Lessons

During my professional activity, I was fortunate enough to develop acquaintances (which sometimes developed in friendships) a bit all over the world, including some places marred by political strife and – sometimes – outright conflict.

Being such acquaintances were on both sides of the political fence, they exposed me to two alternative narratives for the same episodes.

Fast forward to today, where we are exposed to two conflicts with profound implications for the whole world.

In both cases, I had no difficulty developing a personal view: while I am no historian, I formed an opinion based on current events: in both cases IMHO there is clearly one party that unilaterally started hostilities and one party which who passively endured it, leading to a reaction.

So, to make myself even more clear,

I stand with Ukraine
and
I stand with Israel

and fully support their right to defend themselves. Such positions are not in perfect alignment with my cultural and political background: for example, the call for peace which comes form the catholic world or the refusal of war as a way to solve conflict which comes from left-wing politics or, again, the hatred for the military and the defense industry emanating from the anti-establishment domain. Yet, what I think is wjat I think, regardless of such dissonances.

As I said, I have friends in Ukraine, and friends in Israel (as well as in Russia and the Arab Countries).

I learned (hence “Lessons”) that such friends consider themselves at war, even thought they are not necessarily militarily involved, and tend to have a digital perception of issues, although I am aware that individual positions do not necessarily reflect the sentiment of the whole Ukrainian or Israeli societies.

So when I say that once the war is over with the inevitable victory of Ukraine, there will be the need to re-build relationships between the two conflicted nations, I was stonewalled by my Ukrainian friends who say no dialog whatsoever is possible with Russians.

And when I say that the solution to the Gaza conflict cannot be the complete extermination of Palestinians, my Jewish friends objected that this is the ONLY possible solution.

And when I say it is up to the Palestinians to isolate and expel terrorists like Hamas from their ranks (something I even presented at a conference in Cairo using the case of the Italian terrorism season as a case study), my Arab friends retorted that no coexistence is possible in any way with the State of Israel.

I might have lost some long-term relationships and friendship in the process of developing nuanced positions on geopolitical issues, because people at war only want answers to a much simpler question:

ARE YOU WITH ME ?

Anybody who does not answer with a whole-hearted “Yes” becomes ipso facto, an enemy and increase their sense of isolation. I find myself in the unpleasant situation of being considered an enemy by people I support with all my heart simply because I beg to differ in some areas.