GAZA - A SNAPSHOT

Yova’s Beach

Who knows what this collage of snapshots from my existence with the Buddha on the beach will look like when I no longer have the disciplined desire to express what few memories I have of those rare moments when solitude was found in a place where mind and body were one with the breath in this moment and in this world where the madness of men rules but not here on Yova’s Beach.

On Yova’s Beach I have felt the cool of a morning breeze while drifting in the warmth from the sun on my flesh between noon and three of a mid-summer day and cooled by the shadows of passing afternoon clouds providing me a moment to open my eyes to a horizon where the colors of dawn and the colors of dusk are indistinguishable as I wait for my ship to come in.

Meanwhile the tide comes in and the tide goes out teaching me to let go of all attachments. Once upon a time when I was relatively young in this place I understood it to be that possession was the root of all suffering. Until my visit here comes to an end I am letting go of all those attachments, those unique and yet everyday experiences I’ve had here in this time “The Age of Ignorance” that have amused me, annoyed me, agitated me, disturbed me, angered me, sobered me, and saddened me.

Sometimes the Buddha on the beach says “do nothing”. This is not one of those times. This is a time to start letting go of life’s absurdities great and small in fragments of random bits and pieces of observation. This is one of those times to let the rage fall upon the empty page as a rant written in the words of someone who is letting go. This then is my first in a series of rants that express the rage of a cynic, a contrarian and a gadfly who objects to this destructive illusion created by men who believe in the reality of a heaven that does not exist to justify mans cruelty to his fellow man and all other forms of life.

I suppose Gaza is as good a starting point as ever given this conflict between variations of the same two tribes that has a history. A very long history indeed beginning before the history of man began to be written a history of using an “eye for an eye” as a solution then as well as now to resolve their make believe differences this tribe versus that tribe, us versus them, this god and that god ad nauseam.

My limited understanding of the conflict is that the Palestinians are an occupied people some of who strongly object to being occupied. They have been represented the past few years by Hamas, a terrorist organization. Let’s face it indiscriminately lobbing missiles into areas inhabited by civilians has but one purpose i.e. to instill fear in the population. In fact the only general characteristic of terrorism agreed upon by all who attempt to define “terrorism” is that “terrorism” involves violence and the threat of violence.

Ironically Hamas owes its very existence to Israel and its benefactor as well as its partner in crime, the United States. The violations by the United States of international law while committing crimes against peace by waging war against a sovereign state without reason and committing crimes against humanity in the process of torturing “one of them”, “the other” have resulted in a deep disgust among the other civilized nations of the world. George Bush’s black and white world of “you’re either with us or against us” has produced a hatred for America that most Americans fail to grasp or accept.

In addition our client state Israel was fed up with the PLO and figured that by supporting Hamas it would divide and weaken the PLO. I think “be careful of what you ask for because you might get it” applies. In fact no sooner had Hamas been elected in perhaps an election more free of fraud than the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections held here in the homeland both the U.S. and Israel conspired to shut off Gaza from all connections to the outside world.

It is not unreasonable to expect an occupied people who are required to accept without objection their own occupation by a people who have felt the jack boot of subjugation most certainly within the last hundred years creating a ghetto like mentality who not only forgot the moral imperatives of “never again and never forget” they now perpetuate the same suffering on others who have an equal right to claim “never again and never forget”.

Yet I wonder. What do people think about the current conflict in Gaza? The one where Israel’s 21st Century military is used to support the oppression of the Palestinian people. To be sure it’s no secret that the American press strongly supports the state of Israel but the overkill is starting to create an opposition to having more blood on our hands.

So here we are in a place where not long ago another Catholic Pope was praying for world peace to a god that doesn’t exist. Sorry true believers. You may need an imaginary friend but when organized superstition divides man against man it’s not god that you follow it’s just a figment of your imagination reflected in public displays of pathological behavior that appeal to man’s baser instincts of showing little or no regard for human life or any forms of life for that matter.

The Jews are not the chosen people when The One choosing does not exist. The Christian community is an open and notorious lie that claims to follow the teachings of a founder by aiding and abetting the pursuit of Armageddon and ignoring the example set forth in the Sermon on the Mount while Islam completes this unholy trinity of monotheistic religions having made sure that life on earth is hell for believers and infidels alike.

At the end of the day Gaza is a random stream of consciousness as influenced by the randomness of that range of human emotions from rage to compassion. Gaza is a terrorist state waging war against a terrorist organization. Gaza is Gandhi’s eye for eye leaving the world blind.

Does anyone think that all that violence will destroy the hatred that survived the slaughter? Doesn’t violence beget violence or don’t we get it – we live a life that requires a new way of living and in Gaza we have an opportunity as a global community to say “enough” and take a first step toward finding less violent methods of resolving our differences created by the ego – that reigning ideology that rules by dividing this tribe against that tribe, this country against that country in “The Age of Ignorance” where the individual and collective ego demands we focus on that which separates us, makes us different, justifying the “us vs. them” mentality that prepares the path to our extinction rather than deciding what we have in common and committing to resolve our differences through less violent means.