A friend of mine brought up Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” in the context of the escalating clashes between Jews and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. And while it took a moment for me to make the connection, it makes perfect sense. You remember that the star-crossed lovers don’t have a chance at love, much less life, because of the stupid, internecine feud between their families. At the end of the play, over the bodies of the dead teenagers, the prince decrees that enough is enough and the Montagues and Capulets should put their bloody differences aside.
There is a parallel here to the recent stories out of Gaza, some of the most heartbreaking I have heard in a while, and that is in a year of heartbreaking stories. Just when you think the news cannot get more barbaric, it does.
Three Israeli teenagers, walking home from school, kidnapped and killed. A Palestinian boy, on his way home from prayers, kidnapped and burned alive. The blood of children sacrificed for a conflict whose genesis is most likely blurred or forgotten or unknown to their generation, and whose resolution seems impossible. Three of the victims were only 16 years old, just a little older than Will and his friends. Their top worries are grades, girls, and not being grounded — as it should be at this point in their lives. Political ideology? Being kidnapped because of religion? Killed for someone’s cause? Not even remotely on their radar.
There needs to be someone like Shakespeare’s wise prince, some village elder, someone who intercedes and declares that the price has been too high for both sides, and that the escalation has to stop. Instead, the Palestinians lob rockets towards Tel Aviv, and the Israeli military launches deadly firepower of its own. And caught in the crossfire are teenage boys who just want to have a childhood and grow up to live and love.
The situation in Iraq haunts me as well. Sending in Americans again in the guise of military advisors is a bad idea. Haven’t we been there and done that? Didn’t we learn from the lessons of history, especially in Vietnam, a war that dragged on at a tremendous cost for America, a war that started with our country sending in advisors?
One of Molly’s best friends from high school is a rising senior at West Point. They met when they were cast as love interests in another Shakespeare play, but Clayton is a warrior at heart and jumps out of airplanes, shoots guns, and does everything West Point teaches best. We were hoping that the United States would safely be out of all active combat arenas by the time he graduated but it does not seem likely, especially now, with President Obama’s latest orders. Clayton wants to see combat, but we want to see him safe and alive.
Our goddaughter, Kalen, graduated from West Point the same year Katie did and is now going to medical school on the government dime. When she graduates, she will owe Uncle Sam seven years of duty, and that could include being dispatched to the front lines as a military doctor. These kids know what they are getting into when they sign up for the deal, but can anyone truly anticipate the real hardships of battle and the cruel reality that you may never come home?
In Africa, thugs who hate the West kidnap whole groups of schoolgirls and randomly knife and gun their way through entire villages. There is no rule of law for age or gender. Meanwhile, on the Asian front, the mad North Korean president shoots missiles into the water, constantly taunting the south, and keeping the hairs raised on the necks of any peace-loving person around the world.
Airlines issue new security guidelines for flights coming into the United States, and I worry about Katie and Molly traveling on European railways and flying home on American jets. It’s unnerving at the height of summer travel season. At a time when the world is shrinking and everyone is traveling more, the world is a harsher place, with no mercy, even for youth. It seems there is no continent that is safe, and every threat is magnified because of the growing hate and intolerance literally everywhere.
Of course you can’t change the way you live out of fear, but the increasingly hostile world climate makes me want to move to a remote, out of the way sanctuary, away from the maddening terrors that we face. Instead of rising to a higher plane of human existence, it seems that we are devolving. I suppose our current day intermediaries, like the prince in Shakespeare who commands an end to the family feud, should include such organizations as the United Nations.
But I’m not holding my breath there. It seems it was much simpler during the Cold War when the Soviet Union was the enemy, and we knew where the threat was coming from. Today, the threat is everywhere all the time. Sometimes all you can do is hold your children close and pray for the best.
