After bombing and killing at least 56 Lebanese civilians, most of them women and children, Israel has agreed to suspend air strikes for 48 hours. Call it a pause, a breath between bombs, a period in which the Israeli military investigates what the hell happened.
I can tell them what happened. Innocent people were killed -- and will continue to be victimized if an immediate unconditional cease fire is not declared.
Yes, this Jew wants a cease fire.
Cross-posted at winogradwatchdog.com
Though my family was not religious, I grew up in Jewish neighborhoods in New York City and West Los Angeles, where I heard stories of great great grandparents killed in Russian pogroms and great grandparents gassed in the Holocaust. I developed a keen awareness of anti-semitism and a commitment to thwart prejudice at every turn.
Today that commitment extends to the Middle East crisis, to calling for an immediate and unconditional cease fire, lest the world, locally and globally, becomes so polarized that prejudice envelopes us all.
Yes, it is hard to sleep these days.
I cannot sleep if I turn on the tv. Not if I see hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Lebanon, sticks with torn white sheets hanging from car windows, bridges bombed to bits, countless dead and dying children, Beirut a ghost town.
I cannot sleep if I check my email. Not if I read the message from my childhood friend in Israel who writes of hunkering down in a bomb shelter and accuses me of being naive for opposing war. Not if I rehearse what I will write back to her to convince her it is naive to believe in war.
I cannot sleep if I read the newspaper. Not if I read of Palestinians cut off from clean water because Israel bombed Gaza's power plant because Israeli soldiers were kidnapped because Palestinian soldiers were imprisoned, some tortured, for conspiring against Israel because Israel put Palestinians in refugee camps because the Palestinians set off car bombs because Israel stole their land because Israel says the land was always theirs.
I cannot sleep if I think about moving far way, to another country that will be safe from war. I cannot find that place on the map.
Sleepless, I have plenty of time to craft a message.
And the message is this.
Cease fire. Negotiate. Everything is negotiable. Peace is the only sane alternative in this seemingly intractable conflict.
Why?
Let us examine the headlines. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice says the US will only support a cease fire when Hezbollah is disarmed. Israel, however, now says it does not expect to completely disarm or defeat Hezbollah.
Where does that leave us?
With endless war, both regional and possibly global.
We are looking at another Israeli occupation, stated or otherwise, of Lebanon. Hand to hand combat between Israelis and Hezbollah guerrilla fighters. Constant rocket attacks on Haifa. Evisceration of Lebanon. Uprisings throughout the Arab world. Fractured countries. Power vacuums. A nuclear nation, Pakistan, teetering on the brink of collapse.
How is this in the best interests of Israel? Lebanon? Palestine? Jews? Muslims? Americans? Humanity?
To talk to friends in Israel is to know that two weeks into this conflict they are still trembling in bomb shelters. Meanwhile, thousands of Israelis take to the streets to demand an end to this war. Long-time Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery, now in his 80s, writes that Moshe Dayan's daughter joined the latest anti-war protest in Tel Aviv today, where Israelis outraged at the killings in Qana called for their leaders to be tried for war crimes.
To watch CNN and to witness the constant bombardment of Lebanese civilians, the unspeakable horror, is to know that this war will generate tremendous blowback, not only for every Israeli but for my child and her child and for the Jews worldwide, and for every American whose tax dollars pay for the bombs.
To friends who argue that Israel must protect itself, I say -- If you are a friend of Israel then you will not cheer or applaud as Israel adopts a perpetual war policy that will undermine its long-term security. Did the French defeat guerrilla fighters in Algeria? Did the US beat the Viet Cong in Vietnam? Did the Bush Administration cake walk in Iraq?
Each new rocket launched, each new bomb dropped takes us further and further from peace talks and everlasting security.
To support Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine is to call for a cease fire.
And I have been making that call publicly, not only here and now on Daily Kos, but in the street in front of the Israeli Consulate two days last week, when LA Jews for Peace joined with other humanitarians to urge an immediate unconditional cease fire.
Not everyone believes that war is peace.
War is war.
Peace is peace.
Cease fire now!