Your essay on this, this, words fail, horror in Israel is the only one I've found so far that I read without wanting to lash out. Yesterday, in an attempt to understand if enough support and opportunities were given to help the Palestinians find a way to live with the reality of their situation, I stopped counting the billions of dollars in aid funding since 1948, the land for peace deals (of which Gaza was foremost), and the opportunities for peace proffered and rejected. I stopped thinking about the 1948 Arab call for Palestinians to abandon their homes and land that left these people as permanent refugees. I stopped thinking about the Quranic mandate for never ending jihad against infidels, chief of whom are the Jews. I stopped thinking about how so many Arab countries have finally grown tired of Palestinian obduracy, and have decided an alliance with Israel against Iranian hegemony in the region is in their best interest. Finally, I stopped wondering if there is any civility, decency, or even simple human empathy left in Palestinian culture to continue trying to find a place for them in the modern, interconnected world.
At some point the question comes down to a choice whether to protect civilization, or to allow barbarity to continue. After all the blood that was shed during the 20th century because of ideologies that were simply masks for barbarity, I thought we learned a lesson. What happened this week and in the weeks to come will show whether we are committed to resisting, and ultimately, to finding a way to contain and defeat the threat of barbarity in the Middle East, and equally as tragic, in Ukraine. I am not hopeful.
There’s always hope and I have hope for the people of Palestine but whatever change they need to undergo starts with being made to feel the world’s revulsion for Stone Age crimes. We all got here somehow and God willing they will too. If there are more moderate powers I pray they win out soon.
Been looking at every picture of every dead kid I could find on X this morning and imagining they are all my son. I don’t know how this ends if Israel is always faced with a reality of “your kids or ours.” I consider it a sort of duty to look at them.
A friend of mine was in Afghanistan. He told me a story once about a man who sent out all of his children to plant an IED at a particular intersection, knowing it was in full view of a military base and that the soldiers would have to shoot. He sent all six of his sons and complained and collected compensation for all of them.
I know not all of Gaza or Palestine is like that, but for so long as people who are like that are able to act at this kind of scale from Gaza I don’t know what else Israel can do and I’ve been wracking my brain on that for day snow.
Hah, with autocorrect often replacing my correct "its" with "it's", I no longer blame people online for poor grammar or weird word choice; it might just be their phones.
This summary made me feel suddenly appreciative of something I haven’t thought of before. I can suppress/call back my lizard brain from taking over because I haven’t had anything so underlying barbaric and completely devastating happen to me or my family. I can balance the anger with logic and love because I haven’t had my heart ripped to shreds, I can I hold on to civility. I do know that if something happened to my children, I would no longer be me. This made me wonder, how will this end? What is the solution? How do you infuse civility into a lizard brain and hope it takes root?
I know this sounds mean but I’d humiliate them culturally. I’d air drop supplies and on each one I would write a letter saying “why would I do this if I weren’t better than you?” And just keep doing things like that.
I think that’s interesting concept. I read an article in Tablet today (The Savage Nihilism of ‘Free Palestine’) it’s a lot to unpack for a comment here, read it and let me know what you think. It has to be part of the long term solution- a reckoning and constructive evolution of ideology.
I read the same article in Tablet. Well worth the read.
When I was young and idealistic about human nature, freedom fighters, and liberation wars, I moved to Zimbabwe right after its "liberation war" where I learned good and hard about "freedom fighters" and "liberation wars." I recently checked World Health Organization stats on life expectancy for adult males in Zimbabwe between the last year of white rule in 1980 (57 years and trending upward) through the first 20 years of majority rule (36 years and trending downward). Also, the country experienced the highest rate of inflation ever recorded. If you are low on Zimbabwe dollars, I can loan you a couple hundred trillion if you need. There must be something good about what has happened since Independence, but it is surely the dangdest good I ever saw.
Here's my up close and personal accounts of a couple of my freedom fighter experiences:
I said I am not hopeful, but all my life, I have worked in seemingly hopeless situations and always found reasons for hope.
Maybe, someone will finally decide that all the killing and destruction achieved nothing for either side, and will become a trickle of grace that says no matter what you do, I will not hate you. And miraculously, someone on the other side will find the same words and their trickles of grace will become a mighty river.
It has happened before in the world. Maybe it can happen now.
P.S. Thanks for taking the time to put your thoughts into words. It took some courage when so much of the discussion, even here on Substack, is bitter, accusatory, and tribal.
“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
Your essay on this, this, words fail, horror in Israel is the only one I've found so far that I read without wanting to lash out. Yesterday, in an attempt to understand if enough support and opportunities were given to help the Palestinians find a way to live with the reality of their situation, I stopped counting the billions of dollars in aid funding since 1948, the land for peace deals (of which Gaza was foremost), and the opportunities for peace proffered and rejected. I stopped thinking about the 1948 Arab call for Palestinians to abandon their homes and land that left these people as permanent refugees. I stopped thinking about the Quranic mandate for never ending jihad against infidels, chief of whom are the Jews. I stopped thinking about how so many Arab countries have finally grown tired of Palestinian obduracy, and have decided an alliance with Israel against Iranian hegemony in the region is in their best interest. Finally, I stopped wondering if there is any civility, decency, or even simple human empathy left in Palestinian culture to continue trying to find a place for them in the modern, interconnected world.
At some point the question comes down to a choice whether to protect civilization, or to allow barbarity to continue. After all the blood that was shed during the 20th century because of ideologies that were simply masks for barbarity, I thought we learned a lesson. What happened this week and in the weeks to come will show whether we are committed to resisting, and ultimately, to finding a way to contain and defeat the threat of barbarity in the Middle East, and equally as tragic, in Ukraine. I am not hopeful.
There’s always hope and I have hope for the people of Palestine but whatever change they need to undergo starts with being made to feel the world’s revulsion for Stone Age crimes. We all got here somehow and God willing they will too. If there are more moderate powers I pray they win out soon.
Stone Age crimes on 21st century forums. Rachel weeps for her children.
Been looking at every picture of every dead kid I could find on X this morning and imagining they are all my son. I don’t know how this ends if Israel is always faced with a reality of “your kids or ours.” I consider it a sort of duty to look at them.
A friend of mine was in Afghanistan. He told me a story once about a man who sent out all of his children to plant an IED at a particular intersection, knowing it was in full view of a military base and that the soldiers would have to shoot. He sent all six of his sons and complained and collected compensation for all of them.
I know not all of Gaza or Palestine is like that, but for so long as people who are like that are able to act at this kind of scale from Gaza I don’t know what else Israel can do and I’ve been wracking my brain on that for day snow.
IED*?
Jesus what an autocorrect going to fix.
Hah, with autocorrect often replacing my correct "its" with "it's", I no longer blame people online for poor grammar or weird word choice; it might just be their phones.
This summary made me feel suddenly appreciative of something I haven’t thought of before. I can suppress/call back my lizard brain from taking over because I haven’t had anything so underlying barbaric and completely devastating happen to me or my family. I can balance the anger with logic and love because I haven’t had my heart ripped to shreds, I can I hold on to civility. I do know that if something happened to my children, I would no longer be me. This made me wonder, how will this end? What is the solution? How do you infuse civility into a lizard brain and hope it takes root?
I know this sounds mean but I’d humiliate them culturally. I’d air drop supplies and on each one I would write a letter saying “why would I do this if I weren’t better than you?” And just keep doing things like that.
I think that’s interesting concept. I read an article in Tablet today (The Savage Nihilism of ‘Free Palestine’) it’s a lot to unpack for a comment here, read it and let me know what you think. It has to be part of the long term solution- a reckoning and constructive evolution of ideology.
I read the same article in Tablet. Well worth the read.
When I was young and idealistic about human nature, freedom fighters, and liberation wars, I moved to Zimbabwe right after its "liberation war" where I learned good and hard about "freedom fighters" and "liberation wars." I recently checked World Health Organization stats on life expectancy for adult males in Zimbabwe between the last year of white rule in 1980 (57 years and trending upward) through the first 20 years of majority rule (36 years and trending downward). Also, the country experienced the highest rate of inflation ever recorded. If you are low on Zimbabwe dollars, I can loan you a couple hundred trillion if you need. There must be something good about what has happened since Independence, but it is surely the dangdest good I ever saw.
Here's my up close and personal accounts of a couple of my freedom fighter experiences:
https://switters.substack.com/p/its-a-small-world
https://switters.substack.com/p/on-the-road-to-antelope-mine
I said I am not hopeful, but all my life, I have worked in seemingly hopeless situations and always found reasons for hope.
Maybe, someone will finally decide that all the killing and destruction achieved nothing for either side, and will become a trickle of grace that says no matter what you do, I will not hate you. And miraculously, someone on the other side will find the same words and their trickles of grace will become a mighty river.
It has happened before in the world. Maybe it can happen now.
P.S. Thanks for taking the time to put your thoughts into words. It took some courage when so much of the discussion, even here on Substack, is bitter, accusatory, and tribal.
Killing without hate is a tall order and as not at all good as it feels, and as much as it breaks my heart, I think that is where peace begins.
“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
― Golda Meir