Bradley Burston: Ten Commandments for Arabs and Jews at War

[LeftishBrit]

There is no conflict in the world more complex, more closely watched, and more historically intractable than the war between Israel and its Arab neighbors, a tireless blood feud now on the threshold of its seventh decade.

It helps little that each side lays claim to ultimate morality and consummate victimhood.

For Palestinian Muslim and Israeli Jew both, many of the most strident calls for escalation, for war until absolute victory, for refusal to compromise, for justifying injury to civilians on the other side, in fact, for eradication, political or physical, of the other side, come from ultra-nationalist religious leaders....


Herewith, a first draft: Ten Commandments for the Arab and Jew at war:



http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/963200.html

[goodinuf]

1. Suggested addition: Thou shalt not destroy orchards. n/t

[Crunchy Frog]

2. There's a very nice Talkback response that I found.

Title: My Ten Commandments

Name: Tzfonit

City: Ben-Ami State: Israel


Nothing new here and all too obvious.
I propose focusing on ten positive commandments of what we should be doing rather than what we should not.

1.Learn and acknowledge the narrative of the other side.

2.Constantly place preservation of all human life as a top priority.

3.Recognize diplomacy as being far more powerful than guns.

4.Reject revenge in favor of closing all accounts with the other side.

5.Use the peaceful teachings of your religion to guide your actions.

6.Recognize the other side as individual human beings, not a mass personification of their extremists.

7.Seize any of your enemy?s invitations to talk and accept immediately.

8.Demand creative and daring thinking from your leaders. If they remain bogged down in traditional thoughts and actions ? elect new ones.

9.Realize that both peoples are going to benefit far more from peace than from conflict.

10.Make your vision one of life after peace is attained and promite it.