[lit-ideas] Embrace the path of Gandhi & King in the ME
- From: "Stan Spiegel" <writeforu2@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 20:10:51 -0400
Tikkun Community NewsletterHere's Michael Lerner's solution to the Israeli /
Palestinian conflict. His critique is not just to criticize Israel, though he
picks on Israel first. Read his critique of the Palestinians as well.
Stan
Portland, ME
When Will They Ever Learn?
by Rabbi Michael Lerner
When will they ever learn.that violence is not the path to security?
Today we write those words about Israel and Palestine, yesterday about
the U.S. in Iraq, tomorrow about China in Tibet, and it goes on and on. And the
only solution is to break the chain of pain and say, "No more-we will not
respond to violence with violence. We will follow the teaching of the Torah
that says 'love the stranger' and Jesus that says 'turn the other cheek' and we
will stop this madness forever if we could really sustain the courage to do
that."
This is a tough moment to say this point-and yet it needs to be said to
both sides. I start with Israel only because it is the greater military power,
but I'll get to a critique of the Palestinians too, so read this whole thing
through. Tikkun's progressive middle path for Middle East Peace rejects any
attempt to say that one side is the pure bad and the other the pure good.
So, the details of the day. Israel is the military power occupying the
West Bank and surrounding Gaza. By all international standards it has no right
to do either, but if it does so it has an absolute obligation to treat the
civilian population with certain respect and basic human rights. Israel
continually fails to do this and has become one (not the worst, but one) of the
world's major human rights violators.
No wonder that people are asking their Jewish neighbors, "Do you really
think that is morally acceptable to cut off electricity and water for a million
and a half Gazans as a retribution for the killing of two Israeli soldiers and
the kidnap of a third? Isn't this the kind of 'collective punishment' that
ruthless dictators have used against the civilian populations of countries that
they controlled to the horror of the rest of the world? Don't you realize that
when you face acts of terror against Israeli civilians that it is because the
Palestinians have no army, no airplanes, no tanks, so they fight with their
improvised weapons as resistance forces have always done, and it makes no sense
to call that "terror," particularly when the targets are members of the armed
forces on active duty.
And don't you think that the U.S. should be allowed to stand up for
human rights there rather than be restrained by the fear that anyone
criticizing Israel will be described as anti-Israel and their political futures
put in danger by the AIPAC-related crowds that have been so effective in
shaping the media and the public discourse in this country? And while we are at
it, don't you think that it's really not great for the Jews to be identified
with AIPAC and neo-cons and their spokespeople in Congress like Senator
Lieberman who support the war in Iraq and who have become a major voice for
trying to push the US into conflict with Iran?"
Those who care about the Jewish people, want to preserve it and protect
it, want to see a safe and secure Israel and a safe and secure Jewish people
all around the world, have to shout out now in very clear words: "Stop what you
are doing, Israel, not just at the moment, but in the essence of your policies.
Forget about taking over the part of the West Bank within the Wall built by the
Israeli Right and their Labor party collaborators. Get out of the West Bank,
and do it in a spirit of generosity, not of resentment and begrudging response
to world pressure. Do it in a spirit that communicates that you recognize the
humanity of the Palestinian people and recognize their suffering! Imagine, for
example, how different the feelings would have been this week in the Arab world
if, after killing a family on a Gaza beach through an IDF shelling, the
President and Prime Minister of Israel had together gone to visit the family of
the deceased to offer apologies and to share in the mourning of this loss,
rather than trying to prove (unsuccessfully) that it wasn't really Israel's
shell after all! Imagine how different things would be if today the Israeli
government said, "We will find a way to create an international consortium to
provide reparations for those Palestinians who have lost their homes in
1948-1967, and those whose homes were unfairly bulldozed to support the needs
of the Israeli settlers on the West Bank!
Imagine how different things would be if Israel could say, "We recognize
that we have the greatest power in the area, that we face no credible threats
from our neighbors, that our actions since 1948 have been ungenerous and
sometimes outright immoral in the way we've treated not only Palestinians
outside our state but also Arabs who have lived and paid taxes inside our
state, and we want to stop all that, stop the escalation of weaponry and the
arrogance of power, so we will take the first steps to show how generous the
Jewish people can be when it follows its Torah's command to "love the stranger"
and then announces concrete acts of love and generosity! Nothing less than this
will work.
That is the way to break the chain of pain. The only way. And that's why
eventually the path that Tikkun put forward years ago in our Resolution for
Middle East Peace, and then in our support for the Geneva Accord, will be
recognized as necessary components of peace. But we are not believers in power
politics-in the final analysis what counts is transformations in consciousness
and in the heart, and that is why the world so badly needs the New Bottom Line
with its call to privileging love over power. Unrealistic, you say? No. What is
unrealistic, in fact pure craziness, is for Israel to keep acting the way it
has been acting for all these many years, imagining a different result from the
same behavior.
So, does that mean that there's one side that is good and the other evil?
No, the world rarely works that way.
So, we have a message for the Palestinian people also: Violence doesn't
work and it is not working for you. You have every democratic right to elect a
government that declares it does not recognize the very existence of the State
of Israel, and that sees the fundamental crime not in expanding into the West
Bank and Gaza in 1967 but rather in its coming into existence in the first
place in 1948.
Sure, you can do that. But if your government that you elect says it is
in a war, then don't be surprised to find that war getting carried to your
doors, to your electricity and water supply, and to your children. If it's war
that you want, you'll get it.
But if it is peace, then there is only one way: totally, 100% renounce
violence, renounce the articulators of that violence (whether they be in Hamas
or in Fatah). Embrace the path of Martin Luther King, jr. and of Mahatma Gandhi
and of the later Nelson Mandela, and physically restrain those people among you
who will resort to violence or even to violent speech. If you want to win, you
can't do it by kidnapping, or sending missiles across the border, or throwing
rocks. You must be disciplined soldiers of non-violence in your actions and
words. You must not only unequivocally announce your support for the Right of
Israel to exist, you must put forward your vision of a peace in which you live
together with Israel in two sovereign states.
And you must acknowledge that when it was Jews who were climbing out of
the concentration camps and gaschambers and crematoria of Europe and
desperately looking to return to their ancient homeland that it was your
Palestinian leaders who, in alliance with British imperialism, tried to keep
those refugees from settling in Palestine, thereby confirming to them the
previous experiences they had in Arab countries where they were often treated
as second class citizens. Acknowledge that when offered a two state solution in
1947 it was your own people who rejected it and denied that Jews could have any
state of their own, while Muslims could have more than a dozen states in which
their language, culture and religion was the official position of the society.
Speak about that, teach it to your children, and enunciate it in Arabic
for everyone to hear, and you will have some credibility in talking about the
only thing that will make it possible for you to win: a strategy of
open-hearted reconciliation with Israel and the Jewish people. So you must
reject the anti-Israel lefties who give you the fantasy that you can keep on
talking about the destruction of Israel, or embracing fanatics like the
president of Iran, and then hope that Israel will be gentle and generous. It's
a fantasy.
Your only power is moral credibility, and you build that by giving
yourself to that vision of peace and non-violence and love of the enemy. Don't
listen to the people who tell you you have a right to struggle-because of
course you have the right. The question is not whether you have the right, but
whether it s SMÅRT to follow that path. Those who care about Palestinians will
come to a different conclusion: that the smarter path, the path most likely to
lead to an end of the Occupation and to peace and security for the Palestinian
people, will come through developing the kind of compassion for the other, for
the oppressor, combined with absolute commitment to non-violence that made
Martin Luther King Jr. and Mandela so successful. Your misleaders have taken
you on a self-destructive path, and a path that has led you to immoral actions
against innocent civilians. Stop that path-it brings only more suffering and no
liberation.
This is the message that our ancient prophets have been trying to
communicate in various languages: that the only path that can work is the path
of peace, social justice, love, compassion, kindness and generosity. And the
path to peace is a path of peace.
When will they ever learn?
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun and national chair of the Tikkun
Community/ Network of Spiritual Progressives. Join us at
www.spiritualprogressives.org. His most recent book is The Left Hand of God:
Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006).
His most recent book on the Middle East is Healing Israel//Palestine (North
Atlantic Books, 2003). RabbiLerner@xxxxxxxxxxx
To support this message, please Join The Tikkun Community or the Network
of Spiritual Progressives at www.tikkun.org. We are the movement fighting for a
New Bottom Line of love and kindness, caring and generosity. Not only in regard
to Israel/Palestine, but also in our support for an immediate withdrawal of US
troops from Iraq. And a Global Marshall Plan--plank 7 of the Network of
Spiritual Progressives' Spiritual Covenant with America. You are hereby given
permission to circulate this message widely. Please read our Core Vision and
our book The Left Hand of God. NSP@xxxxxxxxxx
For Israeli peace voices, please read "Suffering from Paralysis of
Thought" in Friday, June 30th Ha'aretz Prof. Zeev Sternhell of the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem shows how the path of the Israeli government continues
to be as we in Tikkun magazine described it 20 years ago: immoral and stupid.
To confirm, read the lead editorial "The Government is Losing its Head " in
Ha'aretz also.
July 4th Picnics celebrating INTER-DEPENDENCE DAY.
Many local chapters of the Tikkun Community and the Network of Spiritual
Progressives are celebrating July 4th with events that will focus on all that
we are most proud of in the US--the struggles of ordinary people to expand
democratic rights from the very narrow conceptions in 1776 to a much broader
notion today, and renewing that struggle in the face of the Bush
Administration's attempts to destroy what has been best about America. Check
with your local NSP or Tikkun Community chapter.
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA Tikkun, NSP, and Beyt Tikkun PICNIC JULY 4: at
Cordinices Park Noon to 4 p.m. VEGETARIAN POT LUCK (or salmon, tuna, cod,
bass, snapper, halibut, trout and sole also ok for our barbecue pit--but no
other fish, no chicken, no meat of any sort). Bring children!!! Musical
instruments!!! And bring songs, poems and stories of what we celebrate in
America. ADMISSION: one vegetarian dish per person or couple to serve at
least10 people, plus serving utensils plus one NON-ALCHOLIC DRINK TO SHARE
(state law prohibits alochol in this partk). Location: Euclid a tiny bit south
of Eunice, opposite the Berkeley Rose Garden. Take Highway 80 to the
University Ave. exit in Berkeley, take University east till it ends at Oxford,
left on Oxford till Cedar, right on Cedar till Euclid, and left on Euclid up
4-6 blocks (depending on which side you are counting) till Cordinices Park.
Bring friends!!! Meet new people. Celebrate what is best in America--and what
we are still struggling to achieve.
...
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