An Atomic Bomb on Gaza?

 

I am NOT Anti-Semitic. I am NOT  Islamophobic. 

I have a few, albeit a very few, Muslim friends, acquaintances and neighbours.

I have more who are Jewish.

I appeal to my Jewish friends: please do what you can to get the message to Netanyahu and his government that he has gone way beyond Exodus 21:23–25 - "An eye for an eye" עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן.

The rabbis will tell you that this passage does not demand revenge, but rather places a constraint on reciprocal justice. I fear that, with this merciless, vicious response, Netanyahu has blasted a bottomless pit of revenge and counter-revenge for generations to come.

The Path to Justice and Peace

 

There can be no justification for anti-Semitism just as there can be no justification for Islamaphobia or other religious persecution.

The slaughter of children and civilians can never be justified, nor can sexual and other abuse perpetrated by armed political extremists, militia or government forces.
... not in Hiroshima or Nagasaki
... not in Myanmar
... not in Ukraine
... not in Israel
... not in Gaza
... not in Ethiopia or the Sudan

Nowhere.

Frederic Ozanam

We absolutely need to understand and explain the causes for such serious crimes against humanity, or we will never address the problems.

But understanding or explaining is not justifying. We must never confuse the two.

Punishing perpetrators by perpetrating the same crimes against them is revenge without understanding and addressing the problems. Revenge is not justice and only intensifies the malignant spiral of prejudice, hatred and violence.

Mahatma Ghandi

Truth, respect, restitution and reconciliation are the necessary milestones along the only path towards true justice and peace. 

Who will walk ahead? Followers will not follow without someone showing the way.
Some are trying. They need our support.

Orange Shirt Day - and Silence

Every word has consequences. Every silence, too. - Sartre

 

September 30th was Orange Shirt Day in Canada. On this day Indigenous people were remembering the cultural genocide and abuse that took place in the Indian Residential Schools that were operated by Catholic and other Christian denominations on behalf of the Government of Canada to "take the Indian out of the child.” (Sir John A. Macdonald)

At an Orange Shirt Day event in downtown Peterborough on Saturday, one of the organizers acknowledged the presence of some civic and political leaders, and police officers, who came, not to speak, but to listen. To my mind, that is a good silence, a silence that begets good consequences.

I was also aware of the conspicuous absence of any mention of representatives from Christian churches in Peterborough, notably for me, the Catholic Church. That silence was deafening - and severely consequential.

#everychildmatters

Help Me Say Goodbye

 

Help me say goodbye
To the flowers when they die
And to remember their beauty
Not just wistfully
But gratefully recall
The happiness once shared
The loveliness we rightly feared
Could not last forever

But last a little longer
In the graveyard of the mind
In the earthy soil of kind
And loving memories
In the soil of a heart made rich
By laughter, love and tears
Turned now into reveries.

    - Terry

Dulce et Decorum Est

John McCrae's wonderful poem , In Flanders Fields, is generally the poem of choice for Remembrance Day. However, it presents just one side of a valuable coin. "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfrid Owen (1917) who was killed in action at the age of 25 presents the other side of that coin. 

Wilfred Owen, killed in France November 4, 1918.

(Five-Nines refers to 5.9 inch shells from German artillery fire.
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" is Latin for, "Sweet and fitting it is to die for one's fatherland.)

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like of old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind:
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in sonic smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not talk with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.