Karl Frederick
01-02-2009, 07:11 PM
The conflict in Gaza hurts just to contemplate. Here are some constructive ideas passed along by Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute in his latest message:
Dear friends,
Probably by now you have seen a lot of news and arguments from "both sides" regarding the current events in Gaza. If you haven't, this link will provide you with much to think about:
<http: files.tikkun.org="" current="" article.php="" 20090101114950300="">
<http: files.tikkun.org="" current="" article.php="" 20090101114950300="">Tikkun Current Thinking - Gaza Update, Jan. 2, , 2009. A range of views from Beni Morris and Jonathan Mark to Uri Avneri, Cris Hedges, Gideon Levy and Yos (https://files.tikkun.org/current/article.php/20090101114950300)
But I sense this horrendous situation calls us into a broader perspective, a fuller response. This calling goes far beyond the specific conflict, reaching into the deep history and humanity that bind us all. In addition to stopping bloodshed and destruction, healing wounds and hatreds, and clarifying victimhood and oppression,
there is something eerily universal about what is happening there.
Perhaps we are looking into a mirror and not quite recognizing ourselves...
The following two commentaries, both received by email, are reaching toward that deeper, broader, higher perspective. The first imagines Obama responding to the Gaza crisis like his speech about race during his campaign. The second begins to wrestle with some of the issues that might be raised in such a speech.
Our collective journey is long and hard. It asks so much from all of us. Blessings on the Journey.
Coheartedly,
Tom
PS: CORRECTION: In my last email I mistakenly named the Venezuelan
leader Ceasar Chavez. The President of Venezuela is Hugo Chavez.
Cesar Chavez was head of the United Farm Workers.
=============
Letter to Obama: Obama on Gaza
by Alan Levin
Perhaps, when Barack Obama does speak out about Gaza, he will say something like this: "Once again the world is witness to the tragedy of the conflict in what is known to Christians, Muslims and Jews, as the Holy Land. Many Americans feel a deep connection in their hearts to the stories of events that formed the basis of these three great religions. Because of this, because this is an area of the world in which great competing interests (including our own) struggle, and because of the human suffering that is taking place, I am choosing to speak out. I do this, careful to note once again, that we have only one President at a time, and I speak only of my own vision and concerns and intention, as President-elect." And then......
People all over the world, watching the horror that is now happenning in Gaza are waiting to see what President-elect Obama will say when he breaks his silence. It is one of those eerie moments. Despite the principle that there is only one President, he has spoken out on Mumbai, on the U.S. economy, the auto industry bailout, and other matters. Yet, regarding Israel and the Palestinians, what can he say?
The possibility of his forcefully criticizing the Israeli attacks, even calling them an over-reaction, is negligible. It is well known that no American politician survives such statements. It also would go against the already media established and enforced “American view” that Israel is only defending itself.
Yet, my sense is that most people “know” that he “knows” better. We also know that for him this is one issue amongst dozens, and stepping over the very hard-line of established consensus on anything concerning Israel may explode like dynamite, blowing up his chances to move forward on everything else. We wait, holding our breath, hoping the Palestinians will not go under the now proverbial bus.
There is another possibility. Obama, and perhaps only Obama, could deliver the Israel/Palestine equivalent of his “race speech”, the one that came when the Reverand Wright controversy began. It was this speech that made so many of us hopeful. We saw that here was a man capable of things beyond ordinary politics; a man who is a healer and teacher, a man who can hold complexity and who transcends conflict and brings compassion to those entrenched in rigidity and anger. Now is the time for Barack Obama to turn this kind of attention to the Middle East.
He cannot sidestep this issue. Israel/Palestine is not a side issue.
It is central to everything that is happening regarding U.S. relations in the world. Resolving the conflict, giving full attention to being a forceful and fair mediator of the conflict, would turn the image of America around in the minds of the people of the world. Not doing so, risks the escalation of conflicts in other parts of the world with costs we can ill afford at this time. Not taking forceful action will have great costs and risks losing ground on the domestic and foreign fronts he faces, not to mention our needs to address the ecological crisis.
He has the ability, the knowledge, the sensitivity. More than one wise commentator has suggested that the roots of peace are psychological, even sprititual, and that the political solutions will follow. First and foremost is the need for a voice from this most powerful nation that expresses understanding of the wounds, grief and rage of the people of both sides of the conflict. Second, the willingness to put the power of his office and this country towards the resolution.
His eloquence goes far beyond anything I can suggest. I only suggest he reflect deeply and put his heart into it, including at least the following.
1. Acknowledge the role of the Holocaust and centuries of Jewish persectution, including anti-semitism in the United States as playing a role in the establishment of Israel and the force of feelings amongst Jewish people regarding the security of Israel.
2. Acknowledge the role of European colonialism and centuries of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim propaganda in the Christian nations (including the negative stereotyping in U.S. movies and other media) towards Arab people in building the distrust that now exists.
3. Acknowledge that the history of the establishment of Israel is seen by two very different points of view, one as a liberation for the Jews, one as a catastophe for hundereds of thousands of Palestinians who were displaced.
4. Offer to establish a team of peacemaker diplomats that will engage with Hamas, Fatah and the Israeli government to forge the basic structure of the two state solution that ends the occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel and provides for security from violence by both sides that has the majority support of both Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
5. Offer to engage the great powers of the world to provide massive support for the building of a viable Palestinian state, honoring the democratic right of the Palestinian people to choose their own leaders in implementing the building of this state.
Finally, demand a cease fire and the stop the closures of supplies to Gaza. Stop the killing and maiming and collective punishment so that the peace and justice process can begin.
Alan Levin
Nyack, NY
<[email protected]>
==================
excerpt from
Starhawk on Gaza
.... I don't get how my own people can be doing this. Or rather, I do get it. I am a Jew, by birth and upbringing, born six years after the Holocaust ended, raised on the myth and hope of Israel. The myth goes like this:
For two thousand years we wandered in exile, homeless and persecuted, nearly destroyed utterly by the Nazis. But out of that suffering was born one good thing -- the homeland that we have come back to, our own land at last, where we can be safe, and proud, and strong.
That's a powerful story, a moving story. There's only one problem with it - it leaves the Palestinians out. It has to leave them out, for if we were to admit that the homeland belonged to another people, well, that spoils the story.
The result is a kind of psychic blind spot where the Palestinians are concerned. If you are truly invested in Israel as the Jewish homeland, the Jewish state, then you can't let the Palestinians be real to you. It's like you can't really focus on them. Golda Meir said, The Palestinians, who are they? They don't exist. We hear, There is no partner for peace, There is no one to talk to.
And so Israel, a modern state with high standards of hygiene, a state rooted in a religion that requires washing your hands before you eat and regular, ritual baths, builds settlements that don't bother to construct sewage treatment plants. They just dump raw sewage onto the Palestinian fields across the fence, somewhat like a spaceship
ejecting its wastes into the void. I am truly not making this up:
I've seen it, smelled it, and it's a known though shameful fact. But if the Palestinians aren't really real - who are they? They don't exist! then the land they inhabit becomes a kind of void in the psyche, and it isn't really real, either. At times, in those border villages, walking the fencelines of settlements, you feel like you have slipped into a science fiction movie, where parallel universes exist in the same space, but in different strands of reality, that never touch.
When I was on the West Bank, during Israeli incursions the Israeli military would often take over a Palestinian house to billet their soldiers. Many times, they would simply lock the family who owned it into one room, and keep them there, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days - parents, grandparents, kids and all. I've sat with a family, singing to the children while soldiers trashed their house, and I've been detained by a group of soldiers playing cards in the kitchen with a family locked in the other room. (I got out of that one but that's another story.)
Its a kind of uneasy feeling, having something locked away in a room in your house that you can't look at. Ever caught a mouse in a glue trap? And you can't bear to watch it suffer, so you leave the room and close the door and don't come back until it's really, really dead.
Like a horrific fractal, the locked room repeats on different scales.
The Israelis have built a wall to lock away the West Bank. And Gaza itself is one huge, locked room. Close the borders, keep food and medical supplies and necessities from getting through, and perhaps they will just quietly fade out of existence and stop spoiling our story.
All we want is a return to calm, the Israeli ambassador says. All we want is peace.
One way to get peace is to exterminate what threatens you. In fact, that may be the prime directive of the last few thousand years.
But attempts to exterminate pests breed resistance, whether you're dealing with insects or bacteria or people. The more insecticides you pour on a field, the more pests you have to deal with because insecticides are always more potent at killing the beneficial bugs than the pesky ones.
The harshness, the crackdowns, the border closings, the checkpoints, the assassinations, the incursions, the building of settlements deep into Palestinian territory, all the daily frustrations and humiliations of occupation, have been breeding the conditions for Hamas, or something like it, to thrive. If Israel truly wants peace, there's a more subtle, a more intelligent and more effective strategy to pursue than simply trying to kill the enemy and anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity.
It's this: Instead of killing what threatens you, feed what you want to grow. Consider in what conditions peace can thrive, and create them, just as you would prepare the bed for the crops you want to plant. Find those among your opponents who also want peace, and support them. Make alliances. Offer your enemies incentives to change, and reward your friends.
Of course, to follow such a strategy, you must actually see and know your enemy. If they are nothing to you but cartoon characters of terrorists, you will not be able to tell one from another, to discern the religious fanatic from the guy muttering under his breath, "F-ing Hammas, they closed the cinema again!"
And you must be willing to give something up. No one gets peace if your basic bargaining position is, "I get everything I want, and you eat my shit." You might get a temporary victory, but it will never be a peaceful one.
To know and see the enemy, you must let them into the story. They must become real to you, nuanced, distinctive as individuals.
But when we let the Palestinians into the story, it changes. Oh, how painfully it changes! For there is no way to tell a new story, one that includes both peoples of the land, without starting like this:
In our yearning for a homeland, in our attempts as a threatened and traumatized people to find safety and power, we have done a great wrong to another people, and now we must atone.
Just try saying it. If you, like me, were raised on that other story, just try this one out. Say it three times. It hurts, yes, but it might also bring a great, liberating sense of relief with it.
And if you're not Jewish, if you're American, if you're white, if you're German, if you're a thousand other things, really, if you're a human being, there's probably some version of that story that is true for you.
Out of our own great need and fear and pain, we have often done great harm, and we are called to atone. To atone is to be at one - to stop drawing a circle that includes our tribe and excludes the other, and start drawing a larger circle that takes everyone in.
How do we atone? Open your eyes. Look into the face of the enemy, and see a human being, flawed, distinct, unique and precious. Stop killing. Start talking. Compost the shit and the rot and feed the olive trees.
Act. Cross the line....
Starhawk
<[email protected]>
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TO SUPPORT THE CO-INTELLIGENCE INSTITUTE & TOM ATLEE'S WORK...
Please send a donation of any amount -- $25, $50, $100, $500 or more
-- to
The Co-Intelligence Institute
PO Box 493
Eugene, OR 97440
or use your Visa or MasterCard to make an online donation at The Co-Inteligence Institute (https://co-intelligence.org/donations.html)
Do let me know when you've mailed a donation, so I can add it to our tally right away. Including your email address on your check will help me keep track of your gift.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Your donations to the Co-Intelligence Institute are fully tax-deductible
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
________________________________
Tom Atlee • The Co-Intelligence Institute • PO Box 493 • Eugene, OR 97440 The Co-Intelligence Institute (https://www.co-intelligence.org) • Innovations in Democracy (https://www.democracyinnovations.org)
Read THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY • The Tao of Democracy - Home Page (https://www.taoofdemocracy.com) Tom Atlee's blog Evolving Collective Intelligence (https://www.evolvingcollectiveintelligence.org)
Please support our work. • Your donations are fully tax-deductible.</[email protected]></[email protected]></http:></http:>
Dear friends,
Probably by now you have seen a lot of news and arguments from "both sides" regarding the current events in Gaza. If you haven't, this link will provide you with much to think about:
<http: files.tikkun.org="" current="" article.php="" 20090101114950300="">
<http: files.tikkun.org="" current="" article.php="" 20090101114950300="">Tikkun Current Thinking - Gaza Update, Jan. 2, , 2009. A range of views from Beni Morris and Jonathan Mark to Uri Avneri, Cris Hedges, Gideon Levy and Yos (https://files.tikkun.org/current/article.php/20090101114950300)
But I sense this horrendous situation calls us into a broader perspective, a fuller response. This calling goes far beyond the specific conflict, reaching into the deep history and humanity that bind us all. In addition to stopping bloodshed and destruction, healing wounds and hatreds, and clarifying victimhood and oppression,
there is something eerily universal about what is happening there.
Perhaps we are looking into a mirror and not quite recognizing ourselves...
The following two commentaries, both received by email, are reaching toward that deeper, broader, higher perspective. The first imagines Obama responding to the Gaza crisis like his speech about race during his campaign. The second begins to wrestle with some of the issues that might be raised in such a speech.
Our collective journey is long and hard. It asks so much from all of us. Blessings on the Journey.
Coheartedly,
Tom
PS: CORRECTION: In my last email I mistakenly named the Venezuelan
leader Ceasar Chavez. The President of Venezuela is Hugo Chavez.
Cesar Chavez was head of the United Farm Workers.
=============
Letter to Obama: Obama on Gaza
by Alan Levin
Perhaps, when Barack Obama does speak out about Gaza, he will say something like this: "Once again the world is witness to the tragedy of the conflict in what is known to Christians, Muslims and Jews, as the Holy Land. Many Americans feel a deep connection in their hearts to the stories of events that formed the basis of these three great religions. Because of this, because this is an area of the world in which great competing interests (including our own) struggle, and because of the human suffering that is taking place, I am choosing to speak out. I do this, careful to note once again, that we have only one President at a time, and I speak only of my own vision and concerns and intention, as President-elect." And then......
People all over the world, watching the horror that is now happenning in Gaza are waiting to see what President-elect Obama will say when he breaks his silence. It is one of those eerie moments. Despite the principle that there is only one President, he has spoken out on Mumbai, on the U.S. economy, the auto industry bailout, and other matters. Yet, regarding Israel and the Palestinians, what can he say?
The possibility of his forcefully criticizing the Israeli attacks, even calling them an over-reaction, is negligible. It is well known that no American politician survives such statements. It also would go against the already media established and enforced “American view” that Israel is only defending itself.
Yet, my sense is that most people “know” that he “knows” better. We also know that for him this is one issue amongst dozens, and stepping over the very hard-line of established consensus on anything concerning Israel may explode like dynamite, blowing up his chances to move forward on everything else. We wait, holding our breath, hoping the Palestinians will not go under the now proverbial bus.
There is another possibility. Obama, and perhaps only Obama, could deliver the Israel/Palestine equivalent of his “race speech”, the one that came when the Reverand Wright controversy began. It was this speech that made so many of us hopeful. We saw that here was a man capable of things beyond ordinary politics; a man who is a healer and teacher, a man who can hold complexity and who transcends conflict and brings compassion to those entrenched in rigidity and anger. Now is the time for Barack Obama to turn this kind of attention to the Middle East.
He cannot sidestep this issue. Israel/Palestine is not a side issue.
It is central to everything that is happening regarding U.S. relations in the world. Resolving the conflict, giving full attention to being a forceful and fair mediator of the conflict, would turn the image of America around in the minds of the people of the world. Not doing so, risks the escalation of conflicts in other parts of the world with costs we can ill afford at this time. Not taking forceful action will have great costs and risks losing ground on the domestic and foreign fronts he faces, not to mention our needs to address the ecological crisis.
He has the ability, the knowledge, the sensitivity. More than one wise commentator has suggested that the roots of peace are psychological, even sprititual, and that the political solutions will follow. First and foremost is the need for a voice from this most powerful nation that expresses understanding of the wounds, grief and rage of the people of both sides of the conflict. Second, the willingness to put the power of his office and this country towards the resolution.
His eloquence goes far beyond anything I can suggest. I only suggest he reflect deeply and put his heart into it, including at least the following.
1. Acknowledge the role of the Holocaust and centuries of Jewish persectution, including anti-semitism in the United States as playing a role in the establishment of Israel and the force of feelings amongst Jewish people regarding the security of Israel.
2. Acknowledge the role of European colonialism and centuries of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim propaganda in the Christian nations (including the negative stereotyping in U.S. movies and other media) towards Arab people in building the distrust that now exists.
3. Acknowledge that the history of the establishment of Israel is seen by two very different points of view, one as a liberation for the Jews, one as a catastophe for hundereds of thousands of Palestinians who were displaced.
4. Offer to establish a team of peacemaker diplomats that will engage with Hamas, Fatah and the Israeli government to forge the basic structure of the two state solution that ends the occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel and provides for security from violence by both sides that has the majority support of both Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
5. Offer to engage the great powers of the world to provide massive support for the building of a viable Palestinian state, honoring the democratic right of the Palestinian people to choose their own leaders in implementing the building of this state.
Finally, demand a cease fire and the stop the closures of supplies to Gaza. Stop the killing and maiming and collective punishment so that the peace and justice process can begin.
Alan Levin
Nyack, NY
<[email protected]>
==================
excerpt from
Starhawk on Gaza
.... I don't get how my own people can be doing this. Or rather, I do get it. I am a Jew, by birth and upbringing, born six years after the Holocaust ended, raised on the myth and hope of Israel. The myth goes like this:
For two thousand years we wandered in exile, homeless and persecuted, nearly destroyed utterly by the Nazis. But out of that suffering was born one good thing -- the homeland that we have come back to, our own land at last, where we can be safe, and proud, and strong.
That's a powerful story, a moving story. There's only one problem with it - it leaves the Palestinians out. It has to leave them out, for if we were to admit that the homeland belonged to another people, well, that spoils the story.
The result is a kind of psychic blind spot where the Palestinians are concerned. If you are truly invested in Israel as the Jewish homeland, the Jewish state, then you can't let the Palestinians be real to you. It's like you can't really focus on them. Golda Meir said, The Palestinians, who are they? They don't exist. We hear, There is no partner for peace, There is no one to talk to.
And so Israel, a modern state with high standards of hygiene, a state rooted in a religion that requires washing your hands before you eat and regular, ritual baths, builds settlements that don't bother to construct sewage treatment plants. They just dump raw sewage onto the Palestinian fields across the fence, somewhat like a spaceship
ejecting its wastes into the void. I am truly not making this up:
I've seen it, smelled it, and it's a known though shameful fact. But if the Palestinians aren't really real - who are they? They don't exist! then the land they inhabit becomes a kind of void in the psyche, and it isn't really real, either. At times, in those border villages, walking the fencelines of settlements, you feel like you have slipped into a science fiction movie, where parallel universes exist in the same space, but in different strands of reality, that never touch.
When I was on the West Bank, during Israeli incursions the Israeli military would often take over a Palestinian house to billet their soldiers. Many times, they would simply lock the family who owned it into one room, and keep them there, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days - parents, grandparents, kids and all. I've sat with a family, singing to the children while soldiers trashed their house, and I've been detained by a group of soldiers playing cards in the kitchen with a family locked in the other room. (I got out of that one but that's another story.)
Its a kind of uneasy feeling, having something locked away in a room in your house that you can't look at. Ever caught a mouse in a glue trap? And you can't bear to watch it suffer, so you leave the room and close the door and don't come back until it's really, really dead.
Like a horrific fractal, the locked room repeats on different scales.
The Israelis have built a wall to lock away the West Bank. And Gaza itself is one huge, locked room. Close the borders, keep food and medical supplies and necessities from getting through, and perhaps they will just quietly fade out of existence and stop spoiling our story.
All we want is a return to calm, the Israeli ambassador says. All we want is peace.
One way to get peace is to exterminate what threatens you. In fact, that may be the prime directive of the last few thousand years.
But attempts to exterminate pests breed resistance, whether you're dealing with insects or bacteria or people. The more insecticides you pour on a field, the more pests you have to deal with because insecticides are always more potent at killing the beneficial bugs than the pesky ones.
The harshness, the crackdowns, the border closings, the checkpoints, the assassinations, the incursions, the building of settlements deep into Palestinian territory, all the daily frustrations and humiliations of occupation, have been breeding the conditions for Hamas, or something like it, to thrive. If Israel truly wants peace, there's a more subtle, a more intelligent and more effective strategy to pursue than simply trying to kill the enemy and anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity.
It's this: Instead of killing what threatens you, feed what you want to grow. Consider in what conditions peace can thrive, and create them, just as you would prepare the bed for the crops you want to plant. Find those among your opponents who also want peace, and support them. Make alliances. Offer your enemies incentives to change, and reward your friends.
Of course, to follow such a strategy, you must actually see and know your enemy. If they are nothing to you but cartoon characters of terrorists, you will not be able to tell one from another, to discern the religious fanatic from the guy muttering under his breath, "F-ing Hammas, they closed the cinema again!"
And you must be willing to give something up. No one gets peace if your basic bargaining position is, "I get everything I want, and you eat my shit." You might get a temporary victory, but it will never be a peaceful one.
To know and see the enemy, you must let them into the story. They must become real to you, nuanced, distinctive as individuals.
But when we let the Palestinians into the story, it changes. Oh, how painfully it changes! For there is no way to tell a new story, one that includes both peoples of the land, without starting like this:
In our yearning for a homeland, in our attempts as a threatened and traumatized people to find safety and power, we have done a great wrong to another people, and now we must atone.
Just try saying it. If you, like me, were raised on that other story, just try this one out. Say it three times. It hurts, yes, but it might also bring a great, liberating sense of relief with it.
And if you're not Jewish, if you're American, if you're white, if you're German, if you're a thousand other things, really, if you're a human being, there's probably some version of that story that is true for you.
Out of our own great need and fear and pain, we have often done great harm, and we are called to atone. To atone is to be at one - to stop drawing a circle that includes our tribe and excludes the other, and start drawing a larger circle that takes everyone in.
How do we atone? Open your eyes. Look into the face of the enemy, and see a human being, flawed, distinct, unique and precious. Stop killing. Start talking. Compost the shit and the rot and feed the olive trees.
Act. Cross the line....
Starhawk
<[email protected]>
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TO SUPPORT THE CO-INTELLIGENCE INSTITUTE & TOM ATLEE'S WORK...
Please send a donation of any amount -- $25, $50, $100, $500 or more
-- to
The Co-Intelligence Institute
PO Box 493
Eugene, OR 97440
or use your Visa or MasterCard to make an online donation at The Co-Inteligence Institute (https://co-intelligence.org/donations.html)
Do let me know when you've mailed a donation, so I can add it to our tally right away. Including your email address on your check will help me keep track of your gift.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Your donations to the Co-Intelligence Institute are fully tax-deductible
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
________________________________
Tom Atlee • The Co-Intelligence Institute • PO Box 493 • Eugene, OR 97440 The Co-Intelligence Institute (https://www.co-intelligence.org) • Innovations in Democracy (https://www.democracyinnovations.org)
Read THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY • The Tao of Democracy - Home Page (https://www.taoofdemocracy.com) Tom Atlee's blog Evolving Collective Intelligence (https://www.evolvingcollectiveintelligence.org)
Please support our work. • Your donations are fully tax-deductible.</[email protected]></[email protected]></http:></http:>