re mosque in jewish quarter was re israeli destruction of in article bob cos bob cos com bob blackshaw writes i always believed the statement those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it will durant but i am beginning to believe the opposite is true here in t p m and in other newsgroups it seems that history is mainly remembered to foment hatred or to be used as a club in the history of my own people there are ample acts of shame both done by my people and done to my people since i was not party to any of those acts i refuse to accept blame for the evil acts that my ancestors committed nor do i direct hatred toward the descendants of those who committed evil acts against my ancestors the obsession with discussions of past or present events seems to be largely centered on trying to prove that they are worse than us as we see over and over that leads nowhere except to make ourselves feel superior it s as if we ve become addicted to periodic injections of self affirmation that draw their power from denigration of the other and romanticization of ourselves the hope is that we will begin sometime to apply these discussions in some way towards consideration of how to defuse the situation advancement of negotiations and the search for common ground between the parties involved of course for this to happen we can t believe that the best path to making ourselves feel better is at the expense of others as long as those valuing the coming together of opposing parties do not pursue their vision with the same passion as do those polarization specialists we will stay stuck in the circus of one upsmanship we now have we re getting precisely what we are willing to work for shalom salam and peace tim clock ph d graduate student uci tel department of politics and society fax university of california irvine home tel irvine ca
