Gaza dialogue with Occupy Manchester

I think inner instability is a good place to be, since it means that we don't kid ourselves that we know the answers. We are more likely to be open to listening, to both sides, which is the prerequisite of justice. But this cannot happen while people are killing each other. Peace is not the aim. It is the necessary condition for finding a settlement that is acceptable to both sides, -which may or may not be just according to your perspective.

Once we give ourselves the space to listen to each other with respect, (as we are now doing here) we can find the commonalities among the differences, which no longer need to divide us. We can recognise every person as our brother and sister. That is the first step, the challenge for each one of us in these times, to overcome the rage at the crimes that are happening, and recognise the other as ourselves. This may feel like surrender, like becoming enslaved to power and corruption. Actually that is our state, we are complicit in all the mess and destruction which is happening in the world. To realise that is so heartbreaking, so intolerable, rather than face it, we accuse - see what they are doing, we are not like that, in order to dissociate ourselves from the heinous crimes that are being committed in our name.

That is where we started this dialogue - 'they are the Nazis'.

While we are in that state of dissociation, we disempower ourselves, we feel like victims/slaves and see all the power residing in the other. That impotence feeds our rage, and it becomes a vicious circle feeding on itself. That is what has fed into the 64 years of stagnation.

To reclaim our power we need to recognise the other in all it's guises as ourselves, and acknowledge our complicity. What is our complicity? In simplistic terms every money transaction we make supports this global system of violence.

It seems we are trapped, and that appears to be a hopeless state. What is different is our awareness. We still want to protest the tax evasion, the austerity cuts, the nuclear power, the persecution of Gaza, but our consciousness is different. It is not fuelled by hate or rage. It can protest but it can still hear the other side.

I offer this as a possibility.