In Memory of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
And His Commitment to Nonviolence
January 19th, 2009
A Piece Inspired by Queen Noor of Jordan: My First Encounter, MSNBC, 1/17/09
We have a serious humanitarian crisis happening in Gaza, and it is important that we pay attention. Over a thousand civilians have died, hundreds of them children. They have no escape. They are walled in, and under constant threat of vicious weapons, against which they have no chance. Even though the latest ceasefire has begun, the crisis is not over. The citizens of Gaza are still being starved and dehumanized. Their food supplies are still insufficient. Access to aid workers is still largely forbidden. Basic human needs, which every human deserves, are not being met in Gaza, due largely to constrained border blockades. Tell me, who are any of us to restrict necessary aid to anyone else?
And journalists, those who could show us what is actually happening, who could give us access to pictures and stories that might remind us that these too are people, these Palestinians in Gaza are also women and children, fathers and grandparents, not just faceless enemies deserving brutal punishment, these reporters are restricted access, long after the Israeli Supreme Court ruled for their entry. It seems like the Gazans are under a brutal punishment. And I know of no time when brutal punishment, like forced death, has proved truly useful.
Yes, Hamas shelled Israel and killed a total of four people prior to this recent 22-day massacre. We have heard this many times, far more than we have heard about the astronomically higher number of Palestinian deaths in recent years, not to mention the 1,300 to 13 of recent days. Yes, that’s a hundred Palestinians for every Israeli, which doesn’t account for the deaths still to come from the sub-human living conditions in Gaza, and the possibility of more bombs.
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And let me now be clear. Death by violent means on any side is tragic. I am not supporting the actions of Hamas. I am considering the innocent people on both sides of the human-created borders, and saying that even if we put aside the conditions of subjugation that might cause a people to perpetrate and support desperate attacks, like suicide bombs, or catapulted missles, pebbles thrown at a giant, it is still fair to marvel at the fact that this disproportionate use of force towards the Gazans is coming from a people who have survived a holocaust of their own.
A typical response that might be lobbed at me for speaking such a things (in this case towards the Israeli powerbrokers that make it possible, not its innocents) is that I am an anti-Semite. I might be accused of supporting Hamas. Well, let me say that I recognize the right of the Jewish people to exist, as any people should be able to, and that the reason I could never support Hamas is the same reason that I can’t condone the current actions of Israel, because I do not condone violence. I do not believe it is possible to attain peace through war, and I want peace, which is why I speak out against military, economic and social subjugation, perpetrated against any people. We are only one world, and we are all human, despite our differences.
In the case of recent days, the Israeli government has acted like an unrestrained bully at the cost of great human life, and it is not anti-Semitic to say so. If anything, I think it is anti-Semitic on the part of Israel to carry out aggression that is ultimately harmful to its own people in the long run. The attack on Gaza is like trying to get honey from a beehive by whacking it with a stick. The bees are going to sting if you harm their hive, but if you approach them peacefully you can have all the honey you want.
Outside of another holocaust, where people are dominated to physical submission and terminal imprisonment, there will be no safety from suicide bombers and missile shellers for as long as aggressive attacks, including restriction of aid, continue to be perpetrated. War can never achieve peace. It can achieve decimation or subjugation, but never peace.
And you can bet that as long as the Gazans have any weapons to use, and are under attack, people will use them. David always fights Goliath in the end, even if Goliath might sometimes win. The Palestinians are as equally human as anyone else, and they too have children who they love. And I think most people can agree that the death of a child at the hands of another, due to a bomb, or a gun, or any violent means, would be hard to forgive, no matter where you live. And yet in Gaza (not to mention elsewhere), innocent children (not to mention adults) are suffering and dying due to the senseless proclivity towards violence from the world’s grown-ups. That’s not right.
A child as collateral damage is never justifiable. A baby is never guilty. And so it is fair and not anti-Semitic to note the irony that the survivors of the holocaust would perpetrate such violence against a population so militarily mismatched, when they have the opportunity to avoid repeating the violence they experienced, the watching of their children, their brothers, their sisters, mothers and sons dying, an opportunity to choose a different path that could lead the world in a direction of peace. Israel has that opportunity to militantly explore peace through peaceful means, like conversation. Having lived through the holocaust, and seen such suffering and violence, it is astonishing to me that the Jewish people would look for anything but peace through peaceful means, which is different than indiscriminate bombing and ground attacks.
These people, these people who have died from weapons funded and sometimes produced by America, these Arabs, thousands of them children, hundreds of thousands of civilians, these Gazans, these sitting ducks, the masses of them are left with no weapons but their indomitable spirits, and are effectively powerless to stop the attacks, for as long as Israel wishes to continue them. They can only hunker down.
White phosphorus has been used. White phosphorus can be legally used (under agreed upon international law) only as a smoke screen and a spot-marker. When it is used illegally as an incendiary from above it ignites and showers flames that can burn under water. They will also burn through human skin when contact is made. White phosphorus will burn through to bone, and it has fallen without precision on the people of Gaza. Perhaps this is how some of the 3,000,000,000 annual American taxpayer dollars towards Israel’s military have been used, white phosphorus on children. One child (and this is only one) is now blind because he had to travel from one place to another for supplies, at the wrong time, and white phosphorus fell upon him from the heavens. His mother is probably grateful it wasn’t worse. Hopefully it still isn’t.
Israel’s explicit and expressed strategy in this war has been to use indiscriminate and disproportionate force, until somehow a long term peace can be agreed upon. In what sort of demented mindset is that considered a smart way to peace?
It is not even a way at all. How can any one of us agree that war is a road that will ever get to peace? Only war can lead to peace, true, but it will never get there. Peace is exactly where war ends, because peace is the absence of war. And so for as long as war exists in the world, which means nothing more than war in ourselves, peace has not been achieved. For in order to achieve peace, war must first be stopped. And the only way to stop war is to stop war, beginning within ourselves. Beginning with nonviolence and the weapon of love, in the spirit of the ideals and imaginations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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‘And so what of Gaza?’ You might ask. ‘Remember, Hamas has shelled Israeli neighborhoods.’ Yes, they have, and at tragic loss of innocent humans. But it is important to note that up to this point, Israel has lost a fractional number of lives in comparison to Gaza, almost half of them (five) to friendly fire. This too, all of it, is tragic. But Israel and the United States are in a far better place to negotiate peace from here, by simply starting a conversation instead of abusing their military and economic advantage.
It is important to note again this $3 billion of American taxpayer money that goes towards the Israeli military every year. Excuse me? Who approved that? American money is funding Israeli weaponry so that they can slaughter a neighboring population over which they already held absolute domination? The actions of foreign countries should be of concern to us, certainly, but I can’t support our congress’s almost unanimous (5 nay votes) support for an unnecessary non-binding resolution exclaiming support for Israel, without any deep discussion about the Palestinian plight. It is unhealthy for us as a nation to take such a vested interest in support of any foreign country, ally or not. We should be a friend of foreign countries, never an older brother to beat up adversaries. The United States and Israel are two different countries.
Thus it is unnecessary and unhelpful for us to give such unequivocal political and financial support to another country, especially for such an indiscriminate aggression. And it is unhelpful for Israel in its own interests of peace to perpetrate such warfare. How can anyone think that the way to win a peoples’ hearts and minds, and thus a way to gain peace, would be to drop white phosphorus on their women and children, and to starve them by walling them into utter isolation from the rest of the world? That’s just being the bully next door. Easy to do when you have the US at your side, the big brother that emboldens from across the sea, a safe distance it would seem…
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Please check out the following post by my favorite blogger, Glenn Greenwald, the only guy whose every post I read. His blog, Unclaimed Territory, is at www.Salon.com. He’s saying some very important things almost every day, and is well worth the few minutes it takes to read his thoughtful pieces. The videos linked to in the post I’m linking to, namely the interview with Queen Noor of Jordan (who happens to be a beautiful American) on “Morning Joe” (thankfully absent Joe Scarborough), were the inspiration for writing this, my first blog post, my first encounter with the Queen.
Oh yeah, Richard Haas, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations was there too, along with Pat Buchanan, who happened to be one of the five to vote against the non-binding resolution in unequivocal support for Israel. And while clearly an intelligent man and a skillful political jujitsu artist, Richard Haas was in moral quicksand, and he squirmed as the Queen skewered him with eloquence and a smile, with a reminder about compassion. It is my hope that you will take a few minutes to watch her appearance, and pass it on. And please spread the word about people who are spreading the word…
This is the Link to Glenn Greenwald’s Article
P.s. – It will take about thirty minutes to read the article and watch the video clips, because I encourage you to also watch the link to the brief clip to Bill Moyers highlighted in the article, as well as the link to an interview with the bellicose Joe Scarborough over torture when he isn’t absent from his show.. But don’t wait until you have thirty minutes to click on the link. At least give a lingering eye to Mr. Greenwald’s written work, without which this my first blog post wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have been informed or inspired enough to do it. If you like his work, you can link to his RSS feed, which updates you to future posts. Speaking of which, I hope to do future posts also, and if you’ve made it this far, maybe you’d like to receive them. If so, I’ve got an RSS feed too, whatever that means.
(Future post: The meaning of RSS–better than an anti-climax!)
