November 16, 2004

Below is a copy of the letter I sent to President Bush on the eve of war:

Dear Mr. President,

I have had a lot on my mind especially as another war seems inevitable and as
the fear infecting our world has become so unbearable. I want first to praise
you for the way you have been careful in your comments to distinguish between
true Muslims who are peace loving civilized people and the evil of the Muslims
who seem committed to terrorism, war, and murder.

As a traditional Jew who has lived two different years in Israel during times
of intense violence, I came to understand the realities of terror before the
tragic events of September 11 violated our country's sense of peace and
security. While living in the Middle East, I also met Muslims who were committed
to non-violent solutions for ending the conflicts between Israel and Palestine.
I was likewise aware of the forces of oppression and fundamentalist violence
from the Israeli side made painfully clear by the assassination of Rabin by a
member of my own people.

I realized in light of my experience living and studying abroad, that in the
struggle for a just and peaceful agreement between two peoples to live as
independent nations in harmony, there were extremists on both sides who would
continue to sabotage the peace process. The religious significance of the
Middle East is intense and people who commit violent acts out of fundamentalism
in the name of God are committing sins against their own tradition. In fact if
all the people who relate to the Middle East as holy land, including Muslims,
Christians, and Jews truly followed their books, we would actually come to
peaceful agreement.

I understand how Jesus provides inspiration to you as you have stated in the
past, and yet I am concerned with the potential our Christian nation has for
becoming extremist and hypocritical in relation to militaristic involvement
with the Middle East. Jesus was a Rabbi who was crucified for preaching his
message of non-violence and love for others just as Rome killed other Rabbis
for their teachings to follow the laws of God over the laws of Rome. Jesus
preached in his Sermon on the Mt. that not only must we follow God's
commandment not to kill but we should not even think or speak thoughts of
murder. However, when Rome took on Christianity as the official religion of the
Empire, it seems they began to become fundamentalist in their use of the power
of Christ to maintain their power and forgot this teaching. This trend
continues for any world power when it's leaders use the power of religious
morals to justify militant actions. Jesus died on the cross and then Roman
Catholic Crusaders, and later Spanish Conquistadors, forced many Muslims, Jews,
as well as natives of South and North America to choose between the cross and the
sword.

Jesus is considered a prophet to both the Jewish and Muslim people but the
cross is a symbol of the Roman Empire and crucifixion was the way Romans
punished those who didn't agree to cooperate with their wishes. This included
slave rebels who wanted to be free, such as Spartacus as well as other Talmudic
Rabbis, who practiced free speech in critique of the wealth and power of the
Roman Empire just as Jesus. Many others were burned and then later exiled from
Jerusalem until almost two thousand years later with the return to Israel after
the atrocities of the Holocaust. The American Revolution was fought against an
Empire that tried to control them by force from Britain, and ever since our
Declaration of Independence, we have continued to improve our vision of our
dream for true freedom and justice for all.

In the process, many martyrs were made out of men who
tried to lead our country to escape evermore-subtle forms of hypocrisy, from
Lincoln to JFK to Martin Luther King Junior. These men died in their struggles
for the future to realize what Dr. King spoke about so eloquently in his
"I Have a Dream" speech. But the season is ripe for the current
generation of Americans to awaken to realize his dream in a real way as a
nation and also in our relationship with the members of United Nations who are
watching how we handle the situation in Iraq with wonder as to whether we will
take care of this serious problem like a modern peace loving Christian nation
or like a vengeful empire such as Rome was when they crucified Jesus and then
destroyed the Israelite temple.

The same opportunity exists for Israel with its own very
serious situation concerning the peaceful handling of the Palestinian
situation, to prove itself as a model nation to the world. The fates of the
Muslim, Christian, and Jewish people are all intertwined with common ancestral
roots as we struggle toward peaceful relationships and to a time of world peace
that will arrive when nations will learn the ways of war no more and we will
come to understand the real holiness of the Land of Milk and Honey promised to
us all as descendents of an original African named Abraham who rose above the
ego concerns of the nation and culture he was born into to see the bigger
picture and thus set a model of unity for the future generations to follow. All
true People of the Book have been praying for the day to come when we finally
achieve peace and harmony without death or murder on our own soil or abroad.

I hope that you consider my words to be friendly ones, brother to brother, both
as citizens from the same modern nation as well as descendents from a mutual
ancestor that had great vision to see a time when his children would unite and
live right in harmony with all other nations in mutual appreciation for our
interconnected and fragile existence. I must therefore say I am worried about
our non-cooperation with the will of United Nations, beginning with our lone
refusal to sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafted after the
Holocaust of the last world war, up to recent times as tensions rise between
the U.N. and U.S. mount over the impending war you now have the executive
authority to wage against Saddam Hussein.

You have the opportunity to not use your license to kill
as so many men who have led nations and empires have chosen. Your choice of
action will affect the children I teach as well as the families of those sent
to fight a war the rest of the world nations are advising against. I believe we
could prove those who accuse us of being the latest Egypt, Babylon, or Rome as
being either wrong or right. We could prove to be like those who think us
cursed devils and cause the Arab World to unite against us to really fight, or
we could prove ourselves to be a nation who wakes the world up from the night
of war and terror that has caused us all such fright. You have the chance to
prove your own father’s vision of us as a nation united like a thousand points
of light. The whole world wants peace, and we could handle our relationships
with the Middle East in a way that shows the true intelligence of our nation or
we could once again prove that might is right and reveal ourselves to be the
worst nightmare of the ones who are afraid we are a heathen nation with you as
the head of the beast.

We need peace, and there are evil forces lurking to disturb true harmony in the
world both on our home front and abroad. I pray every day in my traditional way
facing Jerusalem to ask for final peace. The example of Jesus from whom you
have drawn inspiration, was an example to all of us that Roman traditions of
killing revolutionaries for their own power interests need to cease. Rome made
a perfect martyr out of Jesus, but we won't see messianic return until we
release ourselves individually and internationally from our attachment to the
ways of empires that keep all humanity from being truly free. I know we will
return to Eden once again only if we stop killing like Cain, and recognize how
we are all our brother's keeper. Abel and Cain will be reunited once again the same.

Thank you for your consideration... I am praying for you to have the strength
and wisdom to lead our great nation to a better day where we don't have to send
our children off to war any more... We have much more to live for than to die
in the looming and dooming threat of WWIII. We need to wake up from this kind
of bad dream to realize the true vision of Martin Luther King Jr. and I hope we
wake soon. In the poverty of my opinion, you should know I mean no ill will
with my words, but the opposite. We are on the same team and you are my
captain: One nation under God for truth and justice for all.

Sincerely,

Peter Salzman

Needless to say I got no response ...

B'Shalom,

Avniel