly, I came into analysis looking for personal liberation. You see, I have been obsessed with freedom ever since I can remember. My first memories are of being a very small child lying down next to my father's body, list