Eliott Behar > Eliott's Quotes

“collective violence is almost always motivated by the perpetrators and their base of supporters responding to what they see as injustice, and pursuing a form of justice for themselves. It is perpetuated, in much the same way, by the perception that what they are doing, while it might otherwise have been immoral, is justified. Such violence is not typically caused by an absence of, or lack of attention to, justice and morality. It is, instead, caused by the direct and overriding pursuit of a misdirected view of morality and justice, constructed as justification in the minds of the perpetrators.”
― Eliott Behar, Tell It to the World: International Justice and the Secret Campaign to Hide Mass Murder in Kosovo

“Outside of the courtroom, in the dialogues we engage in and the discussions we have, we should be asking ourselves continually whether the stories we tell divide or unite. If we are casting ourselves collectively as victims, to what end are we doing so? Is there a way in which this is seemingly entitling us to collectively diminish others or to sanction acts that we wouldn’t otherwise feel entitled to endorse?”
― Eliott Behar, Tell It to the World: International Justice and the Secret Campaign to Hide Mass Murder in Kosovo

“the stories we tell about injustice can also be used to enable and perpetuate large-scale violence in the first place.”
― Eliott Behar, Tell It to the World: International Justice and the Secret Campaign to Hide Mass Murder in Kosovo

“While we may have a tendency to cast the perpetrators of such crimes as monsters, we should never lose sight of the lesson that virtually every genocide, crime against humanity, or large-scale act of violence teaches when one looks closely enough: that it is surprisingly easy to succumb to the mindsets, justifications, and acts that lead to such violence and cruelty. The form that such justifications take have a way, it seems, of always feeling new.”
― Eliott Behar, Tell It to the World: International Justice and the Secret Campaign to Hide Mass Murder in Kosovo