AN EYE FOR A SORE (ISRAEL/LEBANON)

War lingers at every turn in contemporary affairs. Endangered species strive for meager sustenance. Businesses stretch competition into the vagaries of espionage. Government force their way into a meaningful stand that makes their impression felt. Even a casual glance to the left encounters soul-shaking pornography as female clothing increasingly limit male freedom of sight: this is a violent attack on balanced male psyche.

Intuition naturally motivates commensurate response in violence to perceived attack. What in earnest owes to situation ethics winds up as a feud with a wider resolve that drags in other parties. Understanding requires one to get to know the perceived enemy; an exercise which will reveal the perceived threat to be no cause for alarm after all.

The need for coexistence is increasingly seen to be of collateral significance. The hurt of enduring a score-down in a scuffle can be more unbearable when the contender escapes scot-free. It seems that settling the score is of greater significance than winning a trophy in a chase that is never characterized by equals: only one can win.

Contending forces in the wider perspective sets everyone on edge, by reason of conviction. Sides are taken in a tense battle of interests in which factions stop at nothing to materialize their every will.

No one stops to think who stands to gain: temporal gains between parties ignore wider future ramifications. A win today invites a challenge another day until the score evens at all cost.

Unhealthy motivation like this, to win no matter what, was the bedrock of the ninja art. Its philosophy is riveted on winning and that alone. Contenders fall but others come in a never ending struggle of diminishing significance.

There’s a time to kill and a time to refrain.

One such endless struggle is that of Israel and Lebanon. They probably remember poorly the root cause of their perennial strife.

Laban played host to Israel when his father Isaac sent him off empty-handed to seek a bride in the house of the brother to his mother. Laban’s subtle dealings with Israel caused him to make a pact with Israel upon his departure: he was not to cross that spot to bring war upon him, just as he neither was to do that.

Today, that spot is in shaky agreement.

..and the struggle wins new adherents, hardening young Lebanese against young Israelis.

The Israeli who donated an eye to the Lebanese took on his sore by an act of human kindness. This milk of natural emotion supervenes the sentiment of resolute conviction.