Gaza

When Bill Clinton was President, I worked for Mideast peace alongside Jews, Muslims and Christians in Central Florida. We labored together in the Foundation for Mideast Communication. We gathered people of ethnic diversities around tables where we could safely talk, create dialogue and understanding, destroy old myths and hatreds. Arabs heard a Jewish woman share how back in the forties, her family had saved pennies, clothing, anything to welcome the new state of Israel for Holocaust victims. A Palestinian man who had lost his home on that land, now a successful American business man, was moved to understand better what the creation of Israel meant to Jews. Within the gathering, the dialogue continued. This was but one example of how dialogue helps create understanding. Ours was a community of safety releasing enormous pent up feelings.

In those workshops, old attitudes fell away, friendships formed and remained, some even to this day. Dialogue was key. Peace was possible. The Christian Bible, the Koran, and Hebrew Scriptures all led us to dutifully embrace one another, different or not. Joyfully, our work bore fruit.

I am an offshoot of that fruit. As an Arab American, I now have Jewish and Muslim friends. We had met at those tables. We shared beliefs. We grew in the process.

It is hard to know what to write about in this recent Mideast brutality. Words like “Tragic” or “massacre” don’t even come close. American F-16 and Apache helicopters with Israeli markings have dropped over 100 tons of bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing over 300 civilians. I want to shout: Stop! Just stop! I can’t look at the computer image of a father weeping desperately over the body of his dead son. It hurts too much.

In his book, The Road to Joy, Thomas Merton, dismayed at our involvement in the Vietnam war, wrote aptly for this current crisis in Gaza:

“In our technological world we have wonderful methods for keeping people alive and wonderful methods for killing them off, and they both go together. We rush in and save lives from tropical diseases, then we come along with napalm and burn up the people we have saved. The net result is more murder, more suffering, more inhumanity. This I know is a caricature, but is it that far from the truth?”

This is no caricature, In the Mideast, at the same time Israeli trucks were bringing in humanitarian supplies for hungry and medically denied Palestinian, their planes were bombing these civilians. Isn’t this a kind of insanity? Is this Merton’s truth repeated? We have wonderful “methods for keeping people alive and wonderful methods for killing them off?’

I am a Jewish ally. I dialogued to honor and uphold the state of Israel. I am torn that the Hamas government has yet to recognize the state of Israel. Yet, Israeli occupation of Palestinians will not encourage the duly elected leadership to recognize Israel while Gaza Palestinians sit easily angered, unable to feed families no matter how hard they work. As long as this continues, neither side will e safe. Have both forgotten the dream for a peaceful homeland?

That Jewish woman mentioned above has started a dialogue right here in Central Florida between Jewish, Muslim and Christian school children. Her project is called the Multi-faith Education Project, HYPERLINK "http://www.multifaitheducationproject.org" www.multifaitheducationproject.org. That’s the constructive kind of peacemaking for which the world cries out.

Remember Jimmy Carter was successful in bringing peace between Egypt and Israel through months of dialogue. He cared. I believe in dialogue. Rather than sending bombs and money to Israel, I encourage America to send peacemakers, young people, a kind of Mideast Peace Corp, to dialogue. We can show the world that we care, that we are so much more than simply a Department of Defense. How about a Department of Peace? It’s not a new idea.

So what can you do? No idle question. Surely there is always something whether it’s letter writing, making a phone call, or simply dialoguing with God about these unfortunate suffering civilians.