Stop the Klling in Lebanon, Palestine and Israel
author: Jim Lockhart
 e-mail: eagleye@PhilosopherSeed.org
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This afternoon, July 30, 2006, the air at Pioneer Square in Portland was filled with demands for Peace in the Middle East, for the killing in Lebanon, Palestine and Israel to cease.
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Here today Pioneer Square heard a different story than it heard Wednesday when a pro Israel rally was held. Yet, strong similarites exist. Both sides lament their dead, both sides voice their grievances, both sides are human beings reacting with pain, agony and horror at the loss of innocent life.
And this is the kernal of truth in this raw and seemingly never ending odyssy of tears, death and ongoing promises of revenge. While a few soldiers are dying, the people are dying in much larger numbers; sons, daughters, fathers mothers lay hemmoraging and dismembered in the rubble of bombs and missiles lauched from a safe distance. And those who survive are left to dig through that rubble for their loved ones, for pieces of their lives, and struggle to master their rising fear, hatred and despair.
People who wish only to live their lives in peace, to raise children, worship their deity, celebrate life and natural death with their families and their communities, live instead with their families and communities under the threat of instant death or injury.
And the world community sits and waits for this crime to play itself out. It waits, putting its faith in governments and committees who slyly manipulate the death of innocent civilians to their advantage. The world community permits the death of these children and is so culpable in this travesty. The world community wrings their hands and waits, while the people take to the streets and voice their grief, their outrage and sympathy for the people whose death is a pawn in the machinations of political parties and their ongoing election cmapaigns.
Yet, outside CNN, Fox, the local corporate newspaper and radio station, we see the truth: each small death is a common death of us all; each innocent live snuffed out lessens us each one; each grief stricken family, each devasated commuity belittles the human community and despoils the Human Spirit.
The day was a litany of wrongs suffered by a proud and beautiful people. Why is it that the Lebabese must suffer so? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in history, of the land, its people. Perhaps it lies in the struggle for wealth and power of the colonial powers whose interference in this land have from the beginning brought nothing but death and dying to this land. This land not only oozes oil, it oozes blood and the innocent are dying to power the engines of the world.
I could only silently listen to the pain and outrage. Yes, I was surrounded by anger and hatred for those who would indiscriminately bomb civilian targets, but larger than that I felt a deep spring of love of a proud people for their people, for their traditions and most important of all, a transcending love for Humanity in general.
It is only out of this love and respect for life that a genuine peace will ensue. It will not arise out of political power struggles or sectarian comprmises or world community interference. It will arise from the people. As it is they who suffer, it will be they who will rise above their pain and recognize their universal kinship.
Governments, it seems, are an impediment to the universal realization spoken in Lakota, "Mituawe Oasyn," or the Nepalese, "Nemaste." Indeed, "all my relations" and "we are one" not only define the problem, but supplies the solution for us all.
Here are a few pictures, and audio files will follow soon.
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Edinburgh, Scotland