Seeds of Wisdom: "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." --Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)
This is a comforting quote. It kind of describes how I feel about the whole Israel/Palestine/Middle East situation - ignorant, frightfully ignorant.
You haven't heard from me in awhile, (unless you have a blog where I've left comments!) because I've been all over the web trying to get a handle on the situation. IMO the outlook is grim.
As I write this, I have several browser windows open to the various blogs in what I have come to think of as my home circle. When I read Meryl's passionate support for Israel, and follow the links she provides I feel her pain, but I wonder - are there no innocent Palestinians. Does every single Palestinian embrace the themes of Mein Kampf? Does every single Palestinian want every Jew gone and Israel wiped off the face of the earth?
I read BurningBird as she tries to find a middle ground. I read the comments attached to her postings and I wonder if there is a middle ground to find. I read the blog entry from Doc that Shelley (BurningBird, for those who don't know) quoted - and I'm thinking I should read Doc more often. <g>
He writes, "But we could use some peace bloggers."
If I must take a stand - I stand for peace. I'm not a turn "the other cheek" kind of person, but I have to think there must be some other recourse other than war.
It seems as though most bloggers are taking a stand on one side or another as we watch this conflict unfold. There seems to be a pervasive sentiment of "if you're not for us, you're against us." I find myself shouting - "no! I don't want to be either." I don't like true or false questions. I don't like multiple choice questions where there is no choice that fits what I believe is the right answer.
What I do believe is this ... I believe Israel has a right to exist. I believe that the individual Israeli citizens (and the visitors to their country) have a right to live in peace without worrying that they are not going to make it home from their next trip to the grocery store.
I believe that the Palestinians have a right to their own country as well. I believe that they have a right to live in freedom without fear that a tank will come crashing through their door. I also believe that their fellow Arabs and their fellow Muslims have an obligation to help them. Help them, not by making Israel go away (not that this will happen). Help them, not by paying rewards to suicide bombers families. Help them, not by goading them to fight their battles for them and by dying for them.
In one of BurningBird's comment boxes, Karl of Paradox1x wrote "Damn it. Someone offer a solution."
I wish I had one. The Solomon solution, IMO, would be for Israel and the Arab nations that surround it to sit down and each offer a portion of their land to carve a home for the Palestinians. And of course for the Palestinians to agree to move there and stop trying to push the Jews out of Israel. But that's not going to happen. And I ask myself - if this situation were taking place between the US and Canada would, I be willing to give up a chunk of the US so some separate group of people could make a new country there.
The answer is probably not. Nor would I be willing to leave New Jersey and move to Wisconsin, for instance, because I fell into that group of people. The definition of a wise solution changes as the issues get closer to personal.
This is not a decision for someone who is not Israeli or Palestinian to make. They need to decide for themselves, but first each side has to listen to the other. Unfortunately, I don't think this will happen.
I think the common ordinary individual Israeli's and Palestinians need to rise up. Pack up all their leaders, load them onto a space shuttle and send them to Saturn or Pluto or Uranus. I think they need to get a group of ordinary people together in a room - no make that two rooms (if we put them in one room they might start fighting). Give them pizza, beer and a bunch of laptops so they can communicate. Make them stay there until they have hashed out some kind of agreement.
No summit meetings. No conferences with dignitaries, and protocol, and egos the size of Alaska. Just people - ordinary people like you and me - in a room talking to each other. That's my solution.
Like so many others, I didn't intend for this to be a war blog or a peace blog, but this seems to be a subject on so many minds, how can one ignore it. Perhaps I'll start another blog so I can post some light stuff, some fun stuff that just doesn't seem to belong in the same blog as all this hard thinking.
Seeds of Wisdom: "There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write." -- William Makepeace Thackeray
Shelley (she's back!) over at Burning Bird reminded me of a story when she wrote about her fear of spiders.
When my father retired, my parents decided to move to Florida like many other retirees - a decision they later regretted, but that's a story for another day. Shortly after, my husband and I went down for our first visit. I had never been to Florida before, but I was less than impressed. If you are reading this and you're from Florida - sorry not my favorite state. But I digress - on to the spider story.
I took a shower and when I finished, the bathroom was filled with steam - not hard to do with the high humidity. Hoping to clear some of it so I could see in the mirror to dry my hair, I decided to open the window. It was one of those awning windows with a crank and the screen on the outside. As I turned the crank, I heard this ominous scuttling sound coming from the outside of the opaque glass. The moment the window reached the maximum position, the source of the scuttling sound appeared at the top of the window frame.
For a second I thought I was looking at a crab. The creature was multi-legged and bright red. In another second, I realized that it was not a crab at all (and what would a crab be doing on a window anyway - right?). It was a gigunda* red spider. Big ugly red spider.
Now I have to tell you I am terrified of spiders. Even the tiniest one crawling across a nearby surface sends me into a panic. Forget about the sight of one in my car while I'm driving. This humungous red arachnid was very scary indeed!
I nearly broke my neck as I leaped back, encountering the outside wall of the tub as I did so. And I almost ran out of the room dripping wet and stark naked. Luckily, I had a smidgen of sense left and remembered to grab my robe as I made a swift retreat.
In the relative safety of the living room, I told my parents and my husband about the horror flick creature attempting to invade their bathroom. My mother said, "Red spiders. They come in pairs," very matter of factly as though this was an every day occurrance.
"Pairs," I exclaimed. "There is more than one!"
My father got up at once and went to the kitchen. He returned holding a broom. I thought I detected a pith helmet and elephant gun, but I couldn't be sure.
My husband looked at me with a dubious expression on his face. He studied the baseball-sized shape I made with my hands to indicate the size of the creature.
"How big?" he asked, knowing well my fear of spiders.
He is the one who exaggerates, I don't know why he doubted my veracity. "This big," I emphasized, again showing him the baseball-sized shape.
"Right," he said, laughing as he joined my father aka "Ramar of the jungle" on his "stalking the great spider" quest.
Ha! I had the last laugh when they returned and my husband admitted that the spider was, indeed, the biggest spider he had ever seen. He knows of large spiders, having had a Close Encounter of the First Kind with a tarantula while fixing scales in a prior occupational life. I am vindicated!
(* if gigunda isn't a word - and I couldn't find it in my dictionary - it should be!)