Following the Twisted Path

(Trail at Commonweal Retreat Center in Bolinas, 2024)

This week’s writing has been in the making for nearly 6 months. I started the actual writing over a month ago and thought it would have been finished in a week. With today being 6 months since the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas and the merciless military obliteration of Palestinians and the land of Gaza, I pushed myself to finish this writing just as I’m returning from the Integral Yoga silent retreat today. In a way, the retreat gave me space to reflect by gently loosening my grip of attention on this ongoing catastrophe and sink more into the visceral space of being. It also helped me receive some necessary editing support from my friend and fellow teacher, Mia Velez. And with tomorrow’s total solar eclipse, the message from the universe what that this was as primed and ready as it needed to be.

I started the actual writing over a month ago

and thought it would have been finished in a week.

For those who are open to staying engaged in our first-ever collective inspection of occupation, dehumanization and genocide, largely by way of social media and many courageous voices speaking out, then I hope you will read my personal journey. This is a story of understanding the difference between a set mind that had limited resources to a mind that was opened to greater understanding. Daniel Maté, son of Hungarian Jew and trauma expert Gabor Maté, made a comment in a video posted around Hanukkah 2023 that helped me understand what I was feeling. His take was that once you go through a door of seeing and understanding, that door only swings one way. There’s no returning, no way to unsee. And that’s my story.

The research and personal journey of this post have actually been ongoing for many years and has substantially evolved alongside the 184 days of killing over 33,000 Palestinian children, women and men in Gaza and over 75,000 injured. These numbers don’t account for many who are lost under the rubble of crushed buildings and structures. Many folks I know don’t follow the ongoing catastrophe and have either moved on or remain with their original take on the situation. I understand the faded interest as that was my general attitude during the Afghanistan war. It sounded like we had to do whatever we had to do to reclaim our power after the shock of 9/11. I didn’t dive in or research enough to think much otherwise. I have never liked war and always shutter at all the killing and casualties, but I found my attention slipping out of focus. As history shows us, hindsight and many reviews later, we can consider the mistake that we made by reacting versus responding. (Time.com– ‘Major American Failure.’ A Political Scientist on Why the U.S. Lost in Afghanistan)

The research and personal journey of this post

have actually been ongoing for many years

People across the US have come to understand the ongoing occupation of Palestinians in Gaza and support a ceasefire: from Bay Area activists blocking weapons to Israel to truck drivers protesting in the midwest and Jewish Voice for Peace regularly speaking out in NYC. Hundreds of thousands have protested across the globe from countries such as Yemen, Lebanon, Malaysia, UK, Istanbul, Indonesia and South Africa. Many are courageous and speak-up in support of Palestine. No need to justify a single event when it’s been decades and decades in the making. (Similar to the concept that understanding is not justifying, read this early article, “Explanations are Not Excuses” written on October 16, 2023 by Sarah Schulman from nymag.com). Many Jews of the diaspora and Israeli Jews have spoken up and that has inspired me to share my story.

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Up until my mid-thirties, I was firmly convinced that my philosophy on life was rock solid. I didn’t feel the need to shift outside of my lived experience because I had a strong sense of identity. I primarily gave this credit to three things: my Jewish ancestry and upbringing, a once suicidal gay teen who proudly came out around age 20, and living life as an artist/dancer. I didn’t feel the need for anything in my life to be in question because,“I knew everything.” The years of being an artist were healing, inspiring and heart-opening. I felt grounded and complete in my mind/body/spirit experience. Art was the umbrella over everything and even though I was open to learning about spiritual practices like Yoga and meditation, I wasn’t open to actually making any changes.

Yoga and spirituality looked like a silly costume party with a lofty ideal. I saw it as enlisting in a group-think cult escaping reality with aspiration for nothing more than chanting endlessly and walking around in pastel-colored robes. As a serious artist, I was more interested in diving into and through this known world versus sprinkling glitter all over a make believe one. Being an artist was a more tangible and authentic path since it had been a part of my expressive life since grade school. I didn’t exactly mock spirituality, but I also didn’t exactly hold it as equally important or as relevant as my life in the arts or my Jewish religion. Like my coming out experience, I felt like spiritual people needed to “come out” of their trance and do something more useful and effective. In my mind, they were hiding behind something and their passive approach wasn’t helping anything. My approach to “other” them effectively supported my unconscious fear of learning how similar artists and spiritual seekers actually are!

Yoga and spirituality looked like a silly costume party with a lofty ideal.

When I did come to practice Yoga, it was for the physical benefits of it. As a dancer at age 31, I figured that working on my flexibility would be a smart thing since I was getting “older” and was sustaining chronic back pain. I suppose I had heard of other benefits of Yoga but I didn’t need all that part. I can look back and see I was stripping away what I didn’t want or understand about Yoga. This is what cultural appropriation can look like. (Also to note, I now know that back pain is often more than a physical matter.) About a year into it, with the help of my first teacher, Sandra Koteen who guided me to build a daily home practice, I considered Yoga as a practice for more than the physical benefits. I continually experienced a profound feeling at the end of a practice that didn’t require anything more than lying on the ground in the pose known as Savasana – corpse pose. Something in me was changing while resting in the afterglow of a sincere practice. Without the push and pull of all the usual ways of getting somewhere, it was by surrendering into a new experience that welcomed deeper contemplation. I would later understand it as a space of non-duality and equanimity. It was an entirely new vantage point on life that came by direct experience instead of someone trying to convince me how to see and believe. Much later in my practice, I learned that the entire Hatha flow can be permeated with the body/mind moving between conscious effort and ease as one expression.

This first-hand experience slowly influenced my way of being in the world and changes started to happen. The world I thought I knew so well started to change. A dance injury shifted my career path, and though it was an immensely painful letting go of identity, I was soon no longer attached to being a starving artist. I welcomed a new livelihood and new income! I was taking Yoga classes regularly which inspired me to plan a trip to India for 2 months. I was ready to see the world differently, see myself differently and deepen my understanding of the birthplace of Yoga. Seeing intense poverty alongside grand wealth shook my humble understanding of what it meant to be happy and content. Witnessing funeral pyres and the sacred ritual of death heightened my perspective on our short journey on this planet. Sometimes, when we witness the extremes, we land in our own middle of understanding and we see potential that we might not have otherwise found. This is why I often feel that duality is one of our best teachers. This is what reminds me that we can change from one, deeply rooted state of being to another by way of a natural unfolding.

I was ready to see the world differently, see myself differently

and deepen my understanding of the birthplace of Yoga.

We live in a world that quickly polarizes and divides us. It’s common to hold tightly to beliefs and learned behaviors, but it might simply be a protective mechanism of our nervous system. On one level, our beliefs help us learn who we are. At times, it is nurturing for our nature. At other times, it prevents our nature from nurturing the true peace within. Depending on our lived experiences, we may or may not have space or bandwidth to consider anything more than what has been taught or what is familiar. We adhere to the dominant messaging. We may accept the things we’ve learned up to this point and even come to doubt that anything could shift or redirect our mind. Trauma can cause us to over-prioritize ancestral loyalty and cultural traditions. Or we may conveniently lose interest or suffer from a depleted nervous system. The curtains are closed to cover up the mess behind our neatly designed illusory world because life has given us so much to manage.

When everything can be justified in every direction, when lies persist and are told long enough to appear as truth, we run into real problems. Never had I so clearly understood this in our own national politics until Trump. Many of us can plainly see the insanity of Trump and his most loyal base. So, if here in the U.S. of A we can have a January 6th that has taken years to break down, with fiercely loyal people who will follow a ridiculous story, then imagine how it is in other parts of the world. When truth is concealed behind closed curtains such as human trafficking, animal cruelty and genocide, our world is a dark, complicated place. If we had to open the curtains, it might overwhelm us and throw us “off track.” Our addiction of capitalism would be severely bruised. So often, we know what’s behind the curtains, but we generally “need” to keep them closed in order to navigate our day to day world of achievement and avoid pulling on the loose threads of our world fabric.

When truth is concealed behind closed curtains

such as human trafficking, animal cruelty and genocide,

our world is a dark, complicated place.

A perfect account of this in numerous ways, is my journey of becoming vegan. I’ve come to accept the lack of bandwidth for the majority of people to care about the inhumane, mass slaughter and torture of animals. The majority of people I know accept the fact that they are desensitized to the reality that their meat and animal by-products were once kind-hearted, gentle beings. Most animals-to-meat products are only raised to be slaughtered then neatly packaged. If everyone had to witness what was happening in these factory farms or if we could hear from the people working in these slaughterhouses, I think most people would make changes. But this has not been a popular conversation and I’ve chosen to stay mostly quiet because I recognize how much it would upset people to have to confront the truth of this situation. It pains me to be silent. And it has been something I’ve reflected on for the nearly 20 years that I’ve been a vegan. Some reports show that only 1-4% of the global population is vegan. These odds are too high, the obsession for meat/animal by-products is too strong and the meat and dairy industries are more powerful than most people realize. There is an impressive marketing campaign and endless propaganda for the necessity of these industrial systems to exist. If you think it’s because the FDA really cares about our health, that’s another long blog for another time! To some extent, yes, there is nutritional value in meat and animal byproducts, I’m not denying that. But our obsessions, even fascination with all of this comes more from what we’ve been convinced is healthy living more than what our bodies actually need. So I’ve learned to accept this as a personal mission. In time, I have a feeling more people will become curious because our world won’t be able to sustain the current meat production for the sake of our land, mind or body well-being.

Is this the way we handle all the things that feel overwhelming? Close the curtains and keep going about life knowing that something’s happening back there but it will somehow all work out? That does seem to happen, things “work out” more or less – here we are. But historically, the oppressed rarely win, yet we do have some wins. The dots that I’m connecting here is that the same systematic approach is enabling the genocide in Gaza – distract, deny, and disinform in order to push an agenda. If we could really stop and think, stop and feel, there would be other options on how to do things. But the wheel of progress, the machines of capitalism, the long-standing, ongoing message of colonialism may just be unstoppable. But nothing changes if it’s not leaned up against, if there isn’t resistance. It has taken time for my journey to reach a place where I feel clear to speak about what I’m witnessing. Seeing the images from Gaza are as real for me as seeing the images of tortured animals in slaughterhouses. They’ve helped create a context on both the attack on innocent Palestinians in Gaza as well as the gaslighting, mockery and scorn from Israelis and the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). Just as people can turn away from animal torture and slaughter, they can even turn away from the truth that innocent human beings are being killed and justified as “the casualties of war.”

Just as people can turn away from animal torture

and slaughter, they can even turn away from

the truth that innocent human beings are being

killed and justified as “the casualties of war.”

Spiritual perspective offers insight but ironically can lead to escapism. It can feel like a good direction to preserve our nervous system, but avoidance can be fashioned in a so-called spiritual practice. I also feel it is fair to note that healthy boundaries can be mistaken as disinterest or giving up and I’m all for taking care of ourselves. When we feel resourced, grounded and empowered, we can find our way back to being useful people in this world and inspire a return to love and a shift away from hate and injustice. A rise in addiction and denial feel like the new guarded activities that global marketing and the political arena know best how to spur on. Unfortunately, it’s at the expense of dividing and conquering our natural capacity for compassion and meaningful connection. The next thing you know, you don’t care or you’re in a trance of agreement. On the other side, one might feel frustrated or enraged with righteous entitlement. Thankfully, we have the ability to activate new neural pathways that can empower a once disempowered mind. We can make changes to these scripts inside and around us, but it requires something to spark a shift in the story. It requires the willingness to keep going to seek truth even when it feels confusing and that nothing will ever change.

(“Wind, Spirit, Home” Painting by Marc Morozumi 2009/2010)

Since the start of this current attack on Gaza, I’ve spent many nights researching and gathering the history of the Middle East conflict. I knew much of this dominant narrative as learned during my Hebrew day school years from 1st-6th grades and beyond. It was a one-sided story shared by our Hebrew teachers and Rabbis. Pro-Israeli voices speaking today around the Israel/Palestine catastrophe highlight the pro-Israel, Zionist narrative: Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and most US politicians, Ben Shapiro, Sam Harris, Eylon Levy, Melanie Phillips, Oren Cahanovitc from travelingisrael.com, Bill Maher “Real Time” host, Times of Israel, and of course news outlets in Israel. I used to like hearing this version of Israel’s history because I could say, “Yes, that’s what I learned and it’s true!” Growing up Jewish came with a strong feeling of pride and a very strong sense of identity. It also came with a story to justify seeing nearly all Arabs as the enemies of Israel.

These childhood stories of the Arab world collided against a trip to Egypt and Jordan in 1999 while on tour as a dancer with Joe Goode Performance Group. I realized how deeply rooted this fear was because I was afraid to be discovered as being a Jew and have my life threatened. After being there and meeting Egyptians, Jordanians and Palestinians, that prejudice and bias quickly melted. That story I had learned didn’t feel true anymore. As a mixed race person, it was like I got to be an undercover detective and witnessed a beautiful land and people. It’s helpful to note how one can change once actually meeting the ones we’re afraid of, the ones we’ve othered.

Somehow, I began to reevaluate the message of being “the chosen people.” I will admit that I’ve always liked being able to be on the side of the chosen people and felt a slight superiority and pride. Maybe it’s because I’m a mixed race person who always had to check the “other” check box and as a Jew, I was at the top! I’ve had no influence or encouragement from my father (no blame, just saying and I understand as a first generation why this happened) to know my Japanese heritage so what may be a more visible part of me is the most distant. As a fellow Jew, I was able to claim and be claimed by a powerful group of people. Though later in life, there were moments when I questioned being part of the “chosen people.” I even recall the shift after my Bar Mitzvah the day before my 13th birthday. I had transferred from my Hebrew Day School to the School for Creative and Performing Arts and invited friends from both schools. Here was a moment of reflecting on myself as a Jewish person connecting with a diverse community of Jews and non-Jews. In a way, I was saying goodbye to seeing myself as only Jewish, and now seeing myself in the family of a diverse community. I wanted all of us, here on this planet to be the chosen ones. What a gift to be alive.

Somehow, I began to reevaluate the message of being “the chosen people.”

I have learned so much from all of the Jewish rituals and the relationship to land, miracles of light and the importance of what our people endured and vowed to always remember. For all general purposes and before all other things, I embraced my Jewish identity and have also enjoyed being friends with people of all backgrounds and faiths. I feel tremendously grateful for my Ashkenazi Jewish roots and strong Jewish education – it’s a part of me and informs much of how I see the world. I have very close Israeli friends and their families in Israel and I have immense respect for their courage. Their pain from the atrocities on October 7th has certainly smacked their lived experience with a level of pain and horror that should have no justification by anyone. I also have come to understand that they have been guided with a nationalist version of this whole story and it can be nearly impossible to let anything change that. But it’s been affirming to hear from some Israeli’s who wish for this “war” or more accurately this genocide to end and are calling for a ceasefire and for an early election of PM Netanyahu. Just like here in the U.S., there is not just one Israeli voice.

I’ve never been so engaged with daily news or certain threads in social media as I have been recently. Yes, the usual posts on cats keep showing up in my IG, but so do posts from important voices that know and have explained this subject matter with great depth – Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, Gabor Maté, Daniel Maté, Yuval Noah Harari, Norman Finklestein, Avi Shlaim, John Mearsheimer, Richard Sanders, Max Blumenthal, Marc Lamont Hill, Mitchell Plitnick, Rami Elhanan, Christiane Amanpour, Sam Seder with the Majority Report, John Oliver from Last Week Tonight, plus additional news and activist sources of Al Jazeera, Haaretz, Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, MECA, Save the Children, Middle East Eye, The Parent Circle, Tikkun and others. I’ve purposely named primarily Jewish and Israeli names because I needed to hear from other Jews who had questioned their history. This list could go on and on, it is certainly non-exhaustive. I needed to hear from recognizable voices and also felt these would help further my point. (I have links to share for all of these resources and will create a resource page from them soon.)

I’m even learning right now from my ongoing study of the Mahabharata, credited as the origin of Bharat (British colonial name, India). It is the epic poem which chronicles the war between Bharata’s descendants Pandava and Kauravas and has been giving me understanding of how the closest of people can have the deadliest of relations. There’s so much more to what I’m learning by putting these in context with one another which I hope to go into detail on another blog. It is a fight of righteousness against the unrighteous, of justice versus deceit. And it’s the story of awakening to our life’s purpose and understanding a reality of human existence that can help us not drown in conflicted emotions.

I didn’t know that Palestinian resistance had real merit.

This has been a moment of recognition that our world design has been heralded by more than one group of leaders. For thousands of years of oppression and acts of terror on fellow human beings, this has been a way to conquer one another and claim power over people and land. The huge snowball of logic from our strategy of domination and othering to justify harm used to work really well and couldn’t be stopped. But our modern world no longer accepts that, mostly because things aren’t as easily hidden from our eyes as they once were. This is a new time with the rise of a new generation who is coming to understand there has been an endless attack on the core principles of human dignity. To get here requires diving in with heart and mind to discern one story from the next. One version that misses facts from another version. It requires following the threads of misinformation that is usually shared as our first headline, making the follow-up of facts lose our attention – a style of directing and deflecting mass attention like Trump’s voter fraud. This style is again being used to keep our eyes stuck on the horrors of how the Israelis were killed on October 7th to slow down investigation and speed up genocide.

A number of articles, including those from The Times of Israel admit to lies created by the Orthodox group known as ZAKA on October 7th, which then became world headlines. ZAKA is a volunteer group of Orthodox Jews who identified and bagged dead bodies and parts after the mass killing of Israelis on October 7th. The Times of Israel acknowledged that lies were told and stories were fabricated to heighten the moment and give praise to ZAKA, an organization crumbling from financial debt. This event catapulted them back into existence with millions of dollars in donations. And even after debunking some of the worst claims about babies, it’s hard for us to believe that these weren’t true. When it’s the main storyline repeated over and over, our heart’s won’t let go and our brains can’t process anything beyond it – not accidental messaging. There are many other news outlets who have more details but it’s enough to note that if the Times of Israel shared this, wow. Plus, the recent article of Chuck Schumer speaking out against PM Netanyahu was significant. Likely, there was more to what Schumer shared as he stated his coming to terms with what he saw. It was at most a clear acknowledgement by the one considered as the “highest ranking Jewish official in the U.S.” whose main intended message “was to say you can still love Israel and feel strongly about Israel and totally disagree with Bibi Netanyahu and the policies of Israel.” While it’s not a perfect acknowledgement that some would want, I think it’s important that it may cause more people to consider Netanyahu’s disastrous impact on Israel’s next steps and how Israel will be regarded when this nightmare resolves.

What might be useful to know is that thousands of Israelis have marched on the streets in Israel in protest of Netanyahu’s goal of “overhauling” the judicial branch of government. Dissatisfaction and pending allegations plagued PM Netanyahu. Not just recently, but for years. (nytimes.com 4/2024, npr article, July 2023, cnn, 4/2020)

“Netanyahu’s political position was precarious before the attack. Following a corruption inquiry, he formed a government with far-right factions in Parliament. He then mounted an effort to overhaul the judicial system that was criticized as an effort to increase his own power and undermine Israeli democracy. Street protests ensued that tore the country apart.” (NBCnews, December 2023)

Israel desperately needed something to unify what had become a very divided state and was heading further and further in a bad direction, specifically for and because of Netanyahu. In a very twisted way, this event on October 7th had temporarily unified Israel. But the story before October 7th in Israel is now bubbling back up to the surface and it may help more people gain an understanding of how much more there is to this story and why October 7th was even possible. It was not something that happened out of the blue which most of us feel is what happened on 9/11. To those not paying enough attention, it seemed like a surprise. To those who are willing to dive in to understand our world relationships and the obsession with power and control, this all begins to make sense.

In a very twisted way, this event had temporarily unified Israel.

Here’s quoted text from Rami Elhanan, an Israeli whose daughter was murdered on October 7th in Israel. This is an interview from USAToday.com including Bassam Aramin’s testimony. Both are members of The Parents Circle – Families Forum (PCFF is a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization of over 600 families, all of whom have lost an immediate family member to the ongoing conflict). Here is an important section fro Rami:

It (October 7th) was not unexpected. We are in a circle of blood for the last 75 years. This is just another round. No one expected the viciousness and cruelty of this round, but it was expected. You cannot put 2 million people in a box, close the cover and expect nothing will happen. And those killers who are acting today were kids when the last bombing of Gaza took place. So it’s an ongoing cycle of violence…. We were also part of these crimes. We have the moral integrity and the moral authority to tell people this is not the way. There’s another way. It will not stop unless we talk. You cannot annihilate Hamas. You cannot ignore 6 Million Palestinians living in the holy land. We have to choose whether to share this land or to share this graveyard under it. – Rami Elhanan

The ongoing and currently overwhelming catastrophe in Gaza under the branding as the Israel-Hamas war (when the original branding as the Israel-Gaza war became too obvious of a disparity of military might) has struck a very significant cord in our world, our own country, our circle of friends and in me. Being raised Jewish and living with ongoing Israeli patriotism and Zionism have made for a deeply personal search for truth. I had an Israeli boyfriend in 2002 and when I asked about his military experience, I learned that as a military tank commander, his time likely included harming and terrorizing Palestinians. He didn’t tell me that exactly, but his clever way of expressing it, saying they just shot at “pigs” helped me see both how hard it was to admit to the actual act of violence and how much he was convinced to be on the right side of what he did. Pigs aren’t roaming around in Israel/Palestine.

Being raised Jewish and living with

ongoing Israeli patriotism and Zionism have made

for a deeply personal search for truth.

My gut recognized something was missing from these stories years ago when I made a painting around 2009 or 2010 that had the word “ruach” meaning wind or spirit in Hebrew, blushing in the outline of a new house. Meanwhile, next to it a faded gray outline of a house dissolving with a blurring flag of Palestine blowing off the edge of the painting. Below this and from the houses, a trail of pink intestine-like swirls creates the dominant portion of the foreground of the painting made in the palette of green, red, black and white – the colors of the Palestinian flag. This story reaches to the very core, and lives in the intertwined guts of both the Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, and truly our whole world. It was my first attempt to bring in anything specifically political and personal related to my Judaism. It was ironically an effort to bring Palestine and Palestinians onto the page since I had otherwise countered and contradicted any considerations of their existence with denial and erasure.

(Detail of larger painting)

I understand the significance of making a bold statement. I understand the likelihood of polarization, but I also know that expressing a view is a practice of experiencing perspective after deep discernment. After reviewing everything weekly and generally each evening, I had had enough: Enough information, enough insight and enough defending of a reason to not speak up. Enough worrying about what will happen if I share my views, in particular with my very close Israeli friends. Enough of feeling more worried about my own ego than my gut’s urge to speak up for people suffering a genocide. I’d rather die speaking up for what I believe in than live a life of silence for the sake of my own comfort. It’s reaching that point of a mindset. So the least I can do is speak up, share and educate versus follow the stories that erase the virtues of humanity.

Those who are willing to die for a cause no longer seem as insane to me as they once did. Aaron Bushnell’s self immolation snapped me out of my final trance and I felt something deeply change in me. The polarizing response helped me understand everything even more. Thank G-d, most of us cannot understand how or why something would escalate to something so extreme. Most of us seek comfort so often that anything that burns or hurts is avoided. To wonder why someone would get to the point of seeking a dire way to get us to respond is the point here. It was why, at 16 I ran away from home for 2 weeks and was suicidal – I was acting out to say this world isn’t ok and I was prepared to make a drastic statement. I have my own context to understand why someone would get to this point, why people would gather and scream for a reaction when being silenced has become the norm. I understand why there needs to be a response to the injustices and ignorance of our human experience. Our time here is short and our impact can be significant.

From the moment of the attack on Israeli people on October 7th which resulted in the brutal deaths of approximately 1200 on Israel’s side (Reported: 782 civilians, 63 civilian security guards, 53 police and security guards, 256 Israeli military), I remember learning that 8 Israelis were blasted and killed by their own IDF. I knew there was a long-standing story that had caused this. This was a story that I didn’t know everything about, but that I knew enough to understand why I felt the way I did. I knew it was not an attack that happened out of the blue by an unprovoked people. It was the cork that popped on events from the day before October 7th and all the way back to 1948 as the main historical marker. It had such a tremendous and disastrous impact on Israelis due to the failed IDF immediate response and an unprepared defense by the occupiers against a successfully occupied people in Gaza who had been shaken, humiliated, dehumanized and terrorized by military rule for over 75 years. 2.3 Million people. Though we can trace the story of inhabited land to both peoples back thousands of years, it is more recognizable as a story that begins at the turn of the 19th century and is greatly concentrated by the actions in 1948. It could be seen as an endless story of revenge by two imperfect sides. If someone imagines this is a game where one side must be a righteous winner, it’s the wrong way to view this very real life drama. If we can bring to the discussion the disparities, Israeli terrorism, occupation and racism, then we’ll make some real progress.

It could be seen as an endless story of revenge by two imperfect sides.

I remember feeling upset to learn of the Nakba much later in life – Arabic word for the Catastrophe which is the Palestinian’s version of Israel’s Independence. 1948 was a moment in history seeking to bring balance to atrocities against Jews, but was also the moment that punctuated an already long-standing saturation of immigrating Jews in Palestine who were expanding quickly within the land of Palestinians. I had barely a voice to speak about it and this painting was a way to reflect on something that I was learning. The main part of the painting centered on twisting, spiraling paint strokes in pink, red, burgundy and white intestines. An early article from 10/13/23 in the New Yorker in many ways, speaks to this tangled situation, “The Tangled Grief of Israel’s Anti-Occupation Activists”. This is something that lives in the guts of people traumatized. The belly brain holds an additional layer of consciousness independent of the mind. The ongoing story of Jewish victimhood pursuing a justified liberation has been a specific narrative for Israel that is essentially descriptive and predictable for a dominant culture that is oppressing the “other.” How do I know this? Because America has done the same to Black people. Countries in Europe, of course particularly but not only Britain have done the same. Japan has done the same. Countries in Africa have done the same. On and on…

But what is different is how well we’re seeing this because of social media and a rise in many people young and old who are connecting the dots to the corruptive regimes that are working hard to cover lies and assert power. For anyone who sees 10/7 as a shocking, new point for Israel’s history has not been following this struggle that’s at least notable for decades as a point of identifying the conflict. And for those who are new to seeing this and side with Palestine are undertstanding the parallels in history to apartheid and genocide. For those siding with Israel, the picture paints the colonialist’s justified effort to gain power by stealing land and convincing its citizens of a sole path towards safety and liberation, American style. It’s seeing 9/11 as the surprise to our invincible nation and not realizing what triggered that horrible attack on our government, politics and innocent people.

Jeet Heer: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-us-911-lessons/

Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis:

“The shock and fury in Israel are reminiscent of the emotions in the US after 9/11. That provoked a display of American unity and power. It also led to a misconceived and self-destructive war on terror. Israel may be heading down the same dangerous path.”

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Daniel Levy – https://youtu.be/rLi2tXUR48M?si=WRP39uvH9yIyl2zT

Levy is the president of the U.S./Middle East Project, and served as an Israeli negotiator at Taba under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during Oslo B negotiations.

“I personally believe that Israelis can never have security until Palestinians have security.”

“That equation where you can impose a regime of structural violence on another people. You can deny another people their basic rights and you will live with your own security – That equation never works.” “I hope one day, Palestinians of course, but also Jewish Israelis experience the idea of how liberating it can be to no longer be an oppressor. Because when you’re oppressing people, you know in the back of your mind, that you are generating a desire for retribution. You can’t actually sleep securely at night if you know what you are doing.”

“This has been an incredibly disruptive moment. And I don’t want to spread false optimism. But against the backdrop of such bleak times, perhaps this disruptive moment will cause people to stare into the abyss… I don’t think it’s going well militarily… the hope is that we can turn this around. First we have to currently stop what’s going on in Gaza.”

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Uval Noah Harari – https://youtu.be/SpIIjzS2BIo?si=vQB4oTm1J7ph9uGp

“The key message should be, don’t try to go back to the past and change it.” “Past injuries should be healed and not used as an excuse to inflict more injuries. We’ve been trying this way of inflicting more and more injuries for generations.”

“The key idea is, If you have to choose between justice and peace, choose peace. Every peace treaty in the history of the world was based on compromise. We need some level of justice of course. But there is never a possibility of absolute justice. If you pursue absolute justice, you will only perpetuate war indefinitely.“

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I have only my limited life experience to explain my reasoning and interpretation, so this may or may not find a pathway to yours. I do want to point out that it would have been much easier for me to stay in the zone of what I had been taught. To gather support as an American Jew and feel the ongoing support of our President and most of our political leaders. I would not have the concern of losing close friends or feel disrobed from my religious upbringing. I would not have felt compelled to spend five or more nights every week since October 7th to study, research and stay up to date with news. There was so much more I could share, give every detail and offer a comprehensive synopsis of all I’ve read and seen. But I do have it saved and will do my best to organize what I’ve gathered and let it be a resource for anyone interested. It has taken great courage of many Jewish and Israelis who have come forward to share their opposing perspectives to the ongoing dominant narrative. It has taken the greatest courage for Palestinians who have been speaking up and are speaking up today. To them and my Palestinian friends, I am deeply grateful and pray for a free Palestine.

I would not have the concern of losing close friends

or feel disrobed from my religious upbringing.

The war isn’t between nations. This story isn’t even confined to them and not us. It’s between and inside each and every one of us to fight for the connection to our true nature. It’s for us to notice that when we push someone away for our own peace, we are part of the war of othering that is endless. We can battle against the deeply grooved habits of thought that keep us from seeing the real possibility of life on this earth. When we keep thinking we need to expand, conquer, revenge, exclude, create superiority, we lose.

There’s a big difference between justifying the how and why of something and gaining an understanding. Do we say, “that’s just the way it is,” “you wouldn’t understand,” or “they do the same to us.” In the desire to have an action or incident justified, we may be caught in the headlights of the immediate flash of a story. We may be convinced, even cornered to stay stuck in our fight/flight/freeze response forcing our minds to jump to reaction. We may be shamed if we have anything to discuss outside of the big letters of a headline. In gaining understanding, there’s a better chance to evaluate with knowledge and cultivate a broader way to respond which requires more effort and quite often, a lot more patience. It’s the opposite of the knee-jerk reaction and is the more challenging way to investigate truth. When patterns emerge that demonstrate an upper hand dominating the movement of a story at every turn, then it’s up to each of us to piece the puzzle together with our own discernment. It might seem strange to realize our leaders have lost touch with humanity and have managed to justify harm for the presumed benefit of humanity. But, I find it strange that we’ve lost touch with honoring the divine potential of humanity and are comfortable justifying violence for peace.

I’m open to your thoughts. Please email me – marc@mukundastudio.com or join our weekly TLP Talks – Truth, Liberation, Peace.

Let’s stay connected,

Marc