We
are individuals and we exist in World full of other people. We must try to be
happy and also do good for others. And this “do good for others” happens, of
course, in many levels. We have our nuclear family, extended family and
friends, the community I live in, my city, my Country, the World.
When we think about the Global
problems and what could be done about it it’s hard not to feel a little bit
lost. It’s hard not to think about politics, and there is so much confusion and
so many problems. There are massacres to think about in Asia and Africa – why
don’t we talk more about that? I guess that’s a different topic in itself –
there is slavery, almost slavery, there is War in the Middle East, there is
even a terrible war in Europe.
The urgency that these problems have
to us as individuals depends on how far we are from the “scene”. Of course you
can practice empathy from a distance, but when we are in a comfortable position
there is always the option to say something that just makes us “look good”.
You can take an organization that
has terror and cruelty as it’s main weapons, and it’s publicly sworn to
eliminate an ethnicity, and say this is just “one of the consequences of an
ongoing land dispute in a hard part of the world that is unfortunately too far
from a solution”, when the Two States Solution has been offered to them and
rejected so many times. Yes, it would take a while to build that State, but
first they have to say Yes – and Yes should mean “we totally give up on
destroying Israel to have the whole land”.
From a comfortable place you can even
take a very simple story, the story of more than one hundred people just like
you and me who have been kidnapped and remain in captivity for nine months, you
can take this horror that should end right now, and make it “part of the
conflict”, or, even more, “part of the very complicated situation in the Middle
East”, so these human beings disappear in a haze, and you still look good. Or
you think you do.
Yes, of course there is pain in the
other side too, as I’ve been saying here for a while, but what could be
consequences of having terrorism so ingrained in a Society, especially if this
terrorism remains virtually unchallenged by the World?
Hamas – who is sworn to eliminate
the Jews and publicly praises the death of it’s own people as “martyrdom” – is
the Government of Gaza, and this is part of a Global problem, the problem of a
World that seems to refuse to have any standards at all to define if a
political group is an enemy of Civilization.
Here in the West, most people in the
College “Humanities” don’t care too much for the word “Civilization” to say the
least, most journalists don’t know exactly the meaning of the word, and most
“normal” people take the benefits of Civilization for granted.
Now because of this confusion and
this lack of will to stand for any solid value, we have all this hatred and
violence mostly unchallenged in the Global level. And then you expect the
Israeli people to just watch their world being attacked in the level of family,
community, Country. You expect them to decline to defend their loved ones
because of a huge Global problem of blindness, greed and cowardice.
So why don’t we push for the right
solution, that is, first the return of the hostages – those human beings like
us – and then the surrender of Hamas? Why don’t we see this as a necessary
first step to start building the path for peace?
What can be wrong with the surrender
of a terror organization? Hamas surrendering don’t mean Palestine surrendering
the idea of having their Country. Imagine, what if Gaza was ruled by a
respectable democratic Government? Wouldn’t it strengthen any plea that they
may have? Remember that Israel consider themselves as a Nation subscribed to
the International Law… You can’t say the right way don’t work if you never
tried…
Is this solution too good for now?
How do Jews make peace with a “party” whose only plan is “no more Jews”?
Remembering that countries did try to destroy Israel in open war, and lost, and
then this terrorism thing rose, because “Hamas is not a Country”.
But what would be the consequences
for Israel to let diabolic attacks go unresponded? What would be the moral consequences for their
Society? We see that even in countries free of war the political divisions and
other kinds of division are threatening to destroy any form of common hope, now
imagine how it can work in a Country constantly under attack or serious threat
of attack? Not to mention the value of each single individual lost, because
they don’t raise their kids to be martyrs, as we don’t raise ours.
Yes, we should care about
Palestinian lives, especially children, but we shouldn’t wait for wars to start
to start being worried. We could seriously worry whenever a teacher, under the
watch of even with the help of international organizations, start teaching
children that their biggest mission is to conquer the land of their neighbours
by any means necessary.
Yes, we should care for the poor
countries, but somehow it became wrong to put our fingers in a very important
wound that this World has, that is, the evil Governments that poor countries
sometimes have. How did we go from “we must care for the poor of the World” to “we
can’t criticize a government if the people are brown”? How can we help the
World if we can’t put our fingers on that?
There is a big problem in the World,
of hatred that is growing and going mostly unchallenged. You can’t expect
Israel to pay all the price – or to accept being the first – or to fix all this
alone. Of course Israel must act in the most ethical way possible in this war –
and it is a war, the enemy is armed and angry, and Israeli soldiers are dying –
and I don’t remember hearing in History classes that countries provide aid to enemies in a war like
Israel does, but don’t it occur to you that Israel can’t save Palestine alone?
I don’t want to be pessimistic, but
we should consider that building a better World can be a little harder than
saying “we vehemently condemn any ugly thing that may happen”. We should
consider that is Better World is not just a photogenic peace sign or a
look-how-righteous-I-am protest away.
This can be crucial times, times
when what matters is not just counting dead bodies in a total tragedy, but what
did we really defend.
Did we defend innocence? Did we
really defend innocence?
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