To Save The World From Self-Destruction We Must Recognize Our Common Interdependence

By Winslow Myers\PeaceVoice Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons Good that defensive anti-missiles worked against Iran’s barrage. Still, two elements were more suited to the playground than to international politics: face and revenge. One side bombs the other, and the other thinks that without revenge it will lose face. The October 7th Hamas attack was vengeful, but so was the Israeli government’s doubling down reaction. Where does an-eye-for-an-eye end? One of the uses of history is to chart the plasticity of friend into enemy and back into friend: the U.S. once went to war against enemies like Germany and Japan who are now fast friends. Russia was an ally of the U.S. against Hitler before it became an enemy during the Cold War, then during the Gorbachev era a friend, and now with Putin’s brutal invasion an enemy again. In South Africa and Rwanda, former mortal enemies have used truth and reconciliation processes to re-humanize adversaries.  As Robert Frost wrote, “Nature within her inmost self divides/To trouble men with having to take sides.”  On college campuses in the U.S., there has been far more reflexive taking sides around the Israeli-Palestinian issue than there have been attempts to sit down and listen to...