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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Joy Turns to Shock and Anger For many the joy of Obama’s Presidential victory was diminished by their shock and anger when Proposition 8 passed in California, overturning gay marriage in that state. The rage and pain for some of my gay and lesbian friends was visceral. They wanted to fight back. I support gay marriage. However, for me the larger question is: How can we encourage the arrival of social change? One gay friend argued with me vociferously when I referred him to an article by Lee Stranahan which recommends following Obama’s tactics: “What if instead of merely chalking up opposition to “fear and hate” they went in churches and communities and started engaging in conversations?

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Today I’m pleased to introduce you to my mentor, teacher, and friend, Leah Green, founder and Executive Director of The Compassionate Listening Project.  For a complete history of the Project and its extensive activities please visit the website: http://www.compassionatelistening.org Deep Listening Begins in the Fire of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict                                                                                                                Q: Leah, please give us an idea of how The Compassionate Listening Project got started. L: I started leading citizen delegations to Israel and Palestine in 1990.   I had been looking for a way to bring something positive to this conflict when I found the writings of Gene Knudsen Hoffman, whose teacher was Thich Nhat Hahn.  He challenged peacemakers to stay connected to people on all sides of a conflict. Our new approach was so successful that Israelis and Palestinians asked us to teach them what we were doing. We crafted a curriculum for Compassionate Listening and then people here asked us to show them what we were doing in the Middle East. So the work in the Middle East has always been like a learning laboratory for us.

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 The U.S. Election Deteriorates As We Watch Many of us in the U.S. are watching  as the Presidential race deteriorates into a combination of celebrity worship, media bashing, attack ads, sarcasm and fear. Two extraordinary candidates, each one a man of conscience and courage, are being sucked into a maelstrom so strong even they cannot resist its compelling pull.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Thoughtful Discussion and Gravitas is Lost We are paying a terrible price for allowing ourselves to get swept up in this trance. All sense of thoughtful discussion of the issues, and the gravitas of wisely choosing a leader who will have to make critical decisions that may affect the future not just of the U.S., but of the entire world, is being lost.    How Did American Politics Get So Off-Course? American politics has been off-course for years and Americans and the whole world knows it.

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                                                                                                   Divided Conventions, A Divided Nation  Watching the Republican and Democratic conventions the past two weeks has been an illuminating experience.  While speakers at both conventions made appeals to unifying the American people and to creating change, a tone of blame, derision and outright sarcasm for the “other side” was much in evidence.  In the U.S. such partisanship is thought necessary to winning elections.  It is divisive however, and ruinous when the goal is bringing a divided nation together. Skills for Bringing a Divided Family Together As someone who has paid a dear price for participating in a conflict which nearly destroyed a family, I understand how such apparently intractable conflicts work. I also understand what it takes to reconcile and I know it is possible to find peace after years of terrible bitterness and anger.  I learned many things in my journey back to my family and developed skills, all of which are applicable to making peace at the larger, collective level. One of the most important of these is the skill of seeing the world as other people see it.

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                                                                                                                                                                   Peace, Right Here, Right Now The tips of the trees outside my window dance gently in the morning breeze. The sounds of traffic in the distance hum.  If I close my eyes I almost believe that humming is the sound of waves. This is a beautiful summer morning and I am at peace, right here, right now. Is everything perfect in my life? No, certainly not. Anxieties creep up: family members with serious health problems, money and relationship challenges.  All over the world people are set in furious conflict with other and don’t have enough for survival itself.

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We Are More Alike Than We Are Different Human beings are far more alike than we are different.  The differences between us are actually very minor. Human beings all over the world are overwhelmingly similar. We all share the same anatomy and physiology. Our brains operate the same way. We have the same triune brain, with a brain-stem that controls fundamental life processes like breathing ,a mid-brain which controls and regulates emotion and a cortex, the outer brain, which controls thinking and reasoning and is the seat of language. We Make Up Stories to Explain Our Pain Our one compelling drive is to survive and to reproduce.

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