"Surely, they say, there must, there has to be another way of doing this."
OK, let's start here, with this flicker of anguish, this quick stab of despair and disbelief that war is a rational means to an end. These words, from an essay by Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of the Jewish peace lobbying group J Street, describe the complex discomfort felt by what he surmises to be a "third stream of Jews" in the U.S. and elsewhere -- neither committed peaceniks nor "Pavlovian flag wavers" -- over Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip.
"There has to be another way . . ." Let's sit with it for a moment, nurture it before it passes, because it is awareness at the earliest noticeable stage, and most of us on this planet, I think, can no longer repress it, no matter how much we want to and no matter how alone we feel with it. This awareness may be the fire we must harness if we are going to survive.
I say this mindful of how difficult life is without an enemy to blame for our suffering, for everything that's wrong. I say this mindful, also, of the hell that others do create, as we crouch in the hallway with Lubna Karam.
