REAL PEACENIKS DON'T CHOOSE A SIDE
A while back a man I met, who was an important person in a Peace nonprofit, invited me to go along with him to one of their events. It was at a beach city rather far away and he promised he would provide transportation and get me back home on time, which was important to me because I'd agreed to pet sit for some other friends who were leaving town that evening.
He did come and get me and he did get lost on the way and he did drive through an area that posted that there was no parking, so security guards gave chase, but he got a space near their set up. ***
Soon I realized two things. One was that I was expected to volunteer rather than just sit there and listen to some speakers. And I was through volunteering. Second that it was assumed that, without really knowing anything about this Peace nonprofit, I was joining them. No, I was just checking them out. Along for the ride.
At one point they got a group to take hand made posters on a walk-around because they had heard media would be there. I kept sitting under a tent. I didn't like hearing that locals called them Anti-American, but that was not my beef with them.
It was that a woman speaker, who I'd known about from another setting, tied Peace into Vegetarianism (or as that Veganism?) and not eating beef.
Yet, as a chiropractor once told me, we have carnivore teeth and carnivore intestines.
Yet, hunger and starvation are so common on this earth that I can never put someone down if all they eat is what they can afford; five for a dollar instant noodles, 7/11 hot dogs, cat food without owning one, dandelions and mud. **
I hate it when I hear people talking The Liberal Mob but in this case it really as. What, I asked myself, was that walk-around actually doing to create Peace? Nothing! These people were calling attention to themselves as superior in knowledge and intelligence.
Since then the war between Israel and Iran broke out, on top of the war between Russia and Ukraine. And the man starting tucking a Palestinian flag into his hat just to become a walking advertisement and sided with them or, you could say, Iran. Yes, this broke our friendship.
This was followed by my sudden understanding that the small group of protesters that proudly gathered on a street corner every Friday night so cars going by them could honk had also sided with the Palestinians. And the above mentioned woman speaker who tied Peace into not eating beef was one of them and had also wrote a letter to the editor of a small liberal newspaper and he, a Jew, published it.
Ah... choosing sides and cheering for ANYONE committing war is NOT the ideology of a REAL PEACENIK! Destruction is evil. It doesn't matter who has started it or who is doing furthering it, or who is winning. It's a horror upon this earth. It wastes people's lives. I have no way to cause PEACE ON EARTH but I do wish for it. And there's that song that goes "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me."
It's not easy to restart a homeland.
You do not have to be Jewish or even like Jewish individuals or culture to understand WHY there's an Israel. I understand the complications pointed out to me such as there are so far fewer Jews than Moslems, or biblical prophecy says God gave Jews their homeland back after centuries of wandering, but when it comes right down to it, people like me think who we're looking at when we see Pro Palestinian protesters on street corners is...
NEO NAZI'S
That makes us very uncomfortable.
We know there was a Holocaust in Europe in World War II. (And we do not look forward to World War III and do not believe in End Times and The Rapture.) We know Jews were blamed for a bad German economy and ours is failing. We know Adolph Hitler was a mesmerizing speaker and that at rallies people were excited by his message just like some are excited by President Trump's. We know dehuminization started with comparing Jews to rats, and people started believing they were not humans but needed to be exterminated. And we know that the murders started with people who were disabled in care homes, people who were gay, people who were dependent on the state for income being euthanized as undesirables for their weakness and expensive dependency; our homeless could be next. We know this one:"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
According to AI, "This is a famous passage from a sermon by German pastor Martin Niemöller. It is a powerful statement about the dangers of indifference and apathy in the face of oppression and the moral interconnectedness of all people."
Am I saying that no Jew is at fault for furthering war? Hell no. But, a real PEACENIK doesn't cheer when buildings fall and innocents lay under them. They aren't watching the media and yelling "Kill them all!" If you're for PEACE, you'll suggest trying to come to an agreement or staying out of each other's way until another agreement can be reached.
The Friday corner protesters are especially horrible because that neighborhood is full of Italians who have Jewish roots. So in that way it becomes a small town spectacle designed to aggravate and since when does a protest for PEACE turn out to be so passive aggressive if not obviously violent?
Don't think I'm claiming to be a PEACENIK but I sure am trying to be. I'm reminded that there is no glory or beauty in what's going on in these wars. These wars are ecological disasters for the whole planet and have and will effect all participants negatively, especially the children, for generations forward. In those ways there is no winning.
Christine Trzyna
C 2025
Additions on June 22, 2025 First Day of Summer
*** No he did NOT get me home on time.
** It used to be said that it was less expensive to be vegetarian due to the price of meat but I don't think that's true anymore. My experience with vegetarians is that they have become a new elite due to the affordability of expensive supplements as well as the cost of organics and other "special" foods.
In Los Angeles one child in five goes to bed hungry. School lunches are sometimes a child's only meal.
