Dove's Eye View

Combatants for Peace

Juan Cole reprints a statement from a dialogue group made up of Palestinian and Israeli ex-fighters: Combatants for Peace.

Through our dialogue group, where Israeli and Palestinian former combatants meet regularly, we try to touch the hearts and minds of both societies. We try to help our communities become more aware of the reality of the other side, so that nobody can say "I didn’t know." We want Israelis to comprehend the full scale of the oppression inherent to the Israeli occupation, and we want the Palestinians to know that behind the occupation there are humans, who are also suffering. We want both sides to understand the price of violence. Our message is simple: Peace is possible. The only way to reach peace is through dialogue and negotiations, and the only solution is a two state solution -- an end the occupation, in keeping with UN resolutions.

People frequently respond to us as if we were detached from reality, yet nothing could be farther from the truth. Our Palestinian members were all active in violent opposition to the occupation, serving long prison terms for their activities; the Israelis among us all served many years as combat soldiers on the conflict's front lines. We know the lay of the land, and we know the reality. We know the price we’ll have to pay for peace, and we’ve learned with our very flesh that the price of war is a hundred times greater. We live among our peoples and we see and suffer the consequences of this conflict.

People often say "but you're just a few good people. The majority feels differently." But this is not the case. First of all, we’re not good people. Indeed, until not long ago, we were very bad. As soldiers we killed and maimed, we bombed and tortured. Our Palestinian counterparts stabbed, and shot and planted bombs, killing and maiming as they went.

But we’ve changed. We understood that power has limits and that violence can only lead to more violence; that non-violence is better, as both a tactic and as way of life. Like us there are many more "bad" people who might change, who will change, if they’re given just a bit of hope.

Read the whole thing. Especially read this:

...we don't contest the national values of our respective peoples; on the contrary, we struggle for them. We don't contest the right of Israel to exist in security and prosperity; nor do we contest the right of the Palestinians to resist the occupation and achieve their own state. We question only the methods that have been employed to achieve these goals in the past. These methods were not only ineffective, they were wrong.. Israel is not safe, Palestine is not free, and only the cemeteries are flourishing. Let us try another way.

The Dove loves it when hardened ex-military men express views so close to her own. I am not really a dove; my true nature is angry, viper-tongued and harsh. I've just seen enough of war to think it's a dumb way to gain peace.

Its about time Lebanon

A documentary urging the Lebanese to remember the madness of the last civil war and solve their problems through love, not guns. I know I said I wouldn't post much but this one is too good to pass up.

A political documentary covering 30 years of war and post war in Lebanon. It highlights the real mistakes by the lebanese people throughout ... all the Syrian and Israeli occupations. Different formats are used. War footage, drama and graphics. 14 minutes.

Hat tip to Mirvat.

If you don't have something good to say...

Then say nothing...

Those of you who meditate, now would be a good time to do so. Prayer. Fasting? Retreat to the hills?

I have absorbing work to do and need to spend much less time reading news and blogs. Posting will be very light for a long while.

God help us all, but especially Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Darfur. (and Egypt, and Turkey, and the Armenians, and, and )

Juan Cole Argues With Bush

At length, on the subject of the war on terror. Includes extensive comment on the mess in Lebanon: Informed Comment.

if Bush was so good at taking the fight to the enemy, why is Ayman al-Zawahiri still free to taunt him by videotape. Al-Zawahiri was a major force behind the September 11 attacks. Why is he at large?

Vegetarians Against Global Warming?

I grew up on the catechism that eating vegetarian is better for the planet, and hear the sermons regularly in California. By middle age my ears have closed down - you have never before seen a lecture on vegetarianism here at Dove's Eye View. While I eat many meat-free meals, I'd never call myself a vegetarian. (We had roast lamb for dinner last night, although I ended up not eating the meat, just the potatoes and gravy).

Lately the message has morphed into an extremely reasonable argument - that livestock production for meat consumption contributes significantly to global warming: ABC News: Meat-Eaters Aiding Global Warming?.

Earthsave International is devoted to this idea, and publishes a long essay about it with additional PDF report.

While I have gone vegetarian in the past, I doubt I would again. But I do try to eat more as my Mediterranean peasant grandparents did, with meat and chicken in small proportions, and many meatless meals. Whole grains and plenty of produce fill out the diet plan.

Fast food hamburgers decimate the rain forest in South America - all that beef is raised on burned jungle. Methane from cattle is a significant greenhouse gas, and its harmful effects dissipate in a decade, unlike carbon emissions which will go on heating us for centuries. So reducing our consumption of red meat (ESPECIALLY fast food) will make a positive effect on climate change very quickly.

To my Lebanese and other Arab world readers - prevent climate change, improve your health, support your local economy and save money: eat locally produced food and eat it in the tradition of your ancestors. More ful mudammas, hummus and burghul! And you don't have to give up meat! Just eat it once or twice a week, as your grandparents would have.

See sidebar at left for recipes, including lentil soup and lentil-rice stew (mjaddara).

My Faulkner Connection

My mother's family in Georgia has a literary connection to William Faulkner. One of my first cousins just asked me about it, on the same day I began a class titled "In the house of Faulkner." In class we will read books that influenced Faulkner (i.e. the Bible, Moby Dick, Euripides), his own books, and books he influenced (Garcia Marquez, Cormac McCarthy). For the record I shall set down here my connection to a crucial room in the house of Faulkner, his library.

My great-great-grandfather 's first cousin, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (II) practiced law in Oxford, Mississippi in the mid-19th century; he owned a plantation, later served in Congress, went on to be US ambassador to Russia and finally a US Supreme Court Justice. John F. Kennedy wrote about LQC in his book Profiles In Courage, but I have been given to understand that his account is not all that accurate.

LQC was a colorful character, as were all the Lamars. From the Supreme Court site:

"Lamar's personality was a mixture of contrasting elements. Over the years observers described him variously as dreamy, gloomy, warm, generous, detached, aloof. One woman spoke of the "witchery of his presence." At times he could be gregarious and friendly; at other times he would be distant, scarcely recognizing those whom he encountered. He had a marked oratorical ability; he could hold a crowd spellbound. He was what we in the late twentieth century would probably call charismatic."

LQC's uncle, Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar of Texas, possessed similar qualities; the family lore is that the Lamars were mad geniuses. LQC's aunt, Amelia Lamar, was my 3x great-grandmother, making LQC my first cousin four times removed. LQC's father, LQC Lamar the first, was a judge in Georgia who committed suicide - more grist for the "mad genius" theory.

The Lamars were the sort of white Americans who built this country: they exterminated Indians, bought and sold slaves, and grew rich from it. They were not Snopeses and they were not brutal, crude buccaneers; they were intelligent, aristocratic, and refined. That doesn't make me any prouder of their crimes.

LQC taught mathematics at the University of Mississippi, showing another characteristic family trait, the confluence of math and verbal skills. The Lamars were all known for their gift of gab and poetic inclinations. Math aptitude doesn't always go with these but in my family you see the two together quite often (but my Lebanese father had the same combination, and he had no blood connection to the Lamars!)

LQC had a law office in Oxford which he left when he moved on to Washington. His library of books passed on to one of the lawyers who took over the practice, James Stone. James' son, Phil Stone, also practiced law in Oxford out of that same office. It is with Phil Stone that my Faulkner connection begins.

William Faulkner was a poor, struggling college dropout in Oxford in the 1910s and 20s when Phil Stone befriended him. Stone, a Yale graduate, encouraged Faulkner's writing, and let him use the family library, lending him books. "Through his early acquaintances, Faulkner gained access to the libraries of Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar and Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Oxford's first writer." (Longstreet was Lamar's father-in-law)

Orhan Pamuk, in his Nobel address, talks of the importance of a library to a budding writer. His father's library shaped Pamuk's reading and his literary identity. For Pamuk, a writer is one who "reads to his heart’s content, who, by listening only to the voice of his own conscience, disputes others’ words, and who, by entering into conversation with his books, develops his own thoughts and his own world."

In the Faulkner class, led by Micheline Marcom, we will be entering into conversation with the books Faulkner read, books which influenced his voice and his myths. Miss Marcom's method asks us to write creative responses to the books we read, making us join the ongoing conversation that began with the first book and will continue as long as people read and write.

I am pleased that books Faulkner held in his hands in some dust-mote laden room in Oxford came to him from my complicated cousin. Faulkner was born after Lamar died, and did not know him (although he might have known some of his descendants). The connection to me is not through blood or social ties (which as a democrat, lower case d, should matter little to me -- but you know how Southerners are about our relatives). The connection is through books - the love of books, the passion for books, the infatuation with words and verse and stories.

Amory Lovins

Amory Lovins can solve our energy problems, says the New Yorker.

This week's New Yorker arrived today, and while I shouldn't be blogging or reading magazines now that the semester has begun, I had to turn to Elizabeth Kolbert's profile of Amory Lovins. The link is to Wikipedia because as of today, the New Yorker article is not online.

Lovins is head of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a physicist who now focuses on sustainable energy.

In the profile, Lovins states we can solve our energy problems and eliminate our dependence on foreign oil by 2050. He advocates "good old-fashioned Victorian technology" - or rather Victorian-style reliance on developing new technology - to cut our energy consumption drastically. He says it can be done with "no diminution of lifestyle;" your mileage may vary. (He dries his clothes in a special indoor solar dryer, which sometimes takes two days to dry heavy items like jeans. This is all right with me, but how many spoiled Americans would stand for it?)

Furthermore, Lovins sees this re-engineering for sustainability and energy independence as an opportunity to make more money.

I have always thought Americans just need to apply some of that old-fashioned ingenuity and technical innovativeness to our energy problems. It's easier than curing cancer. We could do it.

Read the article for a taste of his ideas.

I'm sure that some of you out there have more specifics on Lovins' ideas, (calling Alison C) - I just wanted to point you to the New Yorker profile. It is a positive take on the horrors of climate change, and a true sign of hope.

Nature Reserves, Arab Style

The Beirut Daily Star reports on a phenomenon utterly new to me, the traditional Lebanese nature reserve, or hima.

Instead of a nature reserve, which is walled off from the populace, a hima is an area devoted to wild life (plant and animal) which is managed sustainably by the local community. They forage for traditional herbs, for instance; the plan is that the new himas, of which there are now two in Lebanon, will provide ecotourism opportunities as well as more traditional uses to their Lebanese caretakers.

The article claims that the concept is over a thousand years old in Lebanon. No sources are given for any of this history, however.

It does remind me of the old British "commons", land not owned by any individual that was used by the whole populace for pasturage, hunting, gathering and other purposes. My knowledge of this is sketchy so I expect one of my readers to correct me at great length.

Update: Wikipedia informs me that land could be and is owned by individuals while still being part of the commons. Read the entry linked above for more information.

Israel And Syria Negotiate Peace

Josh Landis at Syria Comment tips us to these reports in Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper: Secret understandings reached between representatives of Israel, Syria - Haaretz - Israel News.

Secret understandings reached between representatives of Israel, Syria By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent

In a series of secret meetings in Europe between September 2004 and July 2006, Syrians and Israelis formulated understandings for a peace agreement between Israel and Syria.

Read the full text of an early draft of the agreement and some background information.

Let's hope this comes to something.

People Are Complicated, Ugly American Division

Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy, who lives in the United States, writes a long and impressionistic column at Muslim Wake Up! about what it's like to be Muslim in America: Muslim WakeUp! Virgil Goode, the “bad” American.

I read this piece right after posting about how complicated the picture is, here and elsewhere. Ms. Eltahawy provides her own take.

Rep. Goode belongs to the America which is very familiar to millions of Muslims around the world. It is the America that has held without charge or trial hundreds of Muslim men at Guantanamo.

Such a simple America is easy to hate.

Keith Ellison’s America and the America that I live in is complicated and deserves to be heard out.

Most of all by Rep. Goode.

At times you can see the two Americas talk and argue and it’s a conversation more of us should hear.

By the way, I haven't posted a link to Muslim Wake Up! in a while. This site is devoted to Muslim progressives (and some who say they are not "progressive" - see Mohja Kahf, feminist queer-friendly sex-positive Muslim thinker and poet). I love MWU and need to check it more regularly.