The Betty Carter

Peace Lecture

Earlham College

March 28th, 2006

 

 

IN THE FACE

OF VIOLENCE

 

 

Colin South

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

I would like to thank  the lectureship committee for the invitation to give this year’s Betty Carter lecture. It is a privilege and an honor. I would also like to thank Friends United Meeting, on behalf of Kathy and me, for the four years that we served in Ramallah/el-Bireh in Palestine from 2000-2004. It has been a privilege to work for Friends United Meeting and I have been particularly glad of the last three months support which has been used to think and write and plan this lecture. There are always too many people to thank but I would like to mention two people; the pastor of First Friends Church, Doug Gwyn, who has been my mentor as I have thought and planned this lecture, and Barbara Mays for her advice on style and grammar.

 

Our community in Ramallah/el-Bireh was over one thousand Muslim and Christian  Kindergarten to grade 12 students  and their families, one hundred plus full time and part time staff, the pharmacist, the greengrocer, the nut seller, the fruit juice dispenser, the local government officials, the  money exchanger, the hardware store owner, the jeweler, the gift shop owner,  the restaurateur, café waiter, cake store assistant and bread maker, and many more… our community. They are all held close to our heart and it is to all of them that I dedicate this lecture.

 

I was acutely aware of how difficult it was for Christians and Muslims in the community to challenge the use of physically violent resistance to Israeli occupation. Even Christians and Muslims who taught at Friends Schools and believed in the principles of non violence found it difficult, if not dangerous at times, to openly advocate in our wider community non violence as a strategy for opposing the occupation.

 

The intention of the lecture is to affirm our Palestinian community in its present non-violent strategies; to encourage this community to make use of the language of non violence and to accept its possibilities for transformation; and to re-engage with their Mosques and Churches in the loving search for a just world at peace.

 

We wrote 60 field letters in the period from 2001 through to 2003 and these were the inspiration for this lecture. They became a spiritual exercise and a way to manage anger and despair. We are grateful for the patience and support of our readership, largely among Friends internationally.  Some of you are here tonight so thank you..

 

The image of Jesus in a boat on Lake Galilee with his disciples in the midst of a storm figured strongly in March, 2002. This was just before Operation Defensive Shield was launched on the West Bank by the Israeli Defense Force. To help you share with us the feeling and the experience of that time, Kathy will read a significant extract from that letter.  Although I take the blame for  most of the content of our letters, they were never sent without Kathy’s careful critique and sensitive additions.


MARCH 2002

 

 

‘A windstorm arose on the lake, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; ...’

 

The situation here is terrible. It is difficult to find other words to describe

feelings when yet again a suicide bomber blows himself to pieces killing or injuring others in Jerusalem or in Tel Aviv or in some other part of Israel. Again men, women and children die leaving behind grieving relatives and frightened people. Once more the fragile process that might lead to peace and justice is shaken.  Israeli Defense Forces bulldoze houses of peace loving families to the ground… without warning… in the middle of the night… in the name of security.  Israeli authorities routinely abuse children, from age 8 to 16,  in prison because they have thrown stones. Young men recount their experience in Israeli prisons of sleep deprivation, cold water thrown on them in cold weather, beatings in order to extort confessions. Men and women are driven to a level of brutality and bestiality which we have come to know as present in our humanity only too well. The escalation of the violence in this situation is indeed a tempest. Nowhere in this Holy Land is there safety and security. No-one and no place is inviolable. The forces of evil that live not far below the surface of our experience break out and over us and around us

 

'but he was asleep.....'

 

Where is this God of ours? Is he asleep, has he forgotten, is he somewhere else

or perhaps he is just not around. When we get ourselves into a mess, fall into a

pit or put ourselves in harm's way, do we really expect our God to dig us out

physically and emotionally? Do we believe in a God who acts that way in human

affairs? Well no... well yes. Jesus was with the disciples. He was right in

the middle of the mess, in the pit of the boat, in harm's way. They were surprised that Jesus was there and did nothing but sleep. So often we expect God to take action when inaction seems to be the response. But David, the psalmist, speaks for his experience,  'Yea though I walk through the valley of death, yet will I fear no evil for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.'  God does not destroy the valley of death, he experiences it with you. We perhaps should concentrate more on our inner response to danger and not on its outer manifestations.

 

'And they went and woke him up, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” ...'

 

I can identify with the disciples. The situation after so many years is again at a critical stage. Lord, we are perishing! Just as in the boat, there is desperation. Many readers have told us that the situation brings them to tears as they feel the hurt, pain and distress. Here in the Holy Land the story of the Via Dolorosa is reaching its climax yet again. The cry goes up ,'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!' and again  'Father…if you are willing, take this cup from me!' 

 

How many times must the United Nations tell the world that the Israeli government is drenched in illegal actions, in hypocrisy and in state approved atrocities? How many reports by human rights organizations do we need? How  many times do visitors need to witness what is going on? How many times must Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders remind the world that this is not what God requires of us... Isaiah asks, 'Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?'  .

 

'And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?”...'

 

What kind of faith is this that we are supposed to have? Are we not entitled to be fearful? Are our prayers not good enough? Are they not often enough? Not sincere enough? Is the continuing situation no more than God's feedback on our failures? Do our prayers not come from the right place in our hearts? Are we so beset by our own misdoings and ill thoughts that we cannot hear You? Lord have mercy, is it any wonder that our faith is shaken when our cries are not heard and inaction seems to be the only response?

 

What courage must we possess not to be labeled cowards? What are we supposed to do? Do we not have courage when our children walk the hills to school in

the mud taking an hour and a half not the ten minutes of a year ago? Do we not

have courage when the Israeli soldiers shoot at us as we climb the hills  to work and our children try to get to school so desperately. Do you not see that we seek  not be beaten by aggression and violence as we  escape the confines of our village prison? Do our children not have courage when despite our misgivings and anxieties, they throw stones at the Israeli soldiers and tanks… when they continue to do so even when their friends fall to the ground hit by live bullets and shrapnel from tank shells? Do we not have courage as our homes tumble, as our olive trees are ripped from the ground, as the violence slaughters our animals? Do we not have courage as tomorrow we pick up our lives again and try to be family once more.? What more do you want of us, O Lord. What does this faith require of us?

 

There were no answers to Jesus's question in the story. Jesus knew the human condition. There was no need for excuses.

 

'Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was dead calm’.

 

There are still storms on Lake Galilee today. Jesus may have calmed that storm but not every storm. His action was for his disciples at that moment. Jesus had compassion and acted. But why? If his faith was complete as surely it was...they could have ridden the storm out or they could have finished this life earlier than they expected and died assured of salvation. To be cynical, was a dead calm

necessary? Was Jesus showing off?

 

Jesus was not showing off. He was demonstrating what it was to walk with God.  The storm did not matter;  it was of no consequence. Or rather, it would have been of no consequence to anyone who lives and walks and breathes the presence of God. For such a person there is nothing but calm. There is no wind and sea, the inner work of rebuking and distancing such feelings would have been done. His disciples were caught up in the intensity of it, the mystery of it.

 

'They were amazed   ....'

 

The resilience of the human spirit is remarkable. Just this week, a few days after 150 Israeli Defense Force tanks and 20,000 Israeli soldiers left Ramallah/ElBireh and after the major damage to the roads had been repaired, the elementary school children at FGS laugh and enjoy the skit prepared by Grade 5 for Chapel. The campus was peaceful, the children smiled and all the teachers bar one, who was sick, were there at work and gave of their best. The ebullient and shyer teenagers of Grade 11 prepared and served a barbecue for the more sober and self assured young men and women of Grade 12 as is the tradition of the Friends Boys School... a tradition that goes back to Violet Zarou's time. They enjoyed each other's company, just talked, larked a little, boys and girls soft eyed each other.  In each of these children, adolescents and adults, present in these two situations, lie a deep history of this conflict. It  scrapes away at each soul. But above and beyond this continuing hurt lies promise and peace and a future. The potential for the movement of the love of God in and among us is limitless. It is just a short step surely to that place where we sense the deepness and walk in the healing love of God, not distant from the reality of suffering but deeply present with it. Not divorced from feeling but absorbed by feeling. Not lost in thought but visible in action.

 

'and exclaimed, 'What sort of man is this, that even the wind and sea obey him......'

Matthew 8 v23-27

 

Our God is a God of compassion and surprises. We need to live in the depths and realities of our lives together. We need to be drawn deeper into the Love of God so that our walk with God breathes in peace and justice and breathes out fear and anxiety. We cannot escape life's sicknesses but we can foot ourselves in the rock of God's love. If we do, even the tempest can be calmed. This is God's promise and the record of God's actions.

 

Let us pray that all of our initiatives seat themselves in God's promise and God's Action... whether they be helping to run a school in Palestine... watching for human rights abuse at checkpoints or on the streets of Hebron... working on legal arguments to defend the homeless...trying to find a negotiated solution to the

political questions of this dispute... lobbying Congress,Parliament and the Knesset... working for disarmament... sharing the pain and the hurt of the refugee and dispossessed... praying for peace... whatever it is that we do and for whatever cause it is that we defend.. God dwell with you and with us all.

 

INNER JOURNEYING

 

We all experienced fear, anxiety and stress in the first few months of 2002. Later I found that I had damaged by tongue through grinding my teeth at night, something that I had never done before. I had to have a biopsy some six months later. I found also that a heart valve, which had been imperfect since birth probably, for the first time began to show signs of wear and tear. By the end of our time in Ramallah, ‘hypertension’ began to surface for the first time. These symptoms of stress and accelerated aging are under control now but they are not unique in Ramallah/el-Bireh. They ranked alongside the spate of childhood cancers, family violence and breakdown, childhood trauma and many other psychosomatic illnesses and abnormal behaviours fostered by the insurgency and low-level war that was most people’s experience.

 

Over the first two years in Ramallah, anger and frustration grew to proportions that required us to struggle with the Peace Testimony to which we are committed. We remembered in our letters the estrangement that we experienced during those early years as we visited Jerusalem to shop or to collect mail or to escape the cauldron of Ramallah/el-Bireh for a short time. I wrote ‘it was difficult for both of us as we walked among Jewish families in the West Jerusalem parks who were enjoying the sunshine and the Sabbath. It was a family occasion with fathers taking children out, playing ball, families picnicking, lovers walking hand in hand. But it was hard to reconcile the peacefulness of this scene with the terror and panic these same people had supported in the West Bank just hours before’. 

 

We were only too aware of the humiliation of many good men and women, children and adolescents that were subject on occasion to the pure sadism of some Israeli troops who were no doubt driven by the thirst for revenge and the shadow side of human nature. Kathy and I felt some of that pain every time we heard of some new degrading experience…a man at a checkpoint stripped naked for no good reason, a gentle young man known us, recently married with one small child, forced to sit on his haunches in the middle of the street for five hours, with no chance to relieve himself. He sat under the hot son in front of a check point with a rifle aimed at him, told that if he moved he would be shot because…. there had been a suicide bombing the night before in Tel Aviv.

 

Our letters did not do justice to the anger that we felt, but our distress was simmering. The problem comes if the energy from that anger is used for revenge. Walter Wink writes in ‘Engaging the Powers’,

 

‘Some of us may need to feel our murderous rage, and fantasize acting it out, so that we can imagine also the consequences, and repent of our folly – all without lifting a finger… perhaps also we could recognize the personal, projected anger that is triggered by situations of social oppression, so that we are free to maintain an objective fury at evil, and draw on all the blessed energy of the violent side of our natures. …

 

It may prove beneficial to be forced to face, daily, the humiliating fact that some us are no less violent than those whole policies we oppose. Maybe then we can love them, since we’re no better, and avoid the self-righteousness that ends all dialogue.’

 

Paul writes from Corinth,

 

‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?’

 

Paul does not imply that the Love of Christ will banish famine, perils, or the sword only that Love has dominion over these challenges. None of our associated emotions; stress, anxiety, shame, anger, or fear, shall separate us from the love of Christ!

 

Early Friends recognized that to lead a life faithful to Christ, a life of inner peace, first required us to submit ourselves to an examination of our intentions, our prejudices, our values, our words and deeds in the Light of Christ. It was a cleansing, energizing, peace-seeking process for Early Friends. Michael Birkel writes in ‘Silence and Witness’

 

The light at first exposed their capacity for evil but then led them to the victory of good over evil within them. A sense of inward peace followed – often after a lengthy internal conflict – and a deep sense of community with Friends who had been through the same harrowing experience. This sense of victory energized them to labour to transform the social order into a godly society…  some Friends described this process as ‘the Lamb’s War’.

 

In the Hadith, the sayings of Mohammad, there is reference to the ‘greater jihad’ as the INNER struggle with the Truth. The respected Muslim scholar,  Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, writes that the true Islamic jihad as it relates to individuals is a positive and continuous process, which is at work throughout the entire life of a believer. In one kind of this individual process, jihad-e-nafs, an individual seeks to struggle for control of one’s negative and undesirable feelings and to persevere in the life of God’s choice in all circumstances. This too is a reference to the inner purification necessary as part of a journey to a peaceful life within Islam.

 

We have learned another language about ‘the light exposing a capacity for evil’ and leading to inward peace and wholeness of life. Jung writes in 1960  that

 

            ‘the individual who wishes to have an answer to the problem of evil, as it is posed today, has need, first and foremost, of self-knowledge, that is, the utmost possible knowledge of his own wholeness. He must know relentlessly how much good he can do, and what crimes he is capable of , and must beware of regarding the one as real and the other as illusion. Both are elements within his nature, and both are bound to come to light in him, should he wish-as he ought-to live without self-deception or self-delusion”

 

Jung’s process of individuation, Wink’s stress on self-awareness, the internal housecleaning of the Lamb’s war and the inner struggle for Truth in Islamic ‘jihad’,  all recognize the importance of achieving ‘wholeness’  and an ‘inner peace’ by achieving greater self awareness and self knowledge.

 

PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS

 

In November 2002, I wrote concerning the Israeli-Palestinian situation;

 

This is not like the war in Rwanda or Bosnia or oppression in Zimbabwe…Our situation is more insidious. It thrives on an undercurrent of fear, suspicion and hatred that emanates deeply within people’s psyche driven by a long history and its current events. There is a cat and mouse game being played out. There is a mindless curiosity and casual pleasure in the suffering (inflicted) … in situations where there are no apparent acceptable solutions to seemingly intractable political problems.

In October 2001, I had written,

 

So ingrained in each of us is,  the instinct to recover from damaged pride, to strike out when struck, to harbor revenge when hurt, to demonstrate dominion over others, to justify our feelings regardless of anyone else’s,  that armed conflict is easily understood and justified and easily made compatible with these base instincts of our human personality.

 

Some of the terrible incidents of inhumanity  recorded in ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ and at other times in the West Bank were committed by a platoon of Israeli soldiers and and needed the sanction of at least the platoon commander. It is clear from the number of well documented incidents that the Israeli Army gives implicit support to the maltreatment of detainees. House demolitions by the Israeli Army without regard to the homelessness it creates, the annexations of land without regard to the fragile economy that most Palestinian villages rely upon, the use of the public water supply as an instrument of oppression, are all clear expressions of government policy towards the occupied territories.

 

The incidents of endorsement and support for suicide bombing in civilian areas supported and  promoted unashamedly by Islamic Jihad and Hamas, the widespread corruption within the former Fatah led Palestinian Authority with large sums of public money disappearing into private bank accounts, the nepotism within the legal, policing and security structures that was systemic, the poor conditions of male and female prisoners held in Palestinian prisons,  are all symptoms of a deeper malaise.

 

At the FUM Triennial in Nairobi, July 2002, I stated that Dishonesty, Self Righteousness, Apathy and Unenlightened Self Interest have become demonic in the Israel/Palestinian conflict. These facts of our life had become self-justifying and had taken on a life of their very own.

 

Lest we begin to feel smug, let us remind ourselves that none of these phenomena are unique to Israel/Palestine. We have too recent memories of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Baghdad and Basra, corporate dishonesty and private embezzlement ,within our own societies to feel smug.

 

In writing about the work of the philosopher Hannah Arendt, Larry May describes HOW in Arendt’s thinking,  bureaucracies such as any corporate institution can become ‘evil in intent’.

 

‘People can be socialized by bureaucratic institutions to do acts that they would otherwise see as evil…The reason that ordinary men and women can come to participate in great evil is that bureaucratic institutions socialize their members to be thoughtless, at least concerning what is right or wrong within the institution’

 

Lt. Gen Romeó Dallaire, the UN commander during the Rwanda genocide taking place right under his nose, writes

 

I rejected the picture of génocidaires as ordinary human beings who had performed evil acts. To my mind, their crimes had made them inhuman, turned them into machines made of flesh that imitated the motions of being human.

 

There is no doubt that Evil has an existence. That has been my experience.  ‘Evil intent’ can be palpable, a characteristic of groups and not just individuals. Walter Wink describes such powers, which can be for good or for evil, as  ‘an outer manifestation of an inner spirituality and interiority’. They become effective when they are’ incarnated, institutionalized and systemic’.

 

Violence has a way of spiraling out of control. Evil intent has a way of gathering momentum until it becomes institutionalized and demonic. Dallaire in his book ‘Shake Hands with the Devil’  warns about the deepening frustration of young people which may lead to a spiral of evil resulting in such a community incarnation;

 

… many signs point to the fact that the youth of the Third World will no longer tolerate living in circumstances that give them no hope for the future. From suicide bombers of Palestine and Chechnya to the young terrorists who fly planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we can no longer afford to ignore them… The global village is deteriorating at a rapid pace, and in the children of the world, the result is rage… Human beings who have no rights, no security, no future, no hope and no means to survive are a desperate group who will do desperate things to take what they believe they need and deserve. (p521)

 

We have seen something of this vortex of anger against perceived discrimination of muslim communities which has been sparked by the Danish cartoons. Our communities have too easily allowed Evil to become institutionalized in the very fabric of our societies, often in the name of freedom and democracy.

 

OVERCOMING EVIL

 

Addressing a Friends World Committee for Consultation meeting in January 2003, Ron Mock of Northwest Yearly Meeting reminded us;

 

‘We cannot coerce our way  to the Peaceable kingdom. We can only convince our way there. People will come freely , or they won’t come at all. Or worst,  if we try to force-march them there, we will only be setting up a new evil empire to replace the old ones.

 

This echoes what Noam Chomsky said in a debate with Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag in December 1967 about the use of force to bring about societal change;

 

‘ a new society rises out of the actions that are taken to form it, and the institutions and ideology it develops are not independent of those actions; in fact, they’re heavily colored by them, they’re shaped by them in many ways. And one expects that actions that are cynical and vicious, whatever their intent, will inevitably condition and deface the quality of the ends that are achieved.’

 

From the same 2003 FWCC conference, ‘Friends Peace Witness in Times of Crisis’, Mary Lord states with confidence;

 

War almost never works, and then only  with great destruction and loss of life. Peacemaking, by contrast, is very practical. It has a much better record of success, is less costly, and usually much quicker. …

 

It is time to speak the truth of the practicality of active, creative, often heroic peacemaking. That is the only way to peace, security, and justice. It is time to point out the senselessness of war.

Gandhi referred to a non violent strategy  that he originated as ‘satyagraha’ which combined the two Hindu words for Truth and firmness and together implied for Gandhi, a force which is born of Truth and Love and non violence. For Gandhi the quest for ‘Absolute Truth’ was part and parcel of the non violent struggle. It was as much an inner journey as an outer journey.  In recognizing such Truth in yourself you achieved liberation and, paradoxically, a realization of the self.

 

Gandhi’s strategy for non violence was to confront people with inescapable and Absolute Truth about a particular situation and, as a consequence, if they also embraced the value of the search for Absolute Truth within them, then they would be convinced and the situation transformed.

 

Michael Nagler explains the meaning of non violence as a process of humanization. He writes

 

As a young activist friend of mine recently said, “non violence is when you ‘humanize’ your enemy and let your ‘enemy’ humanize you.” When you respond with courage and respect under duress, it raises your image, humanizes you, in the opponent’s eyes – and helps, in however small a way, to enhance the awareness of humanness in the global culture. This awareness in turn defuses some of the world’s violence.

 

Whilst peacemakers may adopt a non violent approach in the face of violence, such an approach may provoke a violent response. Conflict may be unavoidable. Hanan Ashrawi led a women’s march through the checkpoints which ended in tear gas and some injury. Professional people in Ramallah led boycotts of Israeli goods which if effective would have led inexorably to greater Palestinian unemployment. If we are truth speaking in love or otherwise, we may have difficulty avoiding upsetting others and making them angry. Christian Peacemaker Team’s work in Hebron supports the right of children to an education, and the right of Palestinian villagers to their homes, to their right to graze sheep on common land and to their olive trees. This frustrates and angers settler communities. Such actions are conflictual and result from non violent action by peace makers in the face of violence.

 

Where is the boundary, when using non-violence as a method, between being the oppressed and being the oppressor? Kathy and I often felt that we spoke the Truth in Love but we upset some Friends who argued that we were not balanced and were anti-semitic in our choice of truths. Doug Gwyn in his help to me thinking through this lecture, reminded me of Wolf Mendl’s 1974 Swarthmore lecture. Wolf suggests some additions to Quaker Advices and Queries that might have been helpful.

 

In your zeal for the cause, are you tempted to confuse self-righteousness with the righteousness of God? Does your hatred of the system and your struggle for justice lead you to think that the oppressor is the devil incarnate and not a human being like yourself? Are you inclined to think of non violence as an end in itself rather than as an instrument in the service of Love?

 

We were more critical of ourselves after the summer of 2002 when we had had a time to reflect among Friends at home in England.

 

Non violent action may also be costly. The cost of non violent action in the face of palpable evil, in its extreme, is isolation, pain and death. We must acknowledge the risk of  these ultimate costs if non violence is to be a successful strategy. Jesus paid the ultimate price for a non violent strategy to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promise of salvation, of forgiveness, of grace, and of hope for mankind. Tom Fox, one of the four Christian Peace-maker Team members held against his will,  knowingly too, paid the ultimate price.

 

Non violent action is a strategy for engagement in the world not estrangement from the world. In ‘Letters and Papers from Prison’, Bonhoeffer states

 

(At one time) I thought I could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life, or something like it. ….I discovered later, and I am still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself…(adopt) a this-worldliness (by which I mean) living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God , taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world –watching Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith, that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes a man and a Christian.

 

Non violent strategies are used by Palestinians every day of their lives to speak out against Israeli domination. They may not recognize their actions as such strategies. It would be helpful if they did so that they had honorable language to defend their already respectable non violent actions.

 

STRATEGIES FOR NON VIOLENT ACTION

 

Non violent strategies range from non conflictual to conflictual; from strategies which provide the building blocks for peace and the strength for more assertive action to strategies which upset and anger an oppressor because they undermine the very structures which keep oppression in place. In my view, there are five markers in this range progressing from non conflictual to conflictual. I make no value judgment in relation to one marker against the other.

 

1st Marker. COMMUNITY BUILDING AND RECONCILIATION. Community building is a strategy to strengthen a local community, create within it a sense of pride and ownership and deepen a commitment to its own welfare. Alongside community building is a more focused Reconciliation. Reconciliation is the building of positive relationships between people on different sides of a  conflict. The purpose of this approach is to deepen the climate for peace making.

 

Occasions for celebrating life and humanity and being community were very important in Ramallah/el-Bireh. Friends Schools were illustrative of this type of community building although there were many other examples that I could choose. To honor its history and vitality today, the Friends School undertook its Centennial Celebrations in 2001, despite all the chaos and attendant organizational difficulty around it. The completion of the 1.8 million $US ASHA building on site at the Boys School, the establishment of the Swift House Botanical and Organic Gardens, the complete computer networking of the Friends Boys and Girls Schools, the program for the retraining of staff, the revitalization of music in the twin towns of Ramallah/el-Bireh, through close co-operation of Daniel Barrenboim, the Music Conservatory and the Friends School, the refurbishment of the Friends Play School at the Amari Refugee Camp; these are all examples of  peace making, community building. They are vital to the mental health of a community. They give hope and prepare the ground for non violent resolution of conflict.

 

2nd Marker. PASSIVE RESISTANCE. Passive resistance is a stubbornness of people who are determined not to let an oppressor succeed in destroying or unsettling a way of life. It is a symbol of resistance to go about your daily life, the best you can, without losing courage or hope. There is nothing necessarily illegal about these actions but they are persistent and determined attempts to maintain the dignity of day to day activity.

 

Thousands of Palestinians  go about their daily business and celebrate their family lives in spite of the actions of the Israeli military, increasing closures and the economic impediments placed in their paths. Jean Zaru, the Clerk of Friends Meeting, Ramallah,  regularly refers to this passive resistance as a key example of non violent opposition to Israeli government intentions. There were many occasions too when the Christian community in Ramallah led Christian and Muslim people together in candlelit processions for peace around the town calling for peace and reconciliation.

 

3rd Marker. INDIVIDUAL NON COOPERATION. Individual non cooperation  is a more focused and determined attempt to bypass rules, military orders and oppressive legislation. It is a deliberate act of non cooperation that does not, of itself, destabilize an oppressor but ‘cocks a snook’ at them and helps to rebuild a community’s self respect. The personal risk level is greater than passive resistance may imply. It is not directly confrontational but subtly subversive and, like the ‘black-economy’, often hidden.

 

Despite road blocks, check-points, and travel restrictions, Palestinians made their way over mountains and through the mud, seeking to avoid being shot and sometimes being wounded, breaking through Israeli Military Orders to visit relatives, go to work, and travel internationally through Amman. A four-person delegation from Friends School, Ramallah/el-Bireh managed to visit  three Schools in the UK as part of a British Council Exchange program, right in the middle of a West Bank closure. At the closed Kalendia checkpoint just five miles from Ramallah, they hid behind boulders, ducked and ran to avoid being hit by Israeli soldiers firing their machine guns at them. Eventually, with the courage and imagination of taxi drivers determined to be uncooperative with occupation forces, they wound their way across less-traveled mountain roads avoiding military and police checkpoints until they were able to present their valid documents at the border crossing to Jordan for their international flights. Of such is individual non cooperation.

 

4th Marker. TRUTH TELLING. Truth telling  is a determination to tell it as it is and not to let deliberate attempts at smothering the truth, avoiding the truth, ignoring the truth or distorting the truth prevail. Ultimately non violent action has no moral basis and therefore no power unless truth is at the heart of its endeavor. 

 

One of the main purposes behind our letters and our deputation was Truth telling. In November 2002, we wrote;

 

We have tried and will continue to try to explain to our Friends worldwide and our family and other Friends what our Palestinian colleagues and their community feel about the situation and how they explain and understand the events that affect their lives. We will continue to do this as truthfully and as accurately as we can, trying to shed some of the emotional overlay and over emphasis from our direct involvement in this experience.

 

There were many others who had ownership of websites and e-mail lists (before blogs took off) that were used for similar effects…the electronic networks were alive with examples of non violent resistance. The School, using its new technology, experimented during this period with international school exchange of e-mail between students. People were afraid of facing the truth of other people’s realities and had a hard time accepting it but it was a vital channel for communication of feeling.

 

5th Marker. NON VIOLENT DIRECT CONFRONTATION . Non violent direct confrontation is an uncompromising deliberate and public action to assert a human right or to challenge injustice. It could be individual or group oriented. If a group, then it is organized and has leadership. It is possible for an oppressor to strike at the leadership and attempt to disable an organization. A preponderance of individual non-cooperation may be much less easily suppressed.

 

A Palestinian champion of the non violence movement, Mubarak Awad, was eventually deported by the Israeli Government. He led many successful campaigns in the 1980s which focused on civil disobedience. The path of non violent direct confrontation  can still be seen as international peacemakers stand alongside individual communities in acts of solidarity  as they witness the actions of the IDF and the militant settler community. The World Council of Churches International Observer program,  the International Solidarity Movement who lodged with Arafat in his Ramallah Government offices during the worst part of ‘Operation Defensive Shield’, the international campaigns to replant olive trees all exercise non violent solidarity with local people. There has been loss of life. Rachel Corrie is an example of a person who lost her life in front of an Israeli bulldozer standing in the way of a house demolition.

 

THE NEED FOR LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNITY SUPPORT.

 

In the Palestinian community, there is a lack of central leadership for non violent strategies. This is a strength as well as a weakness; a strength in that ‘institutional evil’ present in Governments and in armies and  militias and elsewhere in our communities, does not have an individual and single target to address; a weakness in that the diversity of focus in present non violent strategies limits the possibility for the transformational change that is required.

 

What is the milieu in which strong leaders such as  Martin Luther King ,  Mahatma Gandhi, and  Badshah Khan, are brought into prominence and effective leadership? It is the seed of an idea, the whispering of God in each of these individuals nurtured in their communities at a specific time that grew the success of their leadership. It is the nurturing of this seed that can build through community discernment and prayer an idea for action far bolder and better defined. Richard McCutcheon addressing the FWCC conference in 2003 on Friends Peace Witness, writes about the process of a growing idea which leads to a peace movement.

 

‘.. peace work, on the whole, is about whispers-what Gandhi was fond of calling the still quiet voice of God inside us…Borrowing from the Musician’s lexicon…The first movement, the one that establishes the central pattern upon which all else builds, is the inner whisper of our own heart. The second movement is characterized by attending to the whispers of love and truth in other person’s hearts through engaged, spirit-led listening. In the third movement, our own inner whisper and the whispers of these other beloved people blend together to transform both my whispers and your whispers into a new perception of reality, a deeper understanding of life, a sparkling clarity of right action, or a new way of  seeing the world. In the final movement, the whisper takes on a life of its own, so to speak, and enters the worlds as the foundation for spirit led community. Through the sharing of whispers, the creation of community is nurtured. This communion in turn fosters a common space in which to hear further whispers, making of them an environment in which individual and corporate lives can emerge as health promptings of the inner heart.’

 

We need to engage that very ground of our being, that very principle of Truth and Love, that is our God.  Such leadership is God directed. The moral imperative of a secular institution alone is insufficient to overcome the evil embedded in institutional structures but God does have such authority and the unlimitless power of love and grace. 

 

As people of faith, we need to identify ourselves with the suffering that is being experienced around us, not isolating ourselves  in our own academic, theological or financial comfort. Creative pathways are needed for dialogue and collaboration with the Church, the Mosque and the Synagogue. Our task begins with the identification of the evil within us as individuals and then as communities of faith. We need to ensure that we are listening to each other and to God,  that we may be rightly led. Then we will be able to name with integrity the institutionalization of evil in our wider communities. With such a naming we can challenge such institutions. This is not a party political concern but a concern for the social gospel, the inseparable news of good works from the good news of faith.

 

God will not leave us leaderless, if we nurture our communities in truth and love, work together to name evil clearly when we experience it, and earnestly seek to transform it. I yearn for our churches to take the lead and support those individuals who respond to the movement of the spirit in their lives to take action in a spirit of love and truth. I yearn for a church that looks outward as well as inward, national and international as well as local and personal. I yearn for a church nationally and a church locally that stands passionately,  openly and courageously for the transformation of society. The Church in Israel and Palestine is too often blind to the social gospel; concerned with personal transformation but too afraid of ‘being political’ and too concerned about its own internal struggles to attend to the quest for justice for the poor, the marginalized and the powerless.

 

This may be a familiar charge. We do not live in isolation from each other. Our deeds or lack of them as a nation, as a region and as a locality affect the lives of countless others. This is a task for Richmond, Indiana as much as it is for Ramallah, Palestine. We are only too aware today of our own demons and these will drag us down unless we acknowledge them. We need to examine ourselves and our churches and develop fertile ground for the movement of the Spirit among us. We need to be assertive in our reaction to evil intent wherever we find it, naming it, and supporting those that seek for it be challenged and transformed for the good. 

 

Thank you for listening. To close, Kathy will read an extract from one of our letters, written January 2002;

 

The work of God’s people is to be witnesses to God’s love and God’s compassion. We must critique by word and by example that which diminishes God’s relationship with humankind. It is not for us to ask, ‘Does this work?’ or ‘Does this solve the problem?’ We are called to be faithful not to be successful. If we have any success it is because we were first faithful. If others choose a different path in response to injustice, we are in no position to be self-righteous. (Romans 14). We must however speak the truth as we see it, exercise love and compassion to victim and perpetrator alike and be uncompromising in pursuit of a right relationship with God for ourselves and for others.

 

This is not a broad path. It is narrow and thwart like the Pilgrim path with dangers and personal tragedies. It is in this calling, however, that life is  perfect peace and is complete. Few of us ever reach this place with any permanence in our lifetime but it is always within our grasp and within our capacity if God is our guide and our love.