A Letter to the Jewish Community »
Posted By tehranchik 9 months, 2 weeks ago in Political NewsWe have to do the utmost that we can for life. In these times of great uncertainty, especially in Israel, in these times of swirling anger across the world, when racism is on the rise, when fear threatens to divorce us from our core values — we have to do all we can for life.
No doubt most of the community, like millions of others, heard Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish, interviewed on radio and television, describe how three of his daughters and his niece were killed by shells fired, in error, from an Israeli tank. His words were utterly heart-rending. I wondered what message he would give at the end of his shattering account of what happened to his family. No, he said, we must not hate. If the death of my daughters teaches that on the other end of our missiles are human beings like ourselves, then my girls will not have died for nothing.
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tehranchik
Well, I'm from and live in the Pacific Northwest. I did live in the middle east during the late 70's and early 80 ...
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hyperbola9 months, 2 weeks ago
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We should remember that many jews, even in israel, are bitterly opposed to the racist, right-wing there and amongst israel-firsters in the US.
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A View From the Gazan Cliff: Choose Life!
After this futile, criminal, pornographic war in Gaza (Shmuel Amir rightly termed it a "hunt" rather than a war) and yet another national election in Israel ending basically in impasse, but this time with a distinctly fascist motif, we are no closer to sustainable peace in the Middle East. We need a drastic revisioning of what we are doing here.
So we start with this: Speaking as an Israeli Jew, I say that we (Israeli Jews and our friends abroad) ought to embrace EVERYONE who wants to live here among us, so long as they truly love the land and have some reasonable claim to it. This would not include, say, tourists from Zanzibar or Antarctica - but would naturally include the Palestinians, whose claim to the land is (or ought to be) beyond dispute and whose deep and enduring love for the land is richly evident to any observer not in a vegetative state.
I say we bring all the long-suffering, besieged, shell-shocked Gazans home to Israel now! They miss their homes. They want to come home. Let us welcome them! We can all move over a little bit and make room. Believe me, there is still plenty of room.
Dayenu! (Enough!).Enough suffering inflicted on the surviving families in Gaza who are hungry, thirsty, cold, frightened, wounded, traumatized for life, and bereaved. Enough. And enough suffering on the other side of the fence in Sderot and environs, too. (Their fates are inextricably intertwined; all our fates are inextricably intertwined.)
The generals and the militants have had their day, for the nth time - and at the end of it, as usual, all that we (any of us) have now, as a result, is war crimes and grief. War crimes and grief and fear. War crimes, grief, fear, hatred, and despair… with thousands of injured and disabled people bearing the burden most directly, forever.
Enough! Israelis are more afraid now than before, and more at risk, too. Time to ABANDON this insane strategy that we (any of us) can force people to love us, or anyhow accept us, by killing them!
...We Jews consider it rational and wonderful to rejoice in our emergence as a modern nation in the ancient homeland, after… not twenty years, not two hundred years, but two thousand years of exile!! Yet the idea of repatriating all those homesick Palestinian families, exiled from their homes a mere 60 years ago, is considered delusional. Something there does not compute.-
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hyperbola9 months, 2 weeks ago
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So think it over and let's put the guns away for good. Let the tribunals meet to apportion blame and responsibility, by all means, but as for the rest of us: we have other tasks. Treat the wounded, yes, of course, and heal the traumatized… And beat the swords into ploughshares and recycle the tank parts into computer equipment. Retool the death factories to make swimsuits instead of parachutes, irrigation pipes for farmers instead of M16 rifles. No time for missiles; we'll all be too busy getting a life. The only phosphorous I ever want to see around here again is in a spelling contest for the kids (ALL our kids). Haul out the welcome mat for the long-lost cousins and let's get busy – there's a lot of work to do here. It's not too late, even now, but you have to take the first step: Choose life!
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