You will find below a challenging post from an old friend and former classmate from my days in Bruges. Eran is a gentle man with an international outlook. He is a respected author and teacher in the world of memory training (erankatzasia/) and not a political hot head. Eran and his family are Israeli. I found his post (as I said above) challenging. My Facebook timeline is full of posts of those sharing their outrage at the actions of the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza. That outrage resonates with me. However, Eran reminds us that fear lives on the other side of the divide too in the face of rocket attacks from Hammas coming from Gaza. For some, this question will be easily answered. Either (on one hand) Israel has the right to do whatever it wants to defend itself or Israel is an abomination that should be wiped off the map. Those two views represent extremes (I suspect none of my FB friends will take those extremes on either side) and most us struggle somewhere in between. I have always thought of myself as a friend of Israel (and I have been taken to task several times for saying that) and I hope to use my new location at the eastern end of the med to visit. However, Israel is one of these friendships that can be hard to sustain in the face of sometimes bad behaviour and a true friend has to be someone willing to tell the critical truth. So, I struggle for answers amidst the horror we see. What do I know? I believe that the people of Israel and the people of Palestine both have a right to live safely. A trite truth but one that must never be lost sight of in its difficult simplicity. I believe that it is wrong for Hammas to attack Israel from Gaza. I believe it is wrong for Israel to attack densely populated Gaza - the civilians of Gaza no more deserve to be bombed in their beds than I do in mine. I believe though it is wrong too for Hammas to hide rockets amidst those densely populated streets of Gaza - exposing those civilians. How do we stop this? How can we open up the borders of Gaza so that it isnt the worlds largest prison camp? How can we ensure that those open borders will not be a vehicle for more attacks on ordinary Israelis? Surely we as a world can come up with an answer. Is a UN peace keeping force in Gaza the answer? I wish I had an answer. I thank Eran for sharing.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 22:25:47 +0000
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