Shot and Starved in Gaza

“I am so tired of waiting. Aren’t you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind? Let us take a knife and cut the world in two-and see what worms are eating at the rind.” Langston Hughes.

  A friend messaged me a month back to ask if I was okay as I'd not written for a long time. I confessed to having had writer's block. And since October, heartbreak block caused by the Hamas attacks and the ongoing retaliation against Palestinians in Gaza. It has been hard to know where to start, what string to pull at, and how to find a thread to connect the anger, grief, rage, despair, and confusion many of us feel.

This newsletter has much of its underpinnings in Buddhist practice. Buddhism’s secular roots attract many people of different faiths who find no conflict between their belief systems and Buddhism. I first discovered Buddhism in my late 20s and devoured almost every book I could find on the subject. I also discovered that many Buddhist teachers in the U.S., including some of the most revered, are of Jewish heritage.

So, I've been curious to see how they have reacted to recent events in Israel and occupied Palestinian land. I've come across two posts from well-known Buddhist teachers. Initially, I was not going to name them, as the point was not to find fault with anyone, but I decided to quote them directly to avoid any misinterpretation.

 Oren Jay Sofer, who also teaches Non-Violent Communication, wrote in October: 

  "As a Buddhist meditation teacher, I rarely speak about my Jewishness. I've yet to come to terms with the pain of Jewish history, or with the complexity of being white and Jewish in the United States. I've avoided entering the thicket of debates regarding Israel-Palestine, knowing how they can call up such strong emotions, stimulate profound trauma, and make it harder to build community and practice across the lines that divide us. "

Speaking of the October Hamas attacks, he writes: "There are the unthinkable, horrifying ways in which Israeli civilians were targeted," mentioning some of the specifics we all read about in the Western media. And then he mentions "the devastating conditions unfolding in Gaza."

Tara Brach is a revered teacher in the D.C. area. When I lived there, I often attended her weekly meditation sessions. Her interweaving of psychological insights, Buddhist teaching, humor, and poetry is enriching and insightful. As someone who was not brought up Jewish but has relatives who are, she notes astutely: 

Our society is so polarized into a sense of "us against them" that, for many and especially for those who are themselves traumatized, it's not possible to empathize and grieve the losses of those considered on the other side. Rather, they are objectified and perceived as bad others. This bad othering locks us in limbic reactivity, and our views and actions become shaped by fear and hatred…

Our current world is so divided and traumatized, it's difficult to talk about what is unfolding without causing pain. And silence also causes pain.

My heart asks that I recognize and name as harmful, any actions that violate others and create suffering. This would include…the terrible violence by Hamas against Jews and Israelis on October 7 and the current and ongoing indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in Gaza perpetrated by the Israeli government."

Sofer and Brach speak respectively to "the devastating conditions unfolding in Gaza" and the "current and ongoing indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in Gaza perpetrated by the Israeli government."

While this is true, it gives the impression that we began with a somewhat clean slate and that it was Hamas's horrific attacks that provoked retaliation against Palestinians in Gaza. I recently met a Palestinian man at an event in Lisbon. I expressed my concern and empathy for the unfolding genocide. Unfazed, he said: "This has been my whole life." 

The anti-Semitism and pogroms in Europe led to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine under the British who failed to take into account the desire of the Palestinians they were responsible for, so keen were they to find another solution to what has always been a problem for Christian Europe--their Jewish citizens. (In 1290, England garnered the distinction of being the first European nation to formally expel its Jews. It allowed them back several hundred years later, but the seeds of European anti-Semitism had been planted.)

On May 15, Palestinians will mark the Nakba, the start of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that began in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel sanctioned by British Zionists. Between 1947 and 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians became refugees as Israel ethnically cleansed more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, wiping out Palestinian villages,  and killing more than 15,000 Palestinians.

Amnesty International documents that since the occupation of remaining Palestinian territories that began in June 1967, Israel's policies of land confiscation, illegal settlements, and dispossession, along with discrimination, have inflicted tremendous suffering on Palestinians, depriving them of their fundamental rights. In half a century of illegal settlements, more than 600,000 Jewish settlers have taken over Palestinian homes and lands. 

In  August 2009, Nasser Ghawi, was evicted from the East Jerusalem home his family had lived in for five decades was quoted in The Washington Post. He lamented: “I am dying a hundred times a day. This is my house, this is what’s left of my furniture… This is where I was born.”

Does anyone know what happened to Ghawi and his family? Does anyone care? This story has been repeated thousands of times as Palestinian families are evicted from their homes so Jewish settlers can move. An entire generation of Palestinians have been born and live in refugee camps.

Olive trees are a significant part of the economy and spirit of the Palestinian people. The Yale Review of International Studies reports that the Israeli authorities have uprooted more than 800,000 Palestinian olive trees since 1967. Many of these trees were centuries old. To uproot these trees is to uproot a people from their heritage, deprive farmers of income, and cut the umbilical cord to agricultural practices that go back thousands of years, not to mention exacerbating climate change. This is all part and parcel of ethnic cleansing.

Most Israelis and American Jews are unaware of this history. They have been "miseducated." In the U.S., being Jewish means you "have" to support Israel. My friend Julie, also from the U.S., who has retired here in Portugal, says, "Many progressive Jews have had enough and are vociferously calling for a ceasefire -- which is almost like turning our backs on our upbringing." 

That upbringing served to induce trauma in Jews and further perpetuate intergenerational trauma, beginning with centuries of European anti-Semitism and culminating in the Holocaust. So it was no surprise when another Jewish friend, also recently retired to Portugal, reiterated that he's glad "Israel is there"; otherwise, "we would not be here." (this Rolling Stone article from 10 years ago that Julie sent me helps connect the dots between these two statements, predicated on the belief that the elimination of the next six million Jews was always just around the corner.

This mindset has led to decades of unquestioned allegiance to Israel, contributing to the "limbic reactivity" Brach speaks of. So, I can see why it's been hard “to go there” Even as the apartheid apparatus of the state of Israel rolls out its genocidal programs and has tacitly supported pogroms against Palestinians by Jewish settlers for half a century in Palestinian territories, Israel remains a sacred cow, vigorously defended by the Christian right as well as most Jews and Israelis. 

How do you confront the tragic irony and karmic repercussions when children of the Holocaust who sought safety from European anti-Semitism that dispossessed them from their land and homes in Europe, in turn, dispossess Palestinians from their land and are wiping them out? This violence has only begotten more violence from beaten down and occupied people and has allowed malevolent actors intent on exploiting the situation for their gain, like Hamas, to emerge in the late 1980s.

 "My heart", Brach writes, "honors the rights of Israeli and Jewish people to exist and seek safety." 

Absolutely. Israeli and Jewish people need to feel safe, but given that 1,200 Israelis died in the Hamas attacks and more than 18,000 Palestinians, including women and children, had been killed when Brach wrote this article, not to mention the thousands of lives destroyed over decades of occupation, prioritizing the safety of Israelis seems to be a huge blind spot.

She also writes that her heart "honors the rights of Palestinians to seek liberation from oppression; to pursue justice, equality and dignity." 

This is precisely what they have been doing for more than half a century, but no one is listening.

Are Palestinians to seek and pursue liberation forever, condemned, like Sisyphus, to push a heavy rock up a hill for eternity? Why can’t Palestinians and other non-Jewish people simply be given the right to "exist and seek safety?" and live on their own land that has been stolen from them?

 I believe Brach's heart is in the right place, but the waters are still muddled, perhaps due to the aforementioned limbic reactivity and trauma, both intergenerational and induced. What happens if I flip what Brach wrote?

My heart honors the rights of Palestinian people to exist and seek safety; and honors the rights of Israel and Jewish to seek liberation from oppression; to pursue justice, equality and dignity.

Palestinians are fighting for their very safety and survival. Gaza is flattened, 30,000 are dead, hospitals and U.N. relief centres have been bombed, and 1.5 million people have been herded into Rafah like cattle. The weight of bombs dropped in Gaza has exceeded that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Israel is preventing food aid from entering Gaza, and infants are now being starved to death, as I write this.

There is no safety or refuge anywhere in Gaza. Nor, apparently, does there appear to be safety and refuge in our collective hearts for Palestinians—at least not enough for more people to speak out and stop this violence. 

Israeli and Jewish people also must seek liberation from oppression. The way forward is to stop supporting the oppression of the Israeli state and become one of the thousands of Jewish Voices for Peace. By definition, justice, equality, and dignity cannot come at the expense of denying these basic human rights to others. You cannot heal your collective trauma by generating trauma for others.

 My friend Julie concludes: "What Israel and the U.S. are doing is exacerbating anti-Semitism, and by not doing all we can to stop it, we're actually creating more dangerous conditions for all Jewish people globally." 

"We have to learn to live with each other," texted a Jewish friend from Israel, despairing at the constant threat her family faces. 

Brach writes. "I realize I have my own conditioning, biases and places of not seeing. As I continue to pay attention, my understandings and views will evolve." She influences thousands of people, so her speaking up offers a way forward. I thank her for starting a conversation. I hope other leaders of all faiths and wisdom traditions will also demonstrate leadership and put their words into action rather than preach love and compassion broadly but turn their backs on genocide.

The first Buddhist book I read was by Jack Kornfield. In it, he asks if we are living a path with heart. This question riveted me and changed the path of my own life. Freedom and peace can only come if this is the path we choose to walk.

Liberation for all will come only by opening our hearts. In liberating others, we liberate ourselves. Dr. Martin Luther King knew this; he offered a path for white Americans to free themselves from the immoral and dehumanizing weight of being an oppressor, a weight that many did not even know they carried. Today, that leadership is coming from South Africa, a country that has experienced apartheid first-hand.

 Silence, as in the AIDS crisis, equals death. For every heart that has closed itself off to the decades-long suffering of Palestinians by speaking up only for Israeli deaths on October 7, there is more death--yet another child who will be shot or starved to death in Gaza when there is no more animal feed to eat.

There is also our own slow death as we constrict and harden our hearts, trapped between a fight and flight response, unable to fulfill the heart’s imperative to open, to bravely create a space for all beings, and forge a path of peace.  

“I am so tired of waiting,” wrote Langston Hughes. “Aren’t you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?”

The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness translated by Amaravati Sangha.

       Even as a mother protects with her life

            Her child, her only child,

So with a boundless heart

            Should one cherish all living beings;

Radiating kindness over the entire world…

            Outwards and unbounded,

Freed from hatred and ill-will.

LINKS

Gabor Mate vs Piers Morgan On Palestine and Gaza. Holocaust survivor & trauma expert on collectible trauma and a way to heal.

For Whom the Bell Tolls? It tolls for Gaza and Israel. Another Buddhist Perspective

Aaron Bushnell’s Divine Violence. Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Museum of the Palestinian People. Bringing people into the heart of Palestine