Tag: Palestine

• August 4, 2014

  Sins of the Nonviolent

   

  

  Warriors carry the sins of violence, of killing the innocent, intentionally and by negligence. But the nonviolent carry sins too, because war is a collective crime and must be understood in its totality as an anti-civilization human phenomenon. The nonviolent play their role. Their sin is the sin of negativity, divestment, emotional distance, bifurcation, polarization, demonization. Divestment and hate are easy but more cowardly. It is the same everywhere. Arabs and muslims walk away from Syria if they are nonviolent, even fellow Syrians. They don’t support. Violent people are guilty of their own crimes but nonviolent are guilty of the sin of negativity, emotional cowardice and selfishness. …

• July 30, 2014

  Berlin in Gaza / Men at War / Mother of Life

   

  BERLIN IN GAZA
  At a certain point in every Israeli war fighting the Holocaust, there is a moment when the superior fire power merely rearranges the rubble of Berlin. Then depression sets in, reality sets in. You can’t bomb your way to safety, Hitler is still dead, there is still no peace, for this enemy can only be beaten with reconciliation not obliteration. Then they turn to us again, too proud to ask, we impoverished, bloodied, no resources, except our wounded open hearts.

  MEN AT WAR
  Men at war above all cannot abide their own impotence, and so they smash everything and everyone insight as a distraction.

  MOTHER OF LIFE
  Most important person in Jewish history? Not Abraham, not Moses. Beruriah. Hate the sin, not the sinner, hate the ideology not the ideologue, wish that crimes cease from this earth, not criminals. 
  The only path to life from Jewish …

• July 29, 2014

  Essential to Peacebuilding

   

  Essential to Peacebuilding is learning to accept blows, bad ones. How can we expect Israelis or Syrians or Iraqis not to become killers after suicide bombs on their streets or Palestinians not to become Hamasniks after losing everything if we cannot happily accept insults?
  Education does not matter on these challenges. It is education of the heart that allows you to accept blows for the greater good of peace.

  

  (Photo source: Belfast Telegraph)…

• July 29, 2014

  The Cycle of Intimate Relations

   

  The cycle of intimate relations between angry men with great power just continues to suck us all into its vortex , and it makes me profoundly sad and bewildered by its power. Think about the world we live in today, conditioned by Jibril, but more to the point, Bin Laden, Bush, Khameini, Assad, Nasrallah, Putin, Erdogan, Al Badghadi, Meshal, and, of course, my very own dearest and nearest, Netanyahu. We must face the darkness here of this moment in history of the Middle East, so that we know best how to shift the vortex in a new direction beyond these angry violent men.

  

  (Photo source: US News)…

• July 28, 2014

  “Gaza becomes Syria: Middle East geopolitics 2.0”- +972 Magazine

   

  Aziz and I published an article in +972 Magazine.  You can read the full article by clicking here, but here is the extract below.

  There are two main camps involved in negotiating a ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel. However, the players are not within the camp that most would have expected. What started as Israel vs. Hamas is quickly becoming a geopolitical issue involving many new actors. While this might seem good for some, it should be seen as terrible news for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

  Today this same is happening in Gaza. ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, is already reported to have a presence in Gaza and is likely to try to take power from Hamas. While all the other regional powers are arguing about which “proposal” for a ceasefire should be accepted, more than 1,040 Palestinians have been killed and 6,000 injured,

  …

• July 24, 2014

  Note from the War Front to Fellow Jews

  The relationships between loving Jews and Arabs, even in Gaza right this moment, is plainly evident. I get reports every day. But it is hard to imagine for those who carry suspicion and fear and loathing of one side. But let’s talk about the strategic and moral and rational necessity of empathy. Hamas is their only defense right now. Hamas is not seen as the oppressor thanks to the twelve year siege and the constant wars. They WOULD be seen as such if anyone had a chance to live a normal life in Gaza. Would you have seen the Stern Gang as an oppressor in 1945, with both the British and the Nazis bearing down on you and the Mufti siding with the Nazis, even if you hated their philosophy of violence against civilians? You don’t have to approve of Hamas, you can consider them criminals, they are.  But you …

• July 22, 2014

  Reflections in My Middle Eastern Mirror

   

  Compassion fatigue.
  Strange expression.
  What is the fatigue?
  Too much suffering, 
  Too many people crying,
  Too many dead bodies, 
  Too many people 
  Demanding that I love them,
  But only them,
  That I see only their tears,
  As they fall upon the bloodied bodies
  That once laughed
  and danced
  and cheered.
  Ask me for compassion
  And I will refuse.
  Ask me who are you?
  Ask a peacemaker,
  Who
  the
  fuck
  are
  you?
  Look at that goddam mirror,
  Do you know any more?
  Or does everything bleed red,
  In the cracked mirror,
  Which you broke,
  In a fit of rage?
  …

• July 16, 2014

  What “We” Must Do Right Now For Palestine/Israel, Not Governments

  There are important next steps being debated for what states can and should do to stop the current war, and set the stage for ending the current cycle of violence. That is not my subject. I thought recently that leaders are followers and followers are leaders, and neither knows it. The fact is that people and their individual initiatives have much more impact on the course of history than is acknowledged by government officials, by cynics, and by those too apathetic, too callous, or too fearful to act. If you are in that category, do not read forward. Just go back to Al Jazeera, Fox and CNN and choose a side. Or go back to Jon Stewart and have a good laugh.

  Here is what is necessary, efforts that have worked before in history in changing the available information available to all parties so that more rational and more morally …

• July 16, 2014

  Reflections on Disunion and Union

  
  

  It is hard to over estimate who is bleeding more in all the people that you meet. The walking wounded are everywhere. Like zombies. That puts conflict management and mitigation in a whole different light. 
  
  There is no battle in the war on prejudice. The battlefront is us. Expect everyone, including yourself, to be prejudiced and then be pleasantly surprised.
  
  We are all hopelessly divided especially, in the strange brain patterns that we call ideologies. But it is equally true that love conquers all, even the most bizarre differences among us. We have all witnessed that this is possible.

  Two people claim the same house. They build a vision of a world without the other. Then they meet. Then they look into each other’s eyes and fall in love, just then. Then they proceed to pray for peace together. The insane beauty of the human capacity for sympathy, compassion, and …

• July 15, 2014

  A Tale of HL

  

  Once upon a time the known world of E was divided up between nasty C’s and nastier F’s who learned from each other how to destroy the poor M’s. The poor M’s hid in every shadow they could find. Then one day, many decades later, the M’s got tired of the shadows, and even more tired of the F’s and C’s, and so they made a big home for themselves to which the F’s and the C’s were not terribly welcome. The C’s disappeared into thin air. Some became F’s, and many just disappeared. But the F’s retreated to the shadows, and then spread their wings like bats and flew in the night across the world to another world called the HL. And there they nested for decades, until they one day grew and grew, and then grew so large that they divided the HL among themselves between IF’s …