Saturday morning breaks clear and chilly, puff clouds scudding across the brilliant blue. From my porch the view of Mt. Tavor rising from the Jezreel Valley, the Benedictine Monastery of the Transfiguration perched atop, is stunning. To the north, the buildings of Nazareth cascade like frosting down the hills, and in the far distance looms snow-capped Mt. Hermon on the Syrian/Lebanese border. It’s a resplendent late-winter day, showcasing northern Israel at its finest.
I am weeding among the flower beds blooming amok with irises, nasturtiums, pink and purple anemones and California poppies when the siren — the first of many — shatters the repose. My body jolts upright, cellular memory reawakened from the terrible months after October 7th.
Grabbing my phone, I rush through the weeds to the bomb shelter a minute away. Pushing open the steel door reveals two dozen disheveled young people, groggy from the previous night’s Purim party, a handful of stoic Thai field workers, stray kibbutzniks who happened to be in the vicinity, as well as several dogs — one I’ve become terribly fond of — who enthusiastically greets me with a wagging tail.
For Israelis it’s uncharacteristically quiet, with faces in their phones catching emergency updates, with the occasional interjection of gallows humor. “The fastest way to trigger Iranian incoming is to step into the shower…” “I met my girlfriend in the shelter… we skipped the small talk and went straight to ‘so what are your last wishes?’”
Unlike Tel Aviv being slammed 10-15 times a day, luckily we’re located in the rural lower Galilee hills lacking any targets or worth. Hezbollah aims mainly for Haifa’s harbor and oil facilities fifteen miles to the north, but the missiles arcing toward Tel Aviv pass directly over us. When Iron Dome interceptors hit their mark (as they mostly do) with loud kabooms, the ensuing fireworks are, frankly, mesmerizing. The danger comes from falling metal bits. Two days ago, was a sobering reminder that what goes up must come down: a car-sized missile fragment crashed in the neighboring village, fortunately injuring no one. And now cluster bombs and drones have been added to the lethal mix.
At night I don’t always wake in time to run but lie in bed imagining a metal fragment piercing my roof. The odds are minuscule, but still…. What I will perhaps remember most from this time is the cacophony of the sounds of war: distant rumbles vibrating the glass, jets and helicopters flying overhead, the jarring warnings on the radio and phone, wailing sirens, and terrible explosions.
Yes, it may all sound dramatic, but hamatzav — “the Situation,” as these past years are referred to — is so common that it’s become just an inconvenient fact of life in the Very Un-Holy Land. And therein lies another level of perversity: innocent humans throughout the Middle East must live under the shadow of missiles, bombs, and drones — the literal, manifested fragments of a handful of vile men’s broken souls.
A Latter Day Holy War Crusade Is Being Waged
It is natural, perhaps instinctual, to bifurcate the world into “us” and “them.” But I seem constitutionally blessed — or cursed — with the inability to neatly divide the world into sides. I grieve no less for the slaughter of Iranian schoolgirls, or babies killed in Lebanon or Gaza, than I do for the three Israeli siblings whose lives were snuffed out by a direct hit on their bomb shelter in Beit Shemesh. All of these deaths, and many more to come, are the mere “collateral damage” of the collective failures of “leaders” who cannot, or will not, do the grueling work of negotiating a path toward peace, justice, and equality.
You may also sense in your bones, as I do, that this war feels different and far more dangerous than other skirmishes. Under the thin guise of neoliberalism, most twentieth- and twenty-first century conflicts revolved around oil and resource extraction, with Middle Eastern conflicts always tinged with religious undercurrents.
Extreme Muslim factions have long espoused jihadist motives by any means necessary. Fanatic religious Jewish Israelis — the likes of Ben-Gvir, Deri, Smotrich, and Gafni, now in positions of power — openly advocate for a Greater Israel “promised” by their delusions of God, envisioning the takeover of lands and the expulsion of Palestinians.
Those calling the shots vocally love and support Israel, but in case you didn’t get the memo, in their theology all Jews will either die or come to Jesus. No exceptions.
What has taken a decidedly disturbing turn is that the AmeriKKKan Evangelical Zionist faction no longer feels constrained to keep their End Times beliefs under wraps; God and state have merged. Those calling the shots — Hegseth, Huckabee, Mike Johnson, and their ilk in Congress — openly speak of this war as part of God’s plan, a Holy War, a latter-day Crusade whose worldview culminates in the longed-for end of the world. (They vocally love and support Israel, but in case you didn’t get the memo, in their theology all Jews will either die or come to Jesus. No exceptions.)
Not to forget their fanatic Jewish counterparts who eagerly await the arrival of the Messiah (they’re going to freak if it’s Jesus again!). Islam’s parallel eschatological beliefs hold that the redeemer Mahdi will appear amid fitna — Armageddon — along with an anti-Christ figure named Dajjal. Right now, the fanatics of the three Abrahamic faiths are duking it out over a swathe of desert land with their respective Muslim, Jewish, and Christian warmongers making crucial strategic decisions influenced by these lethal myths.
While they may give it lip service, they care not an iota about our lives, nor about a just and peaceful future for all, because in the end their “Savior” will make everything right. Add to this the fact that there is no clear exit strategy, and all sides appear to be bumbling through events day by day. This is the nightmare we’re up against, and I fear it does not bode well.
In addition to endless wars, the Epstein files expose the depravity of a psychopathic patriarchal oligarchy (hah, the PPO) — whether Democrat or Republican, Christian, Jewish, atheists, university presidents, health gurus, esteemed academics, philanthropists, financiers, or film stars — who reside in a parallel world of wealth and privilege with little accountability. In one iteration or another these Masters of War have been among us for centuries. They’re human parasites who decimate state coffers for personal profit, declare wars for gain, regard us as disposable pawns, and discard children like refuse when tired of raping them. They are the real terrorists, responsible directly and indirectly for the deaths of tens of millions!
Repairing My Small Corner Of The World
Since October 7th I’ve cycled through horror and fear, deep sorrow, wailing grief, despair, depression, and dissonance — interspersed with blessed moments of insight and hope. But for me the paramount emotions are disgust, anger, and helplessness.
In an attempt to mitigate these feelings, in recent months I’ve turned my energies toward something closer at hand: the kibbutz’s Thai agricultural workers. Without the roughly 40,000 workers, Israel’s agricultural sector would collapse. Essential, yet nearly invisible and with few rights, they often live in sub-standard, abhorrent conditions. I can do little to change the big picture of an 80-year conflict but it gives me some consolation to become their advocate and help repair a small corner of the world.
As the ever-insightful Christopher Hedges recently wrote, though we may despair “True despair comes from surrendering, either through fantasy or apathy, to malignant power. True despair is powerlessness. And resistance — meaningful resistance — even if it is almost certainly doomed, is empowerment. It confers self-worth. It confers dignity. It confers agency. It is the only action that allows us to use the word hope.”
True despair is powerlessness. Meaningful resistance — even if it is almost certainly doomed — is empowerment. It confers self-worth. It confers dignity. It confers agency.
Who doesn’t feel hopelessness and despair? But anyone who claims to stay out of politics — absurd, because politics will not stay out of you — whining that it’s just too complicated or too upsetting, must recognize that apathy and silence are forms of complicity. However small or large, everyone must act.
The most obvious ways are donating and dedicating time to upcoming elections to eject the monsters. The persistent citizens of Minnesota give us a blueprint for resistance if ICE shows up in your city. Jewish and Palestinian Israelis of Standing Together exemplify the possibility of living together. There’s the outspoken and righteously persistent Medea Benjamin of Code Pink who is never going to be quiet. And Peter Gelpi, a Palo Alto friend among my personal Saints and Ordinary People. Without fanfare, Pete spends months at a time in Ukraine conveying food, supplies, and moral support to people living in the devastation of the front lines. Do something. Anything.
Sadly, my conclusion from these past years is that peace and justice are aberrations — that we humans are unable to abide long in calm equilibrium. Yes, we are slowly evolving (after all, children would still be working in mines, women couldn’t vote, and the weekend wouldn’t exist), but humans — men in particular — are genetically and socially predisposed to violence and war. I once read “Heterosexual males suffer from a chronic pathology.” Yes, there are many exceptions (hopefully those men reading this), but as a rule, I believe it’s the tragic truth.
Yet we must still oppose it with visions of a better future, even though we may never see the full results in our lifetimes. Peace warriors are committed to a struggle that perhaps transcends lifetimes, maybe eternity. Ever mindful of the larger story, along that path trod before us by endless avatars, heroines, and saints, we must still chop wood, carry water — and hopefully pause now and then to tango, chachacha or jitterbug along the way.
Emma Goldman once noted if there’s no dancing at the r(E)volution, then she ain’t coming. Ditto that.
Yesterday I ventured to swimming at the pool in the nearby town. True to the joke about showers triggering Iranian missiles, sure enough, a half minute after jumping in the water, the sirens wailed. I climbed out and moved with the crowd toward the underground bomb shelter/Pilates studio — some fifty or sixty strangers in various stages of dress and undress, swimsuits dripping, some sweating from Zumba, several children eating snacks with their dad. One middle-aged woman, wrapped in a towel, suggested we have a strip-tease show and started shimmying her hips, teasingly unwrapping the towel while others began clapping a beat. You had to have been there… But thankfully you are not.
Resources
Standing Together: http://www.standing-together.org
Code Pink: http://www.codepink.org
No Kings: http://www.nokings.org
J Street: http://www.jstreet.org
Women Wage Peace: www.womenwagepeace.org.il
Author, journalist, photographer and world traveler Bill Strubbe was brought up Catholic in California, volunteered on a kibbutz in 1975, and eventually converted to Judaism. He is now a dual Israeli/American citizen living in Israel.
Find holistic Meditation Resources in the Spirit of Change online Alternative Health Directory.
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