Santiago Bilinkis l Risk and Reward - Trying to live a life out of the comfort zone

For the last few days I have read in despair the news coming from the Middle East. They cause me a great deal of pain and sadness. After so many years of failed efforts, how can we finally find the way towards Peace?

As Amos Oz wrote in this article that was almost a prophecy, I am convinced that in this conflict there is no way that Peace may come from War. That is why I find it so hard to stomach this Israeli attack. At the same time, I see very clearly that every time there was a truce to try to find a way towards Peace it was Israel that cooperated and the different Palestinian factions that boycotted, starting with the renowned Triple Negative of 1967 (No to Peace, No to Recognition of Israel, and No to Negotiation).

I also oppose this war because I am convinced that, as Martín Varsavsky explains in this post, this war does not serve the long term interest of Israelis to stop the missile rain and the suicide bombings. On the contrary, it gives more fuel to the perverse logic of hate that Islamic extremists need.

This conflict is very complex and cannot be thought as having “villains” and “victims”. And above all, it cannot be analyzed without putting ourselves in the place of those who suffer the pain. For that reason, I feel particularly bad to see the different demonstrations here in Argentina (especially from the left) that, in my opinion in a totally ignorant and dogmatic way, condemn unilaterally the Israeli attack, turning ones into complete villains and others into pure victims.

What is the FUBA (Federation of the University of Buenos Aires) taking part in a demonstration like this, in which there seems to be no reflection, no search for truth before acting? And what can we say of the attitudes and speeches of Luis D’Elia y and the actions of the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez?

To oppose this war, moreover, to oppose the Israeli attack, there is no need to turn Jews into villains , as a lot of people and media are doing.

In the midst of this informative asymmetry a part of me feels tempted to, without justifying this war, revisit the general Jewish way to approach things. But in this context, being myself Jewish, I am uncomfortable that that could be seen as a support to the attack. Maybe coming from an Arab person it may be heard somehow differently, so I will close this post quoting Wafa Sultan, a Syrian woman who lives in the US and who is very critic of Islamic extremism. She, in a video I include below, says:

“The Jews have come from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy.”

I close expressing my wish that reason will prevail and a way be found to two States, a Jewish and a Palestinian one, that can coexist peacefully.

Photo: Counterclockwise