October 24, 2004

I had a dream where I was addressing a crowd about the Arab/Israeli conflict
and I said, "There are men named Ibrahim blowing themselves up to kill men
named Avraham." The point being we share ancestry and this is madness.

When I was in Israel during 1996, there were many bombings. It was right after
the assassination of Yitzach Rabin. However, I found a place called the Palestinian
Center for the Study of Non-Violence in East Jerusalem. But when I returned to
Israel in 1999 I couldn't find it and East Jerusalem felt much more dangerous

Some justify the suicide bombings as making sense given the oppressive circumstances
but if Gandhi could overthrow the British Empire through non-violence and Martin Luther
King Jr. could do the same during the civil rights movement in the United States
then there is a moral and political precident that should be a model for solving
the problems in the Middle East.

B'Shalom,

Avniel