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Tag: War

  • Victims and Perpetrators: A Twisted Dance

     

    Victims will always want their story told no matter how bloody. no
    matter how gory, no matter how outrageous. Perpetrators will always want to
    ignore the very same thing.

    Victims will always be outraged by crimes committed, whereas
    perpetrators or their relatives will always be outraged by the report
    of crimes. For one died at the hand of the crimes, whereas the other
    died at the hand of the report. One lost their bodies, and one lost their souls.

    Marc Gopin…

  • 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 …

  • Reflections on Disunion and Union


    holdinghands

    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 …

  • A Tale of HL

    jerusalem-panorama-500

    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 …

  • Reflections on Dancing in War and Leadership

    The Test of Our Progress is Not- RooseveltFranklin Theodore Roosevelt

     

    DANCING IN WAR

    There is always a dance of life and a dance of death. The only question at each moment of history is which dance is more appealing. 

    Warriors for life must learn to out dance warriors for death, and the best way is to never ever dance alone. 

    LEADERSHIP

    Being misled is a fundamental human need for some, being anything is better to them than Confusion 

    Leaders for life ultimately prevail over leaders for death because most want life, but followers never prevail over anything…

  • Event with New Story Leadership Participants

    Last weekend, Marc appeared on the event of New Story Leadership for the Middle East as a panelist to discuss with Israeli and Palestinian youths, at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

    During the 7-week youth leadership program in Washington, a young delegation with 5 Israelis and 5 Palestinians watched the recent news of increasing tension between two countries, which made the program challenging and notable.

    You can read the report of this event at Scripps Howard Foundation Wire, or watch the video.

     …

  • Targeting / Enemies

     

    Forgive

     TARGETING

    Aim too high and you will lose yourself, 
    Aim too low and you will lose yourself,
    Aim for your true self, 
    and greatness knocks on your door. Based on Pensees 398. 

    Shoot the enemy and you shoot yourself,
    Shoot yourself and you are gone,
    Shoot rage, shoot fear, shoot estrangement,
    And your target is at hand. 

    ENEMIES

    Hook up with an enemy.
    Forget military victory,
    Forget conferences,
    Forget degrees,
    Forget think tanks,
    Forget policy.
    Nothing works anymore.
    Hook up with an enemy,
    Then victory will be at hand,
    In the eyes of your new friend.
    Together you will conquer worlds,
    Undiscovered.…

  • Tonight I remember

     

    Tonight I remember lonely days on the empty streets of Jerusalem years ago at the height of the suicide bombing.  I remember exactly what I felt as I walked Emek Refaim, and buses passed me with travelers too poor or to brave to avoid the danger of travel.  As they passed, I thought to myself about their eyes, I gazed into their eyes, and I thought I saw ghosts, about to die.  I wondered if the blast would hit me as they drove past and our blood and souls would mix in eternity.  They did not die that night, and neither did I, I think.  Once a ghost always a ghost.  I am the walking dead of this conflict between Arab and Jew.  I carry them all with me in my soul, and I wait to join them one day.

    What more can I do but feel their lives …

  • U.S. Senator Graham says Iran’s help needed to avoid collapse in Iraq | Reuters

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/15/us-iraq-usa-security-idUSKBN0EQ0UH20140615

    Graham last week said American air strikes in Iraq will be needed to halt the advance of militants.

    His comments about Iran broach an even more sensitive topic – putting the United States in potential collaboration with a country it suspects of developing nuclear weapons and supporting its own militant groups in places like Lebanon.

    Iranian officials, closely allied with Maliki and watchful over the Shi’ite population centered in southern Iraq, have also been alarmed at the sudden seizure of territory by the ISIL.

     

    The logic of intending to bomb a country like Iran in one part of the year, and then contemplate an alliance in the next year to defend Baghdad really needs to be defined and exposed. On one level, it is perfectly reasonable. if a year ago, allies Israel and Saudi Arabia were convincing us that Iran is the primary mortal threat, then we decide to …

  • PEACEFUL POLITICS COMES FROM PEACEFUL PEOPLE: A HARD AND HOPEFUL LOOK AT OURSELVES AND OTHERS

    From the explosion of Osama Bin Laden into our consciousness on that terrible day in 2001, all the way to his death, feels like a frame of existence, a distinct period of our history and fate as an American community. There have been many deadly wars since then that America has participated in or supported. As an American Jew and a veteran peacebuilder in the Middle East, I also feel like this decade has been a whirlwind of violence, from Iraq to Lebanon to Gaza, and now to Arab countries in which I had worked, especially Syria where I put my heart and soul.

    Every war, every massive act of violence, always makes me reflect anew on the origins and nature of human violence, and on its opposites, empathy, compassion, and love. We humans have made so many efforts through the millennia to create one political arrangement after another in …

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