It seems odd (and cynical, it goes without saying), but Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip, has seen fit to release this video aimed at persuading Israelis--one supposes--to put pressure on their government to release 1000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, in exchange for one Israeli soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, captured by Hamas in June 2006.
I don't think it will work.
One wonders how this kind of psychological warfare could have the positive impact upon the stalled prisoner exchange negotiations that Hamas apparently expects.
This bazaar episode is just another iteration, of course, in the Arab-Israeli conflict that began with international recognition of Israeli statehood in 1948 and has its roots in Semitic infighting that goes back as far as Abraham's sons, Ishmael and Isaac.
According to spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, this conflict--and conflict in general--has a deeper, more personal source: the collective pain-bodies of the participating nations.
On an individual level, Tolle teaches, the pain-body is "an accumulation of old emotional pain, caused by "the unwillingness of the human mind to let go of the past."
This in turn causes the individual to act against his or her external world (which can also include self-destructive behavior) in a vain attempt to remove the pain which is actually internal. It can only be relieved by letting go of the past and focusing instead on the present moment.
In Tolle's view, the same scenario can play out on a "collective" level. In A New Earth, Tolle writes: "The pain-body, however, is not just individual in nature. It also partakes of the pain suffered by countless humans throughout the history of humanity."
Some have likened Tolle's view of the collective pain-body to the Christian doctrine of original sin.
The collective pain-body can also be a national phenomenon. Writes Tolle, "In some nations, for example in the Middle East, the collective pain-body is so acute that a significant part of the population finds itself forced to act it out in an endless and insane cycle of perpetration and retribution through which the pain-body renews itself continuously."
The answer on the individual as well as the collective level, in Tolle's view, is to stop feeding the beast. The pain-body renews itself through conflict. Through non-reaction to violence, we rob the pain-body of its sustenance and it eventually weakens and dies.
This would be, then, the mechanism behind the power of non-violent protest, the kind of non-reaction that Gandhi used to move the British out of India, and that Martin Luther King, Jr., used to move Jim Crow out of the South. Perhaps it will one day solve the Arab-Israeli conflict too.
The view of Gandhi, King and Tolle were summed up beautifully by both King David and Jesus, when they said, "The meek shall inherit the earth."
King David was Jewish, and Jesus is considered a prophet by Islam. Maybe they'll listen to them.
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Wow- that is bizarre!...We are entering an age when youtube videos are being released in such a strange situation! Still, it seems that any kind of trickle of communication could potentially be a good thing...Thanks for posting this very surreal video. I guess I'm naive, but I like to contemplate the possibility of human beings getting along with each to such an extent that there would be no political prisoners.
ReplyDeleteTodd somehow I overlooked the "read more" link after the video, but then I noticed this link and read the rest of the article. Excellent discussion about the dynamics at the root of violence. We need to look at these conflicts in a deep way to discover a way to turnaround our current titanic course of destruction on this planet. Thanks for this article!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, Colleen and thanks again for the incisive comment!
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