Category Archives: War & Peace

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A Quaker In Conflict, Outer and Inner: Damned if He Speaks, Damned If He Doesn’t. Meanwhile, There’s Work To Do.

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New York Times — December 31, 2023

Can He Condemn the Killings Without Causing More Pain?

Chris George has lived in Israel and Gaza, where he was once held hostage. As his employees ask him to speak out on the latest war, he is torn.

He had spent his entire career attending to the horrors of terrorism and war, and now Chris George, 70, believed it was his responsibility to act again. He sat at his desk inside Connecticut’s largest refugee resettlement agency, trying to write a public statement about the violence in Israel and Gaza that had resurfaced traumas among his staff, and in his own personal history. Continue reading A Quaker In Conflict, Outer and Inner: Damned if He Speaks, Damned If He Doesn’t. Meanwhile, There’s Work To Do. →

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Don’t Miss This Classic Radio Christmas Story from Canada!

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War clouds were gathering as winter arrived in 1990. President George H. W. Bush was mobilizing a huge military strike to roll back Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait. War fever was being ginned up on every side, ignoring huge protests and objections even from Pope John Paul II.

I was working at a large post office in northern Virginia, moving sacks and bundles and mails, on shifts that stretched into the cold nights. I was surrounded by many coworkers who were traumatized Vietnam veterans, being triggered in numerous ways by the approaching battles. My opposition to the war was very much a minority view there; mainly I kept quiet about it. Continue reading Don’t Miss This Classic Radio Christmas Story from Canada! →

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An Israeli-Palestinian Family Faces The War, Clings Together

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The Guardian — Dec. 20, 2023

I’m Israeli, my ex-husband is Palestinian – and our union has never been stronger

At this moment, no one understands our pain better than one another. My ex-husband and I are both clinging to what’s most familiar: the two of us, our kids, our family

It’s a Monday afternoon – just two weeks since 7 October – and I’m floating somewhere outside myself as I teach my weekly multimedia class at the university. I hear myself cracking jokes and responding to students’ questions. I feel myself smiling. But when I look down at my arms and hands as I pack up at the end of class, I don’t recognize my own body. There’s that familiar golden peachy tone, that skin that took Tel Aviv’s sun so many years ago, and carried it back with me to the US. And yet, I can’t quitej place these particular arms and hands.

But the phone, the phone is familiar. After I wave my last student goodbye, I pull it from my purse and read the latest messages. My ex-boyfriend in Tel Aviv – an Israeli vegan, anti-Zionist pacifist – tells me he’s now looking for a stun gun for self-protection.

Continue reading An Israeli-Palestinian Family Faces The War, Clings Together →

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Poland Enters Political Rehab; & the U. S. Military (Mostly) Repels An Assault By the Anti-Woke Brigades

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Restoring democracy in Poland
Donald Tusk, prime minister of Poland again after eight years, has a hard job ahead, Gwynne Dyer writes.

Gwynne Dyer — December 15, 2023

Donald Tusk, Poland’s New Premier

It didn’t take the United States long to restore the normal constitutional order after four years of Donald Trump. He is a ruthless and lawless man, but also a lazy and feckless one, and he simply didn’t bother to do all the damage he might have done to American democracy.

Donald Tusk, prime minister of Poland again after eight years of Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) being in power, has a harder job ahead. Kaczyński had twice as long to entrench his “illiberal” allies and henchmen in Poland’s courts and its media, and he is a wily and determined enemy of liberal democracy. Continue reading Poland Enters Political Rehab; & the U. S. Military (Mostly) Repels An Assault By the Anti-Woke Brigades →