Above and Below...Out of Balance

These are legitimate questions. Is the cocky, dominant, top-gun attitude the best for making ethical decisions? In war should we be "removed" from our targets? What numbers are acceptable "collateral" casualties? Where is the leadership? Where is the humanity in war? Where's empathy? When is a response too much?

I taught school at the American International School in Israel for one year in the late '80s. In one senior English class, I had an Israeli (born Canadian) student who had just been chosen to join a pilots program in the Israeli Air Force. He was a blonde, blue-eyed Tom Cruise type. He was also the son of a Jew for Jesus, a Christian convert. His mother objected when I assigned "Native Son" to the class. She didn't want her son to have to read about such a bleak situation. I explained that it was an important work of literature. She didn't want him becoming depressed by it, she countered. I asked how reading a book and discussing issues was more dangerous than choosing to be a pilot and making life and death situations for those people living on the ground. I never got an answer.

You might say it's easy for me to prattle on; after all, I'm not living through bombardment as are the Israelis and, more so, the Palestinians in Gaza. But being able to sit in a safe place in the states leaves me in a different emotional situation than if I were over there. So, I can only imagine how people's judgments are affected by the stress on all sides.

Hamas can be blamed for launching the attacks, but there needs to be a cease fire.

The way forward has to be one of eventually coming together--or at least balancing the seesaw. Like the yin and yang or the two halves of the kabbalistic star...the one on top is not superior, it is merely the one above. The half on the bottom--this is very important--is not inferior. It is the root. The two halves make one. Like in the creation story where the first human was made in the Creator's image with both male AND female parts (Adam/Adamah), they completed each other. Like Adam and Lilith. It wasn't until much later that the superiority/inferiority fallacy emerged.

People don't have to love or even like one another, but they can respectfully work for a more just future for all people. The way forward is not more bombs and rockets. Not suicide and murder.

I love much about Israel--I have friends who live there; I'm hopeful about a Palestinian state and what that could mean for peace.

Meeting your enemy and walking through their world for a day is one way to start. Taking risks for peace is strength, too.

From One Who's Lost Family to Conflict...

David Grossman, author of the Yellow Wind and others, has a worthwhile perspective on the current crisis in Gaza and Israel.

Who Are Gaza's Leaders?

That is the question. Or is it? There have to be better options.

Stop the Insanity

Okay, so it's always the chicken and the egg story, depending on whom you talk to...but the violence between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Israelis has to stop. Any sane human must acknowledge that shooting rockets at civilians is wrong...a war crime. Yet, that's Hamas' method. Now with the deaths of over 200 Palestinian people yesterday, the Israeli aerial bombardment in response to the rockets only escalates the violence and hatred. It's a cycle...a widening gyre.

If only the Palestinians would stop wishing ill and catastrophic devastation upon the Israelis; they need to stop the offensive, self-defeating propaganda trying to equate Israelis with Nazis.

The Israelis don't help their cause by bombing from on high. The violence needs to stop or, at least, pause.

(Imagine if there was mutual recognition...two states...people could interact to the point of speaking with one another. It might be spy vs. spy, but at least then terror plots could be thwarted at a "humane" level...without the collateral damage of innocent lives being lost.)

Just because you can retaliate with more force than the violence thrust upon you, is that the way? If so we must find a different way. Palestinians and the Arab world need to stop attacking Israel. Suicide bombing must stop. Teaching one's children to destroy themselves and others is not what matriarchy is about. We must speak our truths, learns each other's histories and live in mutual respect.

Mutual destruction is not sane. It's not the way for the future. People must stop teaching children to hate; people must stop demonizing others simply because they live on the other side of a border. People must stop teaching children that the other is evil, a destroyer. That other is the relative...and even, the mirror.

There is another path...one of true strength and compassion.

How about all faiths having access to the holy sites that they share--that was the vision of Jerusalem's mayor, Teddy Kollek. As a college-student-abroad in 1984, I remember hearing stories of how the different sects within the Tomb of the Holy Sepulchre--strictly a Christian site in Jerusalem's Old City--had what you might consider turf wars...among clergy! One group got to sweep this area of the shrine while others got to tend to another corner. Then there's the Temple Mount on top of which the Muslim's built the Dome of the Rock (and Al Aqsa mosque) on the site of the former Jewish temples. Next to it about 50 feet below stands the Western Wall. When you're there in that tiny city it's heartening when there isn't strife going on.

Then, if people think that what's happening in Jerusalem is tricky, how about Hebron where the patriarchs and matriarchs are entombed. People have to find a way to share the heritage sites without feeling threatened or displaced. Lets all be good samaritans, as it were.

Let's have Muslim leaders (Palestinian and other) publicly acknowledge and teach in schools how the Jews are part of their own family returning home...not to displace them but to live in peace and harmony. Christian Palestinians, as a minority among Jews and Muslims, could remind everyone that Jesus was a Jew. Jewish leaders need to find ways to encourage Jewish youth to acknowledge the non-Jewish Palestinians' connections to the land. The New Israel Fund is one such organization...fighting for the civil rights of all.

Tzedek, tzedek tiradof! (Justice, justice you shall pursue).

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[And before these traditions, there were others, too. It's interesting to see overlapping in different pathways.]

R.I.P., Eartha

She was her own person.

What's up?

Voter suppression and vote tampering were a part of the presidential elections in 2000 and 2004. A major witness and participant in this illegal activity has suddenly died in a plane crash. What secrets died with him? Why were small, theocratic companies in charge of tabulating the Ohio ballots of 2004? How is that legal? When are we going to have a national system for voting that protects one person/one vote?

Why is Karl Rove not behind bars? What about Scooter (biblio-pedophile)Libby? Why would I not be surprised if Dick Cheney and Bernie Madoff were BFs?

Protect the vote from those actively trying to disenfranchise democracy.

Hey...

I'm wishing everyone everywhere peace and tranquility.

Spent the day baking cookies; just me and my dog listening to the radio...madrigals, etc. It was transcendent...or at least peaceful. Out the window I saw snow, icicles and birdies coming to the feeder. Idyllic.

The boys were visiting their auntie in Connecticut. It was therapeutic all-round. Rolling out dough. Making menorahs/hanukkiahs, dreidels, suns, moons, stars, trees, sleighs, candy canes, little bears and ginger-bread men. When the boys came home, they helped eat the rejects. Of course, they'll get the good ones, too.

Tonight the cookies are ensconced in their tupperware (who invented that, really?), and tomorrow we'll frost them.

I just really needed today. I'm glad that we were technically snowed-in. Perfect. Now the fire's crackling in the fireplace. It's like a ski lodge. I'm happy. Thanks.

Be well.

Happy Solstice, everyone!

Say it ain't so, Barack!

Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation? Really? I thought that you were more progressive than that, Senator Obama.

Why not a female theologian? Why a right-wing, anti-choice, homophobic patriarch? And if he invokes the creator with a narrow, one-religion name...I will be greatly disappointed.

Where's the bigger picture? Where's the change? Yawn.

Caroline...sweet!

Y'know the way some people flipped their wigs for Sarah Palin, before really knowing much about her? Well, I've followed Caroline Kennedy all my life. And though I don't know her personally, I'm counting on the process to help find out if she's worthy for the seat of senator from New York. I'm leaning "yes." Here is the smart woman's answer to Governor Palin. I'm for Caroline.

Neil Buzz Michael...Apollo 11

At the 35th anniversary White House reception, Neil Armstrong said, "Today we have among us a group of students among America's best, to you we say 'we've only completed the beginning. We leave you much that is undone. There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truth's protective layers.'" (sorry for the tacky background music.)

"Truth's protective layers"...is an interesting way of putting it. Whatever IT is.

What really happened with Apollo 11? What did Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins experience on the way to the moon? at the moon? Why weren't they allowed to discuss it at the press conference? They are clearly uncomfortable and even depressed in the briefing. How much of what happened there is classified or "black ops?" Who is calling the shots? Who has the authority?

Why won't NASA open up to the Obama transition team? What are they hiding from the American public?

I think Neil Armstrong is a good guy...a smart, independent thinker...one of America's best. I wish we knew more about what he knows.

(Here's another video for what it's worth.)

Click here to see Armstrong on NASA's 50th anniversary.

Just breathe...

Colours from Charlie McCarthy on Vimeo.

I liked this...

but Fred needs to get some brown contacts.

Presidents Morphed!

Thank you, Odetta

Sitting in music class at Bush Elementary, I loved singing folk songs. Mrs. Nykamp played the autoharp and we sang, "This Land is Your Land" and such. The passing of a legend such as Odetta deserves remembrance of a time of change and the power of the human voice to move others.

Love vs. Hate

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

A Toddler's Grief

This is so sad; I wish nothing but love and peace for this little one and all those whose loved ones have been killed needlessly.

Here's hoping for fewer incidents like this one. What do the killers think they have accomplished? Terrorism must not defeat people; it must not be allowed to tear us all apart and ruin the hope of humanity's potential.