Note: It has been another challenging week for me. Aside from my mother’s continuing health issues, I am troubled by the violence in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. I do not subscribe to the narratives offered by the far left or far right in explaining what is going on there. I believe all the participants share responsibility for the violence and that they all need to change to come to peace. In view of these events, I thought it was a good time to revisit a book review I wrote a couple of years ago. The book, Salt Houses, was insightful and provocative and was written from a Palestinian perspective. Even if you haven’t read the book, I hope you find my discussion of it enlightening and thought provoking. It is clear that we, across the globe, all of us, need to find better ways to address trauma that has been passed down through the generations. We see the impact of failing to do so everywhere we look.
https://stories-i-tell-myself.com/2018/12/24/hard-questions/
Stories I Tell Myself 
Challenging but no compromise. More lives lost. And no leader has emerged. So sad
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So sad indeed.
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It is terrible that a terrorist, Islamist organization like Hamas can pursue a military strategy that consists entirely of war crimes and not be called out for it. They use their population as human shields and then use the Palestinian casualties they create to demonize Israel. They fire their rockets at civilian targets to terrorize and kill innocent people.
We cannot settle for niceties and fail to criticize such monstrous behavior.
Thank you.
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There is a TV series produced in Israel called “She’ur Moledet” which roughly translated from Hebrew means “Homeland Lesson” which opens with an abbreviated list of other worldwide and regional conflicts over the last 100 years that have been resolved, but one, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, only the first program in the series is available online on YouTube and only in Hebrew. If you know Hebrew, I highly recommend it and if you have access to the entire series, don’t miss it.
IMO this is a conflict that will never be resolved until there is a genuine desire and willingness by all parties in the conflict to make painful compromises. For many reasons, including nationalism and religion, that will not happen, so it seems the best we can hope for is quiet coexistence.
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While I have not seen the television series, I do know that Israel actually has made the painful choice to pull out of Gaza and in return ended up with terrorists firing rockets into their territory.
And Israel made the even tougher decision to offer the Palestinians their own country including parts of Jerusalem and in return ended up with an intifada-a tremendous wave of terrorist attacks-making life intolerable there.
The Palestinians have not acted as partners for peace and it is necessary to tell that sad truth.
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Very moving and sad reading. Reading this Mon, fbbrody
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