In all violent conflicts,
there are innocent victims on all sides. When we follow the news media accounts
about violence abroad, we only get glimpses of the reality that innocents
experience and suffer.
The friend of a former student sent me the following note to
inform me of a recently published book by Dr. Bethe Schoenfeld, The
Routine of War: How One Northern Israeli Community Coped During the Second Lebanon War.
The author, Bethe
Schoenfeld, lives in the Kibbutz Gesher Haziv community as do the people she interviewed
for this book. During the Second Lebanon War, which lasted 34 days, dozens of
katyusha rockets rained down on the kibbutz.
The author’s daily diary and
her interviews with the stalwarts who stayed in the community during those
fearful days give us a rare report of one
of these resolute Israelis. The author’s first person account goes beyond the
war, into the days after the cease fire when the residents of Kibbutz Gesher
Haziv began rebuilding their homes and their lives.
The Routine of War is available at: www.Amazon.com and www.devorapublishing.com
Thank you for your thoughtful cmeomnts. The common denominator in much of these atrocities and abominations of irrationality is that there seems to be a God who can't choose who to favor and who to punish. Perhaps, we'd all be better off were we to leave such a mischievous being seeming split between an internal conflict of alternating benevolence and malevolence to entertain itself by keeping it at arms length or beyond. I don't believe in Hell per se, but I do believe that surrendering your mind to the control of others is the best way to get close to anything like a Hell. Such is often the case when we listen to others who demand we abandon our rational faculties to live a certain way because of some mystical belief. With most, their intent is sincere, but as the saying goes, the road to hell [or hysteria] is One just needs to ask the question Good intentions for whom?
Posted by: Salma | September 01, 2012 at 01:59 AM