An Ambivalent Essay, No, A Multivalent Essay on the Israel-Hamas Conflict
Ambivalence doesn’t mean not caring — it means having mixed feelings about something — I stand with Israel but also pray for peace for all
I woke on October 7th at around 7 am EDT to see alerts on my phone about a Hamas incursion into Israel. If memory serves, the initial Reuters report in my Google News feed indicated 22 casualties. I went back to sleep. A few hours later my 17-year-old son called me as if the sky were falling. We are Jewish. I was groggy and dismissive of his concerns and statements that “we are at war.” Here we go again and my son is young and exaggerating was in the back of my mind.
Then I saw that my friend Henya Drescher, visiting her native land, Israel, for the holidays, had posted a story, A Siren awakened me this Morning And then I heard loud explosions, that I wish I had seen before I went back to sleep. I responded to Henya’s piece, and hers again the next day, Age Will Not Weary Them, Nor Will Condemn Them the Years, Civilians pay a staggering cost for the violence, with the same thought:
My thoughts and prayers go out to all the innocents in both Israel and Gaza and any others who may get injured or kidnapped or die from a cause at the hands of others or who will live in fear or trauma from these or related events.
Note I said innocents and I said Gaza, not Hamas, and I said that both because it was true and because I didn’t feel the need to express on what side I ultimately resided. Anyone who knows me would know.
The side of peace.
Yet on the side of Israel and war if necessary. Sometimes, that’s the human experience for which our souls come here. Two years ago, I also advocated for full NATO intervention in Ukraine, even at the risk of nuclear war, which I deemed slight. (See my A Poem of Right and Might My unpopular opinion is that spirituality demands that we stand up and fight).
Two weeks after the invasion by the terrorists, I posted a long free verse poem, partially inspired by these events, which included these lines:
Why must the path from separation to wholeness be so fraught with fractures? Because It is what It is
Policies of truth require shared respect not mutually assured destruction and recognition of simultaneous truths and falsehoods need not paradoxes present just acceptance of lenses perspectives having equal validity
I initially thought I’d squeeze my thoughts into a poetic form but free verse speeds to expanding beyond labels to a form of Manifesto
Chamberlin thought to appease Hitler into a box of peace but sometimes wars must be fought and millions upon millions must die before we learn our lessons — When will it stop?
When will it stop?
I do not want to ignore nor get bogged down in this essay about why the terms Apartheid, genocide, and carpet bombing are inappropriate usurpations of terms to describe and denigrate Israel’s actions, which create a false equivalence of moral depravity, and amount to antisemitism (when used by others), yet I will in response to comments that disagree. I want to shift to how and when this can stop.
I also do not need to repeat the terror under the dehumanizing influence of the narcotic Captagon that Hamas used to make young men into terminators to inflict on Israelis the trauma that families and many citizens continue to experience. (See Henya’s The Bloodiest and Most Publicized Attacks on Women in History, Feminists, where are you? and Ruchama King Feuerman’s Letter to a Hamas Young Man, Yes, you did it).
I also know that the right-wing and their wannabe theocrat co-conspirators in Israel shoulder much blame here. See my The World (Especially the Middle East) Reflects More Shades of Grey Than Any Box of Crayola Crayons.
I also believe that because Hamas, which exists for Palestine Free from the River to the Sea to mean the death of every Jew in Israel and the West Bank, needs to be exterminated for peace to prevail (to my Jewish kin and others, no, the Gazans did not elect Hamas — Hamas was elected to a minority position and then seized and has maintained power through terror — and don’t get me started on Bibi’s machinations — he’s certainly part of the problem).
Yet, I hope that the removal of Hamas and the establishment of a two-state solution can occur despite the hatred and vitriol.
The side of peace
I see much writing about 5D awakening in spiritual circles and channelings from Jodie Helm http//www.asktheangels222.com and about which I also have ambivalent thoughts. I also know that demolishing Hamas may not lead to peace as too many civilian casualties will occur and others may fill the power vacuum.
I also know that Israel will be blamed for the civilian deaths that Hamas wants and causes as Hamas does not give a fuck, two shits, or three rats asses about Gazan civilians.
If we have to have war I choose Israel.
Yet, is there a path to peace?
I found hope and solace yesterday in Tree Langdon’s How to Disagree But Find a Way to Save Lives, It’s important to have ‘allowance’ for others. I loved Tree’s term allowance. She writes:
Allowance is the lubricant for change
It’s also the antidote to judgment.
When you are in allowance, you aren’t judging yourself. You’re also not judging others. You’re calm and respectful of their opinions.
You may observe and realize that you disagree but you are aware that you don’t have their life, history, and perspective. That lets you be open enough that you’re able to allow them theirs.
You can sit in the feeling of allowance and make any decisions from that calm and respectful space. That’s the kind of position we need to reach so the antagonism in the world can be reduced. (Notice I didn’t say eliminated.)
It can be challenging to pull off. We have deep beliefs and judgments from our life, or history and perspectives. So do they.
Judgment creates separation — it locks in more of the same and doesn’t allow change.
I commented:
This is really tremendous work, Tree. I hope the pub nominates it for a boost. Regardless, congratulations from me. As you see, I highlighted much and could have highlighted more. I like your term allowance. I like it very much. You use it to distinguish acceptance as most define the term, yet it’s very similar to my concepts of acceptance, https://readmedium.com/86877724cd6b, which include such thoughts as this from “The Big Book” of AA:
“Shakespeare said, ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’ He forgot to mention that I was the chief critic. I was always able to see the flaw in every person, every situation. And I was always glad to point it out, because I knew you wanted perfection, just as I did. A.A. and acceptance have taught me that there is a bit of good in the worst of us and a bit of bad in the best of us; that we are all children of God and we each have a right to be here.” [emphasis added]
Your concept of allowance also incorporates what I read from columnist David Brooks over two years ago in his message to moderates on both sides of the Left/Right political spectrum: “Moderation is not an ideology; it is a way of being. It stands for humility of the head and ardor in the heart. When you listen to your neighbor, you see how many perspectives there are and you’re intellectually humble in the face of that pluralism. When you listen to your neighbor, you see that deep down we’re the same and you hunger to deepen that connection.”
In other words, moderation, regardless of where you fall on the political compass, allows the space to agree not to agree. See my only story ever further distributed: https://readmedium.com/can-we-please-all-find-the-space-within-which-to-breathe-the-same-air-and-agree-not-to-agree-6b6b2c8077ec
Your term and your discussion also evoke the work that philosophers do on the concept of recognition. As I have learned from reading Douglas Giles, PhD on Medium, philosophically, recognition “means to respect and value, that I recognize you as a person and therefore I treat you as a person ought to be treated…More than teaching us abstract moral rights and wrongs, recognition norms teach us what we should value in other people and how we should reward those who behave properly and reprove those who do not. This unwritten social contract of mutual recognition is second nature to us as social beings; it is an integral part of our ethical life and social fabric. With recognition, moral conduct like honesty, loyalty, hard work becomes more than exercises for their own sake, they become means to orient ourselves in the social world and be successful in our social endeavors.” See Douglas’s https://readmedium.com/a-concept-little-known-outside-academic-philosophy-may-be-the-key-to-social-justice-648e04732238
Both sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict do not recognize each other and have engaged in dehumanization. Other than getting into a disagreement with a friend of over 30 years off platform and a few comment pane disagreements on Medium with those tossing around terms that I disagree with, I have tried to stay in the lane of, “My thoughts and prayers go out to all the innocents in both Israel and Gaza and any others who may get injured or kidnapped or die from a cause at the hands of others or who will live in fear or trauma from these or related events.”
I applaud you for doing the same here and for staying above declaring to which side you lean and stating philosophically and spiritually a process that somehow might make a difference.
Please read Tree’s essay. I doubt Tree and I would end up on the same side if push came to shove, yet, we are on the same side of peace.
Let’s collectively pray for peace. I have two thoughts on prayer with which I will close this essay. The first is from one of the first yellow bricks in my long and winding road of a spiritual journey without a destination:
“The correct prayer is therefore never a prayer of supplication, but a prayer of gratitude. When you thank God in advance for that which you choose to experience in your reality, you, in effect, acknowledge that it is there…in effect. Thankfulness is thus the most powerful statement to God; an affirmation that even before you ask, I have answered. Therefore never supplicate. Appreciate.” ― Neale Donald Walsch, The Complete Conversations with God
Moreover, please heed this fact-based fiction from our dearly departed White Feather’s The Day It Finally Rained, Can you feel it? and pray not for war and killing to end but for peace by feeling collectively that peace exists:
“When you are dehydrated and pray for rain to come nature FEELS your current situation and gives you more of it. It supports what you are FEELING. If you are intensely FEELING dehydration that is what nature will give you because that is how nature reads what you want.”
Much head scratching and beard scratching ensued.
The stranger continued, “Nature does not listen to what is in your noggins. It listens to what is in your hearts. What you FEEL, it feeds.”
The scratching intensified.
“If you will allow me, I would like to propose a solution to your predicament.”
The scratching stopped and ears perked up. The people were desperate and ready to try anything.
“First of all, stop praying for rain. Completely. Instead of coming together to pray collectively, come together to FEEL collectively. Leave your noggins out of it and just FEEL. Don’t think.”
“The entire settlement must come together in the morning just after sunrise and FEEL rain. FEEL what it is like being drenching wet. FEEL the water pouring over you. FEEL your naked feet standing in mud. FEEL the water nourishing you and your crops. FEEL the taste of water in your mouths. FEEL the joy of dancing in the rain. Simply FEEL everything that is good about water. FEEL it in your hearts as intensely as you can. FEEL it as though it is happening in the present moment.”
“Do this for three days and on the third day it will rain.”
With this, the visitor picked up his bag and left, never to be seen again.
The elders quickly agreed to try this as an experiment. They called a meeting of all settlement members and explained the instructions of what they would do. All praying was stopped during the experiment.
The people did this for three days and around noon on the third day large gray clouds appeared.
When the first raindrops began falling everyone who was not already outside came out of their homes. All eighty-seven members of the settlement stood on the ground — most of them barefoot — as the rain intensified, quickly drenching them all.
The collective joy was palpable — just as it was during their collective sunrise FEELING ceremonies.
Nature brought the people what they were FEELING.”
May peace find us all.
Last but not least, I suggest all, especially on the “Left,” read this illuminating essay by Yuval Idan:
In Rama I create, with soul energy surging through my body, inspiring me and breathing wind into my sails,
Marcus (Gregory Maidman)
Tagging at his invitation Argumentative Penguin
