It is one thing for outsiders like myself to call for an end to the cycle of vengeance that, if it proceeds unrestrained, could very easily soak the whole world in blood. It is quite another thing for someone immediately and directly impacted by violence to repudiate revenge.
Just after I posted this, someone sent me the following video by a 19-year-old who survived the attack on her kibbutz. Very powerful. Leaders of the world, listen to her!
Those voices are neither unusual nor few. Many people feel this way (including me, a Palestinian American living in Europe, and my Israeli neighbor and close friend who was born in the same village-- under a different name-- as my father, 50 years apart).
(Perhaps they seem exceptional in the company of war-mongering politicians who purport to heal the divide but use the language of destruction and genocide? Of environmentalists who fail to address the ecocide that is an inextricable part of the story of the last 75 years?)
Yes, I have seen that video, and she is not saying that just stopping the bombs is enough. She is asking for a political solution. I have seen no practical solution offered by anyone, including you. Liberals think NVC, forgiveness, trauma therapy, singalongs around the fire and more money to Gaza is the solution. Conservatives think wiping out Hamas is the answer. Neither are right.
I thought I wrote out a whole 5-point solution in my previous essay. Granted, that is not a comprehensive long-range political solution. A couple months ago in my first essay on this topic iI did speak a little about a different sort of one-state solution. But for any solution to work, letting go of revenge is a prerequisite. Without that, there is no good solution. That is why I am writing about that. It is the first step. Solutions follow.
Two major issues stand out in any conversation about a political solution. Both are in opposition.
1. A “political solution” is a Western construct being demanded on a non-Western aggressor. It is indistinct from colonialism - our ways, our laws - yet is pushed by the anti-colonial “multiculturalists.”
2. Every solution that has been tried, whether by Israel pulling out in 2005, to thousands of Palestinians making themselves so unwelcome in co-religionist Jordan (who wound up massacring thousands of them), to refugee status in Egypt or KSA or Lebanon, has had the same result: Pal violence.
Pals have been given land, self-government, tens of billions in humanitarian aid. They turn water pipes into rockets, humanitarian aid into motorized hang gliders, and education into hate.
No one wants them as they are and they refuse to change. No “political solution” can or will alter their history.
1. A political solution is not just a western construct, depending on what you mean by "political". To me, in this case, it means at a national/state and international level, as opposed to just the personal (which Charles and Patsy and most mystics seem to be stuck on, and of course it is also important), family, village/tribe, or city levels. It is absolutely necessary, because barring everyone being a good-hearted liberal mystic there will arise inter-family, inter-village, inter-tribal, and international conflict. Political is not colonial in that sense. Colonial is one example of a political solution where one nation dictates the terms to others. It is not the only way higher level international agreements can be made. So the liberal multiculturalists are not wrong to ask for a political solution, even vis a vis the Palestinians. Whether they will abide by anything that doesn't come down from an alpha male islamic leader is another question.
2. Yes, that's why we need to try solutions that HAVEN'T been tried.
I don't know about equating a group being unwelcome with some moral failing of the group. By that reckoning Jews are all losers.... As far as land, I believe Palestinians lost more land than they gained, and they also have attachments to particular land, so not all land is fungible to them (same for Israelis).
As far as money, are you sure it was tens of billions of dollars? Do you have a reference for that? I agree that they should have done something to improve the conditions in Gaza with that kind of money instead of making weapons and promoting hate (and enriching the leaders?). But I'm guessing it was less, or less that didn't end up in the banks of the leaders.
But also they are blockaded by Israel. I understand Israel's motives, but it's still not a good situation.
Seriously? A political solution is not a Western solution, but a State solution? Dud you attend ANY history classes in school? The nation-state is a Western construct formalized at Westphalia in 1648. Educate before typing.
State solution is only one example of a political solution. To our cells, the organs are a political solution. To our organs our bodies are a political solution. To individual humans, the family is a political solution. To the Iroquois tribes, the federation of tribes was a political solution. Solution to what? To the invariable conflict that arises between the parts, whether they be cells, organs, individual humans, tribes of humans, villages of humans, etc. It's Hobbes' Leviathan, but it could exist at different levels for the same functional purpose.
The problem with the western state solution as of late is that it often skips all the intermediate levels that are necessary to both avoid a free riding catastrophe (when you have too many parts at that level, in the case of a western state, that would be individual humans where villages, tribes and families have been destroyed/outcompeted) and to meet our evolved psycholocial needs.
Please don't assume anything about my education. I am a PhD scientist, but I am widely educated in the humanities. Don't nit-pick about what a state is. The important thing is you need a higher level than just a family or the Israeli state or Hamas to abjudicate the conflict between Hamas and Israel
Not all states are Western states. Are you saying that China isn't -- or doesn't have -- a state?
As for politics, that's a word pointing at what folks do to engage in group decision-making. The group can be a state or a bunch of friends... or any group at all, including the Boy Scouts or a hiking club. So not all politics is state politics. And all people make group decisions. So don't take yourself overly seriously here. It's not like you're the only educated fellow in the room.
Trying to neutralize or even wiping out Hamas should not be guided by revenge. But rather simply the sober calculation that doing nothing about them will lead to more and even worse massacres.
Yes they had a hand in this which was part and parcel of Israel's policy of appeasement of terrorist groups over the years. It's a leftist notion that if we make concessions to terrorists somehow they'll come around.
How would they be rewarded, and who is trying to reward them? The Israeli right made a terrible mistake in encouraging and funding Hamas, until they realized it was a mistake. It was what they thought (at the time) was the lesser of 2 evils, or perhaps it was a divide and conquer (though I don't see much evidence that these divisions between PLO and Hamas weakened both). We don't know if PLO would have been better or worse, in hindsight.
100 billion to bibi and his idf mossad is a reward. So they should be enriched for creating terrorists so they can conquer judah aka palestine? Crazy logick.
I forgot to mention (and nobody said anything!) the other consideration in this calculus:
5. Many more PEOPLE will be killed with this military action, especially with a ground invasion. I don't really care if they are women, children or grannies, civilians or combatants (like women and children's lives are more valuable than men? Or a young boy's life becomes less valuable as soon as he dons a uniform? ), Palestinians or Israelis.
How about those of us who can’t quite be categorized because we don’t subscribe to any groups directed by ideology, I.e., more allegiance to ideas than to individual human beings. Am being genuine here. I consider the Israel/Palestine/Hamas situation extremely complex, automatically countering either of the extremes you mention above in terms of a category for me—and I know there are many others like myself who are trying to (as hackneyed as it sounds) “think outside the box”-that is, as Charles has convincingly and eloquently stated, we see so many complex layers that we can only acknowledge such, consider such, rather than polarizing in an “either/or,” straight-edged posture, ready to fight. This would not mean not acting but rather (and again, referencing Charles), acting only after considering, examining the complexity—and then wouldn’t it be nice if most of us wanted the violence to end! PEACE: Any means necessary (as long as no harm is involved!) Rumi has a poem about that space “beyond right and wrong”—and suggests, let’s go there, I will meet you…
It also occurred to me that if Islamic culture was able to change from the life-affirming culture, respectful of science, medicine, architecture, and mysticism (e,g, Rumi, Kabir and Hafiz) to the blood-thristy, authoritarian, death and war-loving superstitious and xenophobic culture that it is mostly today (exception Sufis and Bahai, the latter being not totally islamic), it can change back to a more peace loving culture too.
Alive 67 years, aware since 1969...what does that say about Israeli culture IN Palestine some 75 years? As a Zionist Settler Colonial state they continue to be anything but life affirming behavior towards the original inhabitants. Son is tribal enrolled Koyukon in Alaska so Indigenous issues and rights tend to be a daily concern. We relate to Palestinian viewpoint. Land Back is frequently mentioned. Goes for Lahaina too. Humans can be just greedy and materialistic, racist and hoard dual citizenship options and rights all for themselves...
There are some similarities, but also some differences between what happened with European settlers on native american land, vs what happened with European and Yemenite Jews settling in Palestine. I'll focus on the differences here: unlike the European settlers' intentions towards the natives, the Jews did not displace any Palestinians until after they were attacked and murdered by Palestinians, and then it was about survival and trauma (after Holocaust). The Jews who came from Europe had a leftist socialist identity before a Jewish identity and as socialists wanted to share the earth with all who were willing (the opposite of greedy and materialistic). They bought land from arab landlords. Some arab peasants were displaced by those landlords, not by Jews. After UN agreed to partition (which was a blatant colonial act), Jews would have let arabs stay on their land and in their homes and would have left them mostly alone, but the arabs (understandably) did not want to live under a Jewish state, so they attacked the Jews and the Jews attacked back and displaced some of them, some ran away hoping to come back after the promised slaughter of Jews by arab authorities.
So whereas AIM was not killing peaceful european settler descendants, Hamas was killing and raping the peaceful (and leftist) descendants of mostly peaceful and leftist Jews who had displaced their ancestors. Hamas is more like Custer and Jackson in their brutality but 10 times worse (still we could forgive them, but it won't stop them). They probably already killed the 74 year old woman Israeli peace activist that they kidnapped.
I forgot to mention that there are still many Palestinians living within Israel, that Gaza has not been occupied since I think 2006(?) but they ARE being economically blockaded (due to Israeli fears of weapons, but maybe also other reasons). Jews in Arab lands had to flee for their lives after UN partition was announced. There are very few left.
Yes, ideally we can transcend/integrate/synthesize these categories so we can make progress, but liberals haven't done so yet, because they are still proposing tried and failed solutions (conservatives are even less likely to transcend their programming than liberals, that is part of the conservative phenotype). They are not moral categories, btw, so Rumi doesn't apply here, except in his urge to be outside ideological boxes. Also, these are not ideological boxes either, they are deep, evolved traits, of which ideologies are only the tip of the iceberg. So one can be a communist, but a phenotypic conservative, because one scores high on Social Dominance Orientation, low on openness, high on amygdala action, high on disgust, low on care, and other measures (either with surveys or brain scans). And of course one can score liberal on some measures and conservative on others, and it is not binary, but there is a scale (most communists would probably score high on justice for example, which is a liberal trait).
The other reason this liberal/conservative categorization is useful (besides that it goes deep in personality) is that this conflict is happening equally between liberals and conservatives as between conservatives (of which terrorists are extreme cases) on the Israeli or Palestinian side.
The way you write of cons & libs doesn't feel like actual people. Just labels applied in a theoretical way. This is the way of intellectual discussion. And the way in which nothing gets done. "liberal mystic" oh boy another label and on it goes...
It's not just labeling for the sake of intellectual masturbation. Categories are useful for understanding, and these categories come from scientific research testing hypotheses or (in the case of my "liberal mystic" category) still untested hypotheses, not only from our tribal ingroup-outgroup instincts to feel safe in the ingroup and hate the outgroup (something that the liberal phenotype is doing much less of).
Of course these categories are never going to be a perfect model of a real person. No model can be perfect.
Short of genocide of the whole Palestinian population, no, it's not possible. It's the hydra problem: you kill one terrorist and several of their family become terrorists. Israel has gotten more right wing since its inception, but they do not want to become like the Nazis.
1. I would make economic aid contingent on teaching tolerance and different perspectives in schools, and
2. try to undermine fundamentalist Islam in multiple ways (this is not a contradiction. We should not be tolerant of ideologies or religions which teach violence, intolerance towards those that are not actively harming them, promote slaughter and rape of civilians, and create a surplus of sexually frustrated men).
3. But I think ultimately liberals (and those that transcend these categories) on both sides have to join forces to create economic, social and even religious alternatives (like Sufism and Bahai). My 3 state alternative might be too far out of the box. Apparently some of the Kibbutzes that were slaughtered in this latest attack had Palestinians come for work, I wonder if it was just menial work and why it wasn't a two way relationship where the Israelis also went over to Gaza for work (maybe they were afraid to be killed, or maybe it was a serf-master economic relationship). So,
4. Economically equal relationships have to be built, not serf-master ones. Companies that are run by and hire both Palestinians and Israelis should be encouraged.
5. There are also things that can be done with algorithms online to get islamic fundies exposed to other ways of looking at the word, instead of reinforcing their bubbles.
6. We should have a place online for out of the box ideas coming from anyone who feels inspired, with room for discussion and brainstorming and steelmanning.
7. Hopefully Netanyahu will be removed by the Israelis so that someone who is genuinely interested in peace can lead Israel. If not, pressure to remove him has to come from external sources like the US and UN.
8. Hopefully the leadership of Hamas can be replaced by the Palestinians with people who are interested in peace.
9. Israel needs to lift the blockade on Gaza, and maybe here Charles' witnesses could be handy to make sure that no bombs or other weapons come in, besides what is necessary for the police.
So your “solution” to the problems of a completely different culture is to force down their throats Western mores? I bet you vote D, consider yourself a “multiculturalist,” and are opposed to colonialism, right?
IQ about, oh... 90, maybe? I hope you don’t have kids.
Thank you for saying this, Charles. My observation has been that a lot of people are not themselves, as if under a spell, being messengers of various ghosts as opposed to their actual selves. That is the main problem. The moment people choose to tell the ghosts to leave, so that they, the people, can act on their own agency, with spiritual clarity, better solutions are likely to start showing up. I don't think we can do it based on intellect alone, our intellects exist to remind us not to go crazy and to support the general logic, but I think the first thing we need to do, all of us, is to make sure that our thoughts are our own. I mourn for both the abused and the abusers. I mourn more for the abused but the abusers are also a total mess.
This is a profoundly important perspective, and I believe is true both psychologically and on a spiritual level. Ghosts here include both malevolent entities and the strongly developed thoughtforms born from generations of tribal warfare. For peace to have a chance, these must be resisted in each of our hearts and minds. I also believe that each of these courageous people who choose compassion rather than hate make a difference to the whole, so no one’s efforts are too small to matter.
This is exactly the ancient, animist perspective that we talked about in a call with Josh Schrei of The Emerald podcast last night. Thank you, Tessa. Guardian spirits are also present, and these are the ones for us to call in and feed.
That man also controls nearly every bit of information you receive about both this war and the history of this conflict which stretches back centuries.
That man is standing with Marina Abramović in front of a painting titled 'Satan Summoning His Legions'.
The father of lies is firmly in control of this world. Act accordingly.
If Charles were to address this plea solely to his Jewish readers, then fine.
I am of course deeply moved by this bereft Israeli mother’s plea, AND it also makes perfect sense for Jewish mothers who have lost children in the conflict to make such a plea, for it is truly the case that Israeli techno-military might will never achieve security for the Jewish people, despite Zionist brainwashing to the contrary. More and more Jewish mothers are indeed waking up to this reality.
However, to morally counsel a similarly bereft Palestinian mother to implore Palestinian resistance fighters to put down their weapons and cease fighting for freedom would be to attempt to coerce her acceptance of defeat and dispossession. To expect the colonized, the imprisoned, the enslaved to renounce violence, to lay down their arms and to beg for peace strikes me as reprehensible. Is it just “naive” to suggest that Palestinians do so, or is it a kind of surreptitious ethico-spiritual sabotage?
Our minds are all infected by a sort of “mind-virus”—call it the Story of Separation if you like—that has hijacked our perceptions (and therefore emotions), rendering us pawns in a scheme that ultimately serves none of us. However, we are not all equal in the roles into which we are being cast (neither in terms of benefits nor responsibilities): there is oppressor and oppressed, colonizer and colonized. Why does Charles refuse to acknowledge this gross structural asymmetry?
As I said in a previous comment, I agree with the basic insight, which is widespread among the freedom-minded these days, that victim consciousness is the only human malady, and there is probably no group more than the Jewish people who have so much to overcome in this regard, for their claim to victimhood—even when they have become the architects of concentration camps and the perpetrators of ethnic-cleansing and genocide—is practically unassailable.
We all need to examine our own identification with victim consciousness since it is through our trauma that our perceptions and emotions are hijacked and we are thereby controlled, but I would say that you have to enjoy some degree of relative safety in order to really undertake this work, and the imprisoned of the world’s largest concentration camp (i.e., the people of Gaza) do not have that luxury.
I seem to be agreeing with Charles' main point in the essay, which is to point out that revenge killing only leads to yet more -- and worsening -- revenge killing, and also with your main point here Gabrielle -- which is that the Palestinians are victims of settler colonialism and oppression perpetrated by Israel. You didn't use the word "apartheid," now a term in international law, but I will. Anyway ... "gross structural asymmetry," as you said.
I don't believe Charles' view about the futility of cycles of revenge, and the need to end that cycle, is in conflict with your views, Gabrielle. But I do believe Charles knows as much as we do (or I do, anyway) that the Palestinians cannot gain anything through violent means. Indeed, the whole world cannot gain anything through violent means. Violence has never been a solution to anything.
i’m in the same boat, of agreeing with charles about cycles of vengeance and also viewing israel as a settler colonial project/apartheid state.
i’m not sure i agree with your point about violence never being a solution to anything though. what are those of us under oppression and their allies to do? you said palestinians cannot gain anything from violent means, however through nonviolent means it seems like all that’s going to happen is their extermination and/or continued ethnic cleansing. apartheid in south africa only ended after increasing violence, chattel slavery in the US and the Holocaust needed wars to end those travesties.
i’m not trying to advocate for violence, i just don’t see a nonviolent path to freedom for people who are under the thumb of apartheid, colonialism, and genocide.
my heart knows that world is possible and it also knows we’re not there yet. 💜
"i’m not sure i agree with your point about violence never being a solution to anything though."
Well, that was a generalizing statement, and I do stand by it as such, but when we look at the particular case here -- the Israel / Palestine conflict -- it's pretty obvious that the military capacity of Israel is a thousand times greater than that of Palestine. So what's the point of trying to fight them? Winning is not possible, obviously. Fighting them simply gives them an excuse to bomb the hell out of what they regard as their enemy.
I think the point of fighting back is to bring attention to the issue at hand. This isn’t a justification or capitulation of what happened on the seventh, it’s an under of the state of things previously as well as the attention that we’re bringing to it now.
If not for fighting back, Israel continues a slow ethnic cleansing that will leave the Holy Land - as Charles calls it - without Palestinians. The only way to stop that in my mind is for the international community, especially the USA and UK, to call for a ceasefire and do something like what Charles suggested in the first article about vengeance. We’re paying attention because of atrocities, which were part of a cycle of violence and vengeance for decades now. Hopefully this attention leads to peace.
You're asking for peace between people seduced into hatred and moral superiority by organized religions, by feverish nationalism and patriotism. The truth is nationalism is a dead end and patriotism is a trick. Waving a flag while cursing those who are waving a different one is the worst kind of mass hypnosis. Unless people wake up to the fact that they've been had, they've been played, that all of life in fact is sacred including the lives of our "enemies," asking for peace on a global scale feels like a steep climb. Instead, let's find a way out of patriarchy and capitalism which power so much of our ignoble, ultimately self-defeating behavior
a harsh penalty needs to be applied to the warmongers, americans, and others interested in orion empire building and conquest, which also involves using mossad=hamas terrorism.
A grand event and series of events that will burn the memory into their very soul. So that even when they reincarnate once more, they will remember what they have done and why.
I am reminded of the words of a song I learned long ago. "Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me." If only humanity could heed this call we might have a chance for the human species to survive.
does this species deserve to survive? what mossad=hamas have done and what humans=qabal have done, where is their repentance and atonement? I see only pride and unrighteous outrage. They will get the reward they so richly deserve and more than they can imagine.
Good question. Whether this species deserves to survive for now is an open question. I would suggest, that to some extent, at least, it's up to us to do what we can to make the answer to that question be "yes."
Peace on earth is a Western construct with no tradition on earth other than when enforced by superior military force. It is NOT the normal status of human beings and never has been.
If it is to be in future it will have to be enforced by non-local powers with significant military advantage and the will to enforce it. This is called “colonialism.” AFAIK, the same side demanding a “political solution” is opposed to that, the only way it can come about.
The real problem is a West completely lacking historical awareness.
Definitely an accurate summation of the status quo. The human species lived more than 100,000 years before the time of the Agricultural Revolution. There have been studies that show the level of violence in the millennia prior to then is relatively low.https://violencetrends.substack.com/p/violence-before-agriculture-summary
It's well past time to put an end to the power of the sword, wielded by the patriarchal death cult that has ruled for millennia. Otherwise, it's very unlikely this species will make it through even another century. We are the last of the hominids. That will be true forever, but for how long will we be here to claim that title?
I have noticed that since the most recent, and rather dramatic, flare up of hostilities in Palestine / Israel, the major media, and even commentary spaces like this one here, are only very rarely mentioning a key word in the story, which word is apartheid -- an internationally recognized crime against humanity.
Why is this? Is it because the center of world empire's central government -- the USA -- has a regime and president which refuses to acknowledge that Israel has been an apartheid state for a long time?
Yes, I too long to end all of the bloodletting, the cycle of vengeance. But I don't think we can do this without acknowledging that Israel is an apartheid state, imposing apartheid upon the people of Palestine. We cannot, and should not, cover the A word with a fig leaf, for fear that it is "taking sides" to mention its fact. (It is a fact, not a mere opinion.) It's not taking sides! It's calling a spade a spade. It's providing the people of Israel with an opportunity to see much more clearly what the present flare up is really all about, so they can bring empathy and compassion to the shared table.
I encourage everyone to give to the Palestine Children's Relief fund or to other charities that help Palestinians. I personally intend to give my donation in the name of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I of course will let him know I did so.
I have been enthusiastically supportive of JFKJr. He is the best presidential candidate in my long life. However his unequivocal support for Israel and now supporting more funding for Israel in the midst of blatant war crimes is a deal breaker. How a man as brilliant and knowledgeable as he is can stand with Israel’s savagery is just incomprehensible. And neither do I support the savagery of Hamas.
You’re aware that money is fungible, right? And that any money given for bandages allows their own bandage money to be repurposed to arms. Right? If they wanted to make use of humanitarian aid $, they wouldn’t be ripping-up water pipes (humanitarian-supplied infrastructure) to make rockets out of them.
Safety tip to Western do-gooders: every nickel they’ve been given had been turned into arms. With the tens of billions donated by the West, they should and would have a peaceful, productive economy by now. That they don’t is entirely on them. Stop finding terrorists.
And when Israel periodically "mows the lawn" (that's the dehumanizing term they use), aka destroying local infrastructure and bombing people in Gaza and West Bank, seems to me that's the primary reason behind not having a functional economy.
Unless your goal is the creation of monsters, dehumanizing an enemy makes it easier for most men to kill him. That’s what enemies are FOR, after all, to be killed. If you ask men to kill them while holding them up as normal human beings (newsflash: normal human beings don’t do what Hamas just did), it makes it harder to kill them, which obviously needs doing, while teaching our men that’s killing humans is no biggie; that’s how your get more murderers in your society.
Armies have always dehumanized enemies for exactly this purpose: yo remove hesitancy in killing them, which saves lives on your side.
You don’t think the following words, widely used by our forces, were just playground nicknames, do you?
OMG, that’s very funny. Nevermind all the billions pouring into Israel from the US. Your comments are completely biased, and all your preaching and explaining the “superiority” of your position reveals an individual who has little understanding of both historical context and human nature. Do you realize how silly you look?
This quote is the same one I used when I reposted on Instagram. How heart-wrenchingly beautiful to witness this mother's sanity...may it reach millions. Thank you for everything you're writing these days, Charles. I feel the more beautiful world deep in my bones, and your words make this even more real. ♥️
You know Charles. there is a very well known and time tested saying that applies perfectly to your current situation and the well justified scathing heat you are catching for continuing to post on this subject..
The *first* thing to do when you find yourself in a deepening hole with a shovel in your hand, is to STOP DIGGING.
Please, just stop.
As has been repeated to you, I'm guessing at least scores of times in the last week, no heroic personal or leadership, choices or sacrifice, to let go of vengeance, are necessary to end the so called 'cycle of violence' in Palestine. No one needs to engage angst ridden inner struggle against their own internal feelings of hatred.
ALL that needs to happen to end this horror, is for Israel to end its decades of illegal occupation and war on the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza, immediately. If Israel did this, the bloodshed would end the next day. This situation has nothing to do with "cycles" of hate and vengeance, and EVERYTHING to do with Israel egregiously continuing to blatantly violate international law.
And if Israel refuses to stop, the world needs to boycott and sanction Israel, especially with regard to weapons and military funding, until Israel has no choice but to stop, because it becomes physically impossible for it to continue its illegal war and occupation. This is exactly how South African apartheid was ended, and it is exactly how we can end Israeli apartheid.
This this this. Thank you for your words, for sharing this clip, for having the courage to ask for peace, and also recognizing the great hurt that stands between it. But it IS possible. We CAN, collectively, call in a new paradigm. One where we can each recognize ourselves in the face of the other, our own heartbeat in theirs. May love, connections, “naïvety” lead the way. I use brackets, because is it naïve, really? Or incredibly farsighted? Brave? Wise beyond measure?
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs are the Kingdom of Heaven."
And the peacemakers catch flak from both sides, because they refuse to blind themselves to the atrocities committed by either side, and to the sufferings endured by either side.
What a courageous mother! Our of her terrible loss and grief she weaves a prayer for peace - a true prayer shawl woven from love, humility, despair, and truth. There are many who won't be able to hear her prayer, too caught up in their stories of right and wrong, blame and innocence, perpetrator and victim, but maybe enough of humanity will. What will it take for the world's humans to wake up from their self-inflicted nightmare of fear and hatred? It will take a million acts like this mother's; maybe 100 million such selfless courageous acts. If there is any hope for a new world, it lies in this: that out of millions of experiences of personal loss and suffering a new story will be woven, a promise to ourselves for peace, for understanding, for forgiveness, and love.
Just after I posted this, someone sent me the following video by a 19-year-old who survived the attack on her kibbutz. Very powerful. Leaders of the world, listen to her!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c74Zdvpt5xc
"If you are not interested in hearing the things I just said, then there is no hope."
that is a mighty powerful quote from the video, and articulates perhaps the biggest danger in this precarious moment.
Those voices are neither unusual nor few. Many people feel this way (including me, a Palestinian American living in Europe, and my Israeli neighbor and close friend who was born in the same village-- under a different name-- as my father, 50 years apart).
(Perhaps they seem exceptional in the company of war-mongering politicians who purport to heal the divide but use the language of destruction and genocide? Of environmentalists who fail to address the ecocide that is an inextricable part of the story of the last 75 years?)
This too: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/18/israeli_peace_activist_parents_killed
Yes, I have seen that video, and she is not saying that just stopping the bombs is enough. She is asking for a political solution. I have seen no practical solution offered by anyone, including you. Liberals think NVC, forgiveness, trauma therapy, singalongs around the fire and more money to Gaza is the solution. Conservatives think wiping out Hamas is the answer. Neither are right.
I thought I wrote out a whole 5-point solution in my previous essay. Granted, that is not a comprehensive long-range political solution. A couple months ago in my first essay on this topic iI did speak a little about a different sort of one-state solution. But for any solution to work, letting go of revenge is a prerequisite. Without that, there is no good solution. That is why I am writing about that. It is the first step. Solutions follow.
Two major issues stand out in any conversation about a political solution. Both are in opposition.
1. A “political solution” is a Western construct being demanded on a non-Western aggressor. It is indistinct from colonialism - our ways, our laws - yet is pushed by the anti-colonial “multiculturalists.”
2. Every solution that has been tried, whether by Israel pulling out in 2005, to thousands of Palestinians making themselves so unwelcome in co-religionist Jordan (who wound up massacring thousands of them), to refugee status in Egypt or KSA or Lebanon, has had the same result: Pal violence.
Pals have been given land, self-government, tens of billions in humanitarian aid. They turn water pipes into rockets, humanitarian aid into motorized hang gliders, and education into hate.
No one wants them as they are and they refuse to change. No “political solution” can or will alter their history.
1. A political solution is not just a western construct, depending on what you mean by "political". To me, in this case, it means at a national/state and international level, as opposed to just the personal (which Charles and Patsy and most mystics seem to be stuck on, and of course it is also important), family, village/tribe, or city levels. It is absolutely necessary, because barring everyone being a good-hearted liberal mystic there will arise inter-family, inter-village, inter-tribal, and international conflict. Political is not colonial in that sense. Colonial is one example of a political solution where one nation dictates the terms to others. It is not the only way higher level international agreements can be made. So the liberal multiculturalists are not wrong to ask for a political solution, even vis a vis the Palestinians. Whether they will abide by anything that doesn't come down from an alpha male islamic leader is another question.
2. Yes, that's why we need to try solutions that HAVEN'T been tried.
I don't know about equating a group being unwelcome with some moral failing of the group. By that reckoning Jews are all losers.... As far as land, I believe Palestinians lost more land than they gained, and they also have attachments to particular land, so not all land is fungible to them (same for Israelis).
As far as money, are you sure it was tens of billions of dollars? Do you have a reference for that? I agree that they should have done something to improve the conditions in Gaza with that kind of money instead of making weapons and promoting hate (and enriching the leaders?). But I'm guessing it was less, or less that didn't end up in the banks of the leaders.
But also they are blockaded by Israel. I understand Israel's motives, but it's still not a good situation.
Your explanation about the nature of political solutions and colonialism makes a lot of sense. Not all solutions have been tried.
Seriously? A political solution is not a Western solution, but a State solution? Dud you attend ANY history classes in school? The nation-state is a Western construct formalized at Westphalia in 1648. Educate before typing.
State solution is only one example of a political solution. To our cells, the organs are a political solution. To our organs our bodies are a political solution. To individual humans, the family is a political solution. To the Iroquois tribes, the federation of tribes was a political solution. Solution to what? To the invariable conflict that arises between the parts, whether they be cells, organs, individual humans, tribes of humans, villages of humans, etc. It's Hobbes' Leviathan, but it could exist at different levels for the same functional purpose.
The problem with the western state solution as of late is that it often skips all the intermediate levels that are necessary to both avoid a free riding catastrophe (when you have too many parts at that level, in the case of a western state, that would be individual humans where villages, tribes and families have been destroyed/outcompeted) and to meet our evolved psycholocial needs.
Please don't assume anything about my education. I am a PhD scientist, but I am widely educated in the humanities. Don't nit-pick about what a state is. The important thing is you need a higher level than just a family or the Israeli state or Hamas to abjudicate the conflict between Hamas and Israel
Not all states are Western states. Are you saying that China isn't -- or doesn't have -- a state?
As for politics, that's a word pointing at what folks do to engage in group decision-making. The group can be a state or a bunch of friends... or any group at all, including the Boy Scouts or a hiking club. So not all politics is state politics. And all people make group decisions. So don't take yourself overly seriously here. It's not like you're the only educated fellow in the room.
This is racist bollocks.
Amen!
Trying to neutralize or even wiping out Hamas should not be guided by revenge. But rather simply the sober calculation that doing nothing about them will lead to more and even worse massacres.
why should bibi and mossad be rewarded for creating hamas? A sober calculation would mean that rewarding terrorism creates more terrorism.
Yes they had a hand in this which was part and parcel of Israel's policy of appeasement of terrorist groups over the years. It's a leftist notion that if we make concessions to terrorists somehow they'll come around.
How would they be rewarded, and who is trying to reward them? The Israeli right made a terrible mistake in encouraging and funding Hamas, until they realized it was a mistake. It was what they thought (at the time) was the lesser of 2 evils, or perhaps it was a divide and conquer (though I don't see much evidence that these divisions between PLO and Hamas weakened both). We don't know if PLO would have been better or worse, in hindsight.
There is a few regimes creating terrorists. Ussa and balfour plus nato. The ayrabs seem more like controlled unwitting opposition.
100 billion to bibi and his idf mossad is a reward. So they should be enriched for creating terrorists so they can conquer judah aka palestine? Crazy logick.
Yes, and part of that sober calculation should weigh:
1. the new terrorists that are created in the process of a military action, as well as
2. them being emboldened to carry out further barbarism without the military action.
3. A military action will lead to the international community losing support for Israel.
So I think a non-military strategy might be better. Especially if it gains support from the international community.
I forgot to mention (and nobody said anything!) the other consideration in this calculus:
5. Many more PEOPLE will be killed with this military action, especially with a ground invasion. I don't really care if they are women, children or grannies, civilians or combatants (like women and children's lives are more valuable than men? Or a young boy's life becomes less valuable as soon as he dons a uniform? ), Palestinians or Israelis.
I forgot to mention:
4. Hamas expected Israel to retaliate. They are laying a trap. I am not sure what exactly it consists of, but Israel should not fall into it.
The whole thing is a trap. A no win situation. So I guess we should forget about the hostages?
I must have missed your 5-point political solution. All I saw was forgiveness and millions of witnesses
How about those of us who can’t quite be categorized because we don’t subscribe to any groups directed by ideology, I.e., more allegiance to ideas than to individual human beings. Am being genuine here. I consider the Israel/Palestine/Hamas situation extremely complex, automatically countering either of the extremes you mention above in terms of a category for me—and I know there are many others like myself who are trying to (as hackneyed as it sounds) “think outside the box”-that is, as Charles has convincingly and eloquently stated, we see so many complex layers that we can only acknowledge such, consider such, rather than polarizing in an “either/or,” straight-edged posture, ready to fight. This would not mean not acting but rather (and again, referencing Charles), acting only after considering, examining the complexity—and then wouldn’t it be nice if most of us wanted the violence to end! PEACE: Any means necessary (as long as no harm is involved!) Rumi has a poem about that space “beyond right and wrong”—and suggests, let’s go there, I will meet you…
It also occurred to me that if Islamic culture was able to change from the life-affirming culture, respectful of science, medicine, architecture, and mysticism (e,g, Rumi, Kabir and Hafiz) to the blood-thristy, authoritarian, death and war-loving superstitious and xenophobic culture that it is mostly today (exception Sufis and Bahai, the latter being not totally islamic), it can change back to a more peace loving culture too.
Alive 67 years, aware since 1969...what does that say about Israeli culture IN Palestine some 75 years? As a Zionist Settler Colonial state they continue to be anything but life affirming behavior towards the original inhabitants. Son is tribal enrolled Koyukon in Alaska so Indigenous issues and rights tend to be a daily concern. We relate to Palestinian viewpoint. Land Back is frequently mentioned. Goes for Lahaina too. Humans can be just greedy and materialistic, racist and hoard dual citizenship options and rights all for themselves...
There are some similarities, but also some differences between what happened with European settlers on native american land, vs what happened with European and Yemenite Jews settling in Palestine. I'll focus on the differences here: unlike the European settlers' intentions towards the natives, the Jews did not displace any Palestinians until after they were attacked and murdered by Palestinians, and then it was about survival and trauma (after Holocaust). The Jews who came from Europe had a leftist socialist identity before a Jewish identity and as socialists wanted to share the earth with all who were willing (the opposite of greedy and materialistic). They bought land from arab landlords. Some arab peasants were displaced by those landlords, not by Jews. After UN agreed to partition (which was a blatant colonial act), Jews would have let arabs stay on their land and in their homes and would have left them mostly alone, but the arabs (understandably) did not want to live under a Jewish state, so they attacked the Jews and the Jews attacked back and displaced some of them, some ran away hoping to come back after the promised slaughter of Jews by arab authorities.
So whereas AIM was not killing peaceful european settler descendants, Hamas was killing and raping the peaceful (and leftist) descendants of mostly peaceful and leftist Jews who had displaced their ancestors. Hamas is more like Custer and Jackson in their brutality but 10 times worse (still we could forgive them, but it won't stop them). They probably already killed the 74 year old woman Israeli peace activist that they kidnapped.
I forgot to mention that there are still many Palestinians living within Israel, that Gaza has not been occupied since I think 2006(?) but they ARE being economically blockaded (due to Israeli fears of weapons, but maybe also other reasons). Jews in Arab lands had to flee for their lives after UN partition was announced. There are very few left.
Yes, ideally we can transcend/integrate/synthesize these categories so we can make progress, but liberals haven't done so yet, because they are still proposing tried and failed solutions (conservatives are even less likely to transcend their programming than liberals, that is part of the conservative phenotype). They are not moral categories, btw, so Rumi doesn't apply here, except in his urge to be outside ideological boxes. Also, these are not ideological boxes either, they are deep, evolved traits, of which ideologies are only the tip of the iceberg. So one can be a communist, but a phenotypic conservative, because one scores high on Social Dominance Orientation, low on openness, high on amygdala action, high on disgust, low on care, and other measures (either with surveys or brain scans). And of course one can score liberal on some measures and conservative on others, and it is not binary, but there is a scale (most communists would probably score high on justice for example, which is a liberal trait).
The other reason this liberal/conservative categorization is useful (besides that it goes deep in personality) is that this conflict is happening equally between liberals and conservatives as between conservatives (of which terrorists are extreme cases) on the Israeli or Palestinian side.
The way you write of cons & libs doesn't feel like actual people. Just labels applied in a theoretical way. This is the way of intellectual discussion. And the way in which nothing gets done. "liberal mystic" oh boy another label and on it goes...
You forgot dehumanizing term “pals”
It's not just labeling for the sake of intellectual masturbation. Categories are useful for understanding, and these categories come from scientific research testing hypotheses or (in the case of my "liberal mystic" category) still untested hypotheses, not only from our tribal ingroup-outgroup instincts to feel safe in the ingroup and hate the outgroup (something that the liberal phenotype is doing much less of).
Of course these categories are never going to be a perfect model of a real person. No model can be perfect.
I think wiping out Hamas and the other terror groups is a solution but do not know if it's possible.
Short of genocide of the whole Palestinian population, no, it's not possible. It's the hydra problem: you kill one terrorist and several of their family become terrorists. Israel has gotten more right wing since its inception, but they do not want to become like the Nazis.
Then what's the alternative? Do nothing?
1. I would make economic aid contingent on teaching tolerance and different perspectives in schools, and
2. try to undermine fundamentalist Islam in multiple ways (this is not a contradiction. We should not be tolerant of ideologies or religions which teach violence, intolerance towards those that are not actively harming them, promote slaughter and rape of civilians, and create a surplus of sexually frustrated men).
3. But I think ultimately liberals (and those that transcend these categories) on both sides have to join forces to create economic, social and even religious alternatives (like Sufism and Bahai). My 3 state alternative might be too far out of the box. Apparently some of the Kibbutzes that were slaughtered in this latest attack had Palestinians come for work, I wonder if it was just menial work and why it wasn't a two way relationship where the Israelis also went over to Gaza for work (maybe they were afraid to be killed, or maybe it was a serf-master economic relationship). So,
4. Economically equal relationships have to be built, not serf-master ones. Companies that are run by and hire both Palestinians and Israelis should be encouraged.
5. There are also things that can be done with algorithms online to get islamic fundies exposed to other ways of looking at the word, instead of reinforcing their bubbles.
6. We should have a place online for out of the box ideas coming from anyone who feels inspired, with room for discussion and brainstorming and steelmanning.
7. Hopefully Netanyahu will be removed by the Israelis so that someone who is genuinely interested in peace can lead Israel. If not, pressure to remove him has to come from external sources like the US and UN.
8. Hopefully the leadership of Hamas can be replaced by the Palestinians with people who are interested in peace.
9. Israel needs to lift the blockade on Gaza, and maybe here Charles' witnesses could be handy to make sure that no bombs or other weapons come in, besides what is necessary for the police.
So your “solution” to the problems of a completely different culture is to force down their throats Western mores? I bet you vote D, consider yourself a “multiculturalist,” and are opposed to colonialism, right?
IQ about, oh... 90, maybe? I hope you don’t have kids.
>>(maybe they were afraid to be killed<<
Yeah kinda maybe don't you think?
Watch recent interview by Piers Morgan of Bassem Youssef, Palestinian comedian. He is asked same question & gives a cogent, rational response.
The link?
Thank you for saying this, Charles. My observation has been that a lot of people are not themselves, as if under a spell, being messengers of various ghosts as opposed to their actual selves. That is the main problem. The moment people choose to tell the ghosts to leave, so that they, the people, can act on their own agency, with spiritual clarity, better solutions are likely to start showing up. I don't think we can do it based on intellect alone, our intellects exist to remind us not to go crazy and to support the general logic, but I think the first thing we need to do, all of us, is to make sure that our thoughts are our own. I mourn for both the abused and the abusers. I mourn more for the abused but the abusers are also a total mess.
This is a profoundly important perspective, and I believe is true both psychologically and on a spiritual level. Ghosts here include both malevolent entities and the strongly developed thoughtforms born from generations of tribal warfare. For peace to have a chance, these must be resisted in each of our hearts and minds. I also believe that each of these courageous people who choose compassion rather than hate make a difference to the whole, so no one’s efforts are too small to matter.
This is exactly the ancient, animist perspective that we talked about in a call with Josh Schrei of The Emerald podcast last night. Thank you, Tessa. Guardian spirits are also present, and these are the ones for us to call in and feed.
The American warmongers have condemned them and their progeny to the very thing they judge hamas=mossad on.
Here is the problem for those that seek vengeance in this latest kinetic puppet show of death & misery known as the Israel Hamas war:
A nation's people and a nation's government are completely separate things, and many are conflating the Israeli people with the Israeli government who is controlled by this man: https://tritorch.com/degradation/RothschildAbramovicSatanSummoningHisLegions.png [image]
Many are also conflating the Palestinian people with Hamas who is control by this man: https://tritorch.com/degradation/RothschildAbramovicSatanSummoningHisLegions.png [image]
That man also controls nearly every bit of information you receive about both this war and the history of this conflict which stretches back centuries.
That man is standing with Marina Abramović in front of a painting titled 'Satan Summoning His Legions'.
The father of lies is firmly in control of this world. Act accordingly.
If Charles were to address this plea solely to his Jewish readers, then fine.
I am of course deeply moved by this bereft Israeli mother’s plea, AND it also makes perfect sense for Jewish mothers who have lost children in the conflict to make such a plea, for it is truly the case that Israeli techno-military might will never achieve security for the Jewish people, despite Zionist brainwashing to the contrary. More and more Jewish mothers are indeed waking up to this reality.
However, to morally counsel a similarly bereft Palestinian mother to implore Palestinian resistance fighters to put down their weapons and cease fighting for freedom would be to attempt to coerce her acceptance of defeat and dispossession. To expect the colonized, the imprisoned, the enslaved to renounce violence, to lay down their arms and to beg for peace strikes me as reprehensible. Is it just “naive” to suggest that Palestinians do so, or is it a kind of surreptitious ethico-spiritual sabotage?
Our minds are all infected by a sort of “mind-virus”—call it the Story of Separation if you like—that has hijacked our perceptions (and therefore emotions), rendering us pawns in a scheme that ultimately serves none of us. However, we are not all equal in the roles into which we are being cast (neither in terms of benefits nor responsibilities): there is oppressor and oppressed, colonizer and colonized. Why does Charles refuse to acknowledge this gross structural asymmetry?
As I said in a previous comment, I agree with the basic insight, which is widespread among the freedom-minded these days, that victim consciousness is the only human malady, and there is probably no group more than the Jewish people who have so much to overcome in this regard, for their claim to victimhood—even when they have become the architects of concentration camps and the perpetrators of ethnic-cleansing and genocide—is practically unassailable.
We all need to examine our own identification with victim consciousness since it is through our trauma that our perceptions and emotions are hijacked and we are thereby controlled, but I would say that you have to enjoy some degree of relative safety in order to really undertake this work, and the imprisoned of the world’s largest concentration camp (i.e., the people of Gaza) do not have that luxury.
I seem to be agreeing with Charles' main point in the essay, which is to point out that revenge killing only leads to yet more -- and worsening -- revenge killing, and also with your main point here Gabrielle -- which is that the Palestinians are victims of settler colonialism and oppression perpetrated by Israel. You didn't use the word "apartheid," now a term in international law, but I will. Anyway ... "gross structural asymmetry," as you said.
I don't believe Charles' view about the futility of cycles of revenge, and the need to end that cycle, is in conflict with your views, Gabrielle. But I do believe Charles knows as much as we do (or I do, anyway) that the Palestinians cannot gain anything through violent means. Indeed, the whole world cannot gain anything through violent means. Violence has never been a solution to anything.
i’m in the same boat, of agreeing with charles about cycles of vengeance and also viewing israel as a settler colonial project/apartheid state.
i’m not sure i agree with your point about violence never being a solution to anything though. what are those of us under oppression and their allies to do? you said palestinians cannot gain anything from violent means, however through nonviolent means it seems like all that’s going to happen is their extermination and/or continued ethnic cleansing. apartheid in south africa only ended after increasing violence, chattel slavery in the US and the Holocaust needed wars to end those travesties.
i’m not trying to advocate for violence, i just don’t see a nonviolent path to freedom for people who are under the thumb of apartheid, colonialism, and genocide.
my heart knows that world is possible and it also knows we’re not there yet. 💜
"i’m not sure i agree with your point about violence never being a solution to anything though."
Well, that was a generalizing statement, and I do stand by it as such, but when we look at the particular case here -- the Israel / Palestine conflict -- it's pretty obvious that the military capacity of Israel is a thousand times greater than that of Palestine. So what's the point of trying to fight them? Winning is not possible, obviously. Fighting them simply gives them an excuse to bomb the hell out of what they regard as their enemy.
I think the point of fighting back is to bring attention to the issue at hand. This isn’t a justification or capitulation of what happened on the seventh, it’s an under of the state of things previously as well as the attention that we’re bringing to it now.
If not for fighting back, Israel continues a slow ethnic cleansing that will leave the Holy Land - as Charles calls it - without Palestinians. The only way to stop that in my mind is for the international community, especially the USA and UK, to call for a ceasefire and do something like what Charles suggested in the first article about vengeance. We’re paying attention because of atrocities, which were part of a cycle of violence and vengeance for decades now. Hopefully this attention leads to peace.
You're asking for peace between people seduced into hatred and moral superiority by organized religions, by feverish nationalism and patriotism. The truth is nationalism is a dead end and patriotism is a trick. Waving a flag while cursing those who are waving a different one is the worst kind of mass hypnosis. Unless people wake up to the fact that they've been had, they've been played, that all of life in fact is sacred including the lives of our "enemies," asking for peace on a global scale feels like a steep climb. Instead, let's find a way out of patriarchy and capitalism which power so much of our ignoble, ultimately self-defeating behavior
a harsh penalty needs to be applied to the warmongers, americans, and others interested in orion empire building and conquest, which also involves using mossad=hamas terrorism.
A grand event and series of events that will burn the memory into their very soul. So that even when they reincarnate once more, they will remember what they have done and why.
“A true leader is someone who sets a new course, not someone who merely presides over the momentum of what already is.”
Love it
I am reminded of the words of a song I learned long ago. "Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me." If only humanity could heed this call we might have a chance for the human species to survive.
does this species deserve to survive? what mossad=hamas have done and what humans=qabal have done, where is their repentance and atonement? I see only pride and unrighteous outrage. They will get the reward they so richly deserve and more than they can imagine.
Good question. Whether this species deserves to survive for now is an open question. I would suggest, that to some extent, at least, it's up to us to do what we can to make the answer to that question be "yes."
Thr solution i forsee is the division of chaff from wheat
Waste vs good fruits. The graduates vs those who dont graduate this time
Peace on earth is a Western construct with no tradition on earth other than when enforced by superior military force. It is NOT the normal status of human beings and never has been.
If it is to be in future it will have to be enforced by non-local powers with significant military advantage and the will to enforce it. This is called “colonialism.” AFAIK, the same side demanding a “political solution” is opposed to that, the only way it can come about.
The real problem is a West completely lacking historical awareness.
Definitely an accurate summation of the status quo. The human species lived more than 100,000 years before the time of the Agricultural Revolution. There have been studies that show the level of violence in the millennia prior to then is relatively low.https://violencetrends.substack.com/p/violence-before-agriculture-summary
It's well past time to put an end to the power of the sword, wielded by the patriarchal death cult that has ruled for millennia. Otherwise, it's very unlikely this species will make it through even another century. We are the last of the hominids. That will be true forever, but for how long will we be here to claim that title?
I have noticed that since the most recent, and rather dramatic, flare up of hostilities in Palestine / Israel, the major media, and even commentary spaces like this one here, are only very rarely mentioning a key word in the story, which word is apartheid -- an internationally recognized crime against humanity.
Why is this? Is it because the center of world empire's central government -- the USA -- has a regime and president which refuses to acknowledge that Israel has been an apartheid state for a long time?
Yes, I too long to end all of the bloodletting, the cycle of vengeance. But I don't think we can do this without acknowledging that Israel is an apartheid state, imposing apartheid upon the people of Palestine. We cannot, and should not, cover the A word with a fig leaf, for fear that it is "taking sides" to mention its fact. (It is a fact, not a mere opinion.) It's not taking sides! It's calling a spade a spade. It's providing the people of Israel with an opportunity to see much more clearly what the present flare up is really all about, so they can bring empathy and compassion to the shared table.
If you think Israel is an apartheid state you are ignorant of the meaning of the word.
Is Israel Guilty Of Apartheid Against Palestinians?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MknerYjob0w&t=69s
Why is Israel called an ‘apartheid’ state?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emudV7MyGwo
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/israels-culture-of-deceit
what’s the meaning of the word, then?
I encourage everyone to give to the Palestine Children's Relief fund or to other charities that help Palestinians. I personally intend to give my donation in the name of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I of course will let him know I did so.
I have been enthusiastically supportive of JFKJr. He is the best presidential candidate in my long life. However his unequivocal support for Israel and now supporting more funding for Israel in the midst of blatant war crimes is a deal breaker. How a man as brilliant and knowledgeable as he is can stand with Israel’s savagery is just incomprehensible. And neither do I support the savagery of Hamas.
You’re aware that money is fungible, right? And that any money given for bandages allows their own bandage money to be repurposed to arms. Right? If they wanted to make use of humanitarian aid $, they wouldn’t be ripping-up water pipes (humanitarian-supplied infrastructure) to make rockets out of them.
Safety tip to Western do-gooders: every nickel they’ve been given had been turned into arms. With the tens of billions donated by the West, they should and would have a peaceful, productive economy by now. That they don’t is entirely on them. Stop finding terrorists.
And when Israel periodically "mows the lawn" (that's the dehumanizing term they use), aka destroying local infrastructure and bombing people in Gaza and West Bank, seems to me that's the primary reason behind not having a functional economy.
In re: “dehumanizing.”
Unless your goal is the creation of monsters, dehumanizing an enemy makes it easier for most men to kill him. That’s what enemies are FOR, after all, to be killed. If you ask men to kill them while holding them up as normal human beings (newsflash: normal human beings don’t do what Hamas just did), it makes it harder to kill them, which obviously needs doing, while teaching our men that’s killing humans is no biggie; that’s how your get more murderers in your society.
Armies have always dehumanized enemies for exactly this purpose: yo remove hesitancy in killing them, which saves lives on your side.
You don’t think the following words, widely used by our forces, were just playground nicknames, do you?
Gook, slant, kraut, jap, nip...
Have you ever read ANY history or warfare?
Nope. If Hamas didn’t become a problem regularly, the lawn wouldn’t need mowing. You’re reversing temporal actions.
That's a very poor argument and excuses not helping anyone if there is any chance of money "leakage" due to fungibility.
If you’re adding to the store of armaments, you’re not “helping.”
OMG, that’s very funny. Nevermind all the billions pouring into Israel from the US. Your comments are completely biased, and all your preaching and explaining the “superiority” of your position reveals an individual who has little understanding of both historical context and human nature. Do you realize how silly you look?
Guy's an out and out racist.
Thank you. It's not naive. It is simple. People, all people must stop supporting their leaders, if they support war.
This quote is the same one I used when I reposted on Instagram. How heart-wrenchingly beautiful to witness this mother's sanity...may it reach millions. Thank you for everything you're writing these days, Charles. I feel the more beautiful world deep in my bones, and your words make this even more real. ♥️
You know Charles. there is a very well known and time tested saying that applies perfectly to your current situation and the well justified scathing heat you are catching for continuing to post on this subject..
The *first* thing to do when you find yourself in a deepening hole with a shovel in your hand, is to STOP DIGGING.
Please, just stop.
As has been repeated to you, I'm guessing at least scores of times in the last week, no heroic personal or leadership, choices or sacrifice, to let go of vengeance, are necessary to end the so called 'cycle of violence' in Palestine. No one needs to engage angst ridden inner struggle against their own internal feelings of hatred.
ALL that needs to happen to end this horror, is for Israel to end its decades of illegal occupation and war on the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza, immediately. If Israel did this, the bloodshed would end the next day. This situation has nothing to do with "cycles" of hate and vengeance, and EVERYTHING to do with Israel egregiously continuing to blatantly violate international law.
And if Israel refuses to stop, the world needs to boycott and sanction Israel, especially with regard to weapons and military funding, until Israel has no choice but to stop, because it becomes physically impossible for it to continue its illegal war and occupation. This is exactly how South African apartheid was ended, and it is exactly how we can end Israeli apartheid.
So again, to both you and Israel. Please..
STOP DIGGING
This is very beautiful Charles, thank you for holding space for this vision of sanity and peace amidst the chaos.
This this this. Thank you for your words, for sharing this clip, for having the courage to ask for peace, and also recognizing the great hurt that stands between it. But it IS possible. We CAN, collectively, call in a new paradigm. One where we can each recognize ourselves in the face of the other, our own heartbeat in theirs. May love, connections, “naïvety” lead the way. I use brackets, because is it naïve, really? Or incredibly farsighted? Brave? Wise beyond measure?
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs are the Kingdom of Heaven."
And the peacemakers catch flak from both sides, because they refuse to blind themselves to the atrocities committed by either side, and to the sufferings endured by either side.
What a courageous mother! Our of her terrible loss and grief she weaves a prayer for peace - a true prayer shawl woven from love, humility, despair, and truth. There are many who won't be able to hear her prayer, too caught up in their stories of right and wrong, blame and innocence, perpetrator and victim, but maybe enough of humanity will. What will it take for the world's humans to wake up from their self-inflicted nightmare of fear and hatred? It will take a million acts like this mother's; maybe 100 million such selfless courageous acts. If there is any hope for a new world, it lies in this: that out of millions of experiences of personal loss and suffering a new story will be woven, a promise to ourselves for peace, for understanding, for forgiveness, and love.