Tuesday, July 25, 2006 | from the John Dewey High School Alumni List
Hello Steve, There are times when Israel has practiced great restraint, such as during the Gulf War. I have never said this but I was truly proud of Israel in those days, I felt its strength and integrity, and its willingness to refuse to escalate the crisis. There is a difference between "doing something" and what is happening now. The two abducted soldiers are covered by Geneva. That is an act of war. Technically legal. The massacre of civilians and the destruction of their homes is genocide, also covered by Geneva and other treaties. I know what genocide is because I studied the Holocaust. Then I went to see the damage, as best I could half a century later, and interviewed many Germans about how they felt today, to sense whether the lessons were learned -- in Germany. Then I lived in Paris, where everywhere is another memorial to the murdered, deported, relocated, extinguished lives. Everywhere, as on every single block, there is another plaque on a building. My humanitarian instincts have been informed and refined by an understanding of what occurred in Europe between 1933 and 1945. I cannot stand in a train station and not think about the Holocaust. If the words "never again" are to have meaning, we have to put them into practice, every day. It is not easy to rise above the apparent conflict and have a conscience. But it is possible. I am not willing to stand for this. But I am educated and I am willing to suffer the implications of my education. I am not saying Hezbollah is concerned about the lives of Lebanese children. War benefits nobody except those in the war business, and Hezbollah is an open, shameless participant in a hopeless cause. We don't need to respond to their actions with similar actions, however; the purpose of justice is different than revenge and conquering. Defense and offense are different things. I grow deeply concerned when I read about this war being planned since 2000, when I consider the arms manufacturers and banks profiting wildly, when I consider the wing-nut theocratic politicians in the US and their unwavering loyalty to Israel because these are the "end times," and when I consider the implications of an all-out spiral of war in the Middle East, which we can ill afford at this time in history. Any Jew who cannot see his own reflection in the eyes of a Lebanese child is a grievous embarrassment to his people and his history. For my whole life, as a New Yorker and later as a student of Ira Zornberg at Dewey, I was made sensitive to the plight of the Jews, so recent in history. When I see what is happening now, that same sensitivity is what informs me, and I am sad and disgusted and embarrassed by Israel. e | ||||||
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