The Middle East is the Hub of the World where wars constantly start and peace seems impossible. The only solution is a united planet with a global democracy, and can anyone seriously imagine our species being intelligent, mature, and evolved enough to come together to make it so?
Had my own moment of silence. Today. So many emotions. One year after Palestinian terrorists from Iran’s proxy militia Hamas broke out of Gaza into southern Israel and murdered about 1,200 people. Most were Israelis, Jews, but others were citizens from more than 30 different nation-states and from other religions. A large number of those were Thais working in Israel. Most of the Thais were likely Buddhist. The killed and wounded ranged from babies to the elderly and from across all genders. Hamas engaged in mass carnage. The Israeli counterattacks have killed and maimed many, many more in Gaza, tens of thousands more, mostly Palestinians but also others from different countries and religions including Christians.
Since then the war has spread across Gaza and Israel to the West Bank, Yemen, Lebanon, and has drawn in Iran, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and several European allies including France, Italy, and the UK. Waves of anti-Semitism and sometimes violent pro-Palestinian protests have erupted in numerous countries including here in the USA. There have been vigorous pro-Israeli and pro-Jewish pushback. There are also mass demonstrations within Israel against their Prime Minister Netanyahu and to negotiate a ceasefire to return the remaining hostages home alive. Mass protests by Israelis against Netanyahu had been going on well before the Hamas butchery as Israelis rose up in the streets against their increasingly Far Right, authoritarian, and heavy handed regime.
This war is, however, bigger than all of those issues. It’s connected, in a global strategic geopolitical sense, to other wars in the world such as the Russo-Ukrainian War and conflicts on the edge of breaking out into war such as between China and Taiwan and between Venezuela and Guyana. There are tense, simmering conflicts such as North Korea versus South Korea, Japan, and the USA, and also between China and several countries including the Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan over the islands in the South and East China Seas. There’s a ferocious civil war in Myanmar, border conflicts and revolts across South Asia, wars of all kinds spanning multiple African nations including the Sudans, and civil strife and violence in the Caribbean and Latin America. Some think Earth is in the beginning states of another world war similar to what happened around the planet from 1931 to 1939.
All of these matters, along with global climate disruption, economic challenges, and the exponential spread of AI into our civilization, greatly sadden and concern me. These events combine with my knowledge of history to have me feel anxious while the la-la-la types who ignore “negativity” lose themselves in naivety, perpetual sunshine, and happy frickin’ lollipops.
What is clear Israel has every right to defend and to avenge itself. It has every right to obliterate sources of constant hostile rocket fire and terrorism. While engaged in an existential war, it faces the conundrum of fighting and defeating a terrorist enemy hiding behind civilian shields as they burrow down beneath residential apartment buildings, schools, mosques, and even hospitals. One may ask in a small, densely populated Gaza Strip, basically so blockaded by Israel since earlier Gaza Wars as to be one vast, open internment camp, where else could they go? So they went underground.
The Palestinians have every right to defend themselves, break the Israeli blockade, and demand independence as a separate nation-state. Even if such a state would not at all be economically viable. Early attempts by Gazans to protest and rebel against their Hamas overlords resulted in Hamas harshly crushing all dissent. Israel failed to support such demonstrations and instead walled off the Gaza Strip in a blockade. So guess who regular Palestinians will choose to support when its time to fight, the Israelis who bomb them into devastation, blockade them from necessary everyday resupplies, and shred their children with hot, exploding metal, or the despotic Hamas and Islamic Jihad fanatics who build their armed camps in tunnels below their homes and hospitals?
The Palestinians, however, do not have the right to rape, torture, massacre, and kidnap anyone, including not each other, and certainly not Israelis of any faith and Jews from any country. Israel, however, has gone too far in slaughtering many thousands of civilians in Gaza and now hundreds in Lebanon, especially with aerial bombing assaults. Many say they went too far, but how to go to war against an enemy that hides behind and beneath human shields and fights without any rules whatsoever?
People forget what the Allies did in the Second World War. Both the Allies and the Axis committed atrocities, but the Axis committed far, far more atrocities and far, far worse ones. Even so, the Western Allies burned down German and Japanese cities with incendiary bombs, killing more Humans than did the later atomic bombings of Japan. Very few people wish the Axis Empires had won, however, and most are glad for the Allied victory. War is a horror. We Humans often justify one atrocity with another. Should we cherry pick our war crimes to rail against and prosecute some and ignore and forget others?
War invokes hypocrisy and fear-based behavior. For example, why isn’t the USA, the UK, and the EU helping to defend Ukraine by shooting down Russian missiles? Iran doesn’t have intercontinental ballistic missiles tipped with multiple thermonuclear warheads, and Russia does is why. Fear holds everyone back from peace, health, and prosperity. It doesn’t matter if Russia is so corrupt and incompetent its poorly maintained missiles explode inside their silos. It doesn’t matter if China’s much vaunted Rocket Forces are so riddled with corruption many of its ICBMs were recently determined to be rusty, empty of rocket fuel, and full of water instead. It doesn’t matter UFOs/UAPs from alleged Non-Human Intelligences are obsessed with Human nuclear weapons. Many of North Korea’s artillery shells, those shipped to Russia to use in Ukraine anyway, are apparently duds or explode upon launch. The dictator of Belarus, a giant of a man yet a shaking puppet next to little Putin, is too afraid of his own army to launch them into Ukraine. None of those matter because so many Humans are terrified of nuclear war as it only takes one to trigger the escalatory promenade of thermonuclear explosions. Such war is beyond terrifying. Such a war would be omnicide.
Think about it – Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and their masters in the Iranian regime are power hungry religious fanatics who butcher, rape, and murder on the scale of genocide. Instead they perfect the art of having much of the world view the Israelis as genocidal killers. They could be fighting in accordance with rules of war but instead with conduct molded by hatred. They terrorize, oppress, and impoverish their own peoples. They bring oppression and division upon themselves and blame it all on the West. Instead of building amazing jewels of cities in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, and Iran, instead they destroy themselves with their own fascistic despotism in spite of the billions of dollars of foreign aid and oil wealth. Yes, think about it, those who support Russia, North Korea, Belarus, China, Myanmar, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Nicaragua…those nations are a de facto Axis of, what? They’re sloppy, brutal, incompetent, corrupt Mafia-style warlord states bordering on failure and collapse as they blame America and the West and indeed the rest of the world for all of their own murderous stupidity and hatefulness.
Yes, had my own moment of silence today. With so many emotions. Encumbered, too, by a deeper knowledge of more history, geopolitics, religions, economics, and intelligence analysis than many people are. The origins of the Arab-Israeli Wars and conflicts are far more complicated than simply good versus evil, and involve Europeans, Persians, and Turks as well as many others. Try to untangle the Nakba, or the fall of the Ottoman Empire with its division by France and Britain plus their betrayal of the Arabs. Untangle Jewish anti-British terrorism as well as widespread Arab collaboration with Nazi Germany at the same time other Jews and Arabs allied with the British and Free French. Untangle the hypocrisy of Arabs and Turks and Persians supporting statehood for Palestinians, but not in existing Palestinian countries such as Jordan, while denying statehood to the Kurds and Yazidis.
We Humans must learn to be more flexible with our competing belief systems. Who among us truly understands what compromise is and how to compromise? Ideological rigidity and self-righteousness becomes everyone’s enemy. Shrill voices shouting in rage and fear drown out acceptance, forgiveness, empathy, reason, and love. Everyone may hear each other yelling and bellowing and screaming, but no one is listening. Each side is willing to overlook their own atrocities. What keeps people blind to the blood on their own hands? What will empower us to work together in spite of our differences? Who understands we fractured, divided, and tribalistic Humans must unite politically if we are to tackle complex global problems such as war, nuclear weapons, climate change, AI, energy, and a destructive economic system?
Yesterday my wife Faithlyn and I went on a local exploration of Greater Seattle. We chose to stay away from demonstrations that may turn violent. As we boarded the link light rail train at the new South Shoreline Station, we saw a small group of people waving Palestinian and Lebanese flags and banners from the walkway of a bridge crossing over I-5. Felt both sad and angry. I feel for them as a people, but loath Hamas and Hezbollah. On Saturday the day before, a crowd of over 400 people gathered in Seattle to demonstrate and march in support of Palestine and against Israel, calling the Israeli campaign against Hamas “a genocide.” Later read in local news of a pro-Israeli and anti-antisemitism gathering and march in Seattle yesterday Sunday. Was surprised to read of a strong turnout by both Hindus in support of the Jews and by anti-Ayatollah Iranians in support of Israel. Yet the total outpouring of people in support numbered around 200, nearly half the size of the pro-Palestinian anti-Israeli one.
I’ve known people from both Islam and Judaism in my life. Studied Islam for a few years and for a time prayed at local Muslim mosques. Studied Buddhism, Wicca, Neo-Paganism, and Christianity, too. Along with other religious traditions. Consider myself spiritual but not religious. I’ve known people from all over the Middle East. Participated in rituals with an Iraqi woman who blamed the USA for the civil war in her country. Years ago while studying massage therapy and bodywork was friends with an Iranian Persian whose family fled Tehran after the fall of the Shah and after Islamic Shia Fundamentalists turned on their Communist, Socialist, and Democratic allies during the Revolution. One of my closest friends today identifies as Jewish. His father lives in Israel. His son is over there visiting his grandfather. I’ve known them for years. We all share a certain anxiety for my friend’s father and son over there with this war escalating into the unknown. The feeling is a quiet dread. Things will get grimmer and darker before they improve and the light returns.
So many groups remain divided. Israel is riven between those who support Prime Minister Netanyahu and seek to wipe out terrorist militants everywhere, and those who oppose Netanyahu’s authoritarianism and demand a ceasefire and safe return of the remaining hostages. Many Lebanese love their country, hate Hezbollah, but fear Israel and its American bombs.
A former CIA analyst pointed out Israel has a right to defend and avenge itself, yes, absolutely, but the mass bombings of civilians is creating more and more terrorists in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, and elsewhere for future wars. It’s a lesson already learned by the British, the Russians, and the Americans. Imperialists everywhere, even with initial good intentions, repeat such lessons. People say there are not any answers to ancient animosities and their forever wars. There is one answer, however, indeed one answer to all of our global-local problems: we establish a planetary union as a constitutional democratic world republic with a democratic world parliament. Such would eventually make ethnic and religious violence moot. People can live wherever they want, within reason, and develop healthier communities with productive economies. Warfare over land, religion, water, energy, and ethnicity becomes irrelevant. We Humans are indeed all one species with many cultures networked within one economy within one planet. People say this is impossible. Humans will never ever stop fighting each other, many say. If that is true then our self-induced extinction is inevitable.
“What say you?” I asked my Jewish friend.
“I appreciate your caring sentiments on this tragic anniversary and all the devastation that has ensued on so many fronts,” he replied. “I love your vision, but we’ll ALL have to realize we are ONE.”
“Yeah, sometimes I see the global collapse of civilization if not our own omnicide well before I ever see a united, peaceful Earth,” I wrote back. “Our propensity for tribalism, division, strife, and violence is the main reason the so-called Galactic Federation, if it does exist, leaves us alone. We’re not emotionally intelligent as a species. We’re not ready. One who emphasized this while also claiming ETs exist including their federation out in the Milky Way is the retired head of – after 30+ years of service – Israeli space security (let that sink in: space security) Haim Eshed. Of course, like most whistleblowers, he waited until he retired to speak of it, and, also of course, like most who do so, was promptly declared a lunatic by many silly twits in the mainstream media.”
Will we humans ever grow up? Or will we oppose a constitutional democratic world republic as some sort of dreaded “one world dictatorship” or as a scary, alien, global collective hive-mind? Well, we are not ants and bees. We are not bonobos or chimpanzees. We are human beings. To stop slaughtering each other so we can finally come together to save our planet, elevate ourselves, and explore both consciousness and Outer Space will demand we face up to our greatest challenge, ourselves.
We must find ways to accept what is so before we even seek to change it. I am reminded of several of the 14th Dalai Lama’s teachings on what to do first before we can achieve peace between and within nations: “We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves,” and, also, “If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another.” He also reminded us “Peace does not mean an absence of conflict; differences will always be there,” before going on to declare, “Peace means solving these differences through peaceful means; through dialogue, education, knowledge; and through humane ways.”
Peace is a practice to practice. What can we then do to practice kindness and forgiveness, to practice compassion and empathy, to serve each other, ourselves, and others? We must find ways to practice these practices. What is keeping us from practicing love yet standing firm and responsible with backbone and determination? Or do we just give up and die and waste our souls?
William Dudley Bass
Monday 7 October 2024
Revised Tuesday 8 October 2024
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
United States of America
Planet Earth
Copyright © 2024 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.