Totally Ignored

GAZA, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Israeli fighter jets struck 450 Hamas targets in Gaza and troops seized a militant compound in the past 24 hours, Israel's military said on Monday, in attacks the enclave's health authorities said killed dozens of people.

A Reuters journalist in the Gaza Strip described the overnight bombardment from the air, ground and sea as one of the most intense since Israel launched its offensive in response to a surprise attack by Hamas on southern Israel a month ago.

 Health officials in Hamas-controlled Gaza said more than 9,770 Palestinians have been killed in the war since Hamas killed 1,400 people and seized more than 240 hostages on Oct. 7.

We are seeing similar reports daily of the human casualties of this most current war. What we don't hear or read of is the incalculable impact of war on the environment. Look at just this one AP photo, of which there are no doubt hundreds if not thousands of.

 

This photo from a story that emphasized the challenge of Gazans seeking some safe place amid the shelling and bombing of their neighborhoods. Just think of all the energy and materials that went into the construction of Gaza and what it will take to someday clean-up and rebuild a city of 2 million souls. The numbers will be staggering and they will add greatly to the carbon emissions we are trying to slow and reduce.

Today, November 6,  happens to be perhaps the most ignored UN International Day. It's the International Day for Preventing Environmental Exploitation in War and Armed Conflict. There is of course the total waste of energy and materials that war amplifies, but there are other "externalities" ignored in war that we will pay for - exposure to the toxicity for those who do the eventual cleanup and who live nearby; the extra toxicity from use of weapons like white phosphorus and depleted uranium; the contamination of soils, air, and water; the death of animals and destruction of plants and landscapes.

Each day the world community fails to impose a ceasefire, the tragedies grow and will ensure that future occupants inherent the costs. How many more have to die or be wounded; how much more destruction will satisfy the vengeance that war feeds?  Will the human family destroy itself and the community of life via unleashing these weapons directly or through those weapons of war destroying the ecology that provides us all with life? 

We need a Ceasefire NOW!!! Not just in Israel and Palestine, but Ukraine and Russia and all the other arenas of war. I am outraged that our government feeds this destruction and fails to call for an immediate ceasefire. It's a moral failure. As Edwin Starr so clearly noted 

"War! What is it Good For? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING? "

Ok, maybe. weapon makers.

Gaza, Ukraine and Possibility

Our local Peace Education Center, 

 
distressed by the recent violence in Gaza, we tried to offer something to address the killing, injury, destruction, and chaos that has been going on between Hamas and the Israeli military in recent weeks. We drafted a statement on the siege of Gaza which we put on our website, sent out to local media and supporters. In it we affirm the calls coming from many Israelis,
 

 Nobel Peace Laureates,

American Jews
 
  and others concerned with the escalation of violence in that troubled region, pleading for a cessation.

We fully realize that this little action will not impact the immediate situation on the ground there today. We are not in control of the decision-makers on any side. But can we just stay silent? Friday, while I was attending the weekly peace vigil held at the state capitol, we were joined by a Palestinian mother and her two children. Members of her family in Ramallah (West Bank) had been shot with rubber bullets the day before at a rally protesting the Israeli offensive in Gaza. They were sore but ok she said. But her voice quivered in relating the experience.

I have read in the past few days several potent pieces that offer some glimpse of possibility out of this mayhem in which so many are suffering and so much wasted resources are being expended. These are not the kinds of things you will hear the typical pundits, politicians, or political analysts share. But they are powerful possibilities that should be more widely shared, reflected on, and discussed. Perhaps even attempted with more rigor than has been shown to date. Otherwise, we'll be reviewing this depressing scene over and over in the months and years ahead.

As Einstein noted, the definition of insanity is the repeating of the same action over and over and expecting a different outcome. War and violence only breeds more of the same. Time for something new.

Please check out:


Tom Atlee "Enhancing the Lives of Both Palestinians and Israelis" 

     "The ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine is reaching another volcanic peak. Perhaps the biggest tragedy is the painfully familiar sense that it is all so unnecessary. Here and there I find commentators who offer insightful new directions and people on the ground working to make a positive difference. I share some of these points of light and then ask about the larger shifts needed if we wish to co-create flourishing lives together instead of collective tragedies..."

Charles Eisenstein  "A Restorative Response to MH 17"

     "Aren’t they awful? Aren’t they appalling? How could they? They must be monstrous, evil, inhuman. The only way to deal with such people is to stand up to them, destroy them, send them a message, take a stand, deter them, show them it isn’t acceptable, hold them to account. Any other response is soft, weak, naïve.
      How many times have we heard this narrative repeated? A horrible event occurs: the downing of a jetliner, the murder of three Israeli teenagers, the destruction of the twin towers, gas attacks in Syria… and immediately the press and political classes pump up the narrative that whoever committed this atrocity did so because they are bad people – bad people who implicate a whole class of bad people that must be overcome with force..."