You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right!—-Rosa Parks

My granddaughter asked me and my husband what we did during the Civil Rights Movement of the nineteen sixties. I had to admit to mostly being involved from the sidelines. I was still in high school when most of the important protests and events took place. It was not until I was a student at the University of Houston that I participated in some rather small on campus marches. I knew with all of my heart and mind and soul that the quest for equality for all represented by that movement was right and just. It is not been quite as clear nor as easy to choose sides regarding other issues that have arisen during my lifetime.  

I spent a great deal of time protesting the war in Vietnam whose goal was not particularly clear to me. To this day I regret how the message that the anti-war movement delivered became so muddy and unclear. Along the way it divided a whole generation in our country in ways that have never been totally mended. I know that for myself it was not about making villains of the young men who fought in that conflict, but rather about how questionable our nation’s involvement was. To this very day there is a spectrum of thinking that often tends to place those present in the debate along a continuum of cowards to brave patriots depending on who is remembering what those disagreements were about. it was much harder to know that I chose the absolutely right side during the Vietnam War era, therefore I have always been a bit fearful that I may have been hindering more than helping the cause even as I believed that continuing that war and losing more young men was fruitless.

I console myself in knowing that my intentions were always on the side of peace and fairness but I see from the distance of aging that all of the situations and questions were far more nuanced than I had considered. Perhaps the same can be said of those who were gung-ho supporters of the war. Maybe they never really understood why people like me were working to end the violence and bring our soldiers back home. I suspect that they instead believed that most of the protestors despised them for bravely carrying out their duty to our nation and thus they may still harbor bad feelings for those of us who marched with signs condemning the whole thing. 

So many issues in life are like balls of thread that have become knotted and tangled. Undoing the mess is difficult and time consuming and in the end one wonders if it was even worth the effort. I accept that the vast majority of humans do indeed want to be on the right side of goodness and to do what is truly right. The fear that we have in doing such things comes when we worry that we may somehow be choosing wrong. 

Just as it was rather easy for me to know that supporting the Civil Rights movement was a moral imperative, so it was for those who fought in Europe and the Pacific during World War II. Things become messy, however when we consider the atom bombs dropped on civilian populations in Japan. Even Oppenheimer, one of the creators of that horrific weapon of mass destruction, came to worry that he had opened up an evil can of worms in building it. To this day there are convincing reasons for condemning that horrific bombing even as it is supported by assertions that many more may have died if we had not ended the fighting so dramatically. 

The war that is raging in the Middle East between Israel and Gaza is one of those situations that is so complex that it is quite difficult to determine how to react. On the one hand Israel was attacked by members of Hamas in October when citizens were killed and taken hostage. On the other hand, the devastation inflicted on the Palestinian citizens of Gaza since then has been ferocious and deadly in a way that seems to be a gross overreaction to the initial incident. Furthermore the fighting does not appear to be leading to the stated issue of freeing the hostages, while imposing many of the deadliest consequences on innocent Palestinians whose homes, schools and hospitals have been destroyed. A debate reminiscent of the one during the Vietnam War is raging across the world. 

I know young people who are earnestly questioning the decimation and death of Palestinians and wondering if the ultimate goal of Israel is no longer simply to keep them in line, but rather to rid them from the area forever. Skirmishes between Israel and Palestine have been common since land was first carved out in the for the Israelis in 1948 by Britain, France and the United States. A seeming act of kindness intended to give them a land of their own did not take into account how the people already living there might view about the situation. As Israel claimed more and more territory over the ensuing years the tension has built and built with Israel demonstrating its might in quelling any uprisings. This time things feel very different to all sides. It seems as though a true fair and equitable peace must be brokered with everyone’s needs in mind if life is ever again to be safe and secure for either group of people. This peace cannot come unless both sides enjoy freedom rather than dominance of one side over the other. 

It is difficult to choose when both groups of ordinary citizens are suffering and it feels as though the real disagreement is between politicians thinking they can simply wave magic wands to make things happen their way. The people become mere pawns in struggles for power. Nobody wins and so choosing one side over another becomes murky and difficult, especially for those of us who are not directly impacted by it all. We are judging from afar rather than living the nightmare. 

On the surface it seems as though terrible mistakes have been made for the last seventy years leading to fear and hatred between the two groups of people that will make it ever more difficult to solve the multiple issues. It will take decades to rebuild the infrastructure in Gaza and more time for any of the people to trust each other. A deadly Pandora’s box has been opened and somebody has to be willing to put the genie back in the bottle, but who will that be? 

I am fearful about the situation because I think that right now determining what is right is like untying a gordian knot. Nonetheless, both sides need to try and the rest of us must stop sending weapons that keep the fighting going for who knows how long. Then we must find a Solomon capable of repairing the damage of decades and finding ways to insure that both sides begin to live in a state of freedom, respect and peace as good neighbors rather than sworn enemies. That’s a tall order and in the meantime we all might want to consider making our discussions about the issues calm and focused on determining what might work rather than creating our own little battles of differing opinions. Emotions are not going to end this, nor will more fighting or name calling or destroying property or putting people in jail . This is going to take some very hard work. I want to believe that we humans are up to the task even as the evidence worries me.