Israelis trapped in a narrative that diminishes their empathy

Will Palestinians ever find peace when the people next door refuse to see them as human?

- YASEEN BURT

A FEW days before the fateful events of October the 7, 2023, I accepted a job offer from an Israeli company, a decision that came with a heavy sense of conflict.

As a coloured South African with a childhood framed by apartheid, my heart has long aligned with the struggle for Palestinian justice. Yet, despite my personal and documented opposition to Zionism, I found myself drawn to this opportunity, not to endorse its government's policies, but to understand the mindset of those who live inside Israel itself.

After heated debates and consultations with close friends and family, I decided to take the job and allow myself to remain in it for no more than one year. What followed was an immersion into a world of contradictions: people who could be unfailingly polite one minute and, the next, perfectly comfortable with justifying the most brutal violence against a neighboring people.

On the surface, the workplace was professional and respectful. I was treated, day after day, with a courtesy that one might expect between colleagues. Yet, beneath that veneer was a collective blindness so complete it bordered on willful ignorance.

Nearly every Israeli I worked with was solidly behind the so-called war in Gaza - a war that has wrought devastation on countless Palestinian families. But in our personal interactions, there was no trace of hostility directed at me. It was, perhaps, a cold civility, a compartmentalisation. I met their children and spouses via video calls and saw their daily routines unfold, the everyday life of people who, it seemed, could not conceive of the suffering so close by.

At one point, a co-worker mentioned how he routinely looked forward to Christmas meals prepared by Christian Palestinians. The remark hung in the air like bitter irony because, at that very moment, Israeli forces were systematically demolishing Christian holy sites, their artillery reducing both sacred spaces and civilian lives to rubble.