Things are more depressing than you can imagine.

I am back from a trip to the Middle East that truly shook me.

Addiction to Hatred and Violence is Real and Self-Destructive

Reader beware. My ruminations below are filled with some depressing details about violence in the Middle East. Please feel free to skip over the heavy parts, especially if you can’t find the space needed to sit with trauma and suffering without judgment. I promise my next newsletter will offer some hope for a less dismaying future.

Forty years ago last month—April 12th—I lost a piece of my leg in an old unmarked minefield in the Golan Heights. I used to think that my flesh wound qualified me with skin in the game to have the right to strong opinions on the consequences of war in the Middle East.?

I do have passionate opinions. I’m tempted daily to express them out loud—to judge and blame corrupt political and religious “leaders” left and right.?

But lately silence seems wiser. I’m not sure I’m in a position to do anything but feel compassion and heartbreak. Today, rather than having any advice or solutions—which we desperately need—I feel frozen with fear of the worst coming true.

My March trip to the Middle East was more than depressing. The region is on the edge of not one dark abyss, but several. The lack of hope and light makes me want to crawl back into bed and retreat to sleep, even as violence is begetting violence like some biblical plague.?

There’s enough blame to go around with leaders making disastrous decisions. How might an expanding three-front war be more successful than the catastrophe of a one-front war in Gaza? How do we prevent an all-out regional war on all borders, with outraged Palestinians, Jordanians, and Egyptians on the verge of ripping up unfulfilled peace treaties??

I’m told the Dead Sea marks the lowest point on earth, but this conflict threatens to bring us all much lower, into an abyss in the most dangerous neighborhood on earth.

In March, I visited the site of the world’s worst pogrom on October 7th—the outdoor Nova Music Festival site and Kibbutz Be’eri. I could hear the vibrating thuds of bombs continuing to drop on Gaza, which I was unable to visit.?

I’m not Jewish, so I can’t imagine their worst nightmare—looking into the eyes of Hamas terrorists as they stabbed and killed a husband, raped a sister, burned an aunt, or kidnapped toddlers. The most intimate of terror, in their own homes. Israelis are despondent, existentially triggered by this ongoing and ancestral trauma reaching back centuries. As my friend, journalist Nahum Barnea, described it to me, “The entire country is sitting a non-stop Shiva, traumatized with no end in sight.”?

I’m also not Palestinian, so I can’t imagine their worst nightmare—a gruesome foil, with no one looking in your eyes while bombs and drones destroy homes and indiscriminately kill thousands of children, with entire families wiped out in a single day. Gazans, with no habitat or livelihood, wishing they too were dead, while waves of loss, grief, and rage fuel a desire to avenge the lives of tens of thousands killed and maimed. As one Palestinian friend put it, “It’s over. We’re done. This will be a forever war with an endless supply of martyrs.”

As an American, I wonder how we continue to fuel the fire of this proxy war, playing out our international insecurities. When will leaders show strategic restraint instead of fueling tit-for-tat cycles of retribution??

Where, when, or how does this end? Seriously—how?

As the risks for escalation grow daily, I can feel alternatively impotent, angry, helpless, and ashamed. This shared anxiety is global as more than four billion descendents of Abrahim/Ibrahim watch family violence spread from near and far.?

I can also feel unexpectedly dispassionate, as my mind tries to “game out” all the ways this hellish conflict could end. We can’t give up just because the violence seems “intractable.” Because if there’s one thing we know for certain, it’s that escalating violence and hatred, retaliation and punishment will only spawn new generations of terror.

So, you may ask: dear Jerry, what happens next? How can we resolve or heal this seemingly insatiable addiction to violence? What can be done when the suppliers of arms profit from pain and new victims become addicted to cycles of victimhood? Does anyone have a 12-step plan for recovery and collective healing? We certainly need an intervention. Binational divorce proceedings for Palestinians and Israelis? Tough love to put an entire region into rehab?

Pondering metaphors and analogies fail to satisfy as time is lost taking the basic steps urgently needed yesterday and today: stop the missile attacks and mass bombing of civilians; return hostages or their remains; release prisoners; and provide food, water, medicines, shelter, and safety. Back to the very basics of humanity.

Let me reiterate what the science of violence teaches us. Violence and polarization are behaviors. They are both a choice and an addiction. People are capable of “bottoming out” from their addictions, but it’s better when circumstances don’t wreck innocent families and bystanders. Participants in serial violence may need to experience some form of personal and collective surrender and acceptance.?

Given the nuclear threat of mass destruction, can we call on all leaders, and ourselves, to recommit to healing, justice, and peace, taking it one day at a time?

It turns out the arc to justice is blurrier and longer than I wanted to believe. And the human appetite for revenge and self-destruction is stronger than I thought.

We are still in the fight, flight, or freeze part of this tragedy. When I’m tempted to freeze, I remember being trapped in that minefield forty years ago. Freezing in place would have meant bleeding to death. I had to move. I had to climb out. I had to grab the shoulders of my two friends who carried me out step by step, stumble by painful stumble.

I really don’t know how this war is going to end. But I know that it must. And sooner rather than later, or the abyss will swallow too many of us into its dark hole—lower than the lowest point on earth. There is nowhere to climb but up and out of this horror hole we have dug.?

Okay, I promise my next newsletter will reintroduce glimmers of hope, possibly some preliminary thoughts on how to chart a healthier pathway out of the reality of war. Right now, I am sitting in solidarity with those who are suffering. For now, it’s too painful for people going through this ordeal to hear anything cerebral, logical, or sane. We have not bottomed out.

We CAN Be Resilient

How can we possibly find the strength to end the widespread violence threatening to annihilate us? Steven Charleston, Choctaw elder and Episcopal priest, reminds us that humanity has suffered and survived greatly, for thousands of years, and that their strength is our own: “My culture does not honor the ancestors as a quaint spirituality of the past but as a living source of strength for the present,” he says. “They did it and so will we.” His 2021 book, Ladder to the Light: An Indigenous Elder’s Meditations on Hope and Courage, is a guide to reconnecting with this ancestral resilience, allowing us to overcome in the most hopeless of times. Because, as he says, “Darkness will not last forever. Together we can climb toward the light.”

We ARE Strong

Not only were our ancestors resilient, our neighbors are too. In the face of poverty, displacement, and oppression, they refuse to give up, finding ways to lift their communities out of cycles of violence.

Pakigdait, Inc. Cooperation Circle, in Iligan City, Philippines, for example, is sparking interfaith and intercultural friendship among young people, building a foundation for peace.

Think Round, Inc. Cooperation Circle, in San Francisco, California, is addressing traumatic, systemic adverse childhood experiences within families.?

Choti Si Khushi Cooperation Circle is bridging the rising disparity in opportunities for women and children residing in urban slums in India.

And Pink Hijab Initiatives Cooperation Circle is empowering orphans and vulnerable children to reach their full potential through family-based care and powerful community support.

These neighbors are an inspiration—and, as a URI member, you can join them (and learn from them!) in fostering resilience, strength, peace, and justice across the globe.

Join URI as an Individual Member

The Root of It with Jerry White is a newsletter intended to spur readers to interrupt violence and promote healing in our communities. If you know a friend or colleague who would appreciate this newsletter, please consider forwarding it. That way, we can all become part of the cure.

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