To Kevan From Brian...

after thinking a bit about uncle Kevan and what i'd do for a Christmas project for him, i recalled a time that uncle Kevan helped me open my mind a bit about a certain topic.

i was explaining to uncle Kevan about how it's difficult for me to understand the Palestinian side of the Israel/Palestine conflict. the historical hatred of the jewish people seems completely unwarranted, even in todays Israel/Palestine conflict.

Kevan suggested that i watch the film "Five Broken Cameras" to help balance out my perspective.

which i did. the movie follows the story of a Palestinian family in the west bank whose village was very negatively impacted by the building of the west bank barrier. the "5 cameras" come from the fact that this man bought 5 separate cameras to document the struggles of the village and his family from the barrier. he had to buy 5 cameras because his camera kept getting busted in the coverage.

the film won accolades from many quarters because of the peaceful nature of it's protesting, contrasting against the backdrop of most coverage of Palestinian protests whose goal the the complete elimination of Israel and extermination of the Jews.

the movie did help change my perspective somewhat and i thought i'd do some research for my project for Kevan and donate to peace causes in Palestine that were seeking equity from both Israel and Palestine (i cared not if it was a two part solution or not).

unfortunately, i discovered that peace in the middle east is much more complex than producing a movie.

i dug and dug trying to find a Palestinian organization i could donate to that was not tainted with the anti-semitic hatred of jews that is officially coded in the Palestinian Authority. in good conscience, i needed to donate to an organization that would recognize both the right of Israel and Jews as well as Palestine and Palestinians.

Unfortunately, i couldn't find any that sufficiently recognized Israel's right to exist in order to make a donation.

So, I decided to switch focus a little and find an organization involved in the Aleppo crisis to help out with the horrible refugee crisis. From news reports, it seemed like it was pretty clear and one sided that there was an obvious side to support. The mainstream media kept writing stories about how the existing democratically elected government of the Assad regime was indiscriminately fire bombing and murdering civilians to try to suppress the "moderate" uprising of the people.

Surely i would be easy to find an organization that was supporting the regime change in a way that could appease conscience and give us confidence that we did the right thing, right?

Unfortunately, as i dug deeper into the crisis, I realized that the "moderate" rebels were far from that. The rebels that are fighting the Assad regime (back by the Russians) consists of ISIS and Al Queda. It also looks like there are credible claims that much of the indiscriminate killing that western media is blaming the Assad regime for is actually propaganda by ISIS and Al Queda. not that it isn't happening, but these organizations are forcing civilians to be human shields and will murder the civilians when they decide they no longer want to be shields and try to leave.

so the waters of help in these very sticky situations in the middle east are murky and i was having a very difficult time finding out who to donate to. this service project was no where near as easy as i thought it was going to be.

i had to take a step back and rethink the situation. ultimately, i realized the power of the "5 broken cameras" movie was the fact that it was a human story. while the politics of terrorists and fighting terrorism gets ugly and murky and confusing, the one thing that isn't confusing is that families in crisis who simply want to live their lives and raise their kids really shouldn't be that difficult.

i needed to find an organization that was past the politics and would focus on just the human crisis aspect.

and i knew one that i trusted implicitly to take care of the human need including the unique religious freedom needs of displaced refugees:

Since I knew that the funds donated to LDS Charities would be used both efficiently and effectively without supporting bad actors on either side, I decided to make a donation directly to the Humanitarian Services of LDS Charities in the name of Uncle Kevan.

Merry Christmas Kevan and thanks for being you and helping me realize that the while the political aspects of these ugly situations might be too muddied to really solve, the human aspect is always there and we can always help out with that.