Iran

It's on everyone's mind.

Every day when the fighter jets fly over the village I wonder where there headed. Sitting at the lunch table at work I see if I can distinguish which kind of fighter is flying over us by the pitch of the noise of the jet engine. Deeper usually means an F-15.

"F-15 I think" I say to the director.
"We hope that they are not going to Iran" he replies.
"If Israel attacks Iran I am going back to Canada"
"If Israel attacks Iran I am coming with you"

Yikes.

Talks over Iran's nuclear program are ongoing. The last international meeting with Iran and the UN Atomic Agency was productive, which is to say that Iran agreed to meet with them again. Part of me thinks, Iran has a right to self-determination. They have a right to develop the way they see fit and their nuclear program could very well be for domestic consumption and reactor fuel and not nuclear weapons and it's not like Israel has signed the non-proliferation treaty. It's one of the biggest open secrets that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. Having said all that, despite the fact that I don't think Iran would attack first, the rhetoric, even from "moderates" within the Iranian political system has always directed a great deal of hate towards Israel and Iran continues to sponsor violent militant groups that attack Israel. Once again the world has arrived at a classic impasse.

The prospect of nuclear Iran and the Iranian-Israeli relationship has been a topic of much discussion for the best two decades. What concerns Iran is a Jewish bomb. What concerns Israel is an Islamic one. Both sides are afraid of each other and fear makes people act irrationally.

With the violence in Syria now spilling over into neighboring Lebanon, continued tensions over a possible unilateral strike against Iran and Israeli domestic politics which have turned ever more violent with riots and demonstration in Tel Aviv and the Knesset under control for Netanyahu, it would be understatement to say that I am feeling a little nervous.

Having said that, you wouldn't be able to tell that the world might come crashing down at any moment if you were in Neve Shalom~Wahat-al-Salam.

"We've always found a way to last out the night Chris. Just have faith."

I hope faith will be enough.

It seems that Israel and Iran are attempting to adopt the policies of the US and USSR at the height of the cold war, mutual assured destruction. But there's a reason the acronym is MAD.

There's a great West Wing episode that deals directly with this issue. (Shout out to my West Wing Wednesday buddies if they read this!) The episode is called the Warfare of Genghis Khan.
President Bartlet: "It's telling that the physicists involved with the creation of these weapons became the most fervid opponents of their use. Einstein, Oppenheimer, Szilard. Hans Bethe wrote: "If we fight a war and win it with H bombs what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for, but the methods used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who brutally killed every last inhabitant of Persia.""