"Surely, they say, there must, there has to be another way
of doing this."
OK, let's start here, with this flicker of anguish, this
quick stab of despair and disbelief that war is a rational means to an end.
These words, from an essay by Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of the Jewish
peace lobbying group J Street, describe the complex discomfort felt by what he
surmises to be a "third stream of Jews" in the U.S. and elsewhere
-- neither committed peaceniks nor "Pavlovian flag wavers"
-- over Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip.
"There has to be another way . . ." Let's sit
with it for a moment, nurture it before it passes, because it is awareness at
the earliest noticeable stage, and most of us on this planet, I think, can no
longer repress it, no matter how much we want to and no matter how alone we
feel with it. This awareness may be the fire we must harness if we are going to
survive.
I say this mindful of how difficult life is without an enemy to
blame for our suffering, for everything that's wrong. I say this mindful,
also, of the hell that others do create, as we crouch in the hallway with Lubna
Karam.
The young woman "and the other nine members of her family
spent the night huddled in the hallway of their Gaza City home," the
Associate Press reported as the ground war got under way. "The windows of
the house were blown out days earlier in an Israeli airstrike, and the family
has been without electricity for a week, surviving without heat and eating cold
food.
"She said no one slept overnight. 'We keep hearing
the sounds of airplanes and we don't know if we'll live until
tomorrow or not,' she said."
There has to be another way. "War anywhere, at this point
in our history," writes Marianne Williamson, "is an action that
threatens peace everywhere."
Every action, in other words, still produces an equal and
opposite reaction, and in a world as linked as this one, the chain of
retaliation never stops. It just keeps growing and growing, as does the
potential for destruction and "collateral damage." No matter how
virtuous our outrage, we can no longer afford the luxury of indulging it, or
condoning anyone else's indulgence -- not, good God, by
humanity's ritual of carnage we call war, which has a vested interest in
its own perpetuation and, more and more, seems to be the course of first resort
for those with the capacity to wage it.
There has to be another way . . .
"They care deeply for Israel and understand even why its
government felt compelled to launch the devastating Operation Cast Lead, but
they are extremely disturbed and hurt by the level of civilian deaths and
destruction that almost seems part and parcel of the action," writes
Ben-Ami. "Surely, they say, there must, there has to be another way of
doing this.
"And," he goes on, "they live with those
doubts, often unexpressed, even among families and close friends because the
worst thing they find is that others around them . . . can't find in
themselves compassion for the dead and wounded on the other side. They begin
asking themselves very awkward questions: Are they surrounded by latent
racists, or is something wrong with them that denies the feelings of certainty
of those around them? Or does everyone have similar doubts but are simply
afraid to express them?"
These doubts are humanity's salvation, or can be, if we
choose to honor the well of compassion that is their source, and surrender to
that compassion. If enough of us did so, war would not be the
"inevitable" predator its propagandists and profiteers claim it to
be. Ultimately, it would not even be possible.
Surrendering to our compassion, living up to its requirements, is
the extraordinarily difficult next step in our evolutionary journey. Gandhi
said we must be the peace we wish to bring into the world. To do so is not a
feel-good proposition; it requires the courage to eschew the certainty of the
militant, who surrender over and over again to the illusion that, once we kill
our enemy, we will be safe.
The argument against this illusion has no doubt accompanied every
war in human history, but perhaps now, for the first time, because the stakes
are so high, a critical mass (to borrow a term from the annihilation industry)
of humanity is capable of hearing it.
Williamson, in her extraordinary essay, "Towards a Miracle
in the Middle East," writes: "The human race is evolving to the
realization that what is happening on the level of consciousness both precedes
and determines what happens in the world. War is just an effect, not a cause.
With the power of our minds, we can move beyond the level of effect to the
level of cause."
So war begins here, in our minds and hearts. There has to be
another way, and it also begins here. I pray for the bombs to stop, but I know
they won't until we . . .
And here I stop, not knowing what to say next. If you can
complete this sentence, please do so, and share the answer. Live the answer.