The force of contrition this Oct. 7

A year of conflict in the Middle East – and beyond – has led many to reflect on their roles in causing friction and on ways to end it.

The Monitor's View

A day before the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the commander in chief of the Israel Defense Forces sent a letter to his troops. In it, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi asked soldiers to not only remember the day but also engage in “deep introspection” about “our failures.”

Two weeks earlier, the president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, made a gesture of self-concession. “We are willing to put all of our weapons aside, so long as Israel is willing to do the same,” he told reporters. His apparent compromise toward peace may have been a reaction to a common slogan among Iranians during recent anti-government protests: “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life is for Iran.”

In Lebanon, the violence caused by the Shiite group Hezbollah and Israel has led many people to realize that their internal divisions among the country’s many religious groups is a cause of the war. “We haven’t learned to live with each other,” Bassam Sawma, a Christian merchant, told The New York Times.

Outside the Middle East, where the yearlong war in Gaza has triggered divisive campus protests, universities have had to relearn their purpose as safe domains for self-reflection. In September, for example, the University of Pennsylvania created an Office of Religious and Ethnic Inclusion, the first of its kind nationally.

At the United Nations, several diplomats in September pleaded for personal contrition as a way to end the latest war in the Middle East. “Critical self-reflection of what we or generations before us in our countries have done wrong is actually to our benefit,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 26.

A vision of international order based on equality, she said, “demands, especially in times of crisis, the strength to recognise the pain of others, even if our own pain seems unbearable.” In doing so, “We might sometimes hear ... about our own shortcomings.”

“This is how one of the [Israeli] hostage’s families put it. Humanity is universal,” she said. “If in the darkest hour of her life, the mother of a murdered hostage finds the strength to see both sides, then we, the leaders of the countries around the world ... should be capable of doing the same.”

Such moments of self-reflection were particularly evident among Jews. This Oct. 7 was the midpoint of the 10 days spanning Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. The High Holidays are a period of self-reflection and atonement. In a new book, “For Such a Time as This: On Being Jewish Today,” Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue in the New York borough of Manhattan sees the Oct. 7 massacre and the response to it as an “inflection point” for Jews.

“For the first time in our lives,” he wrote, “we have begun to ask ourselves: what kind of Jews do we want to be? Where do we turn for guidance in such a time as this?” For many Muslims, a similar spiritual introspection occurred during this year’s monthlong Muslim observance of Ramadan – in March and April, or the half-year mark of the war in Gaza.

Perhaps the greatest example of a moment of reflection during this anniversary comes from a former hostage, Liat Atzili. She was captured by Hamas at her kibbutz Oct. 7 and spent 54 days in Gaza. Her husband was killed. Without a spirit of rebirth (tekumah in Hebrew), “We will only sink further into the cycle of mutual anger and victimhood that has plagued our relationship with the Palestinians for too long,” she wrote in The New York Times.

And, as she told The Associated Press for the anniversary, “Nobody’s going anywhere. We don’t have to love each other, but we have to get along, and we have to find a way that everybody can live here in safety.”