war and peace

By: Gershon Baskin
I came of age politically in 1968. I was 12 years old. The primaries took place in the Democratic Party for the post of President of the United States. The civil rights movement was at its height and young Americans were taking to the streets against the war in Vietnam. My congressman was Allard Lowenstein who was the leader of the anti-war movement in Congress. Lowenstein was supporting Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota for president. I met Lowenstein and spent a few weekends going door-to-door with him in my neighborhood. One of my neighbors sponsored an event for Senator McCarthy and I met him as well. I enlisted my father to lead me to anti-war demonstrations and civil rights events. On the weekends, my friend and I campaigned for McCarthy and Lowenstein at the largest mall on Long Island. I remember watching the news every night after the very idiotic and painful war in Vietnam. Most Americans had no idea how many young boys lost their lives in a war thousands of miles from their homelands. But every night, President Johnson or one of the pro-war right-wing candidates delivered rants and rants about the absolute, fundamental need for America to stand up to communism. Every night they reported thousands of enemy dead, and only a few American soldiers were killed. By the end of the war, 15 years after it began, about two million Vietnamese and about 60,000 American soldiers had been killed.
I am writing this article from Vietnam. The war here ended 48 years ago. America lost and the people of Vietnam “won.” I'm in North Vietnam and haven't seen any war memorials, but I'm sure there are. The locals we spoke to don't talk about war. You don't see the results of the war on the streets. It is part of the past and legacy of a nation that fought foreign invaders for freedom and liberation. Vietnam was liberated, but under the communist regime it is difficult to say that people are free. There are very severe restrictions on freedom of expression and association. Our local tour guide asked about the demonstrations taking place in Israel. He commented, "We haven't had any demonstrations against the government in Vietnam." It is illegal and unimaginable. However, since the mid-1980s and much more in the 1990s, economic reforms were carried out that opened up the economy. Old, inefficient co-operatives, especially cooperative farms, were closed, and private enterprise was encouraged. Now Vietnam is a manufacturing powerhouse. The government here recently made a decision that the new Vietnamese cars, Vinfast, manufactured here will be all electric.
Visiting the places I remember from the war days is a bewildering experience. My associations and memories of the names of those places are with death, destruction, and terrible suffering. Today, they are beautiful sites teeming with life, protected nature reserves, and tourist destinations for tourists from all over the world to enjoy what Vietnam has to offer. Life is normal. People are happy and work hard to provide themselves with the comforts that this world has to offer. It is not a rich country, but its economy is growing. There are many places in different stages of development and sometimes they remind me of some Arab villages and towns in Israel or in the West Bank. But the sharp difference is the lack of tension and the aura of peace. I cannot avoid thinking what our reality would look like if we enjoyed decades of peace. In particular, I cannot avoid thinking about how futile our continued war with the Palestinian people is and how much they suffer because we are unable to achieve peace.
There is no victor in war. The Americans lost the war in Vietnam, and so did the Vietnamese — on both sides. In Israel and Palestine, we continue to fight, hate and kill. Neither Israel nor Palestine will surrender, and neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians will leave. The futility of our conflict grows with each passing year, and the prospects for a peaceful solution that were on the table are more remote than ever. The war in Vietnam ended when a right-wing American president came to his senses, declared victory and got out of the war as quickly as possible.
The space between where we are and where we could be - moving toward peace is driving. Unfortunately, we in Israel and Palestine lack a leadership mature and intelligent enough to understand that neither Israel nor Palestine will win our war. We have no choice but to live together. We both have interests to protect our identity, culture, religion and rights. A solution to our conflict will only be found when both sides realize that we all have the same right to the same rights! No one has more rights than the other. With roughly equal numbers of Israelis and Palestinians living on the land, and millions of people, we must come to our senses and understand that if we are to create a future for our children and their children worth living for, we must begin the process of striving to live for our people, for our land rather than die For her. We need leaders to declare victory and end our conflict so that we can negotiate an end to the occupation and liberate Israel and Palestine from each other.