This is the conversation I’ve been engaged in in a couple of different places this past week.
One of the conversations was started on a social media platform with a question relating to the political division and the powers that be. The question was “How do we break free from a system designed to keep us fighting each other instead of those who profit from the fight?”
My sister stated “I have thought these same thoughts no matter who is in charge and, I admit, I have chosen to check out as it seems those who divide have won. Yet, in my everyday interactions and conversations, I hear people making sense. They say things like "Of course the government needs to be smaller but there has to be a better way to do it." They are compassionate to those who need to immigrate without wanting completely open borders. The rhetoric has encouraged division for too long. I think our demonstrations need to be for common sense and unity.” My response was in agreement and I stated that ‘common sense plus unity=community.
You're welcome Gayla, and thanks for your words here. I agree. I think most people want things to be reasonable and fair. Most people don't want to harm others or take rights away. But that doesn't make headlines or create clicks, which is sadly the fuel of modern day politics and media. But there are more of us folks that have compassion, and like you say here, we're talking to each other. BTW, are we related? Dunn?
Thank you for sharing this idea on undividing! I related to the protest part.
As someone who grew up in a conservative Christian household and who 180’d the other direction, Ive felt this tension of having lived both sides.
I see the humanity in my parents and family members, who still identify as conservative. I know they only consume media that shares a skewed reality supporting a very specific world view.
Sometimes it feels like when them and I talk about politics, we might as well be living in different worlds, but if we talk about the actual issues, drill down into the values behind things, you can start to see the common ground. Often there’s the view of the same issues that we want fixed, just supporting wildly different approaches on how to go about it.
I’m never going to flip them to be progressive, that’s not the goal anymore, but I need them and me to see the shared values that we still hold. That gives me hope.
And that's huge. Values I think are the things that bind us. Everywhere I've lived in this world people just want to have a job, pay their bills, give their kids a better future. That's most of us at our core.
Dresden is an amazingly beautiful city and am grateful that they've been able to build it back. The most powerful part of your article is the section about the protest and one of the reasons I follow your Substack--real change happens when we talk TO each other and not AT each other. But that doesn't happen unless really listen and stop listening to interrupt. Keep up the great work!
Beautifully written. I hope that when I wear one of my left wing t-shirts and someone comments negatively that I can step into that moment and find our common ground. Thank you for the inspiration. - Jean
I agree with your sentiment that we need to "destroy our enemy" by engaging in dialog with people of opposite views and trying to find
common ground. However, there is a point of no return. For Israel (where my friends and family live under constant threat of total destruction) it was October 7, 2023.
For Ukrainians (where my friends and family live under threat of total destruction) it was February 22, 2022. History repeats itself again, when after the worst massacre since Holocaust we saw crowds openly chanting "Gas the Jews" , and anti-semitism is on a rise on levels not seen since Holocaust. History repeats itself again, with Russians (many of whom have friends and family in Ukraine!), after 20 years of propaganda, firmly believe that they are actually saving someone by destroying Ukrainian cities and torturing and murdering Ukrainian civilians. Same with Gazan civilians who support Hamas and cheer destruction and capture of Israeli civilians, including babies.
Pure evil force does not care about talk, it only cares about destruction. And it can only be stopped by equal or a greater force of good.
Hi Olga, thank you for what you wrote here. It breaks my heart watching what we are doing to each other all over the world. Everyone feeling justified to do it. And I agree with you that only a force of good can stop it. My hope is that that good can be two sides talking and figuring out how did we get here? How do we undo this? How do we stop history repeating? It's not fast or easy. But that's the force I want to amplify into the world.
There's no "How did we get here" if the other side wants to kill you for who you are. I understand that it might be hard for you to believe that that is the only motivation, but it is. And there's no way of simply talking your way out of it either. Not at this point in time. There were citizens of several countries who were kidnapped on October 7. Hamas and his followers didn't care. They era on the side of Israel, so they were a fair target.
They want Jews gone. They want Israel gone. They want Ameericans gone. They want all the Europeans gone. There's no "let's talk about it" at this point.
When a man calls his parents in celebration that he killed 10 Jews with his own hands, that he has blood of Jews on his hands, there's no talking any more. Only response with as much force as needed to stop more of the same.
And once they give up on killing us (at least for now) then maybe we can talk.
And with Ukraine it's even more tragic, as I said. It's sometimes friends and family who do the killing of their friends and family. And whatever happens with negotiations at this point, the bond that connected these two nations is broken. And I suspect for more than 1 generation.
I do understand you Olga. And I do understand the motivation that you speak of. I'm gay myself and have narrowly escaped being beaten several times in my life. I watched a whole generation of men die who were five years older than me because a lot of people at the time thought we deserved it. I know what it is to be hated for who you are. And I don't mean to trivialise these conflicts with something that sounds like a fridge magnet. But I live in a city where many people have fled both these wars, and many of these people want peace not revenge. They are from opposing sides, but live in the same apartments, work in the same places, sometimes even own businesses together that stand for what can happen through co-operation. I don't know how to stop these wars. But I do know that after the bombing of Dresden, neither side could have imagined the years of reconciliation that we see today. That I saw and wrote about in the article. That's the future we can do our part to make.
My posts might look aggressive, because I become very passionate in trying to explain my point. And sometimes it gets lost, or misunderstood, because English is my third language, and sometime I indeed misinterpret someone else's comments or replies. But my main drive to post is to be heard, and to see if we can connect somewhere in the middle.
There are also many Israelis who want the Palestinians gone and have done their best to reduce their territory and quality of life over the past decades believing that the land is actually rightfully theirs as designated by God. The point is that conflicts are never 100% clear cut and to a large extent are between leaders rather than the ordinary people of a population who are the ones who suffer on both sides. Sometimes they are brainwashed by propaganda but if we keep saying 'they think this, they think that, they've gone too far now, therefore we can't communicate' and can only keep taking an eye for an eye till we are all blind, and nothing will be achieved apart from more and more vengeance. The Nazi regime was possibly the most repugnant in history but does that mean that ordinary citizens of Dresden deserved to be obliterated? Because some people were kidnapped and killed by Hamas does it justify dropping bombs on hospitals and orphanages and killing tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian children? Will it do anything to resolve conflict? Of course not. The only reason I even know about Dresden is that it's where my sister-in-law is from. It's not something we generally learn about as we like to see ourselves, 'the Allies' as the good guys. And to a large extent, as the grandchild of a soldier who helped to liberate Belsen and had the job of organising the burial of thousands of dead Jews, I am inclined to see it that way to some extent. But still, you cannot blame a whole population when atrocities happen. People who are responsible should be held accountable but stirring up hatred towards any nationality or group whether it be Germans, Palestinians, Israelis, Russians or whatever, is never going to help. We are all humans at the end of the day and there are as many different points of views within a group as between them - even if they are not allowed to express them freely. Finding 'common ground' is not necessarily intellectual, it can be emotional, a simple understanding of our common humanity. I was thinking of in WW1 when the soldiers came out of the trenches at Christmas to have a game of football and they showed each other photos of wives and girlfriends and shared cigarettes and exchanged trinkets they would take home as souvenirs (if they survived). A similar thing happened at Gallipolli with the Turks when there was a ceasefire so the soldiers could bury the fallen, so they met each other in the common space of 'no-man's land'. And then the next day they had to continue with the pointless slaughter - but it was never quite the same, something shifted because they knew the men they were fighting were not really different, they were just like them, humans with hopes and dreams and interests and fears. It reminds me of Rumi's poem: 'Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there...'
I wonder, how can we make more of these moments happen in the world where we can come out of our entrenched positions, and judgements of what's right and wrong and just say 'Wait a minute, why are we fighting? We are not so different, we have disputes, we have suffered, but can't we find a better solution than this?'. There can never be a point of no return wherw its too late to talk between peoples, so many lines have been crossed on both sides, but what's the alternative? Newsflash: There isn't one.
Thank you Laura for your really thoughtful reply here. I like the story you reminded us of here about soldiers who took a break in the fighting to play soccer, bury dead, talk to each other, exchange gifts and laughs. They all became humans to each other. Which is why fighting again is a tragedy. So it's more of these moments in the middle that I want to foster here. And these are things with and for each other.
I have one question about the article. Who were the "citizens who were exterminated " you mentioned in the articles. The names of citizens that were written on stones you were "supposed" to trip on. Were they Jews? Germans? Both? Do you know?
Jews. Who were German citizens. The stones are all over Berlin. Sometimes half a dozen or more in a group. There's probably 20 on my street alone. They're right outside the buildings where the families were living. And they're called "trip stones" in German, because you do catch your shoes on their edges. To always remember.
That's just how the sentence came out. If I had to make a guess, I'm so used to seeing them that I know they're for Jews. In my brain, I think of them as the people who used to live here.
As I mentioned in my original comment, both Hamas-Israel war and the war between Russia and Ukraine are a very emotional subject for me. I live in a constant state of anxiety and fear that today I might lose a friend or a relative because of it.
And yes, I want the world to heal, I yearn for the time when decent people in Gaza (if there are any left), Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and other places around the world to finally live in peace. Only it is not possible, when evil people are in charge and want to kill their neighbors, and history shows that only strength, not compliance, saves more lives in the long run. I can't engage in simple fantasy of "what if we could find a way to get along", because reality is that my friends or relatives could be killed today, any minute of the day.
European countries didn't want to engage in another war, so they gave Hitler part of Czechoslovakia. Did they prevent more lives from dying?
You lament about 25,000 of civilians killed in Dresden. (Which I agree is a tragedy, too) What about the rest of the 50,000,000-60,000,000 who lost their lives in that war? Most of them were civilians, too.
Israel lost an equivalent of 30,000-40,000 Americans in one day on October 7, when you convert people murdered that day to the total population of Israel. Where is your sympathy towards them?
I am a descendant of two nations who suffered the biggest genocides in the world history, and I see it happening all over again, and you tell me to stay silent about it, because you don't like any kind of violence.
To me it's like telling a woman who is being raped to stop struggling, because violence is never the right answer.
You might believe that you are creating safe space for people to connect, but from my point of view you are creating yet another echo chamber where only people who mostly agree with you can comment.
Ok Olga, I don't know where else to take this conversation. In our private chat, we agreed to disagree (those were your words) and you said you were happy to stop commenting to let the conversation continue, and I was pleased that we did that with respect for each other.
You're making a lot personal accusations now and a lot of assumptions about what I think. Even after we've chatted in other threads about other topics really well.
My community has been persecuted, murdered, locked up, and abused for millennia. Almost half the countries on this planet, people like me have less or no rights. And many of them jail us. Even in the US my rights are up for debate every election.
If I followed your argument, I could hate everyone. But I choose not to. Because I've lived in countries and cities, where I've seen all different kinds of people work together and make it work. I believe in that part of us.
Hi, Karl. This is in reply to your "Ok, Olga" reply :)
I'm glad you live at a time and in place where you can be yourself and not fear prosecution or death. And despite what you hear on TV about America the reality is that you will be ok here mostly anywhere, no matter who the president is. (That's where disconnecting from the media and actually talking to real people helps) I have mostly conservative views, and I can tell you that most conservatives really don't care who you are, as long as you are a decent person. (Or maybe you were talking about something else) On a personal note, I didn't realize that one of my daughter's friends had two moms. I saw them both taking care of the same girl, it just didn't "click" that they were a couple. Because it really is not that important to me. And noone else gave them grief either.
The truth is that I've been asking myself the same question. Why do I keep trying to convince you when you're obviously set in your opinion, and I'm in mine?
And no, I'm not blaming you. I'm trying to show you how it feels from the victim's side when you say that "both sides" are tearing each other apart, when in reality if one side stops fighting, the other side will destroy it. Hamas would throw you off the roof, that's why I don't understand why you can't say that there is an evil involved.
I didn't reply earlier because I was in and out of the ER for the past few days and I was trying to see whether I missed something before I respond.
And I wanted to try again.
Because, as you said, I do like a lot of things you're saying, and it upsets me that we can't find a way to connect here.
We can continue this in private or stop altogether. I will be done this time for sure, I promise. :)
I do have one favor to ask of you. When you talk of victims of Holocaust, please call them for what they were - Jews. Because that's what they were prosecuted for. And if we stop saying it, then the horrors and inhumanity of Holocaust will be forgotten and repeated again.
Hi, Karl. I've been thinking a lot about whether to write anything here or simply disengage, because not seeing evil side in the Hamas-Israeli war (or in the Russia-Ukraine war) after the massacre they committed on October 7,2023 (invaded Ukraine on February 24,2022) , and especially after a sick parade ceremony of giving 4 dead bodies and giving the wrong keys to the children's coffins and passing some poor Gazan woman as Shiri Bibas is not just misguided. It is immoral. Even Muslim leaders start speaking up against such evil.
I thought that we might at least agree on the point that pure evil does exist.
But no, I don't think you believe in that, and thus we cannot find common ground.
You asked me to stop posting, because it scares some people. I didn't reply to anyone but those who replied to my original comment, and you didn't say anything to Laura , whose comment casually dismissed Israel's right to exist at all, and who was more focused on dying children in Gaza than on anyone who died in the most barbaric way imaginable on October 7.
This is what you say in your other posts:
"When we stop talking to each other, we stop thinking for ourselves. When we stop thinking, we start dividing."
"Disagreeing with someone isn’t a division. Disconnecting from them is." Yet the moment I disagreed with you and Laura, you asked me to leave your group, unless I find something more "peaceful " to talk about.
Olga I didn't ask you to leave the group in our private chat. The wars that are raging in Gaza and in The Ukraine show the worst of what we are capable of. On that we agree. And two warring parties are completely disconnected from each other.
The point of the article, and using Dresden as the example, is that war is always regretted by both sides, regardless of how right they felt at the time.
What I asked you, was not to leave, but to help us find a way that doesn't create more divisions. But when you continually insist on war as the only solution, all conversation stops. And your insistence had stopped all conversation in this thread.
I stand by all those things I said that you've reposted here, and I don't believe it is gaslighting.
You are not blocked. Your comments aren't deleted. I asked for your help. You've said no, and that we agree to disagree. Which is also OK.
If you can't help us, that's fine. But please don't stop us trying.
Yes, there were soldiers who took a break from the war and played soccer together (I heard similar stories occurred between Soviet and German soldiers as well), but there were those who would not play ball. And the reason that the death toll among civilians was so large was because Nazis sometimes burned entire villages of innocent civilians to the ground.
Laura, your comment in the beginning means that you know very little history about Israel and Palestinians, and it was not just kidnapping this time, or murdering a lot of people. It is also what they did to the bodies. That they made videos and put them online *gleefully*. Even Nazis had enough conscience left to hide what they were doing in Aushwitz and other camps.
Israel 100% has the right to that land not only because it says so in Torah, but because that's where Jews lived for centuries, until the destruction of their Second Temple in 71 AD. And the reason that piece of land was called Palestine afterwards is because the king (or the emperor, I keep forgetting the proper title) wanted to spite Jews and named their land after their worst enemies from long ago - Philistines. So if you want to talk about rights to the land, Jews have claimed it long before any European country became what it is now. And they only got a very small portion of it back in 1948. Yet from the very beginning thru just wanted to live in peace with their neighbors, who declared war on Israel the moment it was re-established.
The majority of the land is now called Jordan. Gaza and West Bank (which most Jews call Judea and Samaria, because that is West Bank 's proper historical name) were won back in 1967. The remaining Palestinian refugees (Gaza and West Bank are still considered refugee camps) refused to accept creation of their own state at that time. Because their ultimate goal was the destruction of the entire state of Israel and its people.
October 7 is not "an eye for an eye" It is fight against the existential threat (that had been going on for the past 80 years) of total annihilation of the state of Israel.
And Hamas and their supporters (as I mentioned, there were a lot of civilian Gazans who were involved in kidnapping, murdering and looting on that day as well) not "just" brutally murdered 1200+people. They tortured, by cutting off fingers and poking out eyes, by r@ping many girls and women to death, and some were r@ped after their death as well. They mutilated bodies to the point that rescuers could not identify whether the remains were of a man, or a woman, because their genitalia were cut off.
They burned babies alive in the oven. I saw a clip of a Gazan decapitating a man who seemed to be still alive, with a shovel.
Many people were burned alive.
A lot of girls who are/were kidnaped were used as house slaves, and were physically and sexually abused on a regular basis.
October 7 was not an isolated incident. It was the last straw.
IDF starting Gaza war and bombing of the buildings is the result. And children dying as a result are collateral deaths that are unfortunately, tragically, unavoidable. Especially since Hamas knows that people like you and others will cry and condemn Israel for the bombings, so they built their tunnels and hid their weapons in hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Dresden might have indeed been controversial and not necessary to win the war, but please tell me: if it were you who were involved in WWII, would you stop at the German border? Would you not go in to finish Hitler and his regime? Would you leave him or his generals in power?
The whole point of Undividing, is to not create more divisions. Is to not make everyone else wrong. It's to find our common humanity and work from there, no matter who we are. You are clearly well informed and well studied. And I think what you also want, like everyone else, is peace. And I have seen people do it. I have lived in countries with many different religions and everyone finds a way to get on together.
So here is what I would like you and everyone else to bring to Undividing. Use your intellect and your humanity, and work with us to figure out how to move ahead that doesn't involve more killing and revenge.
My greatest fear of starting this, was exactly this. I don't want these comments sections to be a place where everyone blames every one else. The internet is already full of that.
I know there are people reading this right now, who have great ideas and are too afraid to comment now. And Undividing is a community of people who figure out a way ahead together in a safe corner of the internet.
Every conflict doesn't have to be one side's way or another. There is always a third way.
I hope all eight billion of us aren't just living without violence, but figuring out what we're actually capable of when we all work together. That's the future I'm working for.
This is the conversation I’ve been engaged in in a couple of different places this past week.
One of the conversations was started on a social media platform with a question relating to the political division and the powers that be. The question was “How do we break free from a system designed to keep us fighting each other instead of those who profit from the fight?”
My sister stated “I have thought these same thoughts no matter who is in charge and, I admit, I have chosen to check out as it seems those who divide have won. Yet, in my everyday interactions and conversations, I hear people making sense. They say things like "Of course the government needs to be smaller but there has to be a better way to do it." They are compassionate to those who need to immigrate without wanting completely open borders. The rhetoric has encouraged division for too long. I think our demonstrations need to be for common sense and unity.” My response was in agreement and I stated that ‘common sense plus unity=community.
Thank you for your very insightful article. ❤️
You're welcome Gayla, and thanks for your words here. I agree. I think most people want things to be reasonable and fair. Most people don't want to harm others or take rights away. But that doesn't make headlines or create clicks, which is sadly the fuel of modern day politics and media. But there are more of us folks that have compassion, and like you say here, we're talking to each other. BTW, are we related? Dunn?
Could be related I suppose. I married into the Dunn family. Some great Irish Anericans that are quite proud of their heritage. 💚
Then we might be in the same mix, Irish who emigrated to Australia way back.
Thank you for sharing this idea on undividing! I related to the protest part.
As someone who grew up in a conservative Christian household and who 180’d the other direction, Ive felt this tension of having lived both sides.
I see the humanity in my parents and family members, who still identify as conservative. I know they only consume media that shares a skewed reality supporting a very specific world view.
Sometimes it feels like when them and I talk about politics, we might as well be living in different worlds, but if we talk about the actual issues, drill down into the values behind things, you can start to see the common ground. Often there’s the view of the same issues that we want fixed, just supporting wildly different approaches on how to go about it.
I’m never going to flip them to be progressive, that’s not the goal anymore, but I need them and me to see the shared values that we still hold. That gives me hope.
And that's huge. Values I think are the things that bind us. Everywhere I've lived in this world people just want to have a job, pay their bills, give their kids a better future. That's most of us at our core.
Dresden is an amazingly beautiful city and am grateful that they've been able to build it back. The most powerful part of your article is the section about the protest and one of the reasons I follow your Substack--real change happens when we talk TO each other and not AT each other. But that doesn't happen unless really listen and stop listening to interrupt. Keep up the great work!
thank you Andrea. This week's took a few days to get right. And yes, that city is incredible, a Baroque masterpiece.
Beautifully written. I hope that when I wear one of my left wing t-shirts and someone comments negatively that I can step into that moment and find our common ground. Thank you for the inspiration. - Jean
For sure Jean, that's the bridge building work.
This is beautiful! Thank you!
Thank you Jessica. It took a few days to get it right. I'm glad it landed. I really believe in these things and the greatness we're capable of.
And if you have the time, check out that article by Katja.
I agree with your sentiment that we need to "destroy our enemy" by engaging in dialog with people of opposite views and trying to find
common ground. However, there is a point of no return. For Israel (where my friends and family live under constant threat of total destruction) it was October 7, 2023.
For Ukrainians (where my friends and family live under threat of total destruction) it was February 22, 2022. History repeats itself again, when after the worst massacre since Holocaust we saw crowds openly chanting "Gas the Jews" , and anti-semitism is on a rise on levels not seen since Holocaust. History repeats itself again, with Russians (many of whom have friends and family in Ukraine!), after 20 years of propaganda, firmly believe that they are actually saving someone by destroying Ukrainian cities and torturing and murdering Ukrainian civilians. Same with Gazan civilians who support Hamas and cheer destruction and capture of Israeli civilians, including babies.
Pure evil force does not care about talk, it only cares about destruction. And it can only be stopped by equal or a greater force of good.
Hi Olga, thank you for what you wrote here. It breaks my heart watching what we are doing to each other all over the world. Everyone feeling justified to do it. And I agree with you that only a force of good can stop it. My hope is that that good can be two sides talking and figuring out how did we get here? How do we undo this? How do we stop history repeating? It's not fast or easy. But that's the force I want to amplify into the world.
There's no "How did we get here" if the other side wants to kill you for who you are. I understand that it might be hard for you to believe that that is the only motivation, but it is. And there's no way of simply talking your way out of it either. Not at this point in time. There were citizens of several countries who were kidnapped on October 7. Hamas and his followers didn't care. They era on the side of Israel, so they were a fair target.
They want Jews gone. They want Israel gone. They want Ameericans gone. They want all the Europeans gone. There's no "let's talk about it" at this point.
When a man calls his parents in celebration that he killed 10 Jews with his own hands, that he has blood of Jews on his hands, there's no talking any more. Only response with as much force as needed to stop more of the same.
And once they give up on killing us (at least for now) then maybe we can talk.
And with Ukraine it's even more tragic, as I said. It's sometimes friends and family who do the killing of their friends and family. And whatever happens with negotiations at this point, the bond that connected these two nations is broken. And I suspect for more than 1 generation.
I do understand you Olga. And I do understand the motivation that you speak of. I'm gay myself and have narrowly escaped being beaten several times in my life. I watched a whole generation of men die who were five years older than me because a lot of people at the time thought we deserved it. I know what it is to be hated for who you are. And I don't mean to trivialise these conflicts with something that sounds like a fridge magnet. But I live in a city where many people have fled both these wars, and many of these people want peace not revenge. They are from opposing sides, but live in the same apartments, work in the same places, sometimes even own businesses together that stand for what can happen through co-operation. I don't know how to stop these wars. But I do know that after the bombing of Dresden, neither side could have imagined the years of reconciliation that we see today. That I saw and wrote about in the article. That's the future we can do our part to make.
My posts might look aggressive, because I become very passionate in trying to explain my point. And sometimes it gets lost, or misunderstood, because English is my third language, and sometime I indeed misinterpret someone else's comments or replies. But my main drive to post is to be heard, and to see if we can connect somewhere in the middle.
There are also many Israelis who want the Palestinians gone and have done their best to reduce their territory and quality of life over the past decades believing that the land is actually rightfully theirs as designated by God. The point is that conflicts are never 100% clear cut and to a large extent are between leaders rather than the ordinary people of a population who are the ones who suffer on both sides. Sometimes they are brainwashed by propaganda but if we keep saying 'they think this, they think that, they've gone too far now, therefore we can't communicate' and can only keep taking an eye for an eye till we are all blind, and nothing will be achieved apart from more and more vengeance. The Nazi regime was possibly the most repugnant in history but does that mean that ordinary citizens of Dresden deserved to be obliterated? Because some people were kidnapped and killed by Hamas does it justify dropping bombs on hospitals and orphanages and killing tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian children? Will it do anything to resolve conflict? Of course not. The only reason I even know about Dresden is that it's where my sister-in-law is from. It's not something we generally learn about as we like to see ourselves, 'the Allies' as the good guys. And to a large extent, as the grandchild of a soldier who helped to liberate Belsen and had the job of organising the burial of thousands of dead Jews, I am inclined to see it that way to some extent. But still, you cannot blame a whole population when atrocities happen. People who are responsible should be held accountable but stirring up hatred towards any nationality or group whether it be Germans, Palestinians, Israelis, Russians or whatever, is never going to help. We are all humans at the end of the day and there are as many different points of views within a group as between them - even if they are not allowed to express them freely. Finding 'common ground' is not necessarily intellectual, it can be emotional, a simple understanding of our common humanity. I was thinking of in WW1 when the soldiers came out of the trenches at Christmas to have a game of football and they showed each other photos of wives and girlfriends and shared cigarettes and exchanged trinkets they would take home as souvenirs (if they survived). A similar thing happened at Gallipolli with the Turks when there was a ceasefire so the soldiers could bury the fallen, so they met each other in the common space of 'no-man's land'. And then the next day they had to continue with the pointless slaughter - but it was never quite the same, something shifted because they knew the men they were fighting were not really different, they were just like them, humans with hopes and dreams and interests and fears. It reminds me of Rumi's poem: 'Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there...'
I wonder, how can we make more of these moments happen in the world where we can come out of our entrenched positions, and judgements of what's right and wrong and just say 'Wait a minute, why are we fighting? We are not so different, we have disputes, we have suffered, but can't we find a better solution than this?'. There can never be a point of no return wherw its too late to talk between peoples, so many lines have been crossed on both sides, but what's the alternative? Newsflash: There isn't one.
Thank you Laura for your really thoughtful reply here. I like the story you reminded us of here about soldiers who took a break in the fighting to play soccer, bury dead, talk to each other, exchange gifts and laughs. They all became humans to each other. Which is why fighting again is a tragedy. So it's more of these moments in the middle that I want to foster here. And these are things with and for each other.
I have one question about the article. Who were the "citizens who were exterminated " you mentioned in the articles. The names of citizens that were written on stones you were "supposed" to trip on. Were they Jews? Germans? Both? Do you know?
Jews. Who were German citizens. The stones are all over Berlin. Sometimes half a dozen or more in a group. There's probably 20 on my street alone. They're right outside the buildings where the families were living. And they're called "trip stones" in German, because you do catch your shoes on their edges. To always remember.
Then why didn't you say Jews in your article? Why did you say "people "?
That's just how the sentence came out. If I had to make a guess, I'm so used to seeing them that I know they're for Jews. In my brain, I think of them as the people who used to live here.
As I mentioned in my original comment, both Hamas-Israel war and the war between Russia and Ukraine are a very emotional subject for me. I live in a constant state of anxiety and fear that today I might lose a friend or a relative because of it.
And yes, I want the world to heal, I yearn for the time when decent people in Gaza (if there are any left), Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and other places around the world to finally live in peace. Only it is not possible, when evil people are in charge and want to kill their neighbors, and history shows that only strength, not compliance, saves more lives in the long run. I can't engage in simple fantasy of "what if we could find a way to get along", because reality is that my friends or relatives could be killed today, any minute of the day.
European countries didn't want to engage in another war, so they gave Hitler part of Czechoslovakia. Did they prevent more lives from dying?
You lament about 25,000 of civilians killed in Dresden. (Which I agree is a tragedy, too) What about the rest of the 50,000,000-60,000,000 who lost their lives in that war? Most of them were civilians, too.
Israel lost an equivalent of 30,000-40,000 Americans in one day on October 7, when you convert people murdered that day to the total population of Israel. Where is your sympathy towards them?
I am a descendant of two nations who suffered the biggest genocides in the world history, and I see it happening all over again, and you tell me to stay silent about it, because you don't like any kind of violence.
To me it's like telling a woman who is being raped to stop struggling, because violence is never the right answer.
You might believe that you are creating safe space for people to connect, but from my point of view you are creating yet another echo chamber where only people who mostly agree with you can comment.
Ok Olga, I don't know where else to take this conversation. In our private chat, we agreed to disagree (those were your words) and you said you were happy to stop commenting to let the conversation continue, and I was pleased that we did that with respect for each other.
You're making a lot personal accusations now and a lot of assumptions about what I think. Even after we've chatted in other threads about other topics really well.
My community has been persecuted, murdered, locked up, and abused for millennia. Almost half the countries on this planet, people like me have less or no rights. And many of them jail us. Even in the US my rights are up for debate every election.
If I followed your argument, I could hate everyone. But I choose not to. Because I've lived in countries and cities, where I've seen all different kinds of people work together and make it work. I believe in that part of us.
Hi, Karl. This is in reply to your "Ok, Olga" reply :)
I'm glad you live at a time and in place where you can be yourself and not fear prosecution or death. And despite what you hear on TV about America the reality is that you will be ok here mostly anywhere, no matter who the president is. (That's where disconnecting from the media and actually talking to real people helps) I have mostly conservative views, and I can tell you that most conservatives really don't care who you are, as long as you are a decent person. (Or maybe you were talking about something else) On a personal note, I didn't realize that one of my daughter's friends had two moms. I saw them both taking care of the same girl, it just didn't "click" that they were a couple. Because it really is not that important to me. And noone else gave them grief either.
The truth is that I've been asking myself the same question. Why do I keep trying to convince you when you're obviously set in your opinion, and I'm in mine?
And no, I'm not blaming you. I'm trying to show you how it feels from the victim's side when you say that "both sides" are tearing each other apart, when in reality if one side stops fighting, the other side will destroy it. Hamas would throw you off the roof, that's why I don't understand why you can't say that there is an evil involved.
I didn't reply earlier because I was in and out of the ER for the past few days and I was trying to see whether I missed something before I respond.
And I wanted to try again.
Because, as you said, I do like a lot of things you're saying, and it upsets me that we can't find a way to connect here.
We can continue this in private or stop altogether. I will be done this time for sure, I promise. :)
I do have one favor to ask of you. When you talk of victims of Holocaust, please call them for what they were - Jews. Because that's what they were prosecuted for. And if we stop saying it, then the horrors and inhumanity of Holocaust will be forgotten and repeated again.
Hi, Karl. I've been thinking a lot about whether to write anything here or simply disengage, because not seeing evil side in the Hamas-Israeli war (or in the Russia-Ukraine war) after the massacre they committed on October 7,2023 (invaded Ukraine on February 24,2022) , and especially after a sick parade ceremony of giving 4 dead bodies and giving the wrong keys to the children's coffins and passing some poor Gazan woman as Shiri Bibas is not just misguided. It is immoral. Even Muslim leaders start speaking up against such evil.
I thought that we might at least agree on the point that pure evil does exist.
But no, I don't think you believe in that, and thus we cannot find common ground.
You asked me to stop posting, because it scares some people. I didn't reply to anyone but those who replied to my original comment, and you didn't say anything to Laura , whose comment casually dismissed Israel's right to exist at all, and who was more focused on dying children in Gaza than on anyone who died in the most barbaric way imaginable on October 7.
This is what you say in your other posts:
"When we stop talking to each other, we stop thinking for ourselves. When we stop thinking, we start dividing."
"Disagreeing with someone isn’t a division. Disconnecting from them is." Yet the moment I disagreed with you and Laura, you asked me to leave your group, unless I find something more "peaceful " to talk about.
To me that looks very much like gaslighting.
Olga I didn't ask you to leave the group in our private chat. The wars that are raging in Gaza and in The Ukraine show the worst of what we are capable of. On that we agree. And two warring parties are completely disconnected from each other.
The point of the article, and using Dresden as the example, is that war is always regretted by both sides, regardless of how right they felt at the time.
What I asked you, was not to leave, but to help us find a way that doesn't create more divisions. But when you continually insist on war as the only solution, all conversation stops. And your insistence had stopped all conversation in this thread.
I stand by all those things I said that you've reposted here, and I don't believe it is gaslighting.
You are not blocked. Your comments aren't deleted. I asked for your help. You've said no, and that we agree to disagree. Which is also OK.
If you can't help us, that's fine. But please don't stop us trying.
The war was not regretted by Nazis. Not by Dr. Mengele, not by others who escaped the trials after the war and lived to old age.
Yes, there were soldiers who took a break from the war and played soccer together (I heard similar stories occurred between Soviet and German soldiers as well), but there were those who would not play ball. And the reason that the death toll among civilians was so large was because Nazis sometimes burned entire villages of innocent civilians to the ground.
Laura, your comment in the beginning means that you know very little history about Israel and Palestinians, and it was not just kidnapping this time, or murdering a lot of people. It is also what they did to the bodies. That they made videos and put them online *gleefully*. Even Nazis had enough conscience left to hide what they were doing in Aushwitz and other camps.
Israel 100% has the right to that land not only because it says so in Torah, but because that's where Jews lived for centuries, until the destruction of their Second Temple in 71 AD. And the reason that piece of land was called Palestine afterwards is because the king (or the emperor, I keep forgetting the proper title) wanted to spite Jews and named their land after their worst enemies from long ago - Philistines. So if you want to talk about rights to the land, Jews have claimed it long before any European country became what it is now. And they only got a very small portion of it back in 1948. Yet from the very beginning thru just wanted to live in peace with their neighbors, who declared war on Israel the moment it was re-established.
The majority of the land is now called Jordan. Gaza and West Bank (which most Jews call Judea and Samaria, because that is West Bank 's proper historical name) were won back in 1967. The remaining Palestinian refugees (Gaza and West Bank are still considered refugee camps) refused to accept creation of their own state at that time. Because their ultimate goal was the destruction of the entire state of Israel and its people.
October 7 is not "an eye for an eye" It is fight against the existential threat (that had been going on for the past 80 years) of total annihilation of the state of Israel.
And Hamas and their supporters (as I mentioned, there were a lot of civilian Gazans who were involved in kidnapping, murdering and looting on that day as well) not "just" brutally murdered 1200+people. They tortured, by cutting off fingers and poking out eyes, by r@ping many girls and women to death, and some were r@ped after their death as well. They mutilated bodies to the point that rescuers could not identify whether the remains were of a man, or a woman, because their genitalia were cut off.
They burned babies alive in the oven. I saw a clip of a Gazan decapitating a man who seemed to be still alive, with a shovel.
Many people were burned alive.
A lot of girls who are/were kidnaped were used as house slaves, and were physically and sexually abused on a regular basis.
October 7 was not an isolated incident. It was the last straw.
IDF starting Gaza war and bombing of the buildings is the result. And children dying as a result are collateral deaths that are unfortunately, tragically, unavoidable. Especially since Hamas knows that people like you and others will cry and condemn Israel for the bombings, so they built their tunnels and hid their weapons in hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Dresden might have indeed been controversial and not necessary to win the war, but please tell me: if it were you who were involved in WWII, would you stop at the German border? Would you not go in to finish Hitler and his regime? Would you leave him or his generals in power?
Olga, I'm going to ask a favour of you.
The whole point of Undividing, is to not create more divisions. Is to not make everyone else wrong. It's to find our common humanity and work from there, no matter who we are. You are clearly well informed and well studied. And I think what you also want, like everyone else, is peace. And I have seen people do it. I have lived in countries with many different religions and everyone finds a way to get on together.
So here is what I would like you and everyone else to bring to Undividing. Use your intellect and your humanity, and work with us to figure out how to move ahead that doesn't involve more killing and revenge.
My greatest fear of starting this, was exactly this. I don't want these comments sections to be a place where everyone blames every one else. The internet is already full of that.
I know there are people reading this right now, who have great ideas and are too afraid to comment now. And Undividing is a community of people who figure out a way ahead together in a safe corner of the internet.
Every conflict doesn't have to be one side's way or another. There is always a third way.
Olga, help us find that.
I wonder what the Israelis and Gazans will be doing 50 years from now.
I hope all eight billion of us aren't just living without violence, but figuring out what we're actually capable of when we all work together. That's the future I'm working for.