Mateus Levi

“A prominent israeli writer, Sami Michael, once told of a long car journey with a driver. At some point, the driver explained to Michael how important, indeed how urgent, it is for us Jews “to kill all the Arabs.” Sami Michael listened politely, and instead of reacting with horror, denunciation, or disgust, he asked the driver an innocent question: “And who, in your opinion, should kill all the Arabs?”

“Us! The Jews! We have to! It’s either us or them! Can’t you see what they’re doing to us?”

“But who, exactly, should actually kill all the Arabs? The army? The police? Firemen, perhaps? Or doctors in white coats, with syringes?”

The driver scratched his head, pondered the question, and finally said, “We’ll have to divvy it up among us. Every Jewish man will have to kill a few Arabs.”

Michael did not let up: “All right. Let’s say you, as a Haifa man, are in charge of one apartment building in Haifa. You go from door to door, ring the bells, and ask the residents politely, ‘Excuse me, would you happen to be Arabs?’ If the answer is yes, you shoot and kill them. When you’re done killing all the Arabs in the building, you go downstairs and head home, but before you get very far you hear a baby crying on the top floor. What do you do? Turn around? Go back? Go upstairs and shoot the baby? Yes or no?”

A long silence. The driver considers. Finally he says, “Sir, you are a very cruel man!”

This story exposes the confusion sometimes found in the fanatic’s mind: a mixture of intransigence with sentimentality and a lack of imagination.”
― Amos Oz, שלום לקנאים

“The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“Much self-condemnation, thus, is a cloak for arrogance. Those who think they overcome pride by condemning themselves could well ponder Spinoza's remark, 'One who despises himself is the nearest to a proud man'. In ancient Athens, when a politician was trying to get the votes of the working class by appearing very humble in a tattered coat with big holes in it, Socrates unmasked his hypocrisy by exclaiming, 'Your vanity shows forth from every whole in your coat'.”
― Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself

“In addition to curiosity and imagination, another effective antidote to fanaticism might be humor, and especially the ability to make fun of ourselves. I, for one, have never met a fanatic with a sense of humor. Nor have I ever known anyone capable of making a joke at his own expense become a fanatic. Humor engenders a curvature that allows one to see, at least momentarily, old things in a new light. Or to see yourself, at least for a moment, as others see you. This curvature invites us to let hot air out of any excessive importance, including self-importance. Moreover, humor usually entails a measure of relativity, of abasing the sublime.”
― Amos Oz, שלום לקנאים