Jerusalem, “God’s City of Peace,” is yet again at the center of the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.  The fight goes back fifty-five or seventy-five or thousands of years, depending on who’s counting.  Both sides want their families to live in peace.  Palestinians and Jews must stop fighting, talk to each other and compromise, and end the occupation of Palestine.  They must learn to peacefully live side by side as equals in either one nation or in two states.   

We are brothers and sisters, or at least distant cousins, and we should not be killing, abusing or stealing from each other.  Women, men and children need peace to grow and thrive.  Mother Nature also needs to be protected, nurtured, and rewilded, with trophy hunting banned.  Gangs and guns need to be controlled.  If guns made us safer, we’d be the safest country ever. 

We tell our children to play nicely and to not fight with other children.  Yet America does not play nicely with other nations, but has acted like a bully for over a century.  Interventions in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East have hurt the people living there, and tragically forced families to flee from their homes and become refugees.  America needs a new paradigm of living in peace and harmony with the rest of the world, and non-violently solving our problems together.

America spends about $1 trillion yearly on the military industrial complex, a modern empire with bases around the planet.  We need to change our priorities and policies to one of defense.  That will free up enough money for the Green New Deal, for universal health care, for quality education, and for protecting and healing our environment like our survival depends on it.

This might seem utopian, but now is the time for Martin Luther King’s dream to become reality, to practice what we preach.  We must quickly create a non-violent holistic civilization that benefits all of us, and which is sustainable for our children and for future generations.