New Clear Vision

Finding Peace and Sustainability from the Front Row Seats

by Jan Hart

“To live now as human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” — Howard Zinn

We live in fearful times. Parker Palmer, a Quaker educator says:

“Fear is the air we breathe. We subscribe to religions that exploit our dread of death. We do business in an economy of fear driven by consumer worries about keeping up with the neighbors. And we practice a politics of fear in which candidates are elected by playing on voter’s anxieties about race and class. And we continue to ‘collaborate with these structures because they promise to protect us against one of the deepest fears at the heart of being human — the fear of … a win-lose conflict in which we could lose something of ourselves.” (more…)

Distinguishing Facts and Narratives in the Pursuit of Common Ground

by Julia Chaitin

(Editor’s Note: This week on NCV, as part of a thematic series, we are featuring articles focusing on the Israel-Palestine conflict and attendant issues, hoping to stimulate a dialogue and suggest potential ways forward.)

Recently in Haaretz, Shlomo Avineri wrote an op-ed piece on historical truths and narratives, which I quote here at some length:

“On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. That is truth, not narrative. On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes attacked and destroyed the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. That is truth, not narrative…. In recent debates about the Palestinian ‘Nakba,’ the claim has been made that there are two ‘narratives,’ an Israeli one and a Palestinian one, and we should pay attention to both of them. That, of course, is true: Alongside the Israeli-Zionist claims regarding the Jewish people’s connection to its historic homeland and the Jews’ miserable situation, there are Palestinian claims that regard the Jews as a religious group only and Zionism as an imperialist movement.  But above and beyond these claims is the simple fact … not a ‘narrative’ — that in 1947, the Zionist movement accepted the United Nations partition plan, whereas the Arab side rejected it and went to war against it.” (more…)

Finding Genuine “Peace, Stability, and Security”

by Ahmed Afzaal

(Editor’s Note: This week on NCV, as part of a thematic series, we are featuring articles focusing on the Israel-Palestine conflict and attendant issues, hoping to stimulate a dialogue and suggest potential ways forward.)

For many Americans, the Israeli-Palestinian issue has become an unfathomable mystery enveloped in a dense fog of confusion. In order to clear some of the fog, I would like to enlist the help of a particular expert. The person I have in mind is George Orwell (1903-1950), the English author and journalist best known for his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948).

Why should we make Orwell our guide? One reason for choosing Orwell is that his writings offer one of the most enduring lessons for democratic citizenship, a lesson that many of us are in the process of forgetting. Orwell would tell us that an attitude of suspicion towards those in power, especially the politicians and the news media, is nothing short of a civic virtue. The citizens’ refusal to take the claims of the powerful at face value is a sign that democracy is alive and well. (more…)

Nonviolence, the Peace Process, and Future Directions

by Michael Walzer

(Editor’s Note: This week on NCV, as part of a thematic series, we are featuring articles focusing on the Israel-Palestine conflict and attendant issues, hoping to stimulate a dialogue and suggest potential ways forward.)

I have been coming to Israel every year for the past thirty years, and I spend most of my time here talking about politics. But I don’t understand what’s been going on recently, in Jerusalem and in Washington, beginning with Obama’s big speech. It wasn’t the reference to the 1967 borders that was new in this speech but rather the proposal to deal now with borders and security and postpone all questions about Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem. This makes sense to Israeli leftists, my friends here, who think that it’s to Israel’s advantage to get out of the territories — indeed, that withdrawal is an urgent necessity, and more so for the Jews than for the Arabs. (more…)

But Will It Bring Peace, or More War?

by Randall Amster

President Obama’s shocking May Day announcement that Osama bin Laden has been killed and his body captured promises to usher in a new era of U.S. foreign and domestic policies alike. But what will this portend in actual practice? The implications for the future are potentially staggering in their full import, and they turn initially on how this seminal event will undoubtedly be used to justify U.S. policies that have defined the recent past.

In his announcement, President Obama demonstrated how different he is in temperament (if not policy making) from his predecessor, George W. Bush. Coming eight years to the day after the infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech — and, coincidentally, falling on the 66th anniversary of the announcement of Hitler’s death — Obama’s rendering contained none of the misplaced bravado (“Bring It On”) or glorification of misery (“We Got Him!”) that defined the previous administration. Instead, the President spoke in measured terms about justice, courage, and American resolve in the face of grave challenges. (more…)