Believing that Armed Violence Will Make a Difference The killing continues and the rage and helpless grief goes on while the world watches. So many people have died that should not have died—a thousand by now—and so many are maimed and burned. There must be a better way! Yet still we cling to the crazy belief that this time armed violence will make a difference. Insanity, they say, is doing the same thing over and over, each time hoping for different results. .

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Out of Turmoil Some Clarity Emerges I have been in a turmoil about the Israeli incursion into Gaza, struggling with every emotion from rage to grief.  Likewise, I have been struggling with the actions of Hamas, endangering the lives of its own people, and the role of the U.S. government and its unquestioning  support for the state of Israel.  I have finally found some clarity on this subject.  Today is the first of a two part series.   Today the focus is on Israel.  The next blog will focus on the Palestinians and the U.S. What’s Right in Israel’s Approach It’s often said that “You can’t negotiate with terrorists.”  When people are terrified no one can make rational decisions.  Israelis are tough people but they have an underlying historical narrative of fear, based on thousands of years of persecution, which renders them acutely sensitive to threat.  If the lives of the populace are being menaced it is the role of government to protect its people, and they must take action.  Israel  determined it had to take action against the rockets coming in from Gaza fired on them by Hamas.                                                                                                        What’s Missing in Israel’s Approach Terrorists must be stopped, just as anyone committing out of control violence must be stopped. I have written about this in other blogs about the stopping function.  The problem Israel has run into with their intervention in Gaza, and in prior actions with the Palestinians,  is that they have not thought through the long-term implications of their actions nor made them part of a strategy for successfully ending the conflict with the Palestinians.  It is not enough just to stop terrorist action, because that stopping is always temporary.

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 The Era of Exclusive National Self-Interest is Over I was startled to hear Henry Kissinger, on a recent Charlie Rose program, suggest that the world’s countries can no longer afford to conduct foreign policy based solely on their own self-interest.  Globalization has progressed so far and the world has so dwindled in size, that every nation’s interest is now entangled with that of every other country.   From issues of global finance to rogue nuclear bombs to global warming and pandemic flu, we are now in a new era.  If the new world order has not yet arrived, it is certainly on its way. Transformational Diplomacy Is at Hand While former Secretary Kissinger did not quite say, “We must now think as one,” he came very close to it.  Even key Bush administration figures have changed their thinking radically in the past few years, and these changes came because raw experience on the ground fighting terror in Iraq and Afghanistan forced them to shift their approach.  Condoleeza Rice in the State Department has been calling for transformational diplomacy and the emphasis in that department is now on planning and implementing good governance.  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has also given speeches in the past year in which he declared that the sharp divisions between war, peace, diplomacy and development are no longer useful.  The goal is now to stabilize governments in troubled areas around the globe. Failed States Endanger Everyone Failed states present one of the most difficult challenges to peace in the twenty first century. From Somalia, where pirates attack ships because it is so lucrative, to raging war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where rape is a prime weapon, to the genocide in Darfur/Sudan, to the corrupt government in Afghanistan, installed by the U.S. after the fall of the Taliban, all of these states present ominous threats to the safety and security of  surrounding states, as well as to the western world, and they threaten the lives and health of millions of innocent women and children caught in the crossfire.  The Desperate are Frightened, Hungry, Sick and Violent                                                                                                           The problems are deep and vast.  Millions of people desperate for the basics of life:  food, clean water, a roof over their heads, electricity, roads, sanitation, reliable government services that are not riddled with corruption, a money supply free from inflation.  In short, they long for a chance to make it in the world, a chance to survive and thrive without fear of being slaughtered, raped, tortured or dying of disease or starvation at a very young age.

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 The Unfulfilled Longing for Peace I invite you to take a journey with me today.  I want to explore the experience of completion and how this phenomenon could be applied to war. The longing for peace is so deep in human beings and yet, despite ourselves, we revert to armed conflict again and again to try to solve problems with others.  Our cherished visions of peace recede and never seem to come to pass.   Why is peace so seemingly impossible to achieve? What gets in the way?  The Experience of Completion Recently I was reviewing relationships in my life that have healed after long discord.  I call this state of being at peace with someone being complete.  When I am complete a quiet space opens.   After a time I find myself creating a new way of being with that person I disliked before.  It amazes me.  I use the word complete in a special way here.  When I look at a particular relationship or conflict,  I ask myself if there is anything left to say.  Do I still want to argue, defend, criticize, mourn, condemn?  If I feel at peace, I know I am complete. I once heard this described as having “no wood left to burn.” Fascination with the Holocaust is Never Over Over the holidays many new movies appeared with Holocaust themes.  Filmmakers apparently love to mine the Holocaust, especially when Oscar season is coming.  It is as if this last good war and its horrors is still alive, even though it ended sixty years ago.  Many people also see echoes of that war in the endless cycling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What if We Chose to Get Complete with the WWII?

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 Why Israel Feels  So Threatened In a powerful Op-Ed piece in the NYT Benny Morris, does a wonderful job of describing the vulnerability and fear that Israelis feel in their 60 year old state.   Morris’s article helped me to own up to my arrogance in the blog I wrote about Israel’s victimization. I Was Arrogant  Toward Israel In My Last Blog I indulged in talking down to the state of Israel.  In truth, I am yearning desperately for the killing on both sides to stop.   I directed my remarks to Israel, rather than to Hamas, because I see Israelis as having more capacity to effect change in this situation. These opponents are not evenly matched.  The majority of Palestinians in Gaza are starving.  Perhaps I underestimate the power of Hamas to make rational choices in the current circumstances.  I-P Conflict is About Human Needs and Feelings The key word in Morris’s column is feels.  Israel has the 5th largest Army in the world.  Two peoples are fighting over feelings and perceptions. These needs are so important to Jews and Palestinians they are willing to die for them, and yet they are so passionate they are unable to communicate the depth of their importance to the other side with any coherence.                                                                                                     Stories About Meaning of Trauma Fuel Violence Both peoples hold themselves as victims.  Both were hurt by traumas in the past. Those hurts are held in several ways: physical wounds, emotional experiences, but most importantly, in interpretations (i.e.

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 Assault on Hamas in Gaza Kills Hundreds                                                                                                                                                                                                     It is with a mixture of grief, love and rage that I watch the assault by Israel on Hamas in Gaza which has taken upwards of 350 lives. I am a lover of Israel who has bent over backwards to accept and to understand as Israelis struggle to defend themselves from terrorist attacks.  The Victim Has Become a Bully   Imagine a parent whose child repeatedly gets beaten up by bullies. The parent counsels his/her child to face his bullies. The child takes the parent’s advice and learns to fight his aggressor.  Only he learns his lesson too well. One day after one too many complaints from the school and the police, the parent discovers that his child has become the town bully.  He has to have that “tough love” talk he never dreamed of having: “My son, you have become a bully. Yes, people are hurting you but you stronger than the other kids.

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Sometimes (The poet has expressed her wishes that her name not be used when this poem is quoted or re-printed in personal blogs like this one.) Reprinted from Good Poems. Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor. Viking Penguin: New York, New York. (2002). Sometimes things don’t go, after all, from bad to worse. Some years muscadel faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail; sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

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Passionate Cry From the Heart In a passionate cri de coeur in the Huffington Post, Eve Ensler and Stephen Lewis have drawn our attention to rampant use of rape in the escalation of the ongoing conflict in the DRC (Congo).   We have heard about the hundreds of thousands (mostly women) fleeing the fighting  there.  We have not heard, until now, the reason so many are running-to escape rape. The level of sexual violence there is so extreme that Ensler and Lewis  are calling it femicide.                                                                                                                                                                               Rape as War Strategy There’s nothing new about rape in war which has been  going on since the beginning of time. What is different now is the use of rape as strategy, it’s deliberate employment, along with the use of guns and by armed men, to achieve their goals in warfare.  Consider the impulse to attack, to hurt other people or to make them pay for perceived injustices. How can one  inflict injury?             Physical assault             Knives/spears/swords             Burning/fires             Rape/sexual violence/enslavement             Guns/grenades/rocket launchers             Bombs/landmines/nuclear bombs             Verbal violence Rape Is Easy and Convenient A lot of these methods require that you take a huge risk to your own safety or they may require great skill in their use.

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Longing for Connection is Rampant in Modern Life                                                                                                         I am deeply lonely.  I long to love, laugh and be held in the warm glow of intimate connection by family, friends and beloved community.  Yet something stops me. I do not reach out.  I am left alone, knowing I am not living life to the fullest. Millions of other human beings are caught in the same conundrum . Made-Up Meanings Rule Our Lives I have been inquiring deeply into the roots of my disconnection.  Early in my childhood, perhaps on a day when I was very stressed, I came to a conclusion that has ruled my life: “I can never have anything I want.” Given the things going on in my family at the time, this made a weird kind of sense-for a five year old. It doesn’t make sense for someone who wants more love in her life.  Or for one who wants to bring peace and joy to this planet.

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Milk. Directed by Gus van Sant. Written by Dustin Lance Black. With Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna, Vincent Garber, James Franco and Allison Pill. (2008).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Movie Brims with Life and Love This is an extraordinary film.  I was moved beyond words.  The movie is a labor of love and it has succeeded in making history come alive.

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