Author: jpf_24rvpl

On March 11-13, a small conference of around 200 gathered on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia with potential significance extending far beyond its modest attendance. This was the national membership meeting of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a group founded in San Francisco in 1996, which in the wake of the siege of Gaza in late 2008 has aggressively grown into a national organization with 27 local chapters and seven full-time staff members.

The meeting and its discussions were closed to the press, but this only highlights the newsworthiness of the meeting in itself. Late last year, the Anti-Defamation League named JVP on a list of the ‘Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America,’ and since then well-known members of the group have in some cases met with violence or threats of violence, particularly on the West Coast, and lesser forms of intimidation from various Jewish community leaders.

The furor with which JVP is greeted by the official Jewish community centers largely around the group’s outspoken identification with the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli occupation, increasingly known by the acronym BDS. JVP appears to be conscious of these concerns and wants to allay many criticisms. It delineates few rigid boundaries of discussion and nuance, acknowledging disadvantages to academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, though it draws a firm line against academic institutions involved in the occupation and the Israeli military.

In one of the most remarkable manifestations of the organization’s growing national reach, JVP announced the formation of its Rabbinical Council which numbers 30, including several rabbinical students and one cantor. This represents the largest organized dissent by Jewish religious leaders from the first principles of the Jewish establishment since 1943.

The second national J Street conference at the Washington Convention Center, from February 26 to March 1, was well organized and well attended, with plenty of speakers and an informed audience. I was impressed by their diversity and enthusiasm.

The opening session, available on-line, is very much worth watching for its entire two hours. J Street was founded to challenge more established American Jewish organizations that too often interpret all criticism of Israeli policies as bordering on — if not actual — anti-Semitism.

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“We are once again in another war.” I said this over coffee the other morning as the news reported the start of bombing in Libya. My friend, who understands my pacifist leanings but doesn’t fully share them, started to give me justifications as to why this is not just another war. “This is sanctioned by United Nations Security Council, the Arab League endorsed it, the world needs to stop an insane demonic leader from killing his own people…”

Phrase it any way you want. It’s still another war. And what if it turns out to be a long war? The U.S. is still in Iraq, the U.S. is in the middle of fighting in Afghanistan, and now missiles are being dropped on Libya, allegedly to establish a no-fly zone.

Just stop for a minute and think about what is being done in our name. Somehow, sometime we need to have a national discussion about what we hope to win by fighting one war after another. But when will we have that discussion? If not now, when?

Long after the fighting has stopped, the troops come home, the dead buried, the medals awarded, the monuments built, the names posted of young men and women who died, and the mothers, fathers, sisters, wives, children and friends have gone on with their lives? Or maybe after the corporations have made inroads to sell American goods in what is now considered a friendly country?

Or after we have established this once-evil enemy as a trading partner and a trade treaty has been set up to let us buy trinkets or TVs at strip malls across America? After all this, maybe the American public can finally get down to figuring out why we were there fighting yet another war.

This national discussion needs to begin with the understanding that war is not the answer. Not yesterday. Not now. Not tomorrow. Never. The home-front warriors who make the decision to go to war are never the ones who fight the fight.

As a matter of fact, during the Vietnam War, when the politicians’ own sons were in danger of being drafted, the need to end that pointless war became very evident to those in power. And so they finally ended a failing war which killed some 58,000 U.S. soldiers, maimed another 130,000, not to mention a million or more dead Vietnamese.

So I suggest we begin to have this discussion now. Turn to the person next to you on the bus, the subway, the train, the restaurant, the café, the espresso bar — and talk to him or her. You need to talk to someone, anyone, who doesn’t see the obvious, who doesn’t already agree with us.

Let me help get the conversation started. I have experience in this. “Excuse me. May I ask you why we, the U.S., are in Afghanistan? What do we hope to gain by being there? The Russians couldn’t win a war there even though they tried for 20 years, so do you think we can? Are you willing to give your life for this purpose? If you disagree with why this is being done in your name, in my name, in our names — have you told your politicians?”

If the person can’t hear you, talk louder so everyone around can hear you. Our future and the future of the world depend upon it.

Rows of white granite markers drop away and then ripple up the far grassy hill and go on forever across flat green lawns. Arlington Cemetery. It looks like a thousand little scabs trying to heal one big wound.

War is about holes. Colin Powell planted the seeds for war with a story that had an integrity-hole big enough to drive a WMD mobile-lab truck through. Donald Rumsfeld now tills the book-sales circuit as he works to bury truth down the memory hole. The corporate media cultivated and nurtured the lies of Curveball even as they knew there was doubt. They all dug a deep and deadly hole and now scramble to backfill and cover it over.

War is about holes. The definition of what is a good or bad war; all the patriotic rationalizations and reasons for war, all the war movies and war stories are nothing more than the dirt we shovel in to fill up the holes. Powell and Rumsfeld and the corporate media are all shoveling as fast as they can right now.

War is about holes. Foxholes. Bullet holes. Fire-in-the hole! Bomb craters. Caves and graves. Whether Grunt, Fobbit or REMF, a combat tour is all about holes. Holes you jump into for survival when the shooting starts, and the constant hope and prayer you don’t end up in a hole for good.

A mother often describes the arrival of the uniformed messengers of death on her front porch as the moment she felt as if she had suddenly fallen into a deep, dark hole. There is a hole in New York City. Some say that hole started the war. Some say the war started long before the hole. And there are fights about what should go into or who should be allowed anywhere around that hole.

In the controversy surrounding the creation of the national Vietnam Memorial was the issue of the design. Critics said it looked like a long gash in the earth, like a wound or a scar. It was a hole you had to descend into as the black Wall towered over you. And that is exactly what happens when you walk the memorial. You descend into the hole of war and stare at the names behind your own reflection and the reflection of the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. It is a powerful, overwhelming experience.

I guess we forget sometimes that we can use holes to plant life, to plant the seeds of hope or the saplings of peace. Not too deep lest we smother the plantings. Not too shallow or we risk it being easily uprooted. But we must be constant gardeners and prevent the weeds of war from spreading and strangling the roots of peace and hope. We must tend to the garden for all our sakes, and for the sake of those lost in the holes of war, and those who stare back and ask: Why?

War is about holes. Peace is about what we put in those holes.

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I recently returned to Hiroshima, inspired by the resilience of the Japanese people and the Japanese peace movement. There was also humility and anger at what the government that speaks in my name once inflicted there and is preparing for the future.

Along the way, I couldn’t help but think about the ways that Hiroshima and Fukushima are linked, not only by the deadly radiation which kills across generations, but the reality that, like the decision to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, human ambition and greed, not simply nature, were responsible for what the Japanese have suffered recently from the nuclear meltdowns.

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The sixty-sixth anniversary of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was approaching and a neighbor, a retired fireman and World War II veteran, asked if I thought the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. He said that he thought they were because many American soldiers and marines might have been killed in a land invasion of Japan’s main islands. Okinawa, he said, was bad enough. Invading Japan would have been far worse.

In no way, he said, was he dismissing the killing of so many civilians, but like virtually all Americans at the time he unquestioningly believed the government’s assertions that because of Pearl Harbor and the many American deaths occurred while hopscotching across the islands of the Pacific, it was perfectly all right to kill enemy civilians in a war.

President Truman’s announcement at the time avoided dealing with the issue when he emphasized that Hiroshima was a military base; ergo, the city was a legitimate wartime target. He never sought to explain Nagasaki.

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One of the most uplifting characteristics of summer 2011 in Israel was the realization of the leadership of Israel’s youth. Inspiring! There is no better word to describe how uplifting it was to see our young people take to the streets and demonstrate their leadership in organizing ‘tent city’ protests and demanding greater social and economic justice.

Their organization, supported by their command of the new technologies and new media and augmented by their energy and optimism, swept across the land, and their enthusiasm captured the very spirit of Israel. By far the most impressive and distinguishing attribute of these young leaders is their speaking ability. They are so expressive, so remarkably capable of putting into words their vision for an Israel I would certainly be very proud to be a part of.

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Ribono Shel Olam, Master of the Universe,

I pour out to You a torrent of anguish, tangled thoughts jagged and torn, of love and fear, anger and despair. Lead us from the valley of shadows, help me to contain within me all that I feel, for my people and our land and for the horror that is wrought in our name.

Open our eyes to the wisdom that is ours by tradition, forsaken and left behind in our failure to engage the other, however hard the pill to swallow; peace is to be made with enemies, a notion some have scorned.

Help us to learn what seems impossible to learn, that war does not resolve conflict, a timeless delusion sowing seeds of strife to come. Help us not to speak empty words in lockstep when prophetic challenge is needed, when love is called to utter truths that do not want to be heard.

So hard to restrain when might is at hand, responding to pain inflicted by rockets fueled of hate sent deeper to the heartland. Responding then with fury, horrific scale, innocents beneath the bombs that do not distinguish, terror that is ours and terror that is theirs, words of sympathy ring hollow when followed by “We’re sorry, but it’s not our fault.”

From out of the rubble, open our eyes to see, no peace will come, but legions more of those who hate. “Not by might, nor by power,” Your prophet Zecharia said, and give us the courage to heed their truth and find another way.

Help us to see the openings to be made in borders on the ground and in the borders of our minds, that food, not bombs, will create the greater possibility of minds expanding, our own and theirs, to know there is no place for one without the other.

Hear our anguish, Merciful One, and help us to respond out of the place from which it comes, elusive hope so hard to find, hidden in shards of darkness waiting for the light. Knowing that Your truth is not exclusive to one, help us all to clothe in humility our words to each other and to You, and let that itself be a tender step toward peace.

And let us say, Amen.

A few weeks before Rosh Hashanah, the rabbi in me reverts to seasonal language and themes — love, covenant, partnership, introspection, atonement, sin. The Jew in me adds Jewish communal visions, hopes and disappointments to the list. As a member of the human family, I reach for inclusion. God cares for us all; shouldn’t we emulate that example?

I’ve toiled in the Holy Land since coming here at the age of fifteen. It became my beloved; I’ve raised a family here, my mother is here, my children and grandson are all flourishing here. I fell in love with its people, my people, and was lucky enough to meet the Other, and fell in love with them as well.

[Content continues with discussions of checkpoints, Palestinian rights, Hassan Hijazi’s story, and reflections on peace and justice in Israel/Palestine, ending with a prayer for understanding and reconciliation]