Listening in Extremely Divisive Situations Such as War
Professor Katherine van Wormer, Ph.D.
Director, Global Listening Centre.
Professor Emerita of Social Work, University of
Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa, US.
Co-Author of The Maid Narratives.
My aim in this article is, after some personal background, to discuss the relevance of listening skills to the situation of the Gaza-Israeli war.
Sometimes an event comes along of such magnitude that makes other situations seem trivial in contrast. As a sociologist with a background in social work, I have not only an interest in studying conflict as a universal trait, but also I am interested in studying relationships and what political disagreements do to these personal relationships. The brief articles I’ve written for the Global Listening Centre (GLC) all have to do with conflict of one sort or another— listening to the survivors of racism based on my coauthored The Maid Narratives, a collection of narratives from older African American women who had worked as maids in the Jim Crow South. My aim was to show how much we can learn from such storytellers who survived an atmosphere of injustice and daily discrimination. Other articles I wrote for the GLC were one on listening to the earth: our habitat damaged by pollution and pesticides. Next, I turned to another form of conflict—the abortion issue. My aim was to show how people on opposite sides of this issue could be brought together even if only one party to the discussion practices active listening. This issue was easy for me to address as I can empathize with both sides. This Israeli-Palestinian war offers a much greater challenge to me personally, because as a pacifist, I oppose all war. This means I must struggle to listen with empathy to supporters of any war or supporters of military spending, NATO, and so on.
From my perspective, then, the strong emotions involved in the abortion debate pale alongside the issue of war and the Israeli-Gaza conflict, a conflict that does not seem to have a middle ground. I can’t even begin to fathom how strong emotions are on both sides of this war. Tens of thousands of lives are at stake today from the bombing and many more from famine. There is a history here of hatred that goes back centuries, a history in which each side has been both victim and violator of the other. The depth of the conflict is compounded by religious beliefs of entitlement to the land and resources.
Religious hatred in the world is not new. In the late 1960s, at the beginning of the period later known as The Troubles, I was a teacher in Northern Ireland. As is the case with Israel, religion and politics were intertwined. My background was on one side, as a Protestant, and my sympathies were on the other side, as a protester with the Catholics. My Protestant friends were loyal to the Queen, and my Catholic friends identified with the South of Ireland. There were sectarian parades, rallies in the streets, and terrorism. I had friends on both sides, and there were no problems, but in my school, which was Protestant, I found myself saying all the wrong things, inflaming the staff, and sealing my fate to eventually lose the job. Using hindsight, I would handle the situation very differently today.
The situation in Northern Ireland pales in contrast to what is going on with the Israeli-Hamas conflict. In Northern Ireland, there was always the possibility of a solution and a road to peace. In the IsraeliGaza war, there are no prospects for lasting peace, and the conflict has worldwide ramifications. At first, after October 7th, 2023, the world reacted to the horror of this terrorism, and Islamophobia was on the rise (De Rose, 2024), but as the media shifted focus to the revenge destruction and killings in Gaza, a wave of antisemitic rhetoric and hate crimes were reported in the US, France, and the UK (Gupta, 2023). This outbreak of such rhetoric was most noticeable on US college campuses where demonstrations against Israel were held. What is significant is the extent to which a war and political conflict in a far-away country can bring the issues home.
The divisiveness in the US as in Europe over this issue is very strong. A survey from the Pew Research Center (2024a) reveals that for Jews and Muslims living in the US, the level of distress over this Middle Eastern conflict is especially high. The survey of Muslims and Jews found that around one in four in each group say that they have stopped talking to someone or blocked someone online because of something that person said about the war. And the majority in these two groups say they have felt an increase in discrimination since the Israel-Hamas war broke out.
And other people too, apart from Muslims and Jews in the US have become very emotionally involved into what is happening in Gaza. And everywhere— in the bar or pub, in coffee shops, on the college campus, and at the dinner table among family and friends—angry arguments break out.
What if we, in discussing this conflict, listen to each other? Would we then not feel the pain the other is feeling at the loss of life, the hostages dying in captivity, the children wounded or killed in the bombings, and the terrorism of Hamas? After a thorough investigation, the United Nations Commission states that both Hamas and Israel are guilty of war crimes. Right now, many members of our communities are in emotional pain because of the terrible violence that has harmed—and continues to harm—families and communities in Israel and/or Palestine.
Social work teaches listening skills drawing on the teachings of psychologist Carl Rogers (1980) who famously defined the three key components of listening as empathy, unconditional positive regard, and genuineness. The foremost of these is empathy. Empathy is about grasping the other person’s feelings of anger and fear and responding to them with your body language. It’s also about intellectually putting yourself in the place of the other and feeling even for a moment their pain. And, hopefully, the other person will respond accordingly.
Listening in times of war and especially in situations in which opinions are polarized requires a unique attention to what is said, the words that are used, and tone of voice. Use of “I” statements helps promote understanding. Coming out with bold political opinions can have the opposite effect. The goal is not to win the argument but to find common ground.
The opposite of empathy is dehumanization. To prepare soldiers for combat they are trained to see their enemies as less than human. Part of the process is to call them by derogatory names. The other side is doing the same thing. The result is many end up dead and hatred of the other spreads across the globe. The first casualty of war is said to be the truth. The second could be empathy.
A major pitfall in political conflict is in the choice of words. The connotations on one side of the conflict may be entirely different to the other side. Empathy comes into play here too in understanding how certain terms can trigger a psychological response that makes little sense without knowing the context. And the context may relate to a people’s cultural history and their survival under horrific circumstances. A term’s meaning may have historical implications and relate to intergenerational trauma. Both Palestinians and Jews are descended from people who endured the horrors of mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing. And historical trauma is a factor that drives extremist thoughts and politics on both sides of the Israeli-Gaza war. Examples of terms and slogans that are emotionally laden and thoughtlessly uttered by activists are: “Free Palestine”, “From the river to the sea”, genocide, and Zionism. Equating Palestinians with terrorism also should be avoided as well. Each of these terms is capable of evoking demons from the collective past in the minds of later generations as well as from the survivors themselves.
To know which terms it is safe to use, the best policy is to listen to the terms the other person seems comfortable using. If the goal is to discuss the issues and in doing so, to offer support, then active listening is the best approach. And if the goal is to convince the other person or others in an audience, empathic listening still goes a long way. One of Rogers’ teachings is how to use paraphrasing by focusing on the desired elements in a person’s statement and ignoring remarks that are provocative. In this way two people on opposing sides of a controversy can feel they have reached some sort of agreement.
In summary, there is no greater challenge to advocates of empathic listening than in wartime when the stakes of winning or losing are so high, and the people are so divided. The Global Listening Centre is playing an important role, in its conferences and through its publications available on its website, to peacemaking. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised when I searched online to check to see if there was any research linking listening skills to peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and what popped up but an article on narrative listening between Palestinians and Jews from Israel, an article published by the Global Listening Centre by Rappeport and Wolvin. These authors describe a case study of New Story Leadership, an organization that brings together delegates from Israel and Palestine to Washington DC each summer to share personal narratives with each other and with US members of Congress. The stories invite empathy, but “only if we listen.”
References: DeRose, J., (2024, April 2). Anti-Muslim bias reports skyrocket after October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. National Public Radio (NPR). https://www.npr.org/2024/04/02/1242021356/ anti-muslim-bias-skyrockets-after-oct-7th-hamas-attackon-israel. Gupta, G. (October 21, 2023). Antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise amid the war. New York Times. https:// www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/21/world/israel-hamaswar-gaza-news#antisemitism-and-islamophobia-are-onthe-rise-amid-the-war. Rappeport, A., & Wolvin, A. (2023) Narrative listening and the quest for peace. The Global Listener Issue 7. The Global Listening Centre. Rogers, C. Rogers, C.R. (1980). A way of being. Boston: Houghton Miflin Company.
