Israel---What Would You Do?

I watch the Israelis fight the Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon this August of 2006. I fear for the future of Israel as their fanatical enemies (governments and terrorist movements) grow stronger, bolder, and more deadly. Israel’s understandable bombing campaign in response to the kidnapping of their soldiers has the unintended consequence of recruiting more members for the cowardly Hezbollah who hide amid innocent people.

Israel is surrounded by people who want to eradicate the nation of Israel. Perhaps some have legitimate historical issues; however, I will not listen to any community or tribe that straps bombs on young people and sends them to blow up innocent people.

Madness pervades the Middle East. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote:

There is nothing that you can’t do to someone
in the Middle East today, and there is no leader
or movement—no Nelson Mandela and no million
-mom march—coming out of this region, or into
this region, to put a stop to the madness.

Many of the people in this region appear to be insane: driven mad by crazy crackpots in control who spur human development and the growth of successful nations in an interconnected world. They prefer a primitive culture of male dominance and extreme and contrived fundamentalism (a form of mental illness) that uses religion to control and manipulate.

People in these nations cannot rebel and express their outrage against those who control them. Instead they believe the lies and blame and scapegoat the West. They think they are normal; they are not. People who blow themselves up and kill innocent people so they can be rewarded in heaven with 72 virgins, are not normal—they are nuts.

How does the world negotiate with such people?

What would it be like if we lived in a neighborhood like that?

How would I behave if all my neighbors wanted to destroy my home and kill me and my family because we had a certain heritage? Would I leave the home of my ancestors? Would I try, over and over again, to forge relationships even when my neighbors sabotage my life? What would I do as I watched them build terrible weapons that could destroy my little spot and my loved ones and me in a moment? Would I fight a holding-action? Would I try to appease my enemies? Would I destroy them before they could destroy me?

And what about my friends in neighborhoods across town: could I count on them to help me, would they pretend to not see what was happening, would they betray me for a false sense of security?

What do we the people of the world think of this evil and madness in the Middle East? Many of us don’t want to think about it at all.

Rollo May defined a pseudoinnocent as someone who is naïve, who has blinders on, and who does not see real dangers (Authentic innocence preserves childlike attitudes into maturity without sacrificing the reality of one’s perception of evil). Pseudoinnocents cling to childhood assumptions about the nature of the world. They do not see real dangers. When faced with tough issues they cower into this innocence and make powerlessness, weakness, and helplessness virtues. Evil, like Hezbollah, uses creativity to kill. The pseudoinnocents among us denies evil and colludes with it. They close their eyes to reality to try to make it go away.

Many people and many nations in our world are pseudoinnocent. Grand strategies to transform the Mideast seem out of touch with the reality of the region.

Good mental health requires that we see reality as it is. Villains and injustice exist. We are surrounded by evil—at home and abroad—in more insidious ways than ever before. Much savagery has become institutionalized in the Middle East and elsewhere in our world and accepted as normal.

We need to see the Middle East accurately—Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan—and develop bold strategies to deal with what we see (obviously we didn’t do that in Iraq; we were dumb and reckless). If we do not, we collude with evil. The world cannot allow nuclear weapons in a region immersed in madness.

Pierre Rehov, documentary filmmaker (his upcoming film is "Suicide Killers"), on how we can end the madness of suicide bombing and terrorism in general:

Stop being politically correct and stop believing
that this culture is a victim of ours. Radical Islamism
today is nothing but a new form of Nazism. Nobody
was trying to justify or excuse Hitler in the 1930s.
We had to defeat him in order to make peace one
day with the German people.

We need to see life as it is and make wise moral judgments. It is wrong not to. If we do not use our power for good, a vacuum is created and is filled by those who will use their power to destroy. We use our power to carry out the moral judgments that support and sustain life and spirit--that lead ourselves and others to freedom. Consciousness cannot rest passively. Consciousness must be asserted.

All people of the world need to see reality as it is and stand together against evil in all its forms. If the international community will not secure southern Lebanon, Israel may have to go door to door to disarm Lebanon to protect their nation. The United States should stand with its friends and against evil.

We should also begin a mega-Manhattan Project and become energy independent (at least from the Middle East) and quit funding the madmen.

If Iran develops nuclear weapons and continues to be led by a mad-man, Israel will have an even more difficult decision to make.

What would you do?