Hope

So the Daily Show just reported that an Israeli panel has determined that last summer's war with Lebanon was unjustified and that Ehud Olmert rushed in without proper cause. Israelis are calling for his resignation. Olmert, with whom the Daily Show drew both startling and amusing parallels to our very own clown prince President Bush, refuses to resign.

Personally, I was outraged at Israel's attack on Lebanon, which grossly outweighed the abduction of two soldiers. Beirut was bombed to within an inch of its life, the infrastructure set back 20 years to near-wartime levels of destruction. At some point along the way I've developed a fondness for Lebanon and it broke my heart to watch as years of hard-fought recovery was undone in mere days.

But this panel gives me hope on so many levels. What Israel did was wrong. But then again, I cannot imagine the level of fear and insecurity that people live with on both sides of the line over there. I try to be neutral. It's not my fight. I am neither Arab nor Jew. But it's still devastating on a human level, and perhaps that's where the change will happen.

Case in point. I taught this semester at Oakton's Skokie Campus, the most delightfully versatile college campus I could ever imagine. We watched a couple films on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was intensely personal and I would say even somewhat painful for some of the students. But we did it. And I asked them how it's possible for Jews and Arabs to sit side by side in a classroom in Skokie, Illinois, but kill one another halfway around the world simply for being one or the other.

Two of my favorite students in that class, one an Arab, one a Jew, wrote incredible responses to those films. Both said that it was in fact a very personal issue and it was hard to watch, but that they ultimately feel that both sides are at fault for perpetuating hate and that the conflict has to end. They were able to suspend or, better, transcend the personal and the subjective in order to reach the level of critical thinking for which we were striving.

The news of this panel and the galvanized response of the Israeli people in calling for Olmert's ouster reflects the same degree of critical thinking. And it is the most hopeful thing I can imagine.

People cannot live fully-actualized lives in fear or in ignorance or in hate. And when we operate from any of these places, terrible things happen. People are killed. Lives are ruined. Progress halts, and we regress further. All of these things are the OPPOSITE of being human. So I remain hopeful that Israelis love life more than asserting their right to exist, and that Palestinians love life more than finding victory in martyrdom. They want to reap life, but sow death. And as this continues, life will only be death.

But things like panels and calls for resignation are a start. The true progress though comes from the ideas manifest in my students. Now, I suppose it's less remarkable in Skokie, Illinois than it would be in Nablus or Tel Aviv, but it's a start.