I rented the film Munich this week and watched, for the first time, the grisly, sobering account about a team of Israeli commandos who picked off and killed targeted Palestinians in retribution for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in that German city in 1972. As I watched it, a finalist this year for the Oscar for best film, I thought about what is taking place now as the Israeli government has moved fiercely into the Gaza Strip to rescue an abducted Israeli soldier.In 2001, we visited Munich and the spacious grounds where the games had taken place three decades before. I had expected to spot some of that in the Steven Spielberg film. Instead, I saw 2 hours of cold-blooded killing, bombings and revenge — calculated state sponsored retribution. It underscored how the vicious and bitter Jewish-Arab relations have been in that region, almost without let-up going back to the formation of the Israeli state in 1948. Now new major bloodshed seems immanent in that region because of ancient hatreds and holy determination.
From time to time, we locally write about authorities and peace workers who try to explain the sheer complexities of the the military, political and religious bitterness that stretches back centuries. More than a few times, I turn down interviews with experts who say they have unique takes on the numbing issue. Journalists focused on that patch of earth have some of the most impossible work. What I find especially troubling is that, given how many thousands have died back and forth over the decades in bombings, raids and repressive policies, Israel is impelled to use a single soldiers abduction to launch such new fury with its huge military might.
That kind of behavior smacks of lack of restraint so common in military mindsets. When I was in the U.S. Army, short-fused sergeants used such tactics commonly. Something could be out of place and left undone in the barracks, and a drill sergeant was ready to cancel weekend passes or have every man in the barracks stand at attention interminably until someone fessed up for guard duty infractions or leaving a mess in the mess hall. Dozens or hundreds of men could face the full consequences for one mans action, misbehavior or defiance. It only take one incident, i.e. an abduction of an Israeli soldier, for a pretext to unload on their neighbors.
So many innocent Palestinians settlers especially have been uprooted — again — and sent running for their lives as military equipment rolls across Gaza destroying major bridges, a power plant and homes. Now have come air strikes. For a single abducted soldier? Can such escalated military actions for a single soldiers freedom be justified? As much as we try to see both sides of this confounding endless struggle, my pure instincts, plus understanding of the situation, seem to favor the Palestinians for whom a permanent homeland has got to be a solution. For all of Hamas mistakes and unbending calls to destroy Israel, one can hardly easily side with Israels methods on the West Bank this week.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, prolific editor of Tikkun and national chairman of the Tikkun Community Network of Spiritual Progressives, wisely criticizes both sides. His Friday e-mail renewed his call for transformations in consciousness and in the heart. He scolded Palestinians, Violence doesnt work and it is not working for you, he said. …dont be surprised to find that war (is) getting carried to your doors, to your electricity and water supply. He said Palestinians cant win by kidnapping, sending missiles over the border or throwing rocks. Your only power is moral credibility, and you build that by giving yourself to the vision of peace and non-violence and over of the enemy.
To Israel, Lerner said, by all international standards, it has no right to be occupy Gaza and the West Bank. But it has an absolute “obligation to treat the civilian population with certain respect and basic human rights. Israel continually fails to do this and has become one (not the worst, but one) of the worlds major human rights violators.” He equates Israel’s taking such suffering to the Palestinians as the kind of collective punishment that ruthless dictators have used against the civilian populations of countries that that they controlled to the horror of the rest of the world.
Tragically, the U.S. seems to be lying back and letting things take their course rather than putting pressure and terms on support of Israel. The total demonizing of Hamas has produced predictable results. So, the innocent will keep dying in the land where major world religions took root and spoke of peace.
