"Why doesn't Israel Work for Peace" (by holocaust survivor)

[annabanana]

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opten044839272aug04,0,2597237.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines

BY SILVIA TENNENBAUM
Silvia Tennenbaum, a writer in East Hampton, is author of the novels "Yesterday's Streets" and "Rachel, the Rabbi's Wife."

August 4, 2006


As a Jew who escaped the Holocaust by moving with my family to America in 1938, I turn on the BBC at night. And what I see are clouds of black smoke, explosions; the dead and the dying - children crying bitterly, cities in ruins. Only yesterday, these piles of rubble in Lebanon were home to thousands. Now, the cars roll out onto the highways, white flags attached to the windshields and doors. More than half a million are homeless.

-snip-

No matter what great accomplishments were ours in the diaspora, no matter that we produced Maimonides and Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn and hundreds of others of mankind's benefactors - not a warrior among them! - look at the world of our long exile always in the dark light of the Shoah. But this, in itself, is an obscene distortion: Would the author of "Survival in Auschwitz," Primo Levi, or the poet Paul Celan demand that we slaughter the innocents in a land far from the snow-clad forests of Poland? Is it a heroic act to murder a child, even the child of an enemy? Are my brethren glad of it and proud?

-snip-

The time is long overdue for Jews to return to their role as the world's conscience, who come to the aid of the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth. Once again, we must join those who demand the end to unjust wars - in Iraq as well as Lebanon - and an unjust occupation in Gaza. We must honor the example of American civil rights workers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, not that of the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein or Yigal Amir, killer of Yitzhak Rabin.

And perhaps the day will come that we will be counted - by Jew and Arab alike - as among the Just, perhaps even given a place at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, for the lives we helped to save in a lawless, savage time.

[Oversea Visitor]

1. Sad is it not

Such simple truth so hard to understand.
So many just refuse to see way for better future

Sometimes I wonder if people think that just because they Pro Isreal or Anti Isreal is more important
finding a peaceful solutions. It is like one way street thinking. And like world will end if they change their mindset.

Living outside US bubbles I more anti Isreal but it does not affect me in the way to looks at cause and reasons of conflict and how to look for better ways to solve problems.

Might is right. Dumb thinking. So where all those Mighty Empire all gone. :rofl:

[annabanana]

2. Old Now is Earth. From Age to Age her Tragic Empires Rise.

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Turn Back O Man, Foreswear Thy Foolish Ways (n/t)

[AlamoDemoc]

3. Israel has become the oppressor

They have done to Palestinians what the Nazis have done to them, killing innocent Palestinians subconsciously.

[IndianaGreen]

10. David has become Goliath, and like Goliath

it is being beaten by children armed with stones.

[Reckon]

4. Lots of love for the peace makers!... Thanks for posting... nt

[Karenina]

5. GOOOO Silvia!!!

She is as clear.sighted as they come!!! I've read other articles she's written which also simply cut-to-the-chase. Worth looking up!

[Vidar]

6. Good essay. Thanks for posting.

[annabanana]

8. I was surprized

that no one beat me too it. It is a voice that needs to be heard.

[cali]

9. It's a really good piece

but oddly the author does conflate Jews with Israel. She writes:

"The time is long overdue for Jews to return to their role as the world's conscience, who come to the aid of the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth. Once again, we must join those who demand the end to unjust wars - in Iraq as well as Lebanon - and an unjust occupation in Gaza."

While I don't think any one people have the job of acting as the "world's conscience", it's not like Jews aren't still deeply involved in causes of social justice, including working toward an end to the occupation and a just peace in the M.E. The author herself is proof of this- as are many others.

[w4rma]

11. Jews, who lived the Holocaust, are fighting for the soul of Israel. (nt)

[motocicleta]

12. I wish I could bump again

This piece of writing just strikes to my core. It is all that I feel about the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, but written by a Jew who survived the Holocaust, and as such so much more vital than if written by a an atheist american (i.e., me).

[Baselinereality]

13. Being From a Purported Secular Society, What Amazes Me Is...

That anyone cares that a Jew is crying for peace relating to the conflict in Lebanon.

What percentage of Americans are crying for peace in Iraq while those in power are calling us "cut and runners?"

What is more important: America stopping its incursion in the Middle East or Israel stopping the fighting in Lebanon?

Not only that, but how many Jews are demanding peace in the Gaza Strip? Is that a conflict worthy of dissent? Because it only seems that the massive bombings in Lebanon have gotten anyone's attention.

I just wanted to point out that it seems incredibly, umm, pompous and arrogant to applaud a Jew standing against their government's position--oh, but someone who is Jewish is not necessarily an Israeli, so perhaps being a Jew in East Hampton opposing the war doesn't mean squat--while America continues to launch war after war with countries in the region. Or while Israel continues to kill dozens of Palestinians a week.

I am not an Arab, but I refuse to believe that they are not human. I think most of them just want to eat their hummus like the rest of us. If that makes me weak and stupid, so be it.

Where the hell is peace when you need it?

[struggle4progress]

14. " ... Your hands are bloody. Wash clean. Remove your misdeeds

from my sight. Stop doing evil. Learn to do good. Aim for justice. Redress the wronged. Hear orphans plead. Defend widows. Come: let us immediately set this right ..." Isaiah 1

[IntiRaymi]

15. Israel has succumbed to the myth of 'national security.'

National Security is what allowed, for example, the argentinians to disappear 14 000 dissidents; national security is what is allowing Bush to rip our Bill of Rights to shreds; national security permitted Pinochet to do what he did in Chile, etc.
This editorial hits the nail on the head: If you no longer stand on the higher moral ground, you lose the minds of the naive. Then is when you have to corrupt the process to achieve your aims.