The fear of context

A limited brain can only deal with limited information; a brain with a bit more elbow-room can take in information and related data as well, at the same time.

I thought of this yesterday evening, as I  watched UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemn the butchery in which some 1400 Israelis died and go on to talk about the need for context, with abuse of the Palestinian population going back more than fifty years.  In short, he was able to deal with a horrific attack and to set out what the lead-up to it was.  The response of the Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan was to call the Secretary-General’s  comments “unfathomable” and that they expressed “an understanding for terrorism and murder”.

I don’t think Gilad Erdan has a brain with limited elbow-room. I think he knows exactly what the UN Secretary-General is talking about, knows it’s true, but doesn’t want to factor it into any judgement. “Think of the horror of the Hamas attack. Skip the decades of oppression leading up to that – or about what we’re doing to Gaza right now.”

We have our own version of this sort of thing here at home. Unionism is frequently eloquent on the horror of Kingsmill or Narrow Water; but if you try to produce a context for IRA activity over the time of the Troubles, you’re immediately branded a fellow-traveller of murderers.  In fact, the obliteration of context has been so successful here, even some nationalists tend to think of it as a distraction. Link the IRA in our recent Troubles with the IRA in the early part of the twentieth century and you’ll provoke howls of outrage. Point out, as Francie Brolly did in his H-Block song, that there is a difference between criminality and a struggle for independence, something that’s been going on in Ireland  for 800 years, and you’ll be labelled at best an eejit and at worst a supporter of violence.

It’s simple, really. Little Johnny comes in crying, and complains his friend punched him in the nose, which is now bleeding. To the question “What happened?” he’ll keep repeating that his mate punched him. What he’ll be more than anxious to avoid is broadening the narrative and mentioning that he, Johnny, kicked his mate and stole his toys before suffering the nose-punch.

As T S Eliot said, “Human beings cannot bear too much reality”.