Through the actions of a lone man with an unstable mental history, the
Middle East wars have hit my community. Naveed Haq, from a middle class
Pakistani-American family in eastern Washington State, shot six women at
the Seattle Jewish Federation, in the city where I live. He killed one and
left three critically wounded, saying "I am a Muslim American, angry at
Israel." I've never been to the Federation offices, but I've worshipped at
affiliated Seattle synagogues, attended Federation-sponsored events, and met
one of the women who was critically wounded. So Haq's reprehensible attack
felt personal. Aside from the shooting of Jewish Defense League founder Meir
Kahane and an ambiguous 1994 incident involving a New York taxi driver and a
van of Hasidic students, this may be the first politically motivated killing
of an American Jew by an American Muslim in the past sixty years. As such,
it risks sharply increasing the level of fear in America's Jewish
communities, and with it the reflex support of even the most questionable
Israeli actions.
We could dismiss the deaths as isolated from politics, the actions of a
single deranged individual. Over 16,000 Americans kill each other every
year. This past March, a man shot and killed seven participants in a Seattle
rave because he resented their lifestyle. Maybe if Haq hadn't attacked the
Federation women, he would have shot someone else.
But I doubt it. So the question is whether the actions taken in response to
this shooting will move us toward or away from further violence, here and in
the Middle East. Before the shooting, Seattle's Arab American Community
Coalition had been organizing a silent march for a Lebanon ceasefire. When
the news hit, they postponed it, and issued a release saying they were
appalled by the attack. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and
their families," they said. "Violence against anyone because of ethnicity or
religion does not advance the cause of peace, justice and liberation in
Lebanon, Palestine or Israel. Attacks on civilians must stop in Gaza,
Beirut, Haifa, and certainly in downtown Seattle." Along with other Jewish,
Christian, and Islamic leaders in the city, they called for common mourning
and interfaith dialogue.
It's tempting, particularly for those of us who are Jewish, to use this
shooting as an excuse for supporting Israeli military escalation, and to
blur the urgency of halting the bombs and shells falling on equally
blameless civilians in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. Haq eventually
surrendered to police. But according to this logic we must teach a lesson to
his compatriots--who continue to fire rockets and set off suicide bombs,
attacking innocent women, men and children in Israel--because terror will
understand only the language of force.
Except that Israel has followed this punitive approach again and again in
the forty years since it occupied the West Bank. It's never brought
security, only more bitterness. Five days before the shootings I appeared
on a Seattle Jewish radio show along with the local head of Jewish Voices
for Peace and an activist who worked to support Israeli policies. Though it
was a friendly dialogue, the rabbi who cohosted the show kept treating those
of us who challenged Israel's actions as starry-eyed dreamers, unwilling to
acknowledge the realities of a violent world.
But it isn't naive to suggest that Israel's massive attacks on Lebanon and
Gaza will embitter a new generation. Or to point out that the Hamas victory
in the Palestinian elections was the fruit of daily humiliations
Palestinians face and of Israel's blocking the PLO from functioning as even
a nascent government. We've come close to agreements that would have ended
the occupation with a just peace, in the Taba negotiations and in the
nongovernmental Geneva Accords, whose participants included the former
commander of the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza strip, the Palestinian
Authority's minister for prisoner affairs, a leader of the Palestinian
guerrilla group, the Tanzim, and a cousin of assassinated Hamas leader Abd
al-Aziz Rantisi. Unless we return to that path, those who live in the West
Bank and Gaza, or view themselves as acting in sympathy with them, are
likely to fight with whatever weapons they see as available. Absent a shift
to widespread nonviolent resistance, of the kind that accounted for most of
the first intifada's political gains (as chronicled in the book and
documentary A Force More Powerful), this means, most likely, the taking of
more innocent lives.
The Seattle gunman was a troubled individual, not part of any political
movement. He didn't attend Islamic services and had even recently been
baptized in an evangelical Christian church, though he didn't attend that
church either. But the situation that sparked his unconscionable action was
the same that continues to fuel Israeli-Palestinian cycles of violence.
Hezbollah seized Israeli hostages and demanded prisoner exchanges in the
wake of Israeli attacks on Gaza. Those from Gaza who abducted Israeli
soldier Gilad Shalit claimed to be acting in response to Israeli
imprisonment of Palestinian women and children. Hamas now threatens
retaliation for the deaths in the Lebanese village of Qana. As a result of
the most recent Israeli military actions, 87% of all Lebanese now say they
support the "resistance's fight against Israeli aggression."
The cycles of violence build on an individual level as well. When attempted
London train bomber Hussain Osman was interrogated, he explained "More than
praying we discussed politics, the war in Iraq ... we always had new films
of the war... more than anything else those in which you could see Iraqi
women and children who had been killed... There was a feeling of hatred and
a conviction that it was necessary to give a signal--to do something."
Although Osman was caught before setting off his bombs, others were not, and
brought about more innocent deaths.
No moral argument can justify the Seattle shootings. Suicide bombings and
the firing of rockets at civilian populations in Israel are equally
contemptuous of innocent lives. But the question isn't about justifications.
It's how to stop future violence. Whatever the actions of Hezbollah, forcing
a fifth of the Lebanese population to flee their homes, destroying the power
grids in Gaza and much of Lebanon, burning civilians with white phosphorous,
and bombing villages full of children only makes matters worse. The killings
here in Seattle should give Americans even greater impetus to demand an
alternative.
---
Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A
Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, winner of the 2005 Nautilus Award
for the best book on social change, and Soul of a Citizen See
www.paulloeb.org. To get his articles directly, email
sympa@lists.onenw.org
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