Gaza: There is only One Limit

Some days ago I received a letter by an Israeli peace activist about the situation in Gaza:

“…children were found cowering in their home near the dead bodies of their parents, probably for days, as ambulances could not reach them, despite strict international laws about the free movement of medical crews.”

Wait a moment, before you continue reading. Let this information reach your heart.

Do we know what a child is? At night? Next to the body of his murdered mother?

Something in me becomes very calm and decided. I do not want to argue any longer about international laws or the concrete background of this specific crisis. I cannot. I also do not want to send out another call to sign a petition, another appeal for peace, another meditation and prayer. I cannot.

I only feel the wish to UNDERSTAND. What happens today in Gaza is beyond logic, beyond human law, beyond arguments and beyond emotions … and it has happened yesterday in Ruanda, in Colombia, in Vietnam and … tomorrow … it may happen in my community and in my neighbourhood.

I know that the destruction is carried out in the name of governments, corporations, banks, military, arms industry, intelligence agencies, … but these groups could not  impose their will on the rest of the world if there were not human beings ready to follow, to obey, to carry out their instructions.  So I end up with the question: Who is the human being?

I quote Dieter Duhm:

“Imagine that we, as hermits, crawl out of a cave after carefully resolving to live henceforth in the world and seeing it as it truly is, without interpretation or judgement. Nothing would strike us as more monstrous, more contradictory, and more incomprehensible than the human being, unless we had prematurely explained or defined him with our embryonic powers of understanding. If we make a cross section through our history to date, or through everything that is happening among people and between people and the rest of nature at this moment on our planet, then there is only one limit to what the innocent eye can see: the limit of how much horror it can endure seeing.
The human being: it is he who built the pyramids, it is he who destroyed cities down to the last child and the last cat, who sang hymns and erected cathedrals, who roasted people with other beliefs over burning coal and turned those of another race into soap. The human being hated out of love and murdered in devotion, preached love to the neighbour and produced Napalm, loves peace and now prepares its own annihilation.”

Who is the human being? What is the mistake?

Let us come together and THINK how to heal ourselves and humanity and so to put an end to global war.