When Empathy Falls Short

We have all been raised to value empathy, the act of trying to imagine how someone else feels in a given situation. To be empathetic is admirable, indicating a consideration of others that makes a person easier to interact with and be around. If there were more empathy, the conventional wisdom goes, there would be less conflict. To a degree, this is certainly true. Self-centeredness reduces our ability to perceive others as fully human.

However, it remains an open question as to whether we truly can imagine how others feel without their input. We are all wonderfully, beautifully unique, having been shaped by an unimaginably complex web of genetics, experiences, and environments. This diversity contributes to the richness of the human experience, but it can also create barriers.

These barriers show up in a myriad of ways, and recently I have been pondering their role in perceptions of the conflict in Gaza. People sometimes wonder why the Palestinians don’t just leave. The answer, of course, is complicated. However, a critical component is cultural heritage and its relationship to the land. Particularly for Americans with ancestries that stretch back to other continents, this can be difficult to comprehend. How could I, a white person raised in a solidly middle-class suburb once rated as the safest town in New York, possibly imagine how it would feel to be a Palestinian raised in Gaza? It’s a ridiculous thing to expect of myself.

Of course, this does not mean that we shouldn’t move through life attempting to consider and understand the feelings of others. It is paramount that we do. But without deliberately seeking out accounts of people with different experiences from us, we risk allowing “empathy” to become a vehicle for our own assumptions. As someone with very little attachment to my homeland, I can only guess at what it feels like to be so strongly rooted in a sense of place and to be aware of the enormous sacrifices my ancestors had made to retain the land of my people. I can try, certainly, but I can and should supplement that attempt with reading about, listening to, and otherwise engaging with the experiences of actual Palestinians.

Indeed, it is from reading widely that I even understand the attachment that many cultures feel to the land on which their people have lived for generations. I was born in the United States (a colonized land) to the grandchildren of Irish immigrants; I am so utterly removed from any land that could be considered “mine” that the thought of laying down my life for a patch of earth seemed absurd at first blush. Why not move somewhere new, experience new foods and cultures, expand your horizons? That is certainly something I have hoped to do with my life. But that’s just it. Traveling around, immersing myself in new surroundings, is what I want to do with my life. Even though I find it hard to fully understand how it would feel to want to stay put, through opening myself to the experiences of others, I have at least come to realize and respect that people may have good reasons for doing so.

Recognizing the cruciality of the land in the Palestinian people’s collective and individual identities has enriched my understanding of the violence that was wrought (and continues to be inflicted) against them. It is not merely that innocent people were slaughtered and their livelihoods were taken from them. It is not just that they have been portrayed as terrorists and invaders to the international community. One of the most gut-wrenching elements of the occupation of Palestine is that a loss of land has equated directly to a loss of identity. There is an expression in Arabic that translates to “fully furnished”, used to express the idea that when the Palestinians were pushed from their lands, Israeli settlers received them “fully furnished”. Palestinians mean this not just in a metaphorical sense, but in a quite literal one - some of them saw their family homes, with all the furnishings therein, taken over by settlers. Having read about the deep family and community ties that are embedded in Palestinians’ relationship with their land, how could this expression not feel like a punch to the gut?

And here, I believe, is “true” empathy - combining my own experiences and imaginings with the testimony of others to finally arrive at a genuine emotional understanding (or at least, as close as I can get without having experienced these things myself). Perhaps this is what the experts really mean when they talk about empathy, but I do not think most of us conceive of it as such an active process. I believe that we should.

Cover image by wirestock on Freepik