Dove's Eye View

OneVoice

Yet another grass roots movement for peace: OneVoice Portal.

This one has Hollywood support. The Dove is not endorsing the particular group, just sees this effort as one more sign of hope.

You don't need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows.

The Passion in World Religions

Juan Cole discusses Mel Gibson's Passion here.

Cole, a professor of history with expertise in South Asia, Islam, and Shi'ism, tells me things I didn't know about the portrayal of the Sanhedrin in the Gospels. More importantly, he shows how bashing Islam is no better or healthier than bashing Judaism.

I love Cole's perspective because he has an educated, affectionate view of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, as well as personal love for individual Jews, Muslims and Christians. He also is fluent in Arabic so he can read primary sources. I rely on him to help me navigate the waters of ethnic and religious prejudice swirling around us in these troubled days.

Peres: Israel Has No Claim to West Bank

This is definitely a sign of hope: Yahoo! News - Peres: Israel Has No Claim to West Bank

Thirst for Knowledge is More Powerful Than Hunger for Revenge

Alison C., a physicist friend, sends me this link in the San Jose Mercury News about a new joint venture physics project in Jordan.

``I think this is a good way to help seed the understanding between people,'' said Zahid Hussain, a materials scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who helps train young researchers from the Mideast. ``Politicians have 50 years of failure in this field. Maybe scientists can do something different.''

The project, called SESAME, is under construction in Jordan, which has donated a site and about $8 million in construction funding. The Palestinian Authority and nine countries, including Egypt, Iran, Israel and Pakistan, have signed on as members.

They are building a synchrotron, a versatile tool for understanding nature and bending it to practical use. It generates intense beams of light that can be used to probe living cells, viruses, exotic materials, pollutants or virtually anything else, atom by atom.

...

Eliezer Rabinovici, a theoretical physicist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a member of the SESAME governing council, said he has dreamed of such a project since he was a child.

``When we started, hopes for peace were strong,'' he said. ``Right now, if you read the newspapers and just look at reality, things look really bleak.

``But people are focusing together on a common goal and not letting politics hinder them. This is the thing that gives me still hope, that people can sit together and do good things together.''

Ghandi Then and Now

Aron Trauring's analysis is here: What's So Great About Gandhi, Anyway? Aron says:

"Non-violent resistance means a willingness to die in the act of resistance, but it is not about committing suicide. The hope is that by resisting with dignity and calling on the opressor's conscience, the latter might eventually be won over without having to sacrifice life on either side. It is violent resistance that is more akin to suicide, as we can see explicitely in the case of the Palestinian suicide bombers. But any resister who takes up a gun against overwhelming odds, will also almost surely die. The difference between him and the non-violent resistor is that the armed resistor will wreak "vengeance" by killing some of the oppressor. And precisely this killing will give those in power more excuses to perpetrate violence against the oppressed population."

Aron discusses George Orwell's caricature of Ghandi's position on the Jews and Hitler, and then explains what Ghandi was really saying. He points out that it's possible that non-violent resistance to Hitler, early enough, might have turned the tide in Germany and abroad, before the war began. This is only speculation, but it's interesting to think about how non-violence might have been used in the face of the ultimate evil.

Ghandi wrote the following in 1938:

"And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it the wrong way. The Palestine of the biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or, the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs."

"They should seek to convert the Arab heart. The same God rules the Arab heart who rules the Jewish heart. They can offer satyagraha in front of the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them. They will find the world opinion in their favour in their religious aspiration. There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them."

"I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non- violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds."

Everybody Get Married in San Francisco!

Yahoo! News Photos is one place to look at the amazing spectacle at SF City Hall. The Chronicle has featured one great photo after another this past week of all kinds of couples getting married.

The Dove is proud to live in a bioregion that goes its own way. Maybe the rest of America is going down the tubes, but here in the Bay Area we love civil rights, freedom of speech and religion, and tolerance.

Happy belated Valentine's Day to all.

Yahoo! News - Dismal Six Weeks for Bush Has Supporters Edgy

Dismal Six Weeks for Bush Has Supporters Edgy

This administration is bad for the future of the planet. The Dove hopes these are signs of a one term president.

Background to the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Aron Trauring links us to Background to the Israel-Palestine Crisis by Stephen R. Shalom, a detailed list of questions and answers about the origins and history of the current conflict.

Three representative questions:

What are the modern origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

"During World War I, Britain made three different promises regarding historic Palestine. Arab leaders were assured that the land would become independent; in the Balfour declaration, Britain indicated its support for a Jewish national home in Palestine; and secretly Britain arranged with its allies to divide up Ottoman territory, with Palestine becoming part of the British empire. Historians have engaged in detailed exegesis of the relevant texts and maps, but the fundamental point is that Britain had no moral right to assign Palestine to anyone: by right Palestine belonged to its inhabitants.

"In the late years of the 19th century, anti-Semitism became especially virulent in Russia and re-emerged in France. Some Jews concluded that only in a Jewish state would Jews be safe and thus founded Zionism. Most Jews at the time rejected Zionism, preferring instead to address the problem of anti-Semitism through revolutionary or reformist politics or assimilation. And for many orthodox Jews, especially the small Jewish community in Palestine, a Jewish state could only be established by God, not by humans. At first Zionists were willing to consider other sites for their Jewish state, but they eventually focused on Palestine for its biblical connections. The problem, however, was that although a Zionist slogan called Palestine "a land without people for a people without land," the land was not at all empty.

"Following World War I, Britain arranged for the League of Nations to make Palestine a British "mandate," which is to say a colony to be administered by Britain and prepared for independence. To help justify its rule over Arab land, Britain arranged that one of its duties as the mandatory power would be to promote a Jewish national home. "
....
Isn't the Palestinian demand for the right of return just a ploy to destroy Israel?
"Allowing people who have been expelled from their homes the right to return is hardly an extreme demand. Obviously this can't mean throwing out people who have been living in these homes for many years now, and would need to be carefully worked out. Both Palestinian officials and the Arab League have indicated that in their view the right of return should be implemented in a way that would not create a demographic problem for Israel. Of course, one could reasonably argue that an officially Jewish state is problematic on basic democratic grounds. (Why should a Jew born in Brooklyn have a right to "return" to Israel while a Palestinian born in Haifa does not?) In any event, however, neither the Arab League nor Arafat have raised this objection."

Don't Palestinians just view their own state as the first step in eliminating Israel entirely?
"Hamas and a few other, smaller Palestinian groups object not just to the occupation but to the very existence of Israel. But the Hamas et al. position is a distinctly minority sentiment among Palestinians, who are a largely secular community that has endorsed a two-state settlement. To be sure, Hamas has been growing in strength as a result of the inability of the Palestinian Authority to deliver a better life for Palestinians. If there were a truly independent Palestinian state, one can assume that Hamas would find far fewer volunteers for its suicide squads. It must be acknowledged, though, that the longer the mutual terror continues, the harder it will be to achieve long term peace."

Abu Aardvark: Tariq Ramadan

Abu-Aardvark (a psuedonymous political science professor in the D.C. area) critiques a supposedly "liberal" reading of the European Islamist Tariq Ramadan.

It seems that Tariq Ramadan believes his religion, and thinks Muslims ought to proselytize peacefully, by persuasion and example. Fine. It further seems that some hysteric over at the American Prospect thinks this is a sign of permanent jihad and a wish to exterminate Western civilization.

Abu-Aardvark's good sense is a sign of hope amidst ever-increasing anti-Islamic paranoia.

Scientists Accuse White House of Distorting Facts

Read these NY Times articles if you need some hope on climate change: Scientists Accuse White House of Distorting Facts

Also: Panel Urges Bush to Finance Climate-Change Research"

The Dove grasps at straws but that's what doves do...