Tag Archives: Israel

On My Mind

Where to Stand

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In my journal last night, I wrote that maybe what I’m experiencing is cognitive dissonance. My brain must have worked on this as I slept because I woke up with a structure of what to say, a structure that I’ve spent a month trying to find.

I grew up learning about a land connected to my ancestry through thousands of years and I was elated to have three opportunities to visit.

I grew up understanding that violence is not the answer, never the answer.

As an adult, I found myself teaching a course with the goal of understanding criticism of the government of this land and engaging with it to develop opinions based on critical thought rather than doctrine or dogma.

As an adult, I have maintained the stance that violence is not the way. I’ve written a blog series about peace building, a book about peace building. My stance here is not new.

I would like to think that I heard about Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israeli citizens with the same horror as everyone else. It was reminiscent of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, after all. A clear aggressor, a clear catalyst, an incredible toll on innocent people. Governments react, civilians shoulder the consequences.

But I’ve seen that there are people who don’t view a terrorist attack as unjustified, and their outrage did not mirror mine.

I live in a town that has posters of Israeli civilians taken hostage by Hamas hanging on lampposts. I live in a town that hosted not only a pro-Israel gathering in one of our many squares, but also a pro-Israel concert at the most prestigious of our theatres. I work in a school with people from around the world, and a flyer for a march supporting Gaza appeared in our staff room. My student council students have been struggling with how to word a social media post urging peace; we needed mere moments after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to do the same. But the fact that they are struggling means awareness of nuance, and I cannot fault teenagers for that.

That I live in a small town in a country with strict laws against hate speech means that I’m pretty well insulated. I’ve read about antisemitic rallies, protests, and acts rather than seen them myself. I am grateful for this. But I know people are experiencing terrible things, and it is the discomfort that comes from this knowledge that spurred this blog post.

This blog post is not about the myriad reasons over decades, or centuries, or millennia that could have led to Hamas’s terrorist attack. This blog post is not about the myriad reasons over decades, or centuries, or millennia that could have led to Israel’s response. This blog post is not about who is breaking which laws of war, committing which war crimes, or harming the most civilians.

I want to say clearly that I do not support the idea that the sides of this conflict are morally equivalent. There is a moral wrong here, and it lies with Hamas. It lies with Hamas because their founding tenant is to destroy the nation of Israel, Jewish people, and Judaism. That Hamas is waging a war based on a strategy of knowing that its Israeli opponent practices any degree of restraint should be all that needs to be said.

In terms of civilian response, I find it morally unacceptable that any voices are allowed to call for the destruction of a nation and of a specific group of people, and it is dangerous and hypocritical for this to take place under the guise of voicing support for another group. Antisemitism is loud and it is real. It is one thing to call for peace; it is another to use a call for peace for one group of civilians as an excuse to preach violence against another group of civilians.

But it would also be wrong to deny the immense toll on civilian life. I find the use of the new term “humanitarian pause” disturbing because it suggests that not only is a cease-fire an impossibility, but that it would be futile to work towards one. This new term has removed cease-fire from the language of war, thereby eliminating the concept. War is about power, and language is power.

I grew up understanding that violence is not the answer, never the answer. I believe this to be true.

After Hamas’s attack, it took me many days to decide where to lend financial support because the idea of valuing one set of human lives over another made me nauseous. In the end, I made two donations, realizing that I didn’t have to choose. Civilians are suffering and I cannot stand idly by.

I started this post mentioning cognitive dissonance. It believe it plays a role because I am a pacifist at heart and I know that this position does not work in the real world. I am admitting, here and to myself, that pacifism is not the answer. But I believe, too, that moral positions can act as a framework, and this is the way that I hope the world could be. But it is not enough to hope; one must also act.

Cognitive dissonance plays a role because I grew up in a community deeply entrenched in Jewish life and culture and I am living in a profoundly secular society.

Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort of the conflicting identities, conflicting attitudes, that I experience within myself.

The violence is wrong. The civilian toll is wrong. But in this situation, what is right? We cannot assume rational nation-states as actors because, at the minimum, Hamas is neither a nation-state nor rational. So discussions of this war cannot proceed on that basis. What is to be done with a non-rational, non-state actor? What is to be done with a terrorist organization using not only humanity but humanitarian ideals as a weapon against another actor, one that is, at the minimum, a recognized nation-state?

There is too much emotion in these questions to call either side rational. Thousands of years of conflict are anything but rational.

I do not accept any actors, state or non-state, advocating the destruction of any group of people, supporting violence toward any group of people.

We already know who pays in the end because it is already happening. We already know which nations take which sides because they have already done so.

If an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, we will all be left scarred.

And will that be enough?

Jerusalem, Israel – April 2017
On My Mind

On Action

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It seems out of place to comment on the situation (conflict? war? – When does the headline reflect reality, and does it even make a difference to the people who are there?) in Israel and Gaza, but also out of character to say nothing. There has been plenty of politics, plenty of musing over religion on this blog. But I think, or I would like to think, more focus on peace. At least, this is what I hope.

But I know that hope isn’t good enough, that the achievement of peace can mean fighting, it can mean anger, it can mean bloodshed. That the world established an international organization to keep peace after the Second World War says everything I think we need to say about what humanity can do; that the organization is toothless, impotent, rife with its own governmental conflict, gripped by fear, and therefore ineffective tells us about what world governments are afraid of – ceding their own power to do what is better for the whole.

And what we see in situations like this, in all forms of conflict, is that the people who are most affected are very often those who are least involved. Don’t we all want to come and go without fear, hug our loved ones without thinking about a ticking clock, believe in the wishes on stars that we whisper together with children?

I am experienced enough to understand that no, it’s not all as charming as this picture I’m painting, that in fact some are so consumed by rage that they have made it their life’s work to spread hate to others. But I am also experienced enough to know that while the actions of single individuals cannot stop the violence that comes from rage and hate, the actions of single individuals can cause others to stop in their tracks, to reflect, to think twice and then again.

Although I appreciate them because they come from a good place, I do not believe that “thoughts and prayers” make a difference; it is rather action that position everyday people as participants in the wider world. If one person makes the choice to do the right thing, that is one more right thing. And maybe one more leads to yet another. And maybe the realities of everyday people dawn a little brighter.

I am, as always, on the side of humanity, on the side of innocent people, on the side of what is, at the core of my being, right. Don’t we all learn to help elderly people cross the street? What I feel in my heart is the desire to wrap my arms around everyone, all of you, but I know that my circle of influence is far smaller than my circle of concern. So I stretch out my hands to those I can reach, and I hope that you, wherever you are, will join me.

Berlin, Germany – December 2021
Education, On My Mind

Building Peace Means Letting Go

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I saw something beautiful yesterday.

I saw two small children, giggling. They were playing on what is supposed to be a pull-up bar in one of the exercise parks that are all over Singapore. The three adults with them held the children’s hands over the bar and pumped their legs back and forth. The children laughed and squirmed, ready to get down. Once on the ground, they ran off on unsteady, fat little legs. I watched tight little curls and wisp of a ponytail bouncing. The adults reached for the children’s hands and the children reached for each other’s. They couldn’t have been much more than two years old. I watched this scene until the group turned down a lane at the end of the road.

Those children will grow up fast. I wonder what the world will look like as they do. I hope it’s a more peaceful world than the one we have now, and I’m beginning to think that creating that world means letting go of much of what separates us from each other, what makes us see “us” and “them” and not just “people”.

War
Like every Ashkenazi Jewish family, my family has a Holocaust history. But since all of my grandparents and one or two great-grandparents were born in Canada, it’s such that those who didn’t come to Canada before the war (with one exception, I think) didn’t survive. We’ve been Canadian for a long time and it’s my grandparents’ stories about Canada in the 40s and 50s that I grew up hearing.

My sister and I were recently talking about our shared desire to visit Eastern Europe and the conversation revealed different understandings of the role that Poland, Russia, and Lithuania play in our lives. She spoke about feeling ancestral ties to those countries but also regret for not being able to see what our ancestors saw because none of that is there anymore. On the other hand, I’m interested in the people’s history rather than the government and military history that I learned in school. I’m interested in economic recovery and development. It didn’t occur to me to have ancestral ties to anywhere.

We also talked about the concentration camps, which my sister said she had never really been interested in seeing. We talked about the fatigue that is a side-effect of so much study of so much tragedy. There is a point at which you simply can’t take in any more and you stop. I was glued to Holocaust books as a kid and even into college. I haven’t read one since.

But I am and have always been interested in seeing the concentration camps. I’ve always thought of it as an act of defiance. An act of standing my ground and proclaiming my existence. You didn’t want me here. But here I am.

Reconciliation
A conversation with a friend about a month later, however, prompted me to rethink the whole thing. Going over both conversations in my head while out for a run brought a new realization to light and prompted me to write this post. It seems that the way I’ve been thinking about everything above is misaligned with my firm belief in the necessity of peace. I went through a transition with my thinking on peace last year, specifically when I revisited all of my ideas about Israel. It seems that I’ve taken a step back (or perhaps sideways, if I’m being generous to myself) and I would like to correct it.

This is began to understand on my run:

For as long as I can remember, I thought I’d visit the concentration camps with an attitude of victory. We won, you lost. And I’d never really thought past that. But in this scenario, there’s still an “us”, still a “them”. There’s still the misunderstanding and fear that lead to hatred, the result of which is all too apparent far too often.

But now I think that attitude actually misses the entire point. The camps have been preserved to bear witness, to provide evidence, to serve as a constant reminder of what happens when we separate ourselves, invent distinctions between groups, and cut one another off. The camps are a monument and a memorial. They are where the ghosts of the past urge us to do better, to be better. They are not about winning or losing.

So, it is quite another thing for me to visit the concentration camps the way I have visited the beaches at Normandy or killing fields of Cambodia. Visiting the camps in this light means mourning, paying respects to those whose lives were lost too soon. It means being a witness to what happens when we look at life through a lens that compartmentalizes individuals into categories. It means finding the courage, like countless others throughout history, to stand up for what is right in the face of the strongest adversity.

Peace
When I do make that trip to Eastern Europe, I need to make a dedicated effort to deepen my understanding of humanity and the importance of holding all humans together under one umbrella. As a teacher of peace, I cannot approach a conflict without first looking at the humans affected by that conflict. It’s when regular people become the focus of our teaching, our looking back at history, that we can hope to let go of everything that pulled us apart.

That is what peace means.

Peace means looking at the world that we live in and choosing to come together because it’s the only world we have. It means respecting each other’s losses, being happy for each other’s gains, and working for the good of all humanity. It means letting go of what separates us from each other and fighting to maintain what brings us together. It means doing whatever we can so that children the world over can laugh like the children I watched yesterday.

Peace has to come from me. It has to come from you. From all of us. I will do that by letting go of the anger that morphed into defiance that discolored my perception of how to move forward. Peace is not a contest. It’s not a race. There is no winning and there is no losing. Rather, peace is about opening my arms and letting in the world with all of its bruises, scars, rights, and wrongs. It’s about recognizing myself in you and you in me. Peace is about gratitude for having found you there.

This is where peace comes from. This is the way I want to live and the world I’m committed to building.