Part of the tragedy between Jew and Arab is the inability of so many of us, Jews and Arabs, to imagine each other. Really imagine each other: the loves, the terrible fears, the anger, the passion. There is too much hostility between us, too little curiosity.

Jews and Arabs have something essential in common: They have both been handled, coarsely and brutally, by Europe’s violent hand in the past. The Arabs through imperialism, colonialism, exploitation and humiliations. The Jews through discrimination, persecution, expulsion and ultimately mass murder on an unprecedented scale.

One would have thought that two victims, and especially two victims of the same oppressor, would develop between them a sense of solidarity. Alas, this is not the way it works, neither in novels nor in life.

Some of the worst conflicts are indeed between two victims of the same oppressor — two children of the same violent parent don’t necessarily like each other. Often they see in each other the image of the abusive parent.

Which is exactly the case between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. While the Arabs regard Israelis as latter-day Crusaders, an extension of the white, colonising Europe, many Israelis, for their part, regard the Arabs as the new incarnation of our past oppressors, pogrom makers and Nazis.

This situation charges Europe with a particular responsibility for the solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict: Instead of wagging their fingers at either side, Europeans should extend empathy, understand- ding and help to both sides. You no longer have to choose between being pro-Israel and being pro-Palestine. You have to be pro-peace.

... contd.