Giving birth to peace?
Tzaban, Yair
at the hands of might. And this "violence so crushes whomever it touches that it appears at last external no less to him who dis- penses it than to him who endures it." This is Weil's thesis, as...
...While there is still a temptation to use expressions such as the "new world order," and although we are far from a harmonious world without conflict and crises, we are undoubtedly moving in the direction of new international rules...
...Absorbing one or two million Jews, or ruling over two million Palestinians...
...CHOOSING 'KLITAH' OVER 'SHLITAH' hrough the clouds and the ascending smoke hovering over the Persian Gulf, diplomats and analysts are trying to discern what lies beyond the horizons after the war...
...22 March 1991:183 After two years of repeated, if not completely unfailing, attempts at adopting new policies that include full recognition of Israel and the denunciation of terror, the leadership of the PLO should be commended...
...On one hand, it wishes to see Saddam Hussein's military force totally destroyed...
...We must use all that is at our disposal to pursue this principle for the teaching of peace...the Torah of peace...
...Are the voices of protest opposing the United States-led coalition against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait also the voices for peace in the Middle East...
...GIVING BIIITH TO PEACE...
...The Israeli peace camp must remain loyal to its principles: Peace begins at home, and our common home is that ancient land, which over the centuries became the homeland of two peoples...
...Tragically, Saddam Hussein threatened world peace at a very critical juncture in this process...
...Concern for a normal and more humane life, for Israelis and Palestinians, requires an immediate solution to the Palestinian problem...
...Perhaps they [Europeans, Americans] will rediscover that epic genius [Homer] when they learn how to accept the fact that nothing is sheltered from fate, how never to admire might, or hate the enemy, or to despise sufferers...
...As such, he made his way into / all our hearts...
...A well-known saying from our elder sages teaches that it is "never early nor late for the Torah...
...Without a political res- olution of this conflict, Israel will not succeed in raising the tens of billions of dollars, from America and the international community, necessary to absorb at least one million immigrants...
...These territories are part of the Jewish homeland, engraved in our consciousness, our culture, and our collective memory...
...It is too early to determine under what international auspices negotiations for peace will take place...
...Linkage" would have seriously thwarted the peace process between Israel and its Arab neighbors...
...Even that part of Israel which advocates a just solution to the Palestinian problem is deeply concerned by an international coalition that might ignore Israel's legitimate security concerns...
...PEDRO ARRUPE, R.I.P...
...EVELYN MATTERN Evelyn Mattern lives and writes in North Carolina...
...As Christians we might think that Weil's and the Greeks' notions of fate are more determinate than geometric...
...Israel will have to decide between klitah (absorption) and shlitah (rule...over another people...
...We also cannot ignore the massive emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel...
...The son of a Basque architect, Arrupe worked in Japan for nearly three decades before being elected superior general...
...But the fact is that the Palestinian people also live there and we cannot continue to rule over them...
...It isn't that the strategic, economic, and political issues of the Middle East are not inter- related...
...Where is grace...
...Before 1975, we had tensions with his advisers as we began taking our first steps working for justice...
...Rather, it is that "linkage" would have induced a rad- icalizing influence on the Arab masses, including the Palestinians, thus encouraging extremism and a false messianism around Saddam...
...However, I believe they may have ignored the extraordinary historical changes which have taken place in the world during the last three years...
...In January 1976, 184: Commonweal...
...Concern for the survival of Israel, including the removal of strategic threats against it, dictates a regional peace agreement...
...If the recent troubling developments in the Soviet Union do not throw that country back into the age of cold-war and Stalinist- like repression, then we can and should expect Soviet participation in new strategies for resolving local and regional conflicts...
...As general, he served during the closing session of Vatican H and the turbulent years of postconciliar reforn...
...This is not simply a question of financial assis- tance...
...But the debate will not be submerged entirely...
...There is an inherent connection between successful absorption and a fruitful peace process...
...This is Weil's thesis, as somber in the days of George Bush as in the days of ChurchiU and Agamemnon...
...Israel did not incite Iraq to invade Kuwait, and Saddam did not brutalize the Kuwaiti people in order to save the Palestinians...
...This in turn helped provoke controversy within the Jesuits and led to tensions with the Vatican...
...But as a Christian who hopes and prays and fasts for the "turning" of our mighty leaders, I am tempted these days by the notion of fate, of karma, of righteousness, even as I am terrified of its consequences for us as Americans...
...Public opinion polls prior to August 2 indicated increasing Israeli support for dialogue with the Palestinian leadership and a polit- ical solution to the conflict between our two peoples...
...We can no longer avoid these decisions...
...is coordinating its efforts, on different levels, not only with Western Europe, but also with the Soviet Union--President Mikhail Gorbachev's last-minute initiatives for a peaceful settlement notwithstanding...
...I have no doubt that the peace movement in the United States demonstrated against war out of concern for the loss of human life...
...THE EDITORS t is no easy thing to say in a few words who Pedro Arrupe was...
...Israel, too, shares responsibility for the collapse of the peace process last spring by undermining its own initiative for elections in the occupied territories and driving the PLO into a political cul de sac...
...The Persian Gulf crisis has forced the right wing in Israel to admit to an inescapable paradox...
...Disagreement over postwar settlements will, to a certain extent, eclipse the debate which has accompanied events since last August...
...We cannot ignore the dramatic effect of the Gulf war and repeated Scud missile attacks on the people of Israel...
...Much of that support was shattered by Palestinian identification with Saddam...
...At a time when Islamic fundamentalism casts its eyes not only to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, but also to the AI-Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, it would be political blindness at its worst to take revenge on the Palestinians, thus dooming the region to yet another cycle of violence...
...Under his leadership, Jesuits around the world became more involved in service to the poor and working for justice...
...However, the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion revived the classic Palestinian syndrome, which since 1947 has been rooted in extremist illusions, misconstruing their own true interests, and resulting in disaster after disaster for the Palestinian people...
...They play the game until violence takes over and all conception of goals, even goals for the war, is lost...
...These are two indisputable facts...
...he offered us encour- agement...
...On the other hand, the leaders of the Right acknowledge that the international coali- tion which was forged to advance on the aggressor from Baghdad will not be curtailed by Yitzhak Shamir's veto...
...But after those early misunderstandings, Arrupe always supported us and encouraged us...
...It is a matter of wisely utilizing our limited national resources to fulfill our destiny as a home for the ingathering of exiles, a secure haven for the Jewish people, and a light unto the nations...
...Surely we have evidence of that in the world also...
...However, even those who would like to "punish" Arafat (the U.S., Israel, Egypt, and Syria) cannot sweep the Palestinian issue under the carpet...
...During the society's general congregation in 1975, over which he presided, Arrupe demanded that all of us take up "the defense of the faith and the promotion of justice...
...The choice for us is living together in peace and security, or in a shared hell...
...We know this very well in E1 Salvador...
...The wars fought by America in the past, such as the Vietnam war, were always connected to the ongoing threat of a Soviet- American confrontation...
...where is the tuming that prayer and suffering occasionally borne with grace can bring about...
...but rather, that these issues, and others, are part of larger regional and global forces affecting our lives as well...
...The Left in Israel preferred a peaceful solution to the Persian Gulf crisis, but without giving Saddam Hussein a prize for his aggression by "linking" Iraq's withdrawal to the Palestinian prob- lem...
...Perhaps because I have been in Baghdad and know some families of Iraqi soldiers, I am tempted to give Simone Weil the last word, though there is small consolation in it...
...Ignacio Ellacuria put it well: "Arrupe was a man of God, a man for men and women, and a man of history...
...This time we are witnessing an unprece- dented phenomenon in which the U.S...
...But he did not only demand...
...As superior general of the Jesuits, Arrupe's job was to look at the totality of our world...
...IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF MICAH A J'ESUIT'S WITNESS FOR JUSTICE Pedro Arrupe, S.J., superior general of the Society of Jesus from 1965 to 1983, died in Rome on Febrary 5,following a long illness...
...She further analyzes why men go off to war as to a game...
...Homer, of course, knew neither video games nor the football metaphors used by American pilots bombing Baghdad...
...YAIR TZABAN Yair Tzaban is a member of the Knesset representing Israel's Democratic Socialist MAPAM party...
...The following article, which was translated by Gene Palumbo, is based on a sermon given by Jon Sobrino, S.J., at a memorial Mass for Arrupe held in the Archbishop Romero Chapel at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in San Salvador, El Salvador, on February 9. Ignacio Ellacuria and five other Jesuit martyrs lie buried in the same chapel...
...From a strictly American interest, there are advantages and disadvantages to both...
...In 1979, Pope John Paul H publicly reprimanded the society, and when Arrupe suffered a stroke in 1981, the pope took the extraordinary step of appointing a personal delegate to run the order until a general congre- gation could elect Arrupe's successor...
...Of course, Israel will have to pay a price by withdrawing from most of the territories it conquered in 1967...
...Deliverance finally appears only in the form of extreme destruc- tion...
...Thus no one does anything to bring about its end...
...An entire nation sat in sealed rooms, wearing gas masks, and arrived at the realization that the conflict in our part of the world will not be decided by the rocks and knives of the intifada nor by the settlers of Hebron or Nablus...
...Furthermore, Israelis have clearly undergone a process of deprovincializing the Israeli-Arab conflict...
...What he saw was a world dehumanized in a thousand ways, especially by the terrible poverty and injustice of the third world...
...Ignatius instructs in his meditation on the Incarnation, and asked the world's Jesuits to react...
...It is doubtful if this will happen soon...
...The world is in a transition from a state of polarization between two powerful enemies, to one in which concepts such as "sta- bility" and "interests" are being given a different and much broad- er meaning...
...There are those in the Israeli peace camp who would conclude that we must wait before taking steps to rekindle the political process...
...The United States will probably weigh an American-Soviet aegis, with Egyptian support, against the five permanent members of the UN Security Council...
...This would have vindicated the Israeli leadership, entrenching itself even deeper into the bunker of rejectionism due to the Iraqi threat and the inability of the world community to remove this brutal aggressor from the region...
...He took all this in with the eyes of mercy, as St...
Vol. 118 • March 1991 • No. 6
