This summer we don't seem able to escape the news of war and killing. This morning's papers announce that the U.N. Council backs a halt to the Israeli/Lebanese confrontation/war. I can't escape the feeling that the world just fell into this war, kind of like we fell into the Iraqi war, without quite intending what we did. I'm Jewish, so bear that perspective in mind. That certainly influences my analysis whether I mean it to or not. I might say that my identity connection with Israel gives me deeper insight into the consequences of actions in the Middle East.

The problem with that interpretation of bias is that if I were Palestinian, like Edward Said, I would see with greater insight the Palestinian and/or the Lebanese perspective. We cannot interpret consensus as a merging of all perspectives into one great meta-perspective. That encounters the same problem as metanarratives. There are none. But what we can do is recognize that our perspectives, though uniquely ours, and different from all others, is valid for us. We can respect and honor that uniqueness and search, not for sameness in thought or action, but for mutual respect and understanding for the Other in the actions we must take as part of everyday living.

Another point I want to emphasize in this discussion is the use of violence in resolving problems. My identity is closely tied to Israel. So I focus on Israel's vulnerability that results from her tiny piece of land. Others, tied to other identities, focus on her capacity for armed intervention, supported, especially through Bush's presidency by United States wealth and technology, which increases Palestine's vulnerability. Do the vulnerabilities balance one another? And how do they affect the moral decisions that result in killing? How does overpowering by sheer numbers balance with overpowering by technology? How does overpowering by Islam-related sovereignty balance with Judaeo-Christian sovereignty's tiny portion of land? How does one balance the changes in history that mean that no property is any safer than the sovereignty that protects it?

If someone tells you you're going to hell because you refuse to acknowledge their god according to their rules, why don't you just ignore them? Kathleen's question to Michael, who rarely ignores such pronouncements. My off-the-wall answer is that we can't ignore our collective choice to ignore these tough and complex questions because they have a strong pattern of ending up in wars. The Hundred Years War in Europe between Catholics and Protestants is just one example from humans' recent history.

These are inordinately complex questions obscured by the realities of the moment to all the individuals affected. Choice, for example. Condoleeza Rice said in one of her Middle East discussions that the U.S. had learned from Katrina that some people couldn't leave when told to evacuate, not even for their own good. So she pleaded for breaks in the bombing to get out those who had not left, assuming that many who did not leave were not functionally capable of leaving. So whenever we use the term, "You made your choice, now you must live with the consequences," we need to recognize that what appears to us as a choice is not necessarily a viable choice for the person who fails to act.

I can imagine a peasant in Lebanon, a farmer, whose bare existence has left him or her little time to exercise the creativity of escape when war threatens. Such farmers are poor, often unlearned, and often spend most of their day earning what little they can for survival of their families. Evacuate? If you own no car, have no savings, have no guaranteed income, have a dozen others who depend on you to care for them? What does evacuate mean, under those conditions?

There are Lebanese helping the poverty stricken and ill-prepared to leave now. Why is help so late in coming? Like Katrina. Why was the help so late in coming? Is it true that Hezbollah did not expect a full-fledged attack from Israel? Answers to these questions depend on many assumptions to which we are not privy. Northern Israelis are now living in bomb shelters, unable to go outside. That could make you crazy. There are volunteers trying to help them through this war. War is inhumane. It does not take into account the person it is killing. Most of the people planning and actually executing the war are nowhere near the action on the fields of war. War kills living things. It is a terrible solution to disagreements over sovereignty, wealth, and beliefs. But there must come a point, when there is nowhere left to retreat to, when one must turn and fight. Since both sides have grievances, one against the other, that alternative appears to each. And once started, wars tend to feed on themselves, with enemies forgetting that they no longer know quite while they're killing that enemy or this.