Peace Film: One Day After Peace

Robi Damelin is one of my peace heroes. The documentary of her story is now out. Here's the blurb and the link:


Can the means used to resolve the conflict in South Africa be applied to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? As someone who experienced both conflicts firsthand, Robi Damelin wonders about this. Born in South Africa during the apartheid era, she later lost her son, who was serving with the Israeli Army reserve in the Occupied Territories. At first she attempted to initiate a dialogue with the Palestinian who killed her child. When her overtures were rejected, she embarked on a journey back to South Africa to learn more about the country's Truth and Reconciliation Committee's efforts in overcoming years of enmity. Robi's thought-provoking journey leads from a place of deep personal pain to a belief that a better future is possible.


See http://onedayafterpeace.com/

Israelis speak about the urgency of reaching a two-state solution

Here are a number of Israelis, on the J Street website, advocating a two-state solution.

I'm not sure whether a two-state solution is possible or desirable. Is anyone considering the possibility of changing the program for a "Jewish" state (given, for example, the conflict between being "Jewish," on the one hand, and being "democratic" on the other), and going for a one-state solution, with full equal rights for all citizens, Jewish and Arab, Jew, Muslim and Christian?

Working for Peace in Palestine: Lynne Hybels

"So . . . it was October 2008. I had been invited by Dr. Gilbert Bilezikian—Bill’s mentor and mine—to attend a conference in Amman, Jordan, taught entirely by Arab Christians from Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq and the West Bank. To a person, these ministry leaders said they felt abandoned by Western Christians. And, of course, they are; to most Western Christians the phrase “Arab Christian” is an oxymoron. We experience a severe case of cognitive dissonance when hear about indigenous Iraqi Christians or the ancient Egyptian Coptic Church or—even more surprising—Palestinian Christians whose ancestors have been “on the land” from the time of Christ. What? Why didn’t we realize this? What should we do about it?"

So began the journey of Lynne Hybels - wife of the lead Pastor of one of America's first and largest megachurches - into the world of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Her posts and activities are worth following.

Be Careful What Kind of Walls You Build

We had a fascinating interaction today, at the "Building Hope" conference, on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Presenters were Rabbi Douglas Krantz, one of the founders of J Street (see http://jstreet.org/), and Sami Awad of Holy Land Trust (http://www.holylandtrust.org/) and the film "Little Town of Bethlehem" (http://littletownofbethlehem.org/), which we viewed tonight (see it if you haven't).

The group consists of Muslims from various countries, Orthodox Jews from the U.S., Israel and elsewhere, and Christians from various countries - so you can imagine that there are many different opinions and perspectives.

I didn't know what to expect, whether our newly forming relationships would hold up under the pressures of diving into such a charged issue. I was pleasantly surprised. We were able to engage in frank, honest, and respectful conversation. Many shared their stories, personal experiences, and perspectives, and asked some tough questions. It was moving, at many points (in a positive way). It was enriching. We remarked again and again, the importance of the human dimension - relationship, getting to know the other. It's harder to stereotype and to hate someone you know (if you know them in the right way).

Rabbi Krantz talked about the danger of building walls, physical walls and intellectual walls (and other kinds). He remarked that "an intellectual wall is harder to tear down than a real wall" (and may exist long after the physical walls have been removed). He exhorted us to be careful of how we see ourselves, and how we talk about ourselves, and to be careful what kind of walls we build. An excellent word, which in a way summarizes much of what this conference has been about.

WWJD? A Nonviolent Conflict Resolution for Palestine (Sami Awad)

How could a person living under military occupation, experiencing first-hand suffering and humiliation, even think about loving the enemy, let alone urge family, friends and neighbors to do the same? This challenging message came from a young rabbi named Jesus in his “Sermon on the Mount.” 

Of course, Jesus could have suggested we make peace with our enemies or negotiate peace agreements or peacefully resolve conflict; those statements would have been as shocking to the suffering Jews of that time. Instead, he entreated them to go further: to “love” them. This was the word he chose — a command to all those who seek to follow him...

Website: If Americans Knew

Another website with a variety of information on the Palestinian-Israeli situation:

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/

Do you know? Does it make a difference?

Peace Quote of the Day - tears for Jerusalem

Everyone I know who has traveled in the Occupied West Bank and has seen the realities of the Occupation and met with people who are working against it and for justice, has had a life-changing experience. This account is typical, with the exception that the author is an American Jew, grandson of a 5^th-generation Palestinian Jew, which lends a different kind of weight to his witness:

“Traveling in Israel and the occupied territories in the summer of 2006, my defenses against the reality of Israel’s crimes crumbled. I witnessed the Separation Wall grabbing huge swaths of Palestinian land, the checkpoints controlling the movement of Palestinians within their own territory and strangling farming, commerce, access to health care, education, and social intercourse. I saw the network of new roads restricted to Israelis; I learned about the assassinations, midnight raids, and collective punishment; I saw the massive, continuing construction of illegal Jewish settlements and towns; I heard firsthand about the vicious acts of ideological Jewish settlers, and words like apartheid and ethnic cleansing sprang to my mind, unbidden and undeniable. That summer, forty years after my first encounter with the land, I saw all this, and my relationship with Israel changed forever.

“My last night in Palestine that summer fell on the ninth of Av, a Jewish day of fasting and mourning, the traditional date of the destruction of the Temple of Solomon and the beginning of the exile of the Jews two thousand years ago. The book of Lamentations, a source text for our liturgy of mourning, attributed by tradition to the prophet Jeremiah, is chanted that night. It is a harrowing description of a people fallen and traumatized.

        Jerusalem has greatly sinned

        Therefore has she been made a mockery

        All who admired her despise her

        For they have seen her disgraced.

        Panic and pitfall are our lot,

        Death and destruction.

        My eyes shed streams of water

        Over the brokenness of my poor people

        (Lam. 1:8, 4:46-48; author’s translation)

“On that night, I sat on a hill overlooking the Old City, in the company of congregations of praying Jews, mostly American émigrés worshiping, I felt, at the shrine of their Jerusalem – a Jerusalem ‘reclaimed’ at the expense of the Palestinian people; a Jerusalem that for Palestinians is also a spiritual and political center; a Jerusalem that is being taken from them street by street, farm by farm, village by village. I stood on that hill and chanted the words as I had every year on this day, descriptions of starvation, rape, slaughter, destruction of homes, and banishment from the land, and, for the life of me, I could apply the words only to the Palestinians. In these words, I now felt their suffering. And my eyes shed streams of water for them, my Palestinian brothers and sisters, and yes, for the brokenness of my own people.”

Mark Braverman, Fatal Embrace

If peace is ever going to come to Palestine, to the Israelis and Palestinians, Jewish, Muslim and Christian, it will be through people like Mark Braverman – through people who can step out of their place, their reality, their perspective, their view of the world (comfortable as it is), enter into the experience of those who are not only “other” but even the enemies of their people, feel their pain, and in fact, change to the degree that all that speaks of their own personal pain, can come somehow to connect to the reality of the pain of their enemy, who they can begin to think of as their “brothers and sisters.”

Would that we all would be able to make a journey like Mark Braverman’s, and experience the transformation which radically changed his life.

Peace Quote of the Day - the impact of Yad Vashem on our pursuit of peace

Fatal Embrace is the remarkable account of the personal journey of an American Jew, grandson of a fifth generation Palestinian Jew, into his Jewish identity through the process of visiting Israel and the Occupied West Bank and beginning to grapple with the realities of the Israeli treatment of the Palestinian people.

Here is an account of the impact of a visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, after having spent time in the West Bank. He begins by describing the location of Yad Vashem on Mount Herzl, the Mount of Memory, and the entry to the Museum. The whole account is well worth reading. Here is part of it. Read it slowly.

“I was shattered. A hand had reached into me, grabbed hold of my heart, and drawn me back into my past, into the collective memory of my people. How could I turn my back on this? How could I walk away from my history, from this incalculable, unfathomable loss, and, more so, from Israel, my deliverance? It had worked. I was hooked. What was I to do now? I had no choice. Emptied, numb, and confused, I turned and walked down the hall into the museum.

“It’s a brilliant exhibition. One walks down, into it. It is subterranean – no windows, no light, no escape. You are led through corridors and tunnels, with no control and no way out but through. One traverses the whole, familiar story: from the laws enacted in the thirties, the walls of isolation, privation, and degradation closing in, to the Final Solution: the ovens, the stacked bodies, the faces of the children. Darkness closes your heart – you feel you will never escape from this horror, this black hole of evil and despair. Then, turning a corner into the final gallery, on display are the blown-up photos of the ships bringing the refugees to the shores of Israel, faces shining with hope and gratitude. There is David Ben-Gurion, reading from the Israeli Declaration of Independence. And then, suddenly, you emerge. Ascending a wide flight of stairs, you are outside, in the light and the open air, standing on a wide patio that looks out on the Jerusalem Hills. It’s the final exhibit. And then it hit me. This was no mere museum. This was a lesson; this was indoctrination: from the biblical quote at the entrance [‘I will put my breath into you and you shall live again and I will set you upon your own soil,’ Ezekiel 37:14], into the depths, and to this sight – The Land. The reward. Our destiny.

“The fifty-eight-year spell was broken. I got it. And something let go, and it was okay.

“Diane, a fellow delegate, turned to me as we walked out and asked if I had seen the part about how the Nazis acted to marginalize, dispossess, and banish the Jews, the part before the extermination camps and the ovens. She asked if I had seen that this was what we had witnessed over the last few days. Yes, I had seen. The spell was broken. I got it. And it was okay.

“Treading, as I had so many times, the sacred ground of the Holocaust, I had, for the first time, broken The Rule: our Holocaust, the Holocaust, must not be compared to any other disaster, genocide, or crime. It has to stand as the ultimate humanitarian crime, the genocide. Not only that, I had also broken a rule so fundamental, so important that it is never even spoken: I had compared the Jews to the Nazis. And it was okay. Because, for the first time, I knew what I had to do; I knew how to understand and integrate the Holocaust. For one thing had not changed: the Nazi Holocaust would continue to be the formative historical event of my life. But now, from this day forward, finding the meaning of the Holocaust meant working for justice for Palestine. There were too many parallels, too many ways in which Israel was doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to us. No, we had not built death camps. But we were turning into beasts, into persecutors, and we were killing a civilization.

“Here was the most terrible irony in this scenario: in enshrining our own memory, in living out our liturgy of destruction, to use theologian Marc Ellis’s phrase, we have been erasing the history of another. It is a terrible irony that Yad Vashem, along with Har Herzl, is built on top of these hills west of Jerusalem, hills littered with the remains of Palestinian villages. Some have been turned into parks for the Jews of Jerusalem. Most are ruins, stones bleaching in the sun, standing guard over uncultivated terraces of olives and grapes, witnesses to shattered lives and a murdered civilization.”

Mark Braverman, Fatal Embrace: Christians, Jews, and the Search for Peace in the Holy Land

This is an example of the kind of journey, the kind of transformation, which must take place, individual by individual, if there is ever going to be peace in the so-called Holy Land, the land of Jesus and so many prophets. Non-Jews must see, experience, internalize the Jewish experience of the Holocaust, to understand what lies behind the significance of the State of Israel, and the actions of the Israeli government toward the Palestinians. Jews must see, experience, internalize the Palestinian suffering, and see how their response to the Holocaust has led to the unthinkable – repeating the inhumanity they experienced, in their treatment of the Palestinians.

This is a stunning book. If you are interested in peace, anywhere, you should read it.

Peace Quote of the Day - "my people are those who seek peace"

“Tel Aviv, Israel, 2001. Nurit Peled-Elhanan is the mother of Smadar Elhanan, who was thirteen years old when she was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in September 1997. After Smadar's death, Nurit and her husband, Rami, Jewish Israelis, opened their house of mourning to Palestinian supporters and to other bereaved parents. Years later, Nurit said this in a speech in Tel Aviv:

‘When my little girl was killed, a reported asked me how I was willing to accept condolences from the other side. I replied without hesitation that I had refused to meet with the other side: when Ehud Olmert, then the mayor of Jerusalem, came to offer his condolences I took my leave and would not sit with him. For me, the other side, the enemy, is not the Palestinian people. For me the struggle is not between Palestinians and Israelis, nor between Jews and Arabs. The fight is between those who seek peace and those who seek war. My people are those who seek peace. My sisters are the bereaved mothers, Israeli and Palestinian, who live in Israel and in Gaza and in the refugee camps. My brothers are the fathers who try to defend their children from the cruel occupation, and are, as I was, unsuccessful in doing so. Although we were born into a different history and speak different tongues, there is more that unites us than that which divides us.’”

Quoted in Mark Braverman, Fatal Embrace:

Christians, Jews, and the Search for Peace in the Holy Land

(emphasis mine)

What’s Wrong with Ethnocentrism?

To return once more to the topic of ethnocentrism (i.e., seeing and experiencing and interacting with the world from the perspective of your own culture / your own frame of reference, without an understanding of the different cultures of others, or the ability to enter into their frame of reference and experience), I would like to ask whether ethnocentrism is compatible with seeking peace, and if not, what’s wrong with it?

Here are some of the characteristics of ethnocentrism, with reference to the stages of Bennett’s “Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity”*:

(Denial)

• lack of awareness of cultural difference
• lack of interest in cultural difference
• inability to distinguish cultural difference (e.g., thinking of “Africans” or “Asians” or even “foreigners” as a broad category without internal differentiation)
• isolation or intentional separation from different others

(Defense)

• lack of understanding of cultural difference or others who are different
• a negative experience of difference, and reaction against it – feeling threatened by difference
• one’s own culture experienced as the only viable one
• polarization (“us” / “them”)
• generalizing and positively stereotyping one’s own people and culture
• generalizing and negatively stereotyping other peoples and cultures
• prejudice, denigration, possibly animosity, toward those who are different
• in the extreme, dehumanizing and/or demonizing others 

(Minimization)

• trivializing difference, acting as if people are basically the same (i.e., as if others are basically the same as ourselves)
• thus, not relating to others as they truly are, in their uniqueness or fullness
• lack of cultural self-awareness
• generalizing from one’s own experience, principles, practices, to others – assuming that what “works for us” is universal, relevant and applicable anywhere and everywhere and to everyone
• those in a dominant or majority group not being aware of how racial minorities experience race relations, men not being aware of how women experience gender issues, etc.
• assuming we have “the answers” for everyone, not being aware that the questions that others are asking, may be different than our questions

In sum, ethnocentrism is a form of self-centeredness, on a group and cultural level. It ranges from ignorance through defensiveness to a somewhat benign assumption of similarity, but in all cases, one cannot know and relate to others as they are, from any point on the spectrum of ethnocentrism.

There are many reasons why someone might decide that it would be best not to stay in an ethnocentric state.  From the perspective of seeking peace, I would argue that ethnocentrism, while “natural” to people, is not compatible with living in a way that will lead to building peace between peoples.

                                                                                                               

I recently wrote up some “peace lessons” from the women and men I have met in Israel and the Occupied West Bank, who are actively engaged in trying to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (http://salemshalom.blogspot.com/2011/03/peace-lessons-from-my-travels-in.html). Among the lessons:

* We must learn to see all people – including our “enemies” – as human beings created in the image of God, due respect and honor and treatment as such (regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity, etc., and regardless of how they are treating us). The way Sheikh Ghassan put it, to see that “the person in front of me is me with a different language, religion, ethnicity, etc.,” and to “make my enemy into my friend.” The way the Quakers put it is to find “that of God” in all people. The way Jesus put it is that we must learn to love our neighbor and love even our enemy, and “do to others as we would have them do to us.”

* We need to develop an understanding of God, of religion, and of people that rises above the ethnocentric “tribalism” of believing that God is for us and our people and against others (and that uses religion/the name of God to justify fighting and killing others).

* We need to build relationship with those on the other side of a conflict. We need to share our stories, get to know each other, find what we have in common, embrace our shared humanity, and find ways to work together to end the conflict.

* Conversely, walls and checkpoints and occupation and humiliating others; enshrining our own ethnicity and religion and nationality; playing the role of the victim; and justifying actions which serve ourselves and our interests while mistreating others, do not lead to peace.

Living in a state of ethnocentrism will prevent us from the above positive steps, and will lead us to the negative ways of interacting with others. If we are living in ethnocentrism, we will not see other people who are different than us (racially, ethnically, religiously, in their nationality, etc.) as fully human. We will not be inclined to understand people, to relate to them, to seek to build bridges and friendship. If we are living in ethnocentrism, our god will be a tribal god, belonging and loyal to our people, and against others who are against us. If we are living in ethnocentrism, we will build walls to keep out the alien other, and we will do to others what we would never think of doing to ourselves or our own people (in fact, we will justify doing to others what we would never tolerate others doing to us).

Even at the most positive, least destructive stage of ethnocentrism, minimization, we will fall short of the full potential of building peace between ourselves and others. Peace, as many people have pointed out, is more than the absence of conflict. True, deep, lasting peace, the kind of peace that creates a context within which people can live their lives most fully, requires relationship, understanding, empathy with those who are different than us.

If there is ever to be true peace between Israelis and Palestinians, they will need to move beyond dismantling the separation Wall and the Occupation, agreeing upon borders, and addressing the various legal issues that have accrued over the past 60+ years. For true peace, salaam, shalom – a blessed life, characterized by harmony and well being – Palestinians and Israelis will need to build relationships and come to know each other, listen to and care about each other’s stories, understand each others’ suffering and perspectives (please note: the peace activists in the situation are working on this, and are seeing some success – this is not only possible, it is necessary, and it is not “pie in the sky” idealism). And ethnocentrism will hinder these efforts.

Ethnocentrism, in one way or another, in one form or another, is at the heart of many of the problems which exist between groups of people in the world today (and throughout history). It seems clear that if we want to work for peace in the world, we need to reject, and seek to identify and grow beyond, ethnocentrism in all of its manifestations.

Coming soon: Beyond Ethnocentrism…

* For more on each of Bennett’s stages of Ethnocentrism, see:

http://salemshalom.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-ethnocentrism-hinders-peace-denial.html

http://salemshalom.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-ethnocentrism-hinders-peace.html

http://salemshalom.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-ethnocentrism-hinders-peace-part-3.html

For full treatment of Bennett’s model, see

Bennett, Milton J., “Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity.” In Paige, R.M. (Ed). (1993) Education for the Intercultural Experience (2^nd ed., p. 21-71). Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.

Bennett, Milton J., “Becoming Interculturally Competent.”  In Wurzel, Jaime S., ed., Toward multiculturalism: A reader in multicultural education (2nd ed., pp. 62-77). Newton, MA: Intercultural Resource Corporation, 2004.