Is This The Best We Can Do

“The struggle for human rights does not differentiate between blood, 
between people of different religions, ethnicities and nationalities, 
and it is incumbent upon us to be consistent. The struggle for the legitimate rights 
of one nation cannot be an excuse to decimate the rights of another. 
That is a basic principle: not only of international law, but of simple moral decency. 
Without this, all that’s left is a cycle of blind, indiscriminate revenge.
Our stance is clear: every human being deserves a life of safety and freedom. 
Palestinians and Israelis both.”

- Avner Gvaryahu, Director, Breaking the Silence
Breaking the Silence is a non-profit organization of Israeli army veterans 
speaking out about the atrocities they are forced to commit.

If the Future were to grade us on our care of Earth and each other, at best we'd be on probation. If we were graded on our capacity to get along, we'd flunk. Reading the recent headlines of horror, I remember the words of a friend: The opposite of enemy is personal responsibility.

Does personal responsibility trickle up to our leaders? Does it hydrate society like the lateral flow of a river that hydrates a floodplain? Lateral connectivity feeds underground food webs that keep seeds and soil alive; it feeds microbes and plants that provide refugia for larvae, and young in need of protection. A trickle becomes a stream that becomes a river that knows how to nourish the sea. Water seeks connection. It moves where it is needed. The Future would rejoice.

The recent actions of Hamas are appalling and cannot be tolerated. And, they are the actions of people driven mad with trauma and grief. We all have our breaking point. At some point we snap. Violence is a form of communication. It is well-documented that the Israeli government and its army continue to provoke and oppress Palestinians, especially in Gaza. How can Israel expect peace and security as a result?

For decades, the U.S. has supported policies of assassination and torment in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Latin America. Odd, then, that we continue to be surprised by the flood of migrants who live under intolerable conditions created by those policies. Recently, at a restaurant in Los Angeles, I was talking with the parking attendant. In his native Honduras, he had been a teacher with a promising career. He was happy. He owned his own home. But, because he worked for a government school, he was targeted by violent gangs and had to run for his life. When he fled he lost everything. Luckily for him, he has family in L.A. 

People differentiate between ideologies and ethnicities, but Death and suffering do not. Palestinian children who have perished in this latest convulsion of violence are just as dead as Israeli ones. Russian casualties are as dead as Ukrainians. Where are the leaders of the world inciting peace? 

Trauma, loss and grief are universal among humans and across species: this includes elephants, parrots, chimps and whales. Even llamas. My friend has a friend who had a llama and a pony that shared a paddock for more than twenty years. My friend happened to visit on the day the pony died: the llama was inconsolable. She watched as the llama tried in vain to lift the pony to its feet, moaning and braying in an agony of grief. 

Animals and Nature have long tried to warn us when violence is near. After the genocide in Rwanda, people searched for signs that would have alerted us, and discovered that, in fact, in the days before the slaughter, the signs were everywhere. Market vendors spontaneously wore black, navy blue and dark brown, instead of their usual bright colors. Birds were silent at dawn. Shepherds and their flocks didn't come home, preferring to remain in the hills. Some say the moon blushed pink and tilted at odd angles above the horizon, and even the stars moved to unfamiliar locations. Looking back, we might wonder what extravagant messages were danced by animals and written in sky before Hiroshima and Nagasaki; before Auschwitz, Gallipoli and Wounded Knee; before Columbus and the epidemic of colonization. What were the signs that we missed in Israel/Palestine before things boiled over?

We live in a culture that sees adversaries lurking around every corner. Western literature and media reinforce this by placing conflict at the heart of every story. This is why Deena Metzger  teaches Literature of Restoration as an antidote: it is a literature that seeks alliance, and the missing voices of ancestors and Earth.

Conflicts rooted in identity are notoriously difficult to resolve. When our identity is attacked, we feel that our survival is threatened, and most of us would do anything to survive. It's a hard-wired instinct for all animals, including humans.

Questions of identity can also surprise us. Recently, I was doing some research in a book called Groundwater in the Arab Middle East. It's so comprehensive and clear, meticulously researched and written with love. The author is German. As I read the Table of Contents and then the text, I noticed that he omitted any mention of Israel, though he writes at length about aquifers in the Occupied Territories and the aquifer below the West Bank that Israel has commandeered. It was an unexpected jolt to realize how completely Israel had been erased from the map - by a German. I bear no personal animosity toward the author. If we met in person and had a conversation, we would likely agree on certain things. But I do not know him, and can only speak for myself. For me as a Jew, Israel's violent birth is problematic. I do not view Israel as a democracy: Palestinians cannot vote, though they comprise about twenty percent of the total population. Israel's ongoing aggressions are not only abhorrent but contrary to Jewish values. You can't divide a land with barbed wire and call it holy. It doesn't matter who begat whom or how devout you are if your life contradicts the values you profess to hold dear. That's something that no G-d would ask or accept. I believe that, as Jews, we have a responsibility to be global leaders in compassion, peacemaking, and protection of the vulnerable.

U.S. policy in the Middle East, as elsewhere, is also problematic. What moral authority do Americans have as peacemakers? We are the only country in the world that has dropped atomic bombs. Like Israel, the U.S. occupies lands that once belonged to people we have murdered, mistreated and disdained. Our economy was built on the backs of enslaved people. America touts the legal protection of free speech, yet we are intolerant of dissent and disagreement. We're banning books, for goodness sake. Peace cannot come from silencing the voices we prefer not to hear, nor from refusing to have conversations about things that make us uncomfortable. This includes calling out Israel and other nations for human rights abuses and hypocrisy. Internationally, we lead the world in greed, pollution and waste. We've exported our products, our ways of doing business, and our culture to the world, and now most countries behave as we do. The outsize influence of money shapes all important laws and decisions. Those that object or get in the way are marginalized and attacked. We compete in the frenzied destruction of Earth.

My understanding of the path to peace has been shaped by many courageous people. In my heart, I carry the words of two Liberian men in particular. One was a fighter, the other a peacemaker. I met the fighter in a community council discussing dreams and the aftermath of Liberia's civil war. His wrenching story continues to haunt me. During the war, he was forced to commit atrocities. After the ceasefire, he began to have a recurring dream that has tormented him ever since: in the dream he is pounding on his neighbor's door, begging to know, Is there mercy enough for me?

The Liberian peacemaker, Sam G. Doe, spoke of his work with child soldiers when the civil war was still raging. He told of his visit to one of their training camps. At first the children disrupted the meeting, refusing to listen. But Sam persisted and eventually the kids got quiet. By the time he had to leave, they were begging him to stay. As he drove down the long, dusty road back to the main highway, he watched them in his rearview mirror, waving and calling until he could no longer see them. Sam said, We must deliberately move into the field and lavish love on those incapable of loving. To me, that's the magic.

Now more than ever, that's the challenge, isn't it? To bathe our broken hearts in love until love becomes us.