Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2012/page/6/)
We keep praying for peace. The definition of madness is to continue doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. But,
We keep praying for peace. Wars rage in the Middle East. War is a wicked cruel deception that ultra-violence, that organized murder, that death, devastation and waste can bring peace. Yet,
We keep praying for peace.
One “secret” about me that is quite well known to those who know me is that I actually know very little about mainstream media – television, most magazines, celebrities, and the like. So it would hopefully come as not too much of a shock to my readers that until today I didn’t know of the existence of Emily Yoffe, aka Dear Prudence, one of the better known advice columnists on the web. I became introduced when Dave Belden, who offers all manner of support with my creative projects (if you love the pictures on this blog, he’s the one who selects them, for example), sent me an exchange from her column and urged me to write a post about it. Holiday Family Dinners
The exchange, which I copy below in its entirety (excerpted from this week’s Dear Prudence column), relates to the perennial challenge of political differences during holiday family dinners:
Q. Maybe a Not-So-Happy Thanksgiving?: I am recently married, and will be spending Thanksgiving with my new in-laws. They are a very, ultra conservative group and dislike our president.
I am sure that I am not the only one whose heart is heavy during these days. Waking up to read the news, that civilians, both Palestinian and Israeli, have been killed, including children, and that Operation Pillar of Defense will most likely commence, as rockets and bombing continue in both directions, feels like a nightmare. Maybe I have not in fact woken up at all.
The Hyatt Corporation is subcontracting jobs and forcing workers into poverty. Housekeepers endure crushing workloads that hurt their bodies. Where non-union workers are organizing to improve their circumstances, Hyatt has refused to remain neutral. On July 23, 2012 workers called for a global boycott of Hyatt hotels. We have heard stories of Hyatt abuse from many workers and find them very compelling. We support the workers’ boycott.
Grieving and mourning is the birthplace of healing, repair, and transformation. Once we begin our healing process we will begin to open our hearts with compassion to the experience and suffering of Palestinians.
What will Obama do with his (and our) electoral victory? The answer depends on understanding Obama. There are two theories, which lead to divergent expectations as to how Obama will handle the “fiscal cliff.”
All the usual suspects are cheering on their respective sides in the latest struggle between Israel and Palestine being fought out at the expense of some Israeli and more Palestinian civilian lives. I’ve been overwhelmed with sadness at the tragic loss of lives and harm to the bodies of Israelis and Palestinians, and outraged at all those who continue to justify their side and demean the other, implicitly cheering on the violence even as they officially deplore it! Enough is enough. Stop the violence immediately!
Interior Minister Eli Yishai, in a moment of disturbing candor, revealed what is for many in Netanyahu’s government the ultimate goal of its escalating military campaign on Gaza:
“The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for forty years.” Now, part of Yishai’s bombast comes from the fact that, as a known racist and head of the ultra-orthodox Shas party, he’d feel much more comfortable in the Middle Ages himself. However, his statement reveals an essential truth few Israeli leaders dare to articulate. And that truth is this: the current military throttling of Gaza has less to do with security and more to do with destabilizing Gaza as much as possible.
With bombs falling on Gaza, and rockets on Holon, a person in America who cares deeply about the people of Israel and Palestine is caught between a rock and a hard place. Not wanting to ignore the violence threatening her friends and family, but afraid to venture into the roiling milieu of “for us or against us” attitude in modern day social networks. As Allison Kaplan Sommer calls it in her Haaretz editorial, “laptop warriors” are fighting a war of their own.
I refuse to bow to the pressures of ethnocentrism. Now is the time to turn to each other for moral support.