I had a conversation with a Jewish friend of mine recently about the Palestinian and Israeli crisis. She was raising issues that antisemitism was at play. I listened carefully, as I do dearly love my friend with whom we’ve raised children and had many good times together. Today she helps drive a vibrant homeschooling community, one that I had been involved in deeply for years which leads to my challenging mainstream education today.

After she spoke, I shared my thoughts. “You know, this has nothing to do with Judaism, Muslim faith or any religion. It has everything to do with men and their drive for control and power. If men were able to carry the magic of life inside their bodies, and understand how much we mothers love our children and how much we work together as mothers to raise our children, this would be a very different world.”

My friend was silent. She agreed.

I have worked with preschoolers for years and clearly our educational system is failing when grown men have forgotten those early lessons of kindness and diplomacy. And that is our fault. We have been in a soup of a culture that glamorizes competition, rewards acts of “winning” and losing through violent sports and video games and worships those who have big money, without ever asking the question of how that money was made.

Our men are in a state of crisis. They don’t know who and what to be without raising a gun, screaming about some madness and creating warlike missiles that mirror their appendages. Yes, that’s crass, but it’s 100% true.

Boys, stop it.

Instead we ought to be cultivating beautiful men who know how to dance, know that to work together is the greatest reward and how to put past generational issues at rest so we can collectively envision our future for our future children.

I’m always heartened to remember my former inlaws. My mother in law was a German child during WW2 who endured horror. Her father was recruited by the Nazis,even though he was an old man, and was immediately captured by The Russians. She didn’t own her own coat until she was 18 years old. Whilst my father in law had been an Italian boy during the war. And it wasn’t until his death did we learn that he was Jewish. They had been two war children on opposite sides and yet in their adult lives created the most beautiful fifty years together, putting the past behind them and setting religion aside in order to live the “now” and see each other as loving and caring humans. My father in law baked bread, gardened and always supported my own efforts with such warmth and nurturing. Their story and life give me hope for our future.

When stories of our past continue to divide us instead of “teach us” how to move forward, we must recognize the stories do not serve us and we need to create new stories to build a common thread of respect for one another.

In the name of the lives of the Palestinian children and other violence on the Israelis, I beg the world to open their eyes to the work we have before us. We are the change makers right now. Let’s start dancing with each other before it’s too late and show our children how we can make that happen.

And, if you ask me how we accomplish conflicts and keep our children from killing other people’s children? It’s simple. Put the leaders in a boxing ring to duke it out until they come up with a peace plan and solution. We’ll sell each other popcorn and watch the spectacle. Never respect a leader that drags our children into the killing fields. They are not leaders. They are thugs.