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Date sent: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 10:46:29 -0700
You can't be serious.
America has supported exactly the kind of violence that we were subjected
to yesterday against the palestinian people for decades.
Figuring this stuff out is is not rocket science or mystical alchemy.
Research the modern history of the Middle East, and you will find that at
the end of WWI, the european colonial powers lied to the Turks and Arabs
and specifically architected a political structure that was designed to
destroy and weaken muslim civilization (not that muslims didn't have their
hands full with their own internal problems) in order strengthen the
geopolitical and economic position of european powers.
I'm not "taking sides", those are the facts. Both "sides" in the
Israeli/Palestinian war are full of racism and religious bigotry.
Here is a good resource for understanding the problem:
http://www.tikkun.org
(see below for excerpt from Rabbi Lerner's article)
regards,
ep
On 12 Sep 2001, at 18:31, David Chance wrote:
Date sent: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 18:31:25 +1200
...
> I'm living in New Jersey, and at least 2 of my daughters school
> friends appear to have lost parents in this tragedy.
>
> It's not easy to explain to her how the people doing this
> actually believe that is what God wants of them.
>
> It was very trying watching the news and seeing people in other
> countries, men, women and even children, cheering the events of
> today.
>
> Maybe thats something I never want to undersatnd.
...
A World Out of Touch With Itself: ' Where the Violence Comes From
by Rabbi Michael Lerner Editor, TIKKUN Magazine
There is never any justification for acts of terror against innocent
civilians--it is the quintessential act of dehumanization and not
recognizing the sanctity of others. The violence being directed against
Americans today, like the violence being directed against Israeli civilians
by Palestinian terrorists, or the violence being directed against
Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army occupying the West Bank and Gaza,
seem to point to a world increasingly irrational and out of control. It's
understandable why many of us will feel anger. Demagogues will try to
direct that anger at various "target groups" (Muslims are in particular
danger, though Yassir Arafat and other Islamic leaders have unequivocally
denounced these terrorist acts). The militarists will use this as a moment
to call for increased defense spending at the expense of the needy. Right
wing may even seek to limit civil liberties. President Bush will feel
pressure to look "decisive" and take "strong" action--phrases that can be
manipulated toward irrational responses to an irrational attack. To counter
that potential of mass panic, or the manipulation of our fear and anger for
narrow political ends, a well-meaning media will instead try to narrow our
focus solely on the task of finding and punishing the perpetrators. These
people, of course, should be caught and punished. But in some ways this
exclusive focus allows us to avoid dealing with the underlying issues. When
violence becomes so prevalent throughout the planet, it's too easy to
simply talk of "deranged minds." We need to ask ourselves, "What is it in
the way that we are living, organizing our societies, and treating each
other that makes violence seem plausible to so many people?" Its true, but
not enough, to say that the current violence is a reflection of our
estrangement from God. More precisely, it is the way we fail to respond to
each other as embodiments of the sacred. We may tell ourselves that the
current violence has "nothing to do" with the way that we've learned to
close our ears when told that one out of every three people on this planet
does not have enough food, and that one billion are literally starving. We
may reassure ourselves that the hoarding of the world's resources by the
richest society in world history, and our frantic attempts to accelerate
globalization with its attendant inequalities of wealth, has nothing to do
with the resentment that others feel toward us. We may tell ourselves that
the suffering of refugees and the oppressed have nothing to do with us--
that that's a different story that is going on somewhere else. But we live
in one world, increasingly interconnected with everyone, and the forces
that lead people to feel outrage, anger and desperation eventually impact
on our own daily lives. The same sense of disconnection to the plight of
others that operates in the minds of many of these terrorists. Raise
children in circumstances where no one is there to take care of them, or
where they must live by begging or selling their bodies in prostitution,
put them in refugee camps and tell them that that they have "no right of
return" to their homes, treat them as though they are less valuable and
deserving of respect because they are part of some despised national or
ethnic group, surround them with a media that extols the rich and makes
everyone who is not economically successful and physically trim and
conventionally "beautiful" feel bad about themselves, offer them jobs whose
sole goal is to enrich the "bottom line" of someone else, and teach them
that "looking out for number one" is the only thing anyone "really" cares
about and that anyone who believes in love and social justice are merely
naive idealists who are destined to always remain powerless, and you will
produce a world-wide population of people feeling depressed, angry, and in
various ways dysfunctional. Luckily most people don't act out in violent
ways--they tend to act out more against themselves, drowning themselves in
alcohol or drugs or personal despair. Others turn toward fundamentalist
religions or ultra-nationalist extremism. Still others find themselves
acting out against people that they love, acting angry or hurtful toward
children or relationship partners. Most Americans will feel puzzled by any
reference to this "larger picture." It seems baffling to imagine that
somehow we are part of a world system which is slowly destroying the life
support system of the planet, and quickly transferring the wealth of the
world into our own pockets. We don't feel personally responsible when an
American corporation runs a sweat shop in the Phillipines or crushes
efforts of workers to organize in Singapore. We don't see ourselves
implicated when the U.S. refuses to consider the plight of Palestinian
refugees or uses the excuse of fighting drugs to support repression in
Colombia or other parts of Central America. We don't even see the symbolism
when terrorists attack America's military center and our trade center--we
talk of them as buildings, though others see them as centers of the forces
that are causing the world so much pain. We have narrowed our own attention
to "getting through" or "doing well" in our own personal lives, and who has
time to focus on all the rest of this? Most of us are leading perfectly
reasonable lives within the options that we have available to us--so why
should others be angry at us, much less strike out against us? And the
truth is, our anger is also understandable: the striking out by others in
acts of terror against us is just as irrational as the world-system that it
seeks to confront. When people have learned to de-sanctify each other, to
treat each other as means to our own ends, to not feel the pain of those
who are suffering, we end up creating a world in which these kinds of
terrible acts of violence become more common. This is a world out of touch
with itself, filled with people who have forgotten how to recognize and
respond to the sacred in each other because we are so used to looking at
others from the standpoint of what they can do for us, how we can use them
toward our own ends. No one should use this as an excuse for these terrible
acts of violence--the absolute quintessence of de-sanctification. I
categorically reject any notion that violence is ever justified. It is
always an act of de-sanctification, of not being able to see the divine in
the other. . We should pray for the victims and the families of those who
have been hurt or murdered in these crazy acts. Yet we should also pray
that America does not return to "business as usual," but rather turns to a
period of reflection, coming back into touch with our common humanity,
asking ourselves how our institutions can best embody our highest values.
We may need a global day of atonement and repentance dedicated to finding a
way to turn the direction of our society at every level, a return to the
most basic Biblical ideal: that every human life is sacred, that "the
bottom line" should be the creation of a world of love and caring, and that
the best way to prevent these kinds of acts is not to turn ourselves into a
police state, but turn ourselves into a society in which social justice,
love, and compassion are so prevalent that violence bec
[...text truncated by web site error]
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