Perhaps, like myself, you are following the news from the land we call 'Holy,' with a mixture of grief, horror, and dread.
So many dead, in just a few brief days.
Even though twenty years have now passed since the years I lived there (2000-2003), I still think of my friends--both Palestinian and Israeli--every time I hear the news, which is nearly every day.
I am ever more firmly rooted in my belief that there is no military solution to this crisis. Every death, every killing, merely prolongs the conflict.
Killing civilians is wrong.
Targeting civilians is wrong.
'Civilians' is not a religion, a nationality, nor an ethnic group; but rather the people who choose not to be armed combatants-- they are children, mothers, the elderly, and people with disabilities. And yet so often, they pay the heaviest price in times of armed conflict.
There is no human life that is more valuable or precious than any other human being's life on this planet, regardless of religion, race, age, disability or ability, language, nationality, ethnicity, wealth or poverty, or any other human factor.
And even the mothers and families of armed combatants--whether those in an officially recognized military, or an unofficially-recognized 'militant group'--mourn their dead. And so often the ones who are sent to fight are not the ones who made the decisions to go to war.
The only path forward is one that recognizes the full humanity of each human person; full human and civil rights; a path that provides for each human being's need for food, shelter, water, clean air, an education and vocation; and the ability to live next to each other as neighbors in a civil society.
I believe such a path is possible, and I lament that so much time has been wasted pursuing so many other dead ends.
