Ofer Shinar
21
You talked about bereaved families having a special place in society, but there are certainly bereaved people on both sides who do not share the Forum's message but call for revenge.
You really cannot mis-empathize. You have no negative empathy. If we are the ones who represent the empathy towards the other side's bereavement, you cannot say, no, it's wrong to empathize. It's just something that is not possible. It's not as if you can be a rightist and a leftist. If you chose not to be a leftist but to say in order to solve the conflict we have to empathize with the other side, it doesn't say how the conflict would actually be solved. I strongly believe that if we can have a reconciliation process that would work, Israelis might be able to live in the territories, no harm done. I don't think it's such a bad thing. The thing is that it's impossible now because there is no reconciliation, because we are missing something. It's not bad in itself. So in a way, for me, reconciliation is not something that has another side which can oppose it, and if you can hear people who are supposedly opposing peace, who are bereaved, they are not really opposing peace, they are just hurt and the main message that they are strongly trying to convey is that "there is no hope, we tried it and we had the Oslo process and we really tried to do something good with the other side but there is no one to talk to." That's something we can talk about. I have no problem with it. I don't want you to feel what I am feeling every day, but I don't see how we just have to kill them because there is no other option. That's what a bereaved person said on the television yesterday. She said, "okay, perhaps it's not the best option, but we have to kill them because there is no other option." The only thing I'm sure is that it's going to be rather easy for such people to be convinced when they see that there is another side. Palestinians, and also Israelis, because you get the same reactions from Palestinians-- we are not one-of-a-kind, and most people in both societies want peace.