When one part of humanity is exposed to unbelievable suffering caused by fellow human beings, the outcry often is “Never again.”
Yet, time and again, suffering turns into a boiling pot of hatred and revenge, which descends on future generations.
How do we get out of this vicious cycle?
A Lesson from Brazil’s Favelas
In my early 20s, my voluntary work with Initiatives of Change took me to Brazil in the 1970s. I got to know people from favela communities — shanty towns — in Rio de Janeiro and was part of a team producing an audiovisual about the struggle for change in those communities.
I came close to suffering caused by injustice and poverty. People’s hardships were plenty, but their open hearts, laughter and resilience were infectious. Their generosity was expressed in the welcoming sentence: “There is always room for one more.” However, the sentence I best remember, is:
“Those who have suffered the most, often have the most to give.”
Coming from a society where life so often was measured in terms of success, material security and the absence of suffering, this was an eye-opener. It suggested that suffering can make people more sensitive, with a listening heart to what others go through, offering them the care and support they sometimes desperately need. I had been given a deeper understanding of life.
Oct. 7 Tested the Lesson
Then, years later, came Oct. 7, 2023, when at least a thousand Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and taking at least 250 people hostage. Since then, the world witnessed two peoples tearing at each other’s throats with an anger and ferocity hard to grasp. There seemed to be no restraint. The precious insight from the favela communities was thrown into question. Was it valid?
Here were two peoples with histories of extreme suffering seemingly without any space in their hearts for the suffering of the other.
Admittedly, there are different kinds of suffering. The causes can be disease, accidents, natural disasters or poverty. But where the suffering is caused by an oppressor set on humiliating us, or an enemy determined to wreak havoc in our society and ultimately to wipe us out, the lesson from Brazil seemed inadequate. Something was missing.
Parallel Histories of Suffering
Both Jews and Palestinians are among the peoples on earth who have suffered the most. Millions of Jews were pulled out of their homes and schools and hiding places, and ultimately marched into gas chambers. Cruelty on a scale beyond comprehension caused wounds that do not seem to heal. Then, the Palestinians were thrown out of their homes, pushed aside, oppressed and persecuted to give space for the Jews on their land. They were tortured and humiliated for years, but their screams and protests were largely falling on deaf ears. Numerous attempts and efforts to create justice, peace and harmony were seemingly to no avail.
Of course, Jews and Palestinians are not alone in experiencing their dignity brutally trodden on. The hard heels of conquerors marching through history have made their marks in the memories and souls of many whose ancestors were humiliated — the slaves on the ships crossing the Atlantic and the villages of Indigenous people wiped out in Latin America as the Europeans conquered their land. Examples of brutal suffering in the past are still written in people’s hearts today. And new horror stories are being written now.
On Oct. 7, 2023 and in the time that followed, it seemed like anger and hatred had been cultivated and nurtured for years in oppressed and suffering hearts on either side of the divide. When the floodgates opened, and the killing went on and on, there seemed to be nothing reminiscent of human care and consideration.
Fortunately, this was not quite true. In that darkness — doctors, nurses, journalists, engineers, mothers, fathers, children — so many sprang to action to help others in desperate need, often risking and sacrificing their own lives to do so. An outpouring of love for those who suffered fought back against brutality.
That love, however, seemed to have no space for the victims on the other side. In an article in The Guardian two years ago, Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, quoted what writer, farmer and scientist Zeev Smilansky said in a March 7, 2024 interview: “Our children here are more important to me … There is no room in my heart for the children in Gaza, however shocking and terrifying it is and even though I know that war is not the solution.” Probably, Palestinians would express similar feelings, and likewise anyone else under those circumstances. But I had hoped that in the deeper meaning of the words “those who have suffered the most, often have the most to give,” love that crosses borders of enmity would be found. Was this an illusion?
Finding Compassion in Shared Grief
Like a beautiful orange flower among nettles, thistles and thorns, I found it: “compassion” is the name. We all know it. It was not extinct. And still isn’t.
I found it in the stories I read about bereaved Palestinian and Israeli parents who have found each other in what they have in common. They share their heartbreaking loss of their children and close family members whose lives and future have been ripped away. They console each other because children are first of all precious human beings, not Israeli or Palestinian or any other nationality. Parents Circle-Families Forum (PCFF), an Israeli-Palestinian organization of more than 850 bereaved families, was founded in 1995. Their aim is to turn pain into reconciliation, and they have continued their work after Oct. 7, 2023.
And more proof of compassion was coming my way. A friend sent me a YouTube link to an interview by TV host Jon Stewart with the co-authors of the book “The Future Is Peace”: Aziz Abu Sarah, a well-known Palestinian journalist, and Maoz Inon, an Israeli entrepreneur in tourism — both of them now engaged in work for peace.
Aziz was only seven or eight years old when he was shot at by a soldier for throwing stones. When he was 10, he lost his older brother, who after being detained and tortured by Israeli soldiers for a year, died shortly after being released. Aziz was burning with a desire for revenge for eight long years, until he met a teacher at a Hebrew school, who was the first Israeli to treat Aziz with respect and love. His human dignity felt restored. He started working for peace and got to know Maoz Inon.
Maoz lost both his parents in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the villages next to the border with Gaza. His parents were hiding in a “safe” room when the house was burnt down. Maoz’s youngest brother asked everyone in the family to promise not to take revenge. It would only lead to more killing, he said. Two days after the massacre, Maoz got a phone call from Aziz reaching out to him in his deep pain.
For Aziz and Maoz, compassion is about the willingness to learn what those on the other side suffer. At one peace meeting, Aziz’s father raised doubts about the Holocaust. Did it really happen? An Israeli present offered to guide him through the Holocaust Memorial together with his own father, who had been in Auschwitz. Seventy Palestinians joined him. Afterward, one of the Israelis said to the Palestinians: “You have now seen our story. We would like to understand your story. Could you take us to one of your villages which was destroyed and tell us what happened?”
These Israelis and Palestinians are telling us something the whole world needs to hear. The attentive listening to the painful suffering on the other side opens the door to see the injustice our own people inflict and cause.
Compassion: the Missing Word
Those who choose compassion are still a minority. Hardened hearts are still in the driver’s seat, and as the Israeli government tries to crush any hope of Palestinians having their own homeland, compassion seems to be in short supply among those in power. Yet, compassion is not crushed. An Aug. 31, 2026, report by The New York Times gives a glimpse of hope reporting how former Israeli generals, intelligence officers and prime ministers visiting the West Bank are accusing settlers of committing ethnic cleansing. They are deeply concerned.
Whatever suffering any people in any part of the world goes through, the willingness to see and feel the pain of others is a key to breaking the cycle of hatred and revenge. The sentence I started off with needs two words at the beginning:
With compassion, those who have suffered the most often have the most to give.
We do not know what tomorrow holds, but those with a compassionate heart carry a flower of promise for the future.
