THERE IS NO VIOLENT SOLUTION – CEASEFIRE NOW!!!

Nuestro Amigos – que lastima!! Nuestro familia en el Medio Oriente ha sufrido mucho, verdadamente mucho!! We grieve for their suffering…

 The trauma Jews have suffered over centuries of pogroms, the Holocaust, and now the heinous Hamas attack of Oct 7, has deeply affected feelings, behaviors, and alert systems of Jews – over the generations.

 Palestinians are also deeply traumatized, devastatingly, from the violence and oppression they’ve suffered for the last 75 years and the massive bombardment now.

 When people are in a chronic state of alarm or fight-flight-freeze, their alert systems do not function well, and their responses can be extreme.  Thus violence begets violence, exactly as we’ve seen.

 As the daughter of a German Jew, a Holocaust fighter and survivor, I can only say Never Again Includes Now, and especially not by us.

 In 1900, before heavy Jewish immigration, few Jews lived in Palestine. In 1947, with the population still mostly Arab, a U.N. resolution committed 55% of the land to Israel. Tensions exploded.

 Israel declared itself a state, and five bordering Arab lands were invaded.

Partisans differ on when the Nakba (Catastrophe) began, but most Palestinian Arabs were violently driven from their homes. Since then, Israeli occupation and settlements have reduced Palestine to 166 pitiful enclaves partitioned by Israeli settlements and dedicated roads, controlled by Israeli checkpoints.   Palestinians are still: turned out of their homes by settlers; blocked by invasive walls and checkpoints; deprived of water, food, and power; harassed, assaulted, incarcerated for little or no reason; and senselessly killed.

 This is all the more poignant since half of Gaza’s occupants are children, enduring deprivation, brutal terror, arrests, and incarceration. Nature functions: chronic injustice is violence, sparking more violence. Hence, there’s no violent solution.

To move forward, there must be communication and cooperation: a ceasefire, with diplomatic negotiations supported by the UN and the international communities, and without more arms or munitions supplied.

 International Law, enhanced after two world wars, is crucial. Enforcement mechanisms are needed for it to be truly effective.  Per International law:

• military responses must be proportional:
  (not stronger and fiercer than the event responded to)

• civilians must be left out of it.

• hospitals, medical facilities, and schools must be left undisturbed.

• an occupier is not permitted to bomb the occupied.

• war is illegal (see Kelloggs-Briand Pact of 1927/8).