Guide to Empathy in Times of Crisis
8 Ways to Show Up for Your Palestinian & Jewish Friends As They Grieve.
This is a tribute to the 4,150 (and counting) people who have lost their lives since October 7th.
Aspiring dancers, mathematicians, gifted craftsmen, and craftswomen. People with dreams and a thirst for life. People with joy in their lives and so many plans — they planned weddings, homes, and intricate dinners for their extended families. They dreamt often, and those dreams were built on small acts of care. They grew crops, did the laundry, they waited by the stove as the rice cooked in boiling water. They prepared the table and lit candles to bless their meals. They changed diapers, many of them, and wondered which word their child would speak first — as if this choice would give them a glimpse into their future profession. The first glimmer of identity shines through the words spoken to us when we are just beginning to feel language on our tongues. People who loved them deeply spoke the names, which will now be carved in granite.
The horror is tangible. It sends chills down my spine, yet my fingers have never felt this numb. I watch helplessly as we are spoken for — our tears not yet dry and our hands already stained red. Governments and ideals do not grieve. People do.
Over the past week, I’ve watched people I love lose people they love on both ends of the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Being half-Jewish and having lived two years in Tel Aviv, the pressure to speak only on behalf of one People is strong. My discomfort in doing so has pointed towards a value that to me, speaks louder than cultural affiliation. That is, that I speak on behalf of life. Life will always transcend ideology. It’s bigger than us. I find myself searching for voices that echo our shared humanity through the noise.
I’ve had conversations with friends in Tel Aviv, who are grieving and volunteering in civilian-run organizations. I’ve spoken to Palestinian friends who are watching in disbelief as the bombs drop on their people.
There are simply no words.
There are facts, and then there are stories. What we do with these and how we choose to show up for one another is entirely up to us. Fear and hatred are likely outcomes of historical events. Empathy — less so.
This is an empathy guide for those who, like me — see people they love in pain and want to be there for them.
1. Listen
Check in with your friends on both sides of the conflict. They are grieving and scared. Practice radical listening. Pay attention to the emotions hidden beneath words that fall short. Radical listening starts by saying “I am here for you.” These four words uttered with intention communicate a willingness to listen. Strive to create a safe space for your friend to share their sadness without fear of judgement.
2. Love
“Where there is love domination cannot exist. It’s truth telling, it’s nurturing each others existence in a shared world.” — bell hooks
One of my closest and dearest friends, S, is Palestinian. We met during a summer abroad in Paris. I held her hair while she threw up over Pont Alexandre III. She stroked mine when I got the news of my parent’s divorce on New Year’s eve. We both fell in love multiple times to varying degrees of success. We hopped on a flic bus and traveled all over Eastern Europe — I caught a boyfriend in a Halloween party in Vienna. She caught bed bugs (The irony is not lost on us).
Speaking over the phone yesterday around noon, I heard her weep in disbelief. “My faith in god is shaken,” she said, crying. I told her it would take every bit of strength in her body to forgive and stay open. Later that day she texted, “Thank you for being my sister, when right now all odds are against us being a family.”
The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all be better off using it as a verb. Here are five ingredients needed to practice love in times of conflict, inspired by bell hooks:
- Affection — There are many ways to say “I love you” without saying it. Meet sorrow with a hug. Let it linger. Send a meaningful gift. Give a person your time. Listen.
- Care — Caring is being present for the people you love. As Thich Nhat Hahn would say, “My love, I’m here for you.” Like your Jewish friends, your Palestinian friends need to know that you see their grief. They desperately need to hear that you don’t equate Islam with Hamas, nor Judaism with the IDF. They need you to stand with them against aggression.
- Recognition — Recognize our shared humanity over divisive opinions. See a person’s grief behind their anger. Recognize the love that they have lost in the love that you still have.
- Respect — Respect a person’s truth. When speaking to a friend, ask questions to understand them better, not to debunk their beliefs. There may be a time to question one another’s truths. That time will come when we’re busy rebuilding what we have lost. For now, listen.
3. Sit with Your Emotions
Whether you are directly connected to the conflict or know someone who is, this is a cataclysmic event shaking up the collective zeitgeist. Feeling your emotions when the time is right is the most important thing to do right now. It’s more important than that deadline — your boss can wait (if not, they are the wrong boss). To prevent emotions from stagnating in your body — find a nook where you can curl up. Hold yourself tight, wrap a blanket around your shoulders. Cry. Cry abundantly. Feel the loss, the disappointment and release some of that load. It’s an act of kindness that will create space for you to show up in healthier ways.
Created by Tara Brach, the acronym RAIN is an easy-to-remember tool for processing complex emotions using the following four steps:
- Recognize what is happening — Consciously acknowledge, in any given moment, the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are affecting us.
- Allow the emotion to be there, just as it is — Let the thoughts, emotions, or sensations we have recognized be there, without trying to fix anything.
- Investigate — Let your curiosity guide you towards questioning your experience. What wants attention? How am I experiencing this in my body? What am I believing? What does this vulnerable place want from me? What does it need most?
- Nurture with self-compassion. To do this, try to sense what the wounded, frightened or hurting place inside you most needs, and then offer some gesture of active care that might address this need. Does it need a message of reassurance? Of forgiveness? Of love?
You can take your time to move through the steps whenever challenging feelings arise.
4. Curate Your Feed
If you’re active on social media, look for trustworthy sources of information. The amount of misinformation circulating at the moment is off the charts. In conversation with R this morning, we discussed the delicate balance between content denouncing human rights violations (necessary to raise awareness) and hateful content (obscuring facts). The former is quantifiable and draws from the components of international law that regulate war conditions. The latter isolates information to present a discourse that incites violence.
How you curate your social media is a personal decision. Find a strategy that fits your desire to show up for others and matches your emotional needs.
5. Resist Peer Pressure
Are you sharing content from a place of reactivity or respect?
Humanitarian crises are fertile ground for tribalism to emerge. I deleted instagram from my phone this morning in the hopes that I would find my voice through the noise of social pressure.
Tribalism — an exaltation of your own tribe’s narrative over other groups — hits differently in the age of social media. Social network effects sprawl far and wide when we carry the opinions of everyone we ever knew at our fingertips. We are social animals — wired to fear ostracism. The fear of losing friends is real. It makes sense. Part of the social contract is knowing who to throw rocks at when a threat is perceived.
Resisting peer pressure means turning a critical gaze towards your self — and asking how your sense of allegiance diminishes your capacity to empathize with the Other.
An alternative discourse is choosing to be a citizen of humankind, where you identify with pain and love as fundamental human experiences. Allow dignity and respect to shape your voice, and trust that the right words will follow suit.
To me that means mourning the losses of my Jewish friends and sharing the grief of my Palestinian ones. It means vehemently denouncing the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza. Not on my behalf. It means advocating for the prompt release of Jewish hostages taken by Hamas. Importantly, It means knowing that Zionism does not equal Judaism and radical Islam does not speak on behalf of the entire Muslim population. When we pray for our loved ones to stay safe, we pray to the same god.
6. Find Community Spaces
Preferably ones that are not anchored in politics. Allow yourself to be held while you hold the people you care for. Community is a collective change agent. In times of grief, find people who choose compassion. Find people who hold space for grief, and who will help you turn that pain into something beautiful when the time is right.
7. Talk About Death
It’s hard to talk about death. We live in a society that glamorizes youth. Our cultural metaphor is an endless line of productivity, going forward and upwards into the heavens of consumerism. We spend most of our lives pretending that death will never arrive (or at least, that it won’t happen to us). But death is a universal experience, and recent events have made it impossible to ignore. Many people who grieve, or those who are in the process of dying, find themselves having no one to talk to about it. We all tiptoe around the subject of death because it makes us uncomfortable, it threatens the house of cards upon which we invest our dreams and our time (thinking we have endless amounts of the latter).
Don’t be afraid to talk about death with your Jewish and Muslim friends, it’s essential to acknowledge their grieving process. Choosing to stay, through your discomfort will help them feel seen.
8. Tell New Stories
“There are fourteen stories told in endless variations”, says Italo Calvino. These fourteen stories have painted the same scenes of love and war on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and then on the walls of Orthodox churches in Ethiopia. They have carefully transcribed the same morally ambiguous character from Homer’s Iliad to Alfred Hitchcock's 1960s thriller “Psycho.”
The same fourteen stories have erected some states, eroded others, traced borders on white sand, and driven hammers into the concrete wall separating East from West Berlin. Identities are carved into the Land with the same even pressure with which a stream creates a canyon year in and year out. The same fourteen stories about “how things came to be this way” have shaped national identity. Our relationship with land is carved into marble, and for the sake of belonging to a place — we are willing to die.
Israelis and Palestinians alike need new stories about belonging, and from these, new identities may be carved out. Jews and Muslims have lived peacefully in the Middle East before 1948. We have to believe we can do this again.
After this is over, we will have to mourn, sweep the debris, and rebuild something resembling a Whole once again.
We will have to bathe our fractures in gold. Just like the art of Kintsugi — we will mend our wounds, leaving gold seams where there were fractures. We will mourn and begin the long process of rebuilding, one new story at a time. I trust that new stories will emerge once the mending takes place. I also trust that once these stories emerge, we will be wise enough not to confuse them with a single truth.
I leave you with an open letter to S.
My love,
Bring forth your unspeakable truth, I will meet you with my softness. I’m here for you, in the broadest sense of our friendship. I will look deeply into your humanity and I will see my own. I will feel the heartbeat of a veiled mother mourning the loss of her child, feel the sweat of a man digging through feet of rubble to find his wife (still alive, still breathing). I will feel your exhaustion in my own heavy eyes and oh I will pray for rest. I will pray that you will find home intact after the bombing ceases and that you may take your shoes off and find warm food on the table. I will praise each breath, each act of kindness, each crooked smile.
I will learn this new language that will test my untrained tongue but I will do so with joy — this is how peace is embodied.
Let me turn your lights back on even as I grieve. Let us share this meal, for we have known the same kind of love. I feel your loss as my own — the warmth of your tears on my skin.
Can I still hold your hand through all this darkness?
There will always be room for you in my house. I will pour you a cup of mint tea and we will remember the times when we were both lost in the desert. I refuse to paint my pain on your skin. I refuse to let anger stain my white flag red, and I refuse to tell stories that justify violence. I will still call you my love, “tifl alqamar,” moon child. I will love you through the madness of this world. I will know you and celebrate your life so we may someday tell new stories.
With love,
S.
Despite attempts to blur the lines, maintain focus on the people. Consider donating to any of these three organizations providing essential services and resources to those in need.
Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA)
