How to prepare people's hearts and minds for war

Imagine one early morning hour, still caught up in a dream, you start hearing the rolling drums of war, at first imperceptible, almost like a rustling sound, the sound of wind rushing through leaves. When you become aware of it, the rolling of drums has turned into rhythmic beating, synchronized, repetitive, monumental, omnipresent. By the time you wake up, the gates of hell are flung open, and you are already immersed in the rhetoric that empowers you to carry out almost anything.

Dror Borstein writes that it is no longer possible to convince anyone. No news item would ever change anyone's mind. On the contrary, every fact is mobilized to enforce existing beliefs. A whole family massacred in a single attack? 'Even more reason to eliminate the Hamas, once and for all. How dare they force us to treat them this way, how dare they make us turn into monsters'. Through a rhetorical slight of the hand, the victims themselves become responsible for their plight, the executioner becomes the helpless pawn in a cynical political game, playing a role he has not chosen. Others opt for numbness, wrapping their hearts in a membrane of apathy. Sometimes traces of feelings do emerge, unfortunately, a twitch of the eyebrow, or an almost imperceptible shiver, a vague memory perhaps, when the eyes wander and strike a photograph of the dead, brother next to sister next to brother, the family's father gazing at the tragedy, helplessly. “Yes", they say, "the children died, BUT…” and after the "BUT" comes the explanation, re-framing the problem, a quick bandage to harden the resolve, to justify the means, to thicken the membrane surrounding the heart.

A dark atmosphere has descended upon Israel, never before have I witnessed something quite like this, the formation of a collective logic, a vocabulary and language that makes war possible. The people I truly care about have been transformed; my dear friends, my close relatives, my trusted teachers and professors. Utterly and fully transformed. The first feeling is that of estrangement, the feeling of being catapulted out of an interwoven, what appears to be a cohesive society. Something has gone horribly wrong. Did I go mad? Wasn't there a time in which we shared the same values? Weren't we deeply disturbed when we heard of the suffering of others? Weren't we always puzzled at the possibility that a people - educated, cultured, reflexive, critical, learned - could undergo such a metamorphosis that they should turn into monsters? Is this real, or just a terrible nightmare?

The disgust becomes unbearable. Clueless, I start participating in demonstrations. There we meet: women and men from mainstream and from the margins of society; Palestinians and Jews, LGBT and Anarchists, Zionists and Communists, Victims and Executioners, Hypocrites and Blue-Eyed Idealists, people who, in normal circumstances, would never have met, let alone agree on anything meaningful, suddenly united in a wish to end this bloody carnage. We walk in the middle of Tel-Aviv, along one of its main streets: Ibn-Gvirol street, named after an Andalucian Hebrew poet born in a multi-cultured Spain of the 11th century. At the time Andalucia was no doubt more tolerant than Tel-Aviv today, and I notice, as we were walking, in the middle of the street, to our right and left, on the pavements on both sides, the threatening fists and bulging eyes, pointing fingers, menacing gestures and words of rage. Eggs flying in the air. Chanting rhythmically, our procession carries on, flanked on both sides with waving flags of white and blue, huge flags like the waves of the sea, menacing, aiming to crush us. Yet the procession advanced unperturbed, in the midst of the street surrounded by a flame of blue and white: “in the midst of the sea on dry land, and the waters were walled unto them on their right hand and on their left" (Exodus 14:22).

An earlier version of this post was written after Israel's attack on Gaza in January 2009 and published in the student monthly newspaper of the University of Porto.