Israel, Hamas & Hostages

The Great Mandala ( Wheel of Life) is a song from the ‘60s  by Peter Paula & Mary (PPM). It was among the most powerful songs protesting the Vietnam War, reflecting on the perpetual cycle of life,  death, and choices.  Specifically, it is about a son starving himself to protest a war his father supports. The father’s anger turns to sorrow as he watches his son die.

The term Mandala is Sanskrit for circle or completion. They serve multiple uses for Hindus and Muslims, but generally, they represent the impermanence of life.  Westerners like me just admire them for their intricate beauty and variation.

To me, PPM’s song tied that impermanence to wars that date back for 1,000 years, almost always killing innocent people. Here are a couple of examples from recent American history.

1.     The Vietnam War lasted 20 years, killing 58,000 US soldiers, 600,000 Vietnamese combatants, and between two and four million Vietnamese civilians.  Today, we have statues honoring the US soldiers killed in Vietnam. I would imagine the Vietnamese have done the same. but no one takes much note of the millions of civilian casualties.

To sanitize the continuous televised reports of civilian deaths, the military invented a new term: collateral damage. To me, the term is like putting lipstick on a corpse: it may look better, but it remains dead.

Since Vietnam, the collateral damage term has been used many times in every war started. It is such a nice, neutral, and sanitized term sounding a little like words used on a spreadsheet. The term masks the horrific fact that innocent people keep getting killed in allegedly just wars.  It seems to me that calling innocent dead people collateral damage is like putting lipstick on a corpse. You may prettify it a bit, but it still remains a corpse.
Last year, 318,000 Americans visited Vietnam, often enjoying the hospitality of elite hotels, and enjoying comfortable tours along the Mekong Delta, where two soldiers I knew were killed in 1969. The US is now Vietnam’s #1 trading partner. According to Bard, we did about $60 billion with them. I am not aware of any of this wealth being directed toward the sons and daughters of collateral damage.

2.    Afghanistan. On Sept. 1, 2011, four planes departing from Boston’s Logan Airport were hijacked by Islamic terrorists belonging to an obscure extremist group called al Qaeda. Two jets crashed into the World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 civilians. A third plane crashed into a vacant field that was overtaken by passengers, and a fourth crashed into the Pentagon, bringing the total to about 3500.  Several hundred more would die in the following months from injuries incurred there.
We Americans were shocked and angered. We were nearly unanimous in our thirst for revenge.  We got it when Navy Seals tracked Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, in a remote Afghani cave, where they immediately shot and killed him. Until the attack, Bin Laden had been protected by the Taliban; another fundamentalist Muslim organization that was attempting to get control of Afghanistan.

At the invitation of the failing Afghani government, US troops remained in the country to protect citizens and pursue the Taliban. We assumed it would be a relatively easy and brief engagement. It wasn’t. Nineteen years later, American troops fled in defeat, and the Taliban took over the country.

During the US occupation,  50,000 Taliban combatants and 200,000 civilians were killed.

Wars are fought for many reasons. Those occurring in my lifetime have made little sense to me. The sense of moral superiority assumed by both sides seems to me to always lead to a great many dead civilians. Since Word War 1 ended in 1918, every major war has killed more civilians than combatants, according to Bard.

The current war in the Middle East is no different at least in that perspective.

Who Am I to Say?

I am the son of  Jewish European immigrants who came to America just before Hitler rose to power. My parents lost friends and family in concentration camps. My father’s big brother was killed at the Battle of the Bulge. I have friends who live there, and I have visited there.  I have stood on a street in Tel Aviv and wept as I realized the significance of this place to anyone of Jewish descent: In the whole world, there is finally a place for us.

My last name is Israel only because the immigration guy at Ellis Island could not spell Yisralovsky, my father’s last name when he arrived there in 1930. My heart is with Israel, but that does not stop me from opposing acts that cause collateral damage.

I came of age in the 1960s when Vietnam was erupting. There was still a draft, and I knew I might be called, and I could see no reason why I should risk death to kill people I did not know for a cause that seemed ludicrous to me.

I became active in protests against war and racism. I have been clubbed by police and briefly tossed in the slammer for participation in various marches against war and for equality. I am deeply, passionately, and irrevocably against war and laws that reduce individual freedom—and I am particularly opposed to killing innocent people in the name of a just cause.

Now something has happened, something horrible. As al Qaeda did to the US on 9/11, Hamas has done to Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Terrorists have killed 1400 people. There are horrific reports of rapes and beheadings. Most significantly 244 innocent people were taken as hostages and there is a clear danger that they will become collateral damage.

I don’t know about the Israeli people, but its government is Hellbent on revenge just as we Americans were in 2001. 

Last month, at this time, the world sympathized with Israel, and now there is far less support. In Israel’s rage, at least 10,000 Palestinians have become collateral damage and the court of public opinion has gone against them. The US has gone from a solid supporter to struggling to reduce the death of innocent people and has managed to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow some hours of Armistice allowing Palestinian non-combatants to get out of harm’s way.

To many Israel has taken a step in the right direction, but it is a very small step. It seems to me,  that Netanyahu’s focus should not be on annihilating Hamas at this time. It should be freeing those 240 hostages.

The hostilities between Israel and its neighbors have become an existential problem, one that deeply saddens me. I don’t see an immediate solution to the big problem. But there may be a solution to the hostages. Most of the Arab states seem not to want a war against Israel—at least right now. Perhaps one of those countries can serve as a negotiator for the release of the hostages.

This may not be possible. I am certainly in no position to tell you that it is. But I am pretty certain it is a better way to free the hostages than bombing Gaza to smithereens, and it will improve Israel’s position in the Court of Public Opinion.