The Ways of Peace Are Vast
war will never bring peace + vengeance only consumes
I welcome the ceasefire and I pray that this becomes an opportunity to rebuild, reevaluate, rethink and fundamentally change the relationship between Palestinians and Jews in the Holy Land. We cannot return to business as usual. Not Palestinians. Not Israelis. Now is the time for new ideas, not old ones. Neither Jews or Palestinians can afford to cling to the old.
The ways of peace are vast, if only we truly look for them.
—Lee Wiessman aka Jihadi Jew in a Facebook post
Disillusioned though I have become at the process and systems therein, angry at the reality though I remain, I agree with Lee enough vengeance has been wrought. ON BOTH SIDES. THIS BEGAN BECAUSE OF A PALESTINIAN AND MUSLIM VENGEANCE COMPULSION. We are here because we chose against mercy. Mercy saved the world in the Lord of the Rings mythology because Bilbo chose to let the wretched Golem live, and Golem ended up taking the Ring of Power into the fires of Mordor, thereby defeating Melkor and conquering The Evil threatening destruction of the world.
Wafa al-Biss has an ugly origin story. Her father locked her in the house because she wanted to be a resistance militant terrorist. She set herself on fire to escape her parents’ repressive captivity. Once healed she tried to blow up the people who treated her extensive burns.
Tolkien taught us mercy saves. One small moment of deciding to restrain oneself from a violent vengeful response reverberated profoundly. What if we could harness the power of that lesson now? How would it look? One small moment of love and compassion in your surrounding — what is that for you, reader? The answer is remove obstacles to love, do that now. Go. Get up and love, it’s a verb, an action word. One small moment. One small act.
The Torah contains 304,805 individual letters, each one matters. Each tiny letter adds meaning. That is how any text is written, letter by letter.
All that said, I have some things to say about peace and about the political situation.
Do you want peace? Really want it?
It’s simple. Be peace.
Be. Here. Now. Physically here. Now. Put your phone down in a room full of people. Notice humans. Stop checking out. Be. Here. Be.
Engage humans around you like humans are made to do. The whole world isn’t currency for our stupid holy or moral crusades and social commando missions, reader. Let’s stop seeing the entire world thru the lens of a holy crusade for a piece of land, for the dominance of a secular materialistic idea or ideal, for some elitist neo-Jacobin tribal circlejerk of dehumanisation. Are humans a gift and a blessing, or a burden, and a dreaded discomfort to suffer through? Are strangers enemies or not-yet-friends?
How can we have peace when we engage ourselves and each other and our environment in threat states, rooted in shame, guilt, fear + anger, and chronic avoidance?
How can we have peace when we deny ourselves our own unchangeable human nature? Conflict is needed and it’s natural when managed in healthy fashion.
Anger is natural and suppressing it is the character flaw and abuse, not expressing it. Anger is not bad and we can’t learn about it and teach our kids about it when we are treating it like an evil thing to be shunned. There are no negative emotions only negative responses to uncomfortable feelings you have about someone else’s uncomfortable emotions. Stepford Wives are not a level of relational existence for humans to strive to become, assholes. LOL.
Let’s be a safe place for self and each other, not a danger cue. Safety means absence of shame, which is a neurobiological response we exhibit when we learn the connection we had with another human is interrupted because we are bad, as in a behaviour we did or a feeling we felt got us sent to the “bad box”. We cannot achieve the ventral vagal-safe social level of our social engagement system within a shame state or a shame based social setting or family system. Shame impedes us, like a scab. It’s a necrosis or a tumour or a tunneling would it cuts off life and blocks new growth and undermines existing growth.
That’s it. That’s how to get peace: you be peace. Follow the guidelines. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum. This is the science of peace.
Society is a collection of individuals not a series of blobs of collective identities. Be peace. That means leverage the neurobiology of peace. The vagus nerve is the road to peace. Get on your bike and ride that b1tch. We are humans not placeholders for identities elites made up. This isn’t drama club.
Let’s build our local communities up. That requires us to stop calling everyone who makes us uncomfortable nazis and settlers and racists etc etc. it means leaning into uncomfortable conversations and truth rather than shame and blame and cancel and hold struggle sessions. It means engaging gratitude as a collective and it means releasing self loathing. It means recognising everyone has a purpose in this society and we are equal not superior. Your blood isn’t redder than mine. Mine isn’t redder than yours. We bleed the same. It means stop setting stuff on fire, including churches and synagogues.
Engaging accountability and demanding responsibility and respect isn’t oppressive it’s politeness and it’s cultivating safety in society. Be peace. Show up. Keep consistency. Honour limits and boundaries. Fix your trauma. No else is responsible for your healing. Stop blaming others for things they never did. Look what you made me do is childish, not the path to reconciliation. Tend to the broken people in your vicinity rather than engage in this meaningless self indulgent tribal circlejerk which has the effect of taking you and I further from peaceful coexistence by making the divide wider and increasing the suffering. Be peace. The need exists around you if you see it. Step outside your tribal zone. Be peace.
We cannot return to business as usual. Not Palestinians. Not Israelis, says my friend Jihadi Jew. I will add to that, of course.
Not for Americans or Canadians either, we also MUST NOT return to business as usual. It really does rest on us, The New World—it always has. We have failed miserably in our greed and materialism and shallow gossip infested societies. We must level up now.
North Americans treat this Israel v Palestine conflict like we treat every other geopolitical and human rights issue dumped at our feet for us to collectively fix. We take a side and each argue our side in stupid panels and talks and party fetes for plastic people with tenure in fancy suits and who wins wins then we move onto the next Game Show-like pseudo crisis of wag the dog dramatics. Samsung versus Apple. Wendy’s versus McDonald’s. Ford versus Chevrolet. We treat this geopolitical and religious conflict like any other rivalry invented by Mad Men because we have no skin in the game beyond our shallow tribal identity and allegiances.
We build NGO empires and we create tax exemption schemes and fiscal sponsorship systems to dodge fiduciary accountability and we have charity status and rich people with extra money can have fun playing real life SIM City pretending they give any fcuks for the physically and socially disadvantaged and marginalized. We have agents of chaos who cultivate antagonism and psychologically torment people with fear to move away from Canada to some Other Promised Land Over There for the good of the [insert made up moral objective here]. Everyone hates you, you don’t belong, they’re trying to kill you, you’re never gonna blend in, blending in is wrong — it’s a circle of psychological abuse and manipulation masquerading as leadership.
This is the opposite of being the light of all nations of the world, it’s draining the light from the world for Machiavellian designs.
This ain’t working for Canada. It needs to change immediately. For my children and grandchildren and for yours, whomever reads this. It must change.
Look assholes—I don’t want to free anything from anywhere between any river and any sea in the Levant region of Western Asia. This isn’t a fcuking Mad Men episode. It’s real life.
So, The Fake Peace Deal.
We just galvanised the creation of a hostage-taking industry now. Well done.
We completely torched the laws of warfare. Also well done.
We glorified violence and hate and we rewarded malignant narcissists and we watched entire families on both sides of the conflict die.
Are we tolerant yet?
Context though someone in the room of be kind remember tolerance ceasefire now kumbaya peace, maybe even my lovely amazing friend Lee Weissman himself, is dying to lecture me about context. Do not.
Wafa al-Biss lost her two young boys many years after wishing publicly to kill Jewish children and herself. Wafa wished for more Gilad Shalits. She wished for the horror that became the October 7th massacre.
When you attempt to give a context: 1. to excuse the hours of snuff horror terrorists videos I saw from October 7th alone, 2. to excuse the videos of cheering Gazans of all ages I saw along with that, 3. to excuse the many deliberately false anti Israel propaganda videos Palestinians and Arab influencers and conspiring media outlets promoted throughout the west to sway public opinion and falsely influence government policy decisions to favour the intellectual descendants of WW2 Nazis — well, that’s similar to you asking me what I did to deserve whatever abuse I received at whatever time in my life trajectory —morally repugnant and unnecessary and self indulgent social noise.
Like I said, Shhhh. No context needed for watching a Hamas terrorist decapitate a Thai labourer at an Israeli kibbutz with a garden hoe. You can’t provide me any context for that to help me understand or feel better about what I saw—please stop insulting me by trying.
Readers will recall that when I saw a grieving mother in the rubble of Al Masri tower in Rafah and learned she was a part of the Shalit deal, I researched her story and wrote about her. Wafa al-Biss lost her two young boys many years after wishing publicly to kill Jewish children and herself. Wafa wished for more Gilad Shalits. She wished for the horror that became the October 7th massacre. I wonder if she cheered it when it happened, with her family in Rafah? As I learned about Wafa, I was horrified for her, for Israelis, for humanity. Hers is an ugly origin story. Her father locked her in the house because she wanted to be a terrorist. She set herself on fire to escape. She tried to blow up the people who treated her extensive burns.
Studying the suicide bomber cult and learning about its purveyors and our western response of enabling and apathy and our approach of infantilising Palestinians and excusing their nazi-level hostility leaves me cold. We are dealing with a serious sickness and exploitation of vulnerable humans. It’s egregious. An egregious failure. Where does the blame lie? Who’s responsible? Whom do we judge and how? Why should we judge anyone at all? It isn’t in our job description to judge the souls of others. It’s our job to defend our own souls though. How do we do that? Be peace.
Vivian Silver could not be reached for comment because she was murdered by Hamas, whom Bibi allowed to grow because he believed it would strengthen Israel’s position to weaken the Palestinian leadership and poison its societal structure and human fabric.
There is no good outcome after 7/10.
I encourage people to read about Wafa al-Biss and the suicide cult of Jew hatred infiltrating Palestinian and Arab and Muslim societies because it’s not as simple an issue as it may seem. CRT and DEI cannot help you, they’re avoidant and culturally inappropriate and imperial as fcuk. Europeans are not the problem anymore. Lean in and take ownership.
May we be wiser and have better leadership, politically and socially and spiritually and theologically and pragmatically. May we remember the family unit once more and may we remember to be whom Creator created us to be.