After a writer expressed sympathy for Israelis in an essay, all hell broke loose at a literary journal
What are the limits of empathy in war?
That's the question that Joanna Chen, a liberal writer and translator who is Jewish and lives in Israel, probed in an essay about her struggles since Oct. 7 to connect with Palestinians.
"It is not easy to tread the line of empathy, to feel passion for both sides," she wrote in the literary journal Guernica, explaining that she briefly stopped her volunteer work driving Palestinian children to Israeli hospitals for lifesaving medical care.
"How could I continue after Hamas had massacred and kidnapped so many civilians," she asked, noting that the dead included a fellow volunteer, a longtime peace activist named Vivian Silver. "And I admit, I was afraid for my own life."
The essay, titled "From the Edges of a Broken World," provoked an uproar in the activist literary world. Over the weekend, more than a dozen of
