And they’re surely all watching this troubling scene on Al Jazeera:

When the ancient impulse of blood lust is stirred up, scary things can happen. At the very least, it makes conciliation ever less likely. The two sides never notice their symmetry. The Times Square guys lack self-awareness, as is always the case with mobs. We train on sports, which help sublimate our tribal impulses. When the primal slow simmer ekes up into a boil, we can find ourselves celebrating real death in exactly the manner we’d previously celebrated our team’s decimation of its rivals.

Me? I’m ashamed, as a fellow human, of bloodthirsty Muslim extremists, I’m ashamed, as a fellow Jew, of bigoted Israeli settlers, and I’m ashamed, as an American, to see these primal impulses increasingly stoked here, where my grandparents brought our family yearning for a more civilized environment.

As I asked a few years ago, “Will we human beings ever learn to react to extremism with enlightened moderation rather than with reciprocal extremism?”

(Cross-posted on my blog.)

This guy was never much of a mastermind (and, it’s said, lately not at all). He was a symbolic spiritual leader and a financier. His symbolic value has only been increased by what will surely be seen as his martyrdom, and he certainly didn’t take his money with him. So we didn’t help ourselves, tactically, with this.

There will, obviously, be retribution attacks. And while there may be targets of such enormous tactical value that the risk might be worth it, he wasn’t such a target.

So why did we kill him? The word “justice” is being used a lot, even by members of our government, which makes me squirmingly uncomfortable. We are a modern, civilized country with a well-developed legal system. Assasination may or may not be justifiable, but it’s never justice. And the day it’s widely seen as such would be a dark day indeed.

The real reason for this was blood lust. America needed “closure”, which is the sanitized modern term for an ancient, messy impulse.

Do I mourn Bin Laden, or wish he were still alive? No way. I lost friends in 9/11. And I’d have shot Hitler if given a chance (though I’d never have called it justice, and would have deemed myself a murderer). But was I dancing in the streets last night? No. I don’t celebrate death. I don’t fire my kalashnikov skyward in jubilation when blood’s spilled in the other tribe. Instead, I dug around my psyche for some feeling of satisfaction. And I pondered the horrendous return on investment*. And then I went on with my life, feeling a little less safe.

* – Neil deGrasse Tyson noted last night on Twitter: “Two American goals that took a decade, and more than $100 billion to achieve: 1) Walk on the Moon 2) Find Bin Laden”.

(Cross-posted on my blog.)

Gandhi’s whole message…he constantly said “I am not against the British! That’s not what I’m doing! I’m for Indian sovereignty! It’s what I’m FOR.” He was always telling people “we are not against“. And this shows his consciousness was not in a divided state. And so he acted, and spoke, and more importantly transmitted into the collective, an undivided state of consciousness. This one little man got the biggest colonial empire kicked out of India. The key here is that his state of consciousness was not divided. That’s what has all the power!

It’s like….”I love the trees!” Fine! It’s good to love trees! But do I hate the loggers? Do I hate the politicians? [If so] then we’re just putting divisive energy into the whole.

There are a lot of people, more than at any time in our history, really working to stop destructiveness and violence, and what does our world look like? Seemingly a little more destructive and violent every day. I would suggest that one of the reasons is that when we’re doing good works with a divided heart, we are part of the war. We’re giving birth to it in the heart.

November 15, 2008

Dear Sirs,

I greatly enjoyed reading Aijaz Zaka Syed’s beautifully stated open letter to President-Elect Obama. But one sentence disappointed me: “A Jewish chief of staff doesn’t necessarily mean you are anti-Arab or anti-Muslim.”

The word “necessarily” implies that having Jewish chief of staff does at least increase the likelihood of infection with such sentiment. But it’s just not so. How did we reach a point where it’s assumed that merely having a Jewish person around stacks the deck against Arabs and Muslims?

I’m Jewish. And I have many Muslim friends, I love Arabic (and, for that matter, Berber, Pakistani, and Indonesian) music, I revere Kebir and Rumi, and, as a food writer, I deeply appreciate a great plate of foul madamas, baby camel, dum aloo or Palestinian kunefeh. The actions of crazy Israeli hawks anger and embarrass me, much as the actions of crazy Muslim hawks surely anger and embarrass the majority of your readers. Immediately after 9/11, I launched a campaign urging Americans to eat in Muslim-owned restaurants. Foreseeing the bigotry and discrimination ahead, it anguished me that good people might lose their livelihoods as well as their feeling of being warmly at home in the American melting pot. We human beings never learn to react to extremism with enlightened moderation rather than with reciprocal extremism. It’s our pivotal flaw as a species.

If the influence of Obama’s chief of staff concerns Muslims, it may (or may not) be because Mr. Rahm happens to be avidly pro-Israel, but not because he’s Jewish. Many non-Jews are avidly pro-Israel…and many Jews disapprove of Israeli actions. But in any case, to be Jewish is not to be anti-Muslim! And I certainly hope the reverse is true, too!

I’m reminded of another well-intentioned sentence uttered during our recent campaign. I cringed for days after someone in a crowd spat out the accusation that Obama is “a Muslim” and was corrected by McCain, who replied “No, ma’am, He’s a decent, family man.”

McCain’s intention was conciliatory (and, in light of all the roiling invective, conciliation was most welcome). And I doubt John McCain really believes Muslims can’t be decent family men, just as I’m sure Mr. Syed didn’t mean to imply that Jews can’t respect Muslims. I appreciated the conciliatory intention behind his words, even if they conveyed an unfortunate and unintended assumption.

But please know that if 95% of Jews could blink their eyes and have every Muslim be deliriously happy, healthy, and prosperous, they wouldn’t hesitate to do so. And many of us would be willing to work harder than just blinking!

As for the hateful 5%? Every group has a few of those. But we all know their tricks by now. And the good, tolerant majority of any group has more in common with the good, tolerant majority of other groups than they do with their own hateful 5%. Every kind-hearted Muslim is my brother or sister. And we’re a huge and powerful family.

Jim Leff

[note: for more thoughts on the idea touched on in that final paragraph, read this, this, and this. Oh, and this.]