A Search for Priorities

I just watched two people – one Israeli my age, and one Palestinian twice my age – give a lecture on the Wall. They spoke about their collective resistance against this West Bank encirclement, about how some Israelis and some Palestinians have decided that enough was enough. No more violence. No more deaths. No more injustice. Their solution was a nonviolent and peaceful uprising – all they carried were signs. Fifty-five demonstrations later, only one had sadly been killed – out of the large number of rubber bullets the IDF used, a few were actually live ammunition. This movement, however, is not portrayed in popular media. Shame.

After watching them, and then later privately talking to them to discover their personal (and different) motivations, I couldn’t help but feel slightly ashamed. That might be the wrong word, but here were two people who had initiated their own attempt at creating a semblance of peace between the two cultures because they were frustrated with the hypocrisy inherent in governmental attempts. I look at Lebanon, and I can’t see such constructive social mobilization. If I “zoom out”, I see the same stories being written, although the details have changed. But I can’t keep complaining. I can’t keep discussing what is wrong in Lebanon, knowing that at this phase of my life, I don’t have the power (or maybe I don’t have the will) to instigate change at the necessary levels. Comparing myself with these two is probably not mentally healthy, but it is definitely making me think about whether I have my priorities in the right order.

posted by Lazarus, 6:50 PM