Dear Friend,
Usually, I give you articles from others. This one is from me. I'm mad. Really mad. Read on. March 13, 2011, John R. Kleinheksel Sr.
The Insanity of Endless Tit for Tat
John R. Kleinheksel Sr. March 13, 2011
The world is now learning about the latest insane actions/reactions in Israel/Palestine. Here’s the latest headline from the Associated Press:
Israel OKs settlement construction after attack
By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press
JERUSALEM – Israel said Sunday it has approved building hundreds of settler homes after five members of an Israeli family — including three children — were knifed to death as they slept in a West Bank settlement over the weekend.
For those who care about human life and property, the latest atrocity and the tit for tat escalation in hostilities is maddening.
Where are the leaders who see and understand what is going on there and desire to put a stop to the violence against persons and property? Right-minded people must condemn the Palestinian desire to wreak vengeance on Israelis who violate their people and property. And right-minded people must condemn the Israelis’ desire to wreak vengeance on Palestinians by continuing to violate their people and property!!!
Why do we continue to aggravate and kill each other? When will each back off and make conciliatory actions that show the other side cares about atrocities and is doing something to make real changes for the better?
What is really insane to me is that at least the Palestinian Authority (PA) has categorically denounced this form of violence by fellow Palestinians. It achieves no good end whatsoever. But no one in the present Israeli leadership is disavowing the advancing of the settlement project, which inflames the violence. What insanity is this?
I remember attending a conference in Athens, Ohio as an undergraduate when Martin Luther King Jr. addressed us. I will never forget when he argued that Caucasian society cannot use the results of prejudicial treatment as an argument for its continuance. What he meant was that blacks who were separated from their wives and children in the earliest years of slavery, rebelled, committing serious atrocities over the decades, violating “civil” standards of decency and order. Dr King insisted the solution was not to continue to pile on the inequities, but to rectify systemic roots of dislocation and egregious forms of inequality, instead of seeking vengeance on the persons who were aggrieved. Civil rights legislation began in earnest following his assassination (and the assassination of Jack and Robert Kennedy) and has truly made a huge difference in the United States, even though inequalities and injustices persist decades later.
That situation applies now in Israel/Palestine. But instead of changing the root causes of violence against themselves, the Israelis establishment is reinforcing the systemic sources of the violence against themselves. Does this make sense? What will it take to begin a different “way” of dealing with “violence”? This is a clear and present illustration of insanity, the absence of reason to address causes of violence.
It’s like saying, “You will always stay in the back of the bus”! Or, “You will never be able to buy a home in our neighborhoods”! Or, “You will never be admitted to our schools”! Or, “You will never get THAT job”!
And religion is a contributing cause, make no mistake. This horrific violence perpetrated against an Israeli family was done in a leading religiously motivated settlement, where rabbis claim it is “God’s” intention that Israelis (and no one else) have the right to settle the land.
Where are the Muslim and Jewish leaders who are committed to the “common good” among the immigrants (Israelis) and previous occupants of the land (Muslims and Christians)? What will it take to sit down and reason with one another and accept mediation from a Third Party that both sides can trust?
God, when will this insanity end????
