peace quote of the day [Israel's Declaration of Independence]

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open to the immigration of Jews and for the Ingathering of the Exiles from all countries of their dispersion; will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace as invisaged by the prophets of Israel; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

- from Israel's Declaration of Independence 

Game Trekking: traveling (and gaming) towards peace, creativity, and understanding

"As cliché as it sounds, I believe that travel is a metaphor for, and microcosm of, life itself, and that therein lies its value. It's about the exotic, but also about the commonplace; about the new, but also about the old; about seeing and discovering, but also about listening and waiting; about coming into contact with the other and being changed, but also about finding constancy. Always it is about coming to know the world better, and myself." -Jordan Magnuson, "The Journey"

If, as Marvin Olasky suggests, social justice is created from millions of individual acts of relational justice, then maybe global understanding is created from combining millions of moments of individual understanding.  Of one person stepping out of his or her comfort zone to encounter the Other.

And encountering the Other is exactly what game designer, Jordan Magnuson, hopes to do.  Travel the world, and create computer games (or notgames) about what he sees and experiences.  About how he is impacted.

This is something he has already done -- very effectively, I believe -- with such games as Freedom Bridge, inspired by his two years spent living in South Korea.  But now he wants to do it on a wider scale, and is asking for your support.

Now, there are many, many reasons that this excites me, but I'm going to share two of them.  One, as I have stated elsewhere, I believe in creativity.  I believe that creation is, perhaps, the single greatest weapon we have against destruction -- against war, and hatred, and violence.  Pacifism is powerful because it requires creative resistance.  It requires humanity in the place of barbarism.

I believe that the creative process, even when it isn't used to convey explicitly peace-related themes, helps us retain our humanity and draws us together in community -- the broad community that binds us together as beings who long to communicate, create beauty, and make meaning, and the more specific community of those who have shared a specific experience, whether that experience involves looking at a van Gogh, attending an opera, or playing a computer game.  Art binds us together.

Which is why kickstarter (an online site that allows you to contribute directly to creative projects) is so exciting to me.  Not only can you be involved in the process of experiencing art, you can actually help create it.  You can enable individuals to share their creative visions with you, and with the world.

So I am excited about Game Trekking because it's creative.  But I'm also excited about the specific way in which it is creative.  I'm excited that it's a project dedicated to encountering and understanding the unknown.  I'm excited that Magnuson will have the opportunity to see and listen, to explore and ponder, to change and be changed.  I believe that, in itself, is priceless.  But it doesn't stop there.  What I'm really excited about is that Magnuson, being the artist that he is, will then be able to share those experiences with us.  Share them in a way that is deeply impactful, using a medium, travel gaming, that has never been used before.

Now, I will admit that I'm a bit biased when it comes to this particular project, gamemaker, and person.  After all, he's one of my favorite people, one of my favorite artists, and one of my favorite thinkers.  I find his ideas compelling and his conviction inspiring.  He's one of the very few people who has the power, in a 60 minute conversation, to actually change my perspective on a topic, and broaden my worldview.

Magnuson is a person of integrity, living and creating out of a strong sense of necessity, compassion, and humility.  So when I tell you that his creative contribution can actually impact the world, I truly, wholeheartedly believe it.

"I want to travel around the world and communicate the things I experience.  To help me understand the world better, and maybe, just maybe, to help increase understanding in a broader context.  Perhaps that's arrogance, but for me it's hope."

So what are you waiting for?  Become a backer.  Because choosing peace, creativity, and understanding, even on the small scale, is always a good thing.

peace quote of the day [Rabbis for Human Rights: Torah]

The essence of Torah, as summarized by Hillel’s statement “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow” (Shabbat 31a), reflects the experience and ethical consciousness of the Jewish people. The Torah states explicitly: “Do not wrong a stranger who resides with you in your land. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens: you shall love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (Lev. 19:33-34). Our historical experience of exile and redemption, as well as our ethical consciousness, must sensitize us to the suffering of others and compel us to defend the rights of all who dwell among us.

-from Rabbis for Human Rights: Judaism & Human Rights, Principles of Faith

Ethnic Cleaning: the fate of Arab Israelis in Israel

The Israeli Declaration of Independence declares that "[The State of Israel] will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations."


Unfortunately, it lied.


Nearly 20% of Israel's citizens are not Jews.  They are Arab.  And yet, despite claims that "Arab Israelis are citizens of Israel with equal rights,"every human rights group we spoke to in Israel (most of which were Jewish) declared that the Arab citizens of Israel are consistently discriminated against, and many live in a constant state of fear.  


Just to be clear, I am not talking about the Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories.  I am talking about the Arabs living within the borders of Israel itself, who are supposedly recognized as full citizens by the Israeli government. 


One example of this disparity is the difference between the law of return (which makes it illegal for an Arab Israeli to return to their pre-1948 land) and the right of return (which gives every Jew, regardless of citizenship, the right to settle in Israel).


They also receive significantly less public services (i.e. money for schools, health care, road cleanup, etc.) than their Jewish counterparts, despite paying the same amount of taxes.  


One of the Jews we talked to at B'Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) cited this as one of the main reasons he got involved with the organization: I have eyes, he said.  I grew up seeing the way we lived, and seeing the way our Arab neighbors lived, just across the street.  I knew they paid the same taxes, and I couldn't understand why they were treated so differently.  


But this is all just an introduction, for what I actually wanted to share, which is Max Blumenthal's article, "The 'Summer Camp Of Destruction:' Israeli High Schoolers Assist The Razing Of A Bedouin Town."


The thing that really struck me in this account of the demolition of a Bedouin village in the Negev (which took place on July 26th) is the fact that the Arabs involved were Israeli citizens.


But instead of being protected by their government and neighbors, they were surrounded by gloating volunteers, celebrating the destruction of an Arab community in their midst.

A number of villagers including Abu Madyam told me the volunteers smashed windows and mirrors in their homes and defaced family photographs with crude drawings. Then they lounged around on the furniture of al-Arakib residents in plain site of the owners. Finally, according to Abu Matyam, the volunteers celebrated while bulldozers destroyed the homes.

“What we learned from the summer camp of destruction,” Abu Madyam remarked, “is that Israeli youth are not being educated on democracy, they are being raised on racism.”

Blumenthal highlights the disturbing reality that many of these volunteers are teenagers, officially working for the Israeli police.   

Not only are they being indoctrinated to swear blind allegiance to the military, they are learning to treat the Arab outclass as less than human. The volunteers’ behavior toward Bedouins, who are citizens of Israel and serve loyally in Israeli army combat units despite widespread racism, was strikingly reminiscent of the behavior of settler youth in Hebron who pelt Palestinian shopkeepers in the old city with eggs, rocks and human waste. If there is a distinction between the two cases, it is that the Hebron settlers act as vigilantes while the teenagers of Israeli civilian guard vandalize Arab property as agents of the state.

Blumenthal's concern echoes that of the Arab Association for Human Rights, who we met with in Nazareth.  Unlike other organizations (B'Tselem, Al Haq, etc.) working for Arab rights in the Occupied Territories, these were Israeli citizens working for human rights for Arabs in Israel.  The director informed us that his great fear is that, while the situation in the Occupied Territories will eventually be resolved, one way or another, the situation for Arabs in Israel will just continue to deteriorate, because they are invisible.  

Most do not even know they exist.  The terms Israeli and Arab are thought to be mutually exclusive.   

While the individual suffering is heartbreaking, it is the trend (and legal precedence) that is truly terrifying.  As Blumenthal states, "The spectacle of Israeli youth helping destroy al-Arakib helps explain why 56% of Jewish Israeli high school students do not believe Arabs should be allowed to serve in the Knesset."   

Take a moment.  Read that again.  More than half of Jewish youth (the next generation of leaders and law makers) do not believe that Arab citizens should have a voice in the law-making of their country.  

They want the minority silenced. 

As for the present condition of Israeli democracy, it is essential to consider the way in which the state pits its own citizens against one another, enlisting the Jewish majority as conquerers while targeting the Arab others as, in the words of Zionist founding father Chaim Weizmann,“obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path.” Historically, only failing states have encouraged such corrosive dynamics to take hold. That is why the scenes from al-Arakib, from the demolished homes to the uprooted gardens to the grinning teens who joined the mayhem, can be viewed as much more than the destruction of a village. They are snapshots of the phenomenon that is laying Israeli society as a whole to waste.

This is America's democratic ally in the Middle East.

peace quote of the day [heroism]

"Who is the greatest hero?  One who makes an enemy into a friend." - Avot d'Rabbi Natan (23:1)

why don't they listen?

On a side note, I so wish that Christian groups visiting the Holy Land would meet with organizations like Rabbis for Human Rights.  Organizations that share their heart for loving God and loving Israel, and could maybe open their eyes to the fact that continuing to allow consistent human rights violations is not the way to love either.

Rabbis for Human Rights: the voice of a God who loves

Rabbis for Human Rights is a humanitarian organization that seeks to restore true righteousness to the State of Israel.

Meeting with Rabbi Michael Schwartz, around a wide oval table in their headquarters in Jerusalem, we were told that their organization is driven by the Old Testament command to take care of the fatherless, the widow, and the stranger in the land.  That, said Rabbi Schwartz, is what true religion looks like.  

The work of the rabbis is multi-faceted, centering on Social and Economic Justice (the protection of the poor), Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and Human Rights Education. 

Much of their work in the Occupied Territories revolves around helping Palestinians maintain physical access to the land they own.  According to the law, if Palestinians can be kept off their land (even by such unjust means as barbed wire fences, armed soldiers, or violent settlers) then the land attains the status of "no-man's land" and is legally seizable by the Israeli government.  This is one of the main techniques that has gained settlers the control of 42% of the West Bank.  

(Look at that percentage again.  Did you really see it?  42% of the WEST BANK is controlled by settlements considered illegal under international law.)

Some of their most unique work, however, is under the heading of Human Rights Education.  RHR rabbis work with religious youth preparing to serve their country in the IDF (Israeli Defense Force).  Together they look at Israel's Declaration of Independence (in the absence of a constitution, which Israel does not yet have), in combination with relevant scripture, and wrestle with questions of ethics and morality.  How does a soldier, loyal to his country and obedient to God, make decisions within the impossible situations that young Israelis are likely to find themselves in?  How do they maintain the innocence, humanity, and dignity of both themselves and their Palestinian brothers and sisters (or enemies, depending on how you want to categorize)?  

One of the reasons that this work is so vitally significant is that the IDF has their own rabbis (and here there was a trace of anger -- or was it pain? -- in Rabbi Schwartz's voice).  Rabbis who hand out pamphlets to young soldiers declaring that Palestinians are less than human; declaring that annihilating such sub-humans is the act of a holy war; declaring that killing them is not murder, but righteous victory.  

For all our sakes, Rabbi Schwartz seemed to plead, we must teach them another way.

But perhaps most important of all their work, they seek to generate hope.  There are Israeli and American Jews who have come to them, Schwartz told us, and said that the only reason they can continue to wear the kippah, or call themselves religious Jews, is because of the work of RHR and those like them.  

My favorite story illustrating this work of hope-building was the one Rabbi Schwartz left us with (a story that is briefly referenced in the New York Times op-ed article about RHR, In Israel, the Noble vs. the Ugly):

His coworker (Rabbi Asherman) once got a call about settler violence against Palestinians.  When he got there, the Palestinians, extremely agitated, began throwing stones at the settlers and the soldiers protecting them.  Unable to condone violence, he left.  Only to get called minutes later to be told that Israeli soldiers were using a Palestinian child as a human shield.  He returned to the site to find a 13-year-old boy tied to the front of a tank.  Going up to the soldiers, he asked them if they knew that such acts were in violation of the Geneva convention, and could constitute war crimes.  In response, he was head-butted, and tied to the front of the tank with the child.  When the traumatized child was later interviewed by Al Gazira, he told them that, yes, he was having nightmares, and, yes, he was terrified of the soldiers.  But he also said that a tall Jew, with a red beard and a kippah on his head, came to his rescue. 

And that, right there, is the testimony of hope.   

But although it was Rabbi Schwartz who told us that bitterness is the result of inaction, still there are elements of the situation that even he will admit are very bleak indeed.  

For instance (and this was a sentiment repeated by almost every human rights group we met with), one of the strongest movements in Israel today is the movement to de-legitimize human rights groups, and exhaust the strength of those opposing injustice.

May the day never come when they succeed.    

Travel Writing: a child born in Bethlehem

I scribbled this in my notebook while staying with a host family in Beit Sahour (next door to Bethlehem).  The family has bullet holes in their home -- a remnant from the 2nd Intifada, when standing on your balcony could be considered a crime.
______________________

Babies, I think, may be the international language of love.

All that is needed is one glance at the large, bright eyes, the guarded smiles, the small, pudgy fingers, the wild squeals, and it would take a hard heart to not surrender entirely.

Our host grandmother kisses the fat rolls of the baby's thighs, laughing at the child's delight, cooing at his noises.  Her voice, pitched high, speaks nonsense in his ear.

We watched as the grandfather, a man of few words and severe dignity (who would barely speak in our direction), became a child himself, playing games with his grandson in his arms.  Chuckling in his satisfaction and pride.

And I wish that all the mothers of Palestine could hold all of the babies of Israel, and vice versa.  Maybe then we would not be so quick to kill.

peace quote of the day

"Social justice is the sum of millions of acts of relational justice." - Marvin Olasky

peace quote of the day

I'm not sure this qualifies as a peace quote.  Maybe a justice quote?  Or maybe it's just a self-interested attempt to separate myself from Christian Zionism.  It just continues to baffle me how anyone reading the bible could believe that God is somehow disinterested in Palestinian pain.  Could believe that prophetic fulfillment is somehow more important than mercy, justice, or compassion.  Could believe that speaking out against murder, theft, and lawlessness is somehow to be anti-Israeli.  

Was it not the prophets -- those who condemned Israel the most strongly -- who wept for her the most passionately? "Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. . . . Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears!  I would weep day and night for the slain of my people." (Jer. 8:21-9:1)

But perhaps it is only those who can do both who have the right to speak  We talk of the "prophetic voice," but until I can weep over Israel's pain, do I really have the right to say anything at all?

Jeremiah 7:3-11:
This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place.  Do not trust in deceptive words and say, "This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!"  If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever.  But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.

Will you steal and murder . . . and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, "We are safe" -- safe to do all these detestable things?  Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?  But I have been watching! declares the LORD.