The Revenge Game
The headlines of the various news agencies covering the current Israel/Gaza/Lebanon conflict alternate reports of the numbers of innocent civilians being killed by either side. Needless to say there is plenty of blame to lay on each -- ranging back as many years as one wishes to survey.
The point, however, is that both sides here are engaging in self-defeating attacks on the other, resulting in increasing numbers of deaths of innocents and sabotaging their own best interests.
Israel will not win friends in the Middle East -- where an ultimate possibility of WMD lurks in an uncertain future. And those supporting the rights to a just settlement for Palestinians will not gain them by violent attacks on Israelis.
One good thing that we in the U.S. have learned the hard way is that non-violent protest is the most effective means both for protesting injustices and rectifying them. We have had an horrific history as a nation that has engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing (against native Americans), brutal tyranny inflicted upon Africans (imported as slaves and then suppressed by on-going racism, exploitation), of new immigrants and 'guest' workers (denied basic citizen rights) , and massive violence and killing (750,000 in our Civil War and horrendous labor/management violence during our struggles for economic justice). With all our flaws, however, we have continued to make progress -- voting rights for all, affirmative action programs to rectify social and economic injustices.
And if we still have a long way to go to assure a just society and to reign in those who would mislead us at home and abroad, we have developed techniques for doing so in extreme cases short of violent revolution. Thoreau, and after him Martin Luther King, Jr., pioneered the protest device of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience or resistance is variously defined. In King's version it was to be carried out after all efforts to negotiate and resolve conflicts through normal channels had failed by acts that were: 1) public, 2) non-violent, 3) selective in targeting specific wrongs, 4) done lovingly (i.e. with care for those targeted) and 5) with the acceptance of arrest and punishment. Needless to say specific variants are sometimes necessary. The Quakers smuggled slaves out of the South secretly. Sometimes -- as Gandhi demonstrated against the British occupiers -- goading the opposition into violent responses may be a publicity device necessary to win the day.
But above all civil disobedience must be carried out in tactically appropriate ways that do not defeat the very cause for which one is fighting. We saw instances of such actions during WW2. The Danes smuggled their Jewish population away from the Holocaust in defiance of the Nazis. A group of non-Jewish German wives with Jewish husbands managed to rescue them at the height of the Holocaust by publicly demonstrating in a German city for their return. The escape from the former Soviet Union by Jews being oppressed there was accomplished by highly sophisticated protests.
The lesson here which I put forth as an outsider is that both the Palestinians being abused by Israel and caring Israelis have non violent means of protest to use to protest injustices. Needless to say many of us have had high hopes that Hamas would take the route of non-violence and try to reign in its nut cases firing rockets at Israel from Gaza -- stimulating Israel's excessive retaliation and imposition of cruel collective punishment on mainly innocent Gazans. And needless to say the rockets launched by Hezbollah might just as well have been fired at Gaza as at Israel so far as the whirlwind consequences they have predictably unleashed.
It would be all too easy for us outsiders to say a plague upon both your houses. Destroy yourselves if you are determined to do so. But how cruel for your children. They are not the guilty ones! Shame on your political leaders and ours as well for playing the vicious game of tit-for-tat -- the revenge game. Were you not properly raised as children? The very young child claims almost as soon as he can say it that "IT'S MINE!" Wise parents teach their children the first rule of morality. "Take turns! Share!" Needless to say sharing would bring Israel/Palestine peace and prosperity. Will you never learn this lesson? Are you determined to destroy your children's futures? We shall see.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
The point, however, is that both sides here are engaging in self-defeating attacks on the other, resulting in increasing numbers of deaths of innocents and sabotaging their own best interests.
Israel will not win friends in the Middle East -- where an ultimate possibility of WMD lurks in an uncertain future. And those supporting the rights to a just settlement for Palestinians will not gain them by violent attacks on Israelis.
One good thing that we in the U.S. have learned the hard way is that non-violent protest is the most effective means both for protesting injustices and rectifying them. We have had an horrific history as a nation that has engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing (against native Americans), brutal tyranny inflicted upon Africans (imported as slaves and then suppressed by on-going racism, exploitation), of new immigrants and 'guest' workers (denied basic citizen rights) , and massive violence and killing (750,000 in our Civil War and horrendous labor/management violence during our struggles for economic justice). With all our flaws, however, we have continued to make progress -- voting rights for all, affirmative action programs to rectify social and economic injustices.
And if we still have a long way to go to assure a just society and to reign in those who would mislead us at home and abroad, we have developed techniques for doing so in extreme cases short of violent revolution. Thoreau, and after him Martin Luther King, Jr., pioneered the protest device of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience or resistance is variously defined. In King's version it was to be carried out after all efforts to negotiate and resolve conflicts through normal channels had failed by acts that were: 1) public, 2) non-violent, 3) selective in targeting specific wrongs, 4) done lovingly (i.e. with care for those targeted) and 5) with the acceptance of arrest and punishment. Needless to say specific variants are sometimes necessary. The Quakers smuggled slaves out of the South secretly. Sometimes -- as Gandhi demonstrated against the British occupiers -- goading the opposition into violent responses may be a publicity device necessary to win the day.
But above all civil disobedience must be carried out in tactically appropriate ways that do not defeat the very cause for which one is fighting. We saw instances of such actions during WW2. The Danes smuggled their Jewish population away from the Holocaust in defiance of the Nazis. A group of non-Jewish German wives with Jewish husbands managed to rescue them at the height of the Holocaust by publicly demonstrating in a German city for their return. The escape from the former Soviet Union by Jews being oppressed there was accomplished by highly sophisticated protests.
The lesson here which I put forth as an outsider is that both the Palestinians being abused by Israel and caring Israelis have non violent means of protest to use to protest injustices. Needless to say many of us have had high hopes that Hamas would take the route of non-violence and try to reign in its nut cases firing rockets at Israel from Gaza -- stimulating Israel's excessive retaliation and imposition of cruel collective punishment on mainly innocent Gazans. And needless to say the rockets launched by Hezbollah might just as well have been fired at Gaza as at Israel so far as the whirlwind consequences they have predictably unleashed.
It would be all too easy for us outsiders to say a plague upon both your houses. Destroy yourselves if you are determined to do so. But how cruel for your children. They are not the guilty ones! Shame on your political leaders and ours as well for playing the vicious game of tit-for-tat -- the revenge game. Were you not properly raised as children? The very young child claims almost as soon as he can say it that "IT'S MINE!" Wise parents teach their children the first rule of morality. "Take turns! Share!" Needless to say sharing would bring Israel/Palestine peace and prosperity. Will you never learn this lesson? Are you determined to destroy your children's futures? We shall see.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
posted by Ed Kent at 8:58 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home