The Lesson of the Flotilla
By Michael Nagler
THE SAVAGERY that Israel has been inflicting on Gaza has brought Israel itself, the immediately complicit states (you know who you are) and by extension humanity itself down to a low moral ebb. The one bright spot is the way the bombing has been paused, and perhaps, if there is more left of us than meets the eye, even ended 𑁋 not by nations as such, i.e. major powers but (though no one in office will admit it) by a courageous grass-roots effort of some 500 or so people, led by a charismatic youngster. For my money, though I do not begrudge Maria Corina Machado her success, the Nobel Prize should certainly have gone to Greta. (Is Sweden a little too close to Oslo?).
It is useful, and not just idle speculation, to ask ourselves what should actually happen now on the world stage; what lessons should humanity learn? There are several: the need to deal with that conflict can no longer be put off 𑁋 and deal with it not just as a political or diplomatic but a deeply psychological and even spiritual problem. The world need for a real international community, able to maintain order among its constituent parts. The vital contribution of grass-roots efforts in world peacemaking. And finally, the world must somehow shed its fear of the awesome military and economic power of the United States. As a Jew and an American, nothing would please me more.
Last century the world has seen, thanks primarily to events in India and in America, as Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi said in his book, The Crazy Ape:
Between the two world wars, at the heyday of Colonialism, force reigned supreme. It had a suggestive power, and it was natural for the weaker to lie down before the stronger.
Then came Gandhi, chasing out of his country, almost singlehanded, the greatest military power on earth. He taught the world that there are higher things than force, higher even than life itself; he proved that force had lost its suggestive power.
Before, during, and now after Gandhi, nonviolence has proven over and over, in every imaginable context, great and small, that when employed with skill and courage it is an invincible power and one with which alone the world can proceed to a future free from hatred and violence 𑁋 a future worthy of the name of humanity. That is, to enlarge on Szent-Györgyi’s trenchant observation, a different kind of force can arise in human beings to dispel the hypnotic spell of violence and guide us forward. This is the deepest significance of the Global Sumud Flotilla.
The media, of course, will miss this significance in their welter of details. It is up to us to bring it out, loud and clear, in every channel we can access. The flotilla itself was a grass-roots event, and must have its equally grass-roots interpretation and celebration. At least at first; it’s always possible that despite the media or through an awakened media the world will learn to, in the words of the Goethe’s tortured hero, Dr. Faustus, “see the working powers and seeds” of what’s really moving in the world.*
* Schau’ alle Wirkenskraft und Samen, und tu’ nicht mehr in Worten kramen.
