I am caught in the miry deep of much work this week and last — and so here I am, trying to escape, only to get blogged down.

(That is not entirely my clever pun… You’ll have to visit my mother’s blog at cynthiagustavson.modblog.com and read her first entry to understand that pun’s history!)

I am not disheartened this week. I really thought I would be — because I have often been the last several months.

I read the New York Times every day, and rather amusingly dissect it with my dullened scissors, searching for articles that I need to process… and my blog is the place that I process most of that, while (hopefully!) at the same time, somehow communicating with folks about my fears, angers, hopes and loves…

I wasn’t disheartened this week also because of a blog I read at my good friend Jeshua’s site — jeshuaerickson.com/blog — He talks about hope… And I feel like I have the right to be hopeful. And I am hopeful…

This was the week of the Bono-Bill Gates-Bill Clinton symposium on Africa’s poverty. This was the week of Iraq’s election. This was the week of true possibilities for reconciliation between Palestine and Israel.

Here’s to hope.
G’night.

I guess I don’t understand what happened in the Holocaust. I don’t understand how people could either survive the way so many did, through the hell of those times, or how folks on the other side could get on with their ‘everyday’ lives while knowing about the horrors, or even working in the camps. (Though I do understand how the Germans felt who didn’t necessarily know or realize the horrors or details of the concentration camps, because my government also keeps me in the dark about the atrocities for which we are responsible.)

I just heard on NPR the story of a woman who was in Auschwitz. She talked in a way that only survivors of the Holocaust can speak. I have only met three survivors personally, but they all shared a kindness that I can’t quite describe, but that you probably understand if you, too, have met a survivor.

I will tell the positive message she gave in her story to me, and the message I was given by another Holocaust survivor — a woman in Nahariya, Israel, about 6 years ago My telling these stories is meant to be a testament to the courage of the survivors and of those who died in the camps, so I hope you are able to read it as such:

I had so much going around in my head today that I felt like one of those snow-glass-ball little villages that you shake up… but now it’s all settled down — but I think I’ve sprung a leak, and if you’ve ever seen those little glass balls after they’ve started leaking water, they aren’t so pretty anymore…

I am quite proud that my car is still running — through the great blizzard that buried us in our homes (not quite) — every morning I have to give the engine a good kick, and spend about 15 minutes begging with it to warm up… But I try to find a midpoint — it’s a 1987 Plymouth minivan — if I get too sassy with it, I feel like it will just decide to drive its own way one day without me like an upset spouse after a bad couple of decades.

And it has been gorgeous here, the sides of the streets piled up with mountains of snow — the pride of the little bobcats and their drivers… But for some reason, our safety comes first, and the beauty of it all second — so there are huge piles of salt and sand muck everywhere –

I went to Gaza twice. The first time I went, I went with a tour guide, and we visited both the settlements and the Palestinian areas. Pretty unbelievable.

I read in the paper today that Sharon’s plan for dismantling the settlements in Gaza might actually happen… What a blessing that would be. Let me fill you in on some of the facts, which I saw first hand:

1,300,000 Palestinians live in cramped conditions, with families of 20 or more members in every apartment in an area inland, dusty and crowded. 8,600 Israelis live in 1,600 homes on the sea, spaciously laid out like a subdivision.

I don’t condone the violence that has happened to the settlers in Gaza. I condemn all acts of violence as wrong. But I understand why they happened. Something like 2,000 Palestinians live in an area equivalent to what 20 settlers live in. That isn’t fair. And where did the settlers take the land from? And where did all of the Palestinian ‘residents’ come from?

A great article in today’s paper by John Leland (NY Times) talks about all the times that censorship has targeted cartoons, or kids’ entertainers:

In the 1930’s, Betty Boop was attacked for her heart garter belt…

In 1942, Tweety Bird, who was first pink, but folks thought that he might appear nude, so they made him yellow…

Bert and Ernie have been accused of being gay.

Tinky-Winky, a teletubby was attacked for carrying a purse.

The Little Mermaid movie was accused of showing a priest noticeably aroused while presiding over a wedding.

So I guess Spongebob and Patrick Starfish have good company, even if they are gay.

Maybe that’s the mixup. I think that James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, has misconstrued the entire ‘happy’ population as being gay. “Being happy, and skipping around acting like a girl is not Christian…” I can hear him saying it now.

Come on folks — it’s a cartoon — it’s fun… I’ve seen it — it’s not about homosexuality, it’s about being happy. And what could be better than that.

A headline in the New York Times today reads, “Israel Lauds New Palestinian Leader for Moves to Stop Attacks” — and a picture of a spokesman for the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades speaking in Gaza about ‘halting attacks on Israelis…’ —

On further reading, nothing much has changed. I am quite amazed that Abbas has been able to be so effective so far in somehow holding on with his teeth in this mess… Somehow he is able to give the world hope that Palestine is rescinding what the world believes to be its ‘terrorist’ ways, and at the same time, is able to give his own people hope.

There was a time when Arafat gave his people the same hope — the media dwells on the fact that Arafat was a fighter and a terrorist — but the truth is, he won a Nobel Peace Prize, and probably would have succeeded in the peace process with Israel more than ten years ago, had Rabin not been killed by a radical in his own country.

I have hope. I believe that Abbas can do this, because right now the world is watching, and the world is supporting Palestine, even at the same time as they are still calling them ‘terrorists’. The time is now, though. The Gaza withdrawal has to happen very soon, or none of this will work. If Sharon loses his battle to withdraw from Gaza and create his legacy, the entire peace process will be in shambles again.

And that is another frustrating thing. Sharon is the warmonger who started this whole mess with his claims on Jerusalem, and his march on the holy city with his political entourage. And now he has these high ideals for peace.

I do believe that he means it, however. I really think that he is sick of fighting, and I think that he truly believes that he will be able to achieve a lasting peace with Palestine. Albeit with a wall three miles high, but nevertheless a peace. And like before 2000, there will be very little ‘terrorist’ violence, and at the same time, little ‘need’ for the Israeli army to commit acts of violence against the Palestinians.

Insh’allah. God willing.