Sorry seems to be the hardest word
If you do nothing to deserve it, don’t you deserve an apology?
A friend of mine was motoring down a narrow village lane the other day, passing parked cars, when, all of a sudden, she was confronted by a bicycle coming the other way. It’s a one-way street, but the bikes are allowed to come up against the flow, being just wee things an’ all as they are. This particular lane was only recently made one-way, because it has a bit of an S-bend and it’s hard to see from the top of the rise whether anyone’s coming up, so the council decided to make it definitive and easy: now, nothing comes up. Except, that is, the bicycles.
Well, normally when two vehicles face each other, there will be some kind of accommodation arrived at, and my friend was in an awkward place, with another car behind her and parked cars to her side. The accommodation that the cyclist decided to opt for was a tirade, directed at said friend. I can’t judge how right he was to be outraged at having been constrained to halt his velocipede in the impasse presented by a bulking great Alfa Romeo, all four wheels of it. Not a wee thing, at all at all, certainly not for an Italian motor, where drivers occasionally deploy a shoehorn to actually negotiate their way into their seat.
Image: It Started In Naples is a 1960 film with Sophia Loren and Clark Gable. Gable is met off the train at Naples station and expresses surprise at his lift, noting wryly that all they need is the olive oil in order to be packed like sardines.
It was in the throes of this altercation that the cyclist used a word that no one should ever utter to any lady. Said friend decided that a lesson in manners was appropriate, and it was duly given.
The reason I relate this story to you is not because of the confrontation between motorised and unmotorised transport itself, but rather the reaction of the motorist who was waiting patiently behind my friend. He had been blissfully unaware of the use of gutter language, but had noticed that tempers had flared and so he stepped out of his vehicle and approached the two belligerents. What he said next was stunning in its simplicity: “I don’t know who said what to whom, but you, sir, have clearly greatly upset this lady and I think an apology would be in order.”
I don’t know whether the apology was given, and calling the police would, on reflection, perhaps have been overreacting. But how the onlooker reacted was, well, was it not gallant? Was it self-appointed? Did he meddle?
When you step into an argument to try to quell a situation, it is always possible that either or both of the parties will advise you to mind your own business. When in Ireland on holiday in the 1970s, my parents found getting embroiled in political arguments in lounge bars virtually unavoidable, with the locals launching into well-rehearsed diatribes about the Irish and the English. My mother was Scots and vaunted her neutrality by dint of that. If ever a cat erred among pigeons. Little did she realise she’d made herself the target of the most bitter vitriol of all … she should’ve read up on the Protestant settlement policies in the province of Ulster.
While my mum might have denied any concern, it was unquestionably a matter of great concern to Ireland, to Britain and indeed to the world that Ulster devolved into violence in 1969.
And it is no less of concern to Palestine, to Israel and, indeed to the world, that Gaza has devolved into violence in 2023.
It’s hardly a sin to want to pour oil on troubled waters. The gentleman was perhaps primarily moved to intervene for the sake of getting on home. But his intervention was remarkable for a number of reasons.
He had no idea what the argument was about.
He could see someone was visibly upset.
He was moved to try to find a resolution to my friend’s upset.
He suggested an apology: they cost nothing, after all.
When I look at that other altercation, going on in Israel right now, I wonder why the same notions cannot hold good there as well.
It isn’t necessary to know all the rights and wrongs of Israel’s historical claim to the territory of Palestine, the suffering of the 750,000 inhabitants expelled in the Catastrophe, who sold what land to whom, and under what right and title, whether settlements have encroached in breach of the Oslo Accords, which of the one-state and two-state solutions proffers itself as most propitious, the controversy of Jerusalem, torn apart in the name of religion. It is not necessary to know any of that, not for an apology it isn’t.
For a settlement to their differences, Palestine’s and Israel’s, yes, it will be necessary to know all these things and many more things, and to appreciate the unfathomable, intractable complexity of this most Gordian of Gordian knots.
Vladim Shishimarin was the first Russian serviceman to be prosecuted in Ukraine for war crimes following Russia’s invasion. He was found guilty of shooting dead a gentleman on … actually, on a bike, again. The man was telephoning as he rode along, and Mr Shishimarin’s comrade-in-arms feared the man could betray their position, and told Vladim to kill him, which Vladim did. On 22 May 2022, Shishimarin was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for his crime. Before leaving the courtroom, however, the Russian turned to the widow of the man he had killed and spoke an apology.
Shishimarin’s apology has nothing to do with Russia’s irredentist claim over Ukraine, or with the rights and wrongs of deliberately aiming fire at civilians in a combat zone. He was in Ukraine on the orders of his commander in chief. He was told by a peer, not a superior officer, but a fellow private, to commit the murder. He consented. He knows he committed the act. He said he was sorry for having done that, and I believe him. His apology was given for his act. Not for Russia’s and not for his fellow private’s acts. He did it, and he stood trial for what he did.
The current Gaza crisis began on 7 October 2023, with an act by a terrorist organisation against the state of Israel. The antecedents need not concern us at this juncture, for it is not a settlement I wish to divine here. Hamas killed over a thousand Israeli citizens. Israel launched a defensive attack on Hamas. Hamas is being served up humble pie, which it will be obliged to eat, if Israel gets its way. Israel was wronged by Hamas. Hamas is being served retribution for its wrong.
I don’t know if the Gazan civilians, the butchers, the bakers, the candlestick-makers of Gaza, harbour hatred for Israel. Or tip the wink to Hamas. Or pray fervently for terrorists before they go to sleep at night. And I don’t think I need to know. Because the ordinary folk of Gaza didn’t set off those missiles on 7 October. If they had done, they wouldn’t be ordinary citizens, and they’d be needing to devote themselves to this battle, which they sparked unthinkingly, say some, thinkingly, say others, that Saturday morning in October.
But, if that roundly includes the terrorists —they started it, they should finish it—does that also include the ordinary Gazans? Or is the entire population of the Gaza Strip terrorist? Must the ordinary ones, be they Gazans or terrorists, likewise take up arms to defend themselves, their homes, their businesses, their hospitals and their administrations, because Israel is so keen to eradicate the author of the crime against it, that it is heedless as to who precisely it is that gets eradicated along with them?
It would be extremely helpful if there could be some apologies. I’m sorry, I saw a situation getting out of hand, so I stepped out of my car to approach the bickering road users. I’d like a well-meant apology by the administrators of Gaza for the horror that has been wreaked against their neighbour by the extreme element in their midst, even if not by them.
I would like a well-meant apology by the Israeli state for having overstepped the mark in its reaction to the Hamas attack. It does reek a little of road-rage, does it not, Mr Netanyahu?
The third apology has already been given. The Israeli left has pleaded since for ever in favour of peaceable cohabitation across the region. Yes, even from that river to that Mediterranean Sea. And it needn’t spell the demise of one or the other component peoples. And it’s been given by Mrs Lifschitz. Who forgave her captors when she returned home to Israel from Gaza. She made no gesture; she confirmed a life philosophy that few could dream of, so rare is the strength of backbone that that woman possesses.
If Mrs Lifschitz could decide policy, be it in Israel or among Hamas, or even in both, I think there’s a good chance that this altercation would never have arisen. But, perhaps it’s precisely because it never arose in this magnitude before that Hamas felt that an act of this magnitude was needed. Gunfire is never needed except in defence …
Dear reader, if you think that forgiveness is a sign of weakness, I invite you to try it. Any one of you will know who your opponents are, perhaps even enemies, irascible neighbours, yesterday’s bad driver. So: forgive them. Forgive them and think nothing but good of them from here on in.
When people say that not forgiving is strength, that doesn’t make them strong. Saying you’re strong is not being strong. It’s bravado.