In 2000 I attended a Conference on Conflict Transformation led by Fr. Ray Helmick, S.J. at Boston College in June of the Holy Year. Jesuits were there from Zambia; Great Britain; Italy; Indonesia; Spain; India; USA. We visited His Beatitude Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, elected President of World Pax Christi; Yad Vashem the Holocaust Memorial with Dr. Ephraim Kaye; Orient House with the Palestinian Authority; Dr. Mordechai, a founding member of Peace Now, close to the Meretz Party. Dr. Mustafa Abu Sway, Muslim theology professor at Al Quds University in Jerusalem. In history Jerusalem was besieged and conquered thirty-eight times. How can we say that God has given Jerusalem to any one group? God does not reward anyone for having a particular genetic code. God's promise to Moses was religious not ethnic. Jihad has a spiritual component, struggling against evil in oneself.

Although I'm sure there are other interpretations, one version of what has happened in Israel-Palestine is found in America and the Founding of Israel, An Investigation of the Morality of America's Role by Fr. John W. Mulhall, CSP.  Is the Bible a "Deed of Ownership" to Canaan?  Abraham and Isaac are not depicted as displacing the natives but as enjoying generally a peaceful existence using Canaan's less populated regions.  When Moses' people arrived, they would have had close relatives in Canaan.  Extensive genetic, religious and cultural blending occurred.  The Canaanites were not driven out but lived on as Israelites.  The "Promised Land" was not so much a land conquered by outsiders as a land united by people already there.  Reductionists see the first books of the bible as religious stories, a literary devise, rather than history in the modern sense.  Relying on archaeological evidence they conclude that the Hebrews are primarily descendants of the Canaanites rather than a blend of Canaanites and incoming Hebrews.

Fundamentalists and biblical literalists see a "God of fire and brimstone who has its own terrifying code of justice unfettered by human concepts of human rights or of justice between humans.  God can therefore authorize human beings to destroy other human beings--soldiers, civilians, little children--and take over their land.  Some fundamentalists are also premillennialists.  They believe that one condition for the second coming of Christ and for the Millennium to follow is the 'ingathering' of all Jews into the Promised Land."  Some TV evangelists are premillennialists. Universal moral principles like "fairness" "do to others as you would have them do to you" "help those in need" "do not kill unjustly" "do not steal" should speak to all people including biblical literalists.

Mainline Protestant, Jewish and Catholic scripture scholars do not consider the bible as a deed of ownership..  They say the promises made to Abraham were not about real estate today but about spiritual values.  Did Abraham have the boundaries of a nation promised to him?  Four thousand years ago national boundaries were not known.  We cannot take a  book written several millennia ago for a peoples' spiritual growth and apply it literally to a political reality today.

Palestinians who had definite possession of land for countless generations have a definite, clear right to it.  "To take away a definite right from one person to make way for at best a doubtful right of another person does not seem morally just."
Human rights today are not determined by individual religious beliefs but by international law.

Were the Jews in Israel-Palestine first and therefore have a moral right to return?   Most Jews did not choose to return to Palestine after the Babylonian Captivity ended. In the succeeding centuries most Jews opted for life in the Diaspora rather than in Palestine, even when it was ruled by the Jewish Hasmonians.  In the decades and centuries after the deportation by the Romans in AD 135 many Jews freely emigrated from Palestine, and most Diaspora Jews did not choose to immigrate to it.  This gradually reduced to the vanishing point their descendants' moral hereditary right to Palestine.  Today it would be difficult even to identify Jews who are biologically descended from the Jews of the Babylonian Captivity or from the exodus of A.D. 135.  Many if not most Palestinian Arabs' ancestry also probably goes back in part to the Canaanites. Long term presence seems to add more weight to the Palestinian Arab side.

Did modern Jews have the right to immigrate?  There were about 13,000 Jews in Palestine in 1850.  Because of pogroms in Russia the first wave of immigrants to Palestine came from 1882-1903.  A Russian Jewish immigrant, Ze'ev Dubnov, wrote in 1882 that his final purpose was "to take possession in due course of Palestine and to restore to the Jews the political independence of which they have now been deprived for 2000 years."  Political Zionism won its first prominence when championed by Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) a Jewish Austrian playwright and journalist.  He had seen virulent anti-Semitism in Vienna and Paris and was convinced that Jews could protect themselves from it only by moving from anti-Semitic countries to a land that would be their own.  Herzl considered both Palestine, part of Argentina, and Uganda in Africa desirable sites.  In 1897 Palestine had 529,500 Arabs and 21,500 Jews.

What if at the beginning of the so-called advanced 20th century the family of humankind had insisted on basic human rights for each human person? What if all nations had accepted its share of immigrants?  What if enough Zionists had been content to develop a spiritual and cultural center in Jerusalem and set up a sovereign state elsewhere?

Instead Russian pogroms and European anti-semitism continued.  By 1914 60,000 Jews and 659,000 Arabs were in Palestine.
"The fact that one is a citizen of a particular state does not detract in any way from one's citizenship in the world community and one's common tie with all people. . . A person has the right to enter a political community where one hopes one can more fittingly provide a future for one's self and one's dependents.  Wherefore, as far as the common good rightly understood permits, it is the duty of that state to accept such immigrants and to help to integrate them as new members."  Pope John XXIII Pacem in Terris (No. 25, 106)  But no one has the right to immigrate to a country with the intent of supplanting the indigenous people, preventing the exercise of their right to self-determination or otherwise disrupting their common good.

Instead of accepting the right to self-determination of the indigenous Arabs, in 1917 Lord Balfour and the British cabinet declared:  "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."  This contradictory declaration was supported by US Presidents Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Roosevelt, and Truman, the US Senate and House, though not always without some doubts and misgivings.  Britain allowed so many non-Palestinians to immigrate that they did in fact upset "the common good rightly understood."   "How  would, should, Americans react if their right to self-determination were withheld in order that America could become the mandated territory of some second nation so that it might become the national home of a third group of people?  Would Americans consider that morally just?" Palestinian Arabs continued to press for a representative government;  Zionists continued to oppose it because they would have been outvoted.

Despite the poverty of many Palestinian Arabs during the depression in the 1930's there was a large influx of well educated Jewish immigrants and of Jewish capital which created a strong economy in some areas.  Jews bought land from absentee landlords.  The British Peel Commission considered the Swiss model of a single federal government with highly autonomous cantons, regions based on ethnic diversity.

In 1938 Bernard Baruch, a Jewish financier and sometime adviser to President Roosevelt, devised a refugee plan that would help Jews resettle in underpopulated host countries in Africa.  Some Zionists, including Rabbi Stephen Wise, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and presidential adviser Felix Frankfurter, severely criticized the plan.  Jews themselves differed.  Some stressed protecting Jews in Europe, some wanted to settle refugees in unpopulated areas, some wanted more immigration to Palestine.

Because of worsening British-Zionist relations, Zionists in early 1942 turned more to the US for support.  On Nov. 2, 1942  68 senators, 194 congresspersons, hundreds of community leaders and public figures signed a statement which called for a Jewish national home. In 1945 Dean Virginia Gildersleeve, a prominent American educator wrote:  "Almost no one was willing to speak out publicly against a project of the Zionists.  The politicians feared the Jewish vote; others feared the charge of anti-Semitism, and nearly all had a kind of guilt complex becasue of the terrible tragedies inflicted upon the Jewish people by Hitler.  It seemed to me, however, that someone ought to speak out against the cowardly and immoral course to which our nation was being urged."  She wanted the US instead to take more Jewish immigrants which paradoxically was opposed by the Zionists.

In 1946 Zionists had a direct and very short line to Truman; Palestinian Arabs lacked even smoke signals.  In 1948 Zionists had almost the full support of the Congress, the US media, and most of the American people.

In 1947 the UN proposed a federation.  The Holy Places were to be accessible to all; Jerusalem was to remain under international trusteeship. The US pressured other nations in the UN to accept its 1947 Partition Plan.  Fr. John Mulhall, CSP considered the plan unjust because  1.  It denied the national right of Palestinians to self-determination.  The plan forcefully split the Palestinian Arabs within the Jewish state and in the Palestinian state from each other, against their wishes, into two different political countries.  2.  It forced the Arabs who would be living in the Jewish state to be a minority among a hostile majority. 3.  The partition plan was a form of diplomatic aggression especially on the part of the US.  4.  The partition gave 53.46 % of the better land to the Jews even though they then occupied only 6% of the territory.

Fr. Mulhall describes the Massacre at Deir Yassin, April 9, 1948; the Ambush on the Mt. Scopus Run, Apr. 13, 1948;  the Massacre at Kfar Etzion, May 12-13, 1948.  400,000 Palestinians fled between Nov. 29, 1947 and June 1, 1948.  70% because of Jewish military action; 15% from actions of the Irgun and the Stern Gang and 55% from actions of the Hagana/IDF.

In early 1948 Arabs were either driven from their homes or frightened into leaving.  "By the time Britain withdrew on May 14, 1948, large areas of the coastal plain, eastern Galilee, some of western Galilee, and all of the cities except Gaza, Old Jerusalem, and those of the West Bank had already been 'cleaned' of most of their Arab inhabitants." (p. 158)
Many atrocities and violations of the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907 were committed before statehood.  Palestinians who fled fully expected to return within a few days or weeks.  Most of them have never been permitted to return. Many Arabs, aware of massacres at Deir Yassin and elsewhere, were terrified by the Israeli military.  In June 1948 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion ordered the government to "see to the settling of the abandoned villages."  "It was the Jewish policy to encourage the Arabs to quit their homes, and they used psychological warfare extensively in urging them to do so.  As the war wore on, they ejected those Arabs who clung to their villages." (p. 173) Against their will Arabs had been assigned to the Jewish state.  Then they were considered a threat to that state and forced to move out of it.  Some of the very people who wanted the US to solve the Jewish refugee problems, knowingly created the Palestinian refugee problem. Nathan Chofshi, a Russian Jew: "We Jews forced the Arabs to leave. . .Here was a people who lived on its own land for 1,300 years.  We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees."  Erich Fromm, a Jewish author:  "If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse."

Israel promised to cooperate with the UN in establishing an Arab state in part of Palestine.  There was internal dissent within the US administration on the establishment of Israel and certainly within the UN, but the US kept up its pressure to accept Truman's stance.  Fr. Mulhall considers the UN partition plan of Nov. 29, 1947 to be immoral and an act of diplomatic aggression primarily because the partition gave to the Jewish state so much Arab land and Arab people.

David Ben-Gurion declared statehood in May 1948 despite warning by Arab states that such a declaration would precipitate a war. Ben-Gurion thought he would win a war and expand the territory given by the UN Partition Plan.  "We would not have taken on this war merely for the purpose of enjoying this tiny state." (p. 164)  Through its violations of the July 19, 1948 truce, Israel gained some 2,000 square miles, some 20% of Palestine's total.

Truman made a substantial long-term loan to Israel despite many violations of the truce arranged by Ralph Bunche.  As a UN member, the US pledged on December 10, 1948, to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but repeatedly supported the violation of its articles.  On Dec. 11, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194 which stated: "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible." A Conciliation Commission was established "to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation."

The US pushed through the UN partition plan of 1947 which gave Jews 53.46 percent of Palestine even though Jews then owned only some 6%.  Then through its role in the UN the US encouraged and helped Israel take even more land through truce violations.  This left only 22% of Palestine under Arab control; this was ruled by either Trans-Jordan or Egypt, not by Palestinians.

UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of Nov. 29, 1947, which called for Palestine's partition, stipulated that Jerusalem should not be part of either the Jewish or the Arab state but under international control.  In March 1949 Israel began moving its government agencies into the part of the City that it had occupied.  By this time Israel had also reapplied for UN membership.  Several nations hesitated to admit Israel because it kept land conquered outside the area allotted to it by the UN, because it refused to allow refugees to return home, and especially because many UN members feared that Israel would prevent the internationalization of Jerusalem.  Israel maintained that it "held no views and pursued no policies on any question which were inconsistent with. . . the resolution of the Assembly and the Security Council." In 1948 Israel "gave formal assurance in writing that Israel would not oppose the internationalization of Jerusalem."  When Israel was admitted to the UN, it was explicitly presumed that Israel would accept all of the UN resolutions mentioned above.  Within seven months Israel repudiated its promise regarding Jerusalem.

In 1907 the Fourth Hague Convention was signed by major powers.  In 1948 the General Assembly of the UN aagreed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1949 the four Geneva Conventions were signed eventually by most nations including the US and Israel. These positive laws were signed by nations with many different religious and cultural traditions.

Palestinians should have the right to live in Israel and be first-class citizens there.  Palestinians have a right to form a viable contiguous state of their own.

US leaders made decisions that radically affected the lives of millions of Palestinian Arabs and succeeding generations. Can US citizens say "Sorry about that" and walk away?    They have a proportionately serious obligation to learn the facts that will enable them to make decisions based on justice, rather than on propaganda, guilt feelings, emotion or winning the next election.  Since the US was an accomplice in various injustices against Palestinian Arabs, especially the refugees and their descendants, the US should make reparations.

Certainly the US has the obligation to work for a true peace with justice in Israel-Palestine. The residues of the traumas experienced by both Jews and Palestinians need to be healed if there is to be a true peace not only politically but in Israeli and Palestinian hearts and minds.  Some US citizens have skills and resources which would help to alleviate the inner anguish felt by everyone and move toward reconciliation.  "True reconciliation should be only the beginning of a loving, neighborly friendship between these two peoples, both of whom may be children of Abraham, both of whom certainly are children of God." p. 207  America and the Founding of Israel, An Investigation of the Morality of America's Role, Fr. John W. Mulhall, CSP. Well-documented with extensive notes.

http://www.hcef.org/     The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation are a group of Christians in solidarity with Christians in the Holy Land.
Other groups working for peace and justice in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
(A much longer list of groups can be found at http://btvshalom.org/links)

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/  A coalition of many groups working for a peace with justice.

Jewish Voice for Peace ­ http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org - a US-based group of Jews seeking a just peace in Israel-Palestine

MIFTAH (Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy) ­ http://www.miftah.org - Palestinian organization seeking justice and human rights led by Hanan Ashrawi. For an interview with Hanan Ashrawi from Sojourners magazine, see "Tanks vs. Olive Branches: An Interview with Palestinian Leader Hanan Ashrawi on Feminism, Faith, and the Future of the Palestinian Cause"
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0502&article=050220

Palestinians and Israelis for Nonviolence ­ http://www.pinv.org - thoughtful reflections on the potential of nonviolent action in the Israel-Palestine conflict

Tikkun ­ http://www.tikkun.org - a magazine edited by Rabbi Michael Lerner which often has articles on Israel-Palestine issues, as well as other social justice topics

Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions - http://www.icahd.org/eng - a group of Israelis who actively oppose house demolitions, seizures of Palestinian land, the uprooting of Palestinian fruit and olive trees, and other abuses that are part of the realities of occupation

Checkpoint Watch - http://www.machsomwatch.org - a organization of Israeli women who volunteer to spend time at the Israeli military checkpoints in the occupied territories, trying to prevent human rights abuses by the Israeli military against the Palestinians

Yesh Gvul - http://www.yeshgvul.org.il/index_e.asp - support group for Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied territories

Americans for Peace Now - http://www.peacenow.org - US-based Jewish organization supporting the efforts of Peace Now, one of the largest peace groups in Israel

International Solidarity Movement - http://www.palsolidarity.org - Sends international volunteers to the occupied territories in order to document and try to nonviolently prevent abuses against Palestinians. This is the organization that Rachel Corrie, a college student from the U.S. who was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer, was part of.

Rachel Corrie Foundation - http://www.rachelcorriefoundation.org - organization formed by the parents of Rachel Corrie, seeking to carry on her work for a just peace.

Christian Peacemaker Teams - http://www.cpt.org - sends international volunteers to Palestine (and also to Iraq and various other places) to work nonviolently for human rights. Four members of this group were taken hostage in Iraq. One of them, Tom Fox, a Quaker, was killed.

                                                                                            Religion and Peace

I think there are four main areas that universities could research and develop. I urge a revolution of values, a greater emphasis and insistence on basic human rights, especially economic rights; international law and order; active non-violence; economic democracy.

A natural question is how can a peaceful revolution proceed? Active non-violence is itself a way. Peace education is a way, a major part of active non-violence.

Is religion a way to peace? Or is religion a source of conflict? I see faith as including the contribution of religion to peace and justice. It is part of my experience that religion can be an enormous stimulus in pursuit of a peace with justice. We can't just say we will do the reasonable thing. We don't. We need faith to sustain and guide us.

Will religion play a vital, even necessary role in a revolution of values? As we have seen in Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, the Sudan, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, religion can be part of the problem. It's easy to say that members of a particular religion are not following the tenets of their faith. It is a failure of leadership and a failure of members when those professedly religious put their culture and their selfishness before religious values.

Religion can produce anxiety, narrow-mindedness, and intolerance. Leaders of religion can be tyrannical and reactionary. Religion can bring on worry, fatalism, and fanaticism. Even wars can be justified in the name of religion.

But genuine religion can also motivate, call, sustain, and open us to new thinking and fresh attitudes. The civil rights movement in the US was started by a black pastor, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and was supported by many pastors, priests, and nuns. In the Philippines the Catholic Church inspired the non-violent overthrow of Marcos. Half-way around the world, Catholic Poland followed the lead of the non-violent action in the Philippines.

Religion can liberate, inspire trust, generosity, tolerance, solidarity, creativity, and social commitment. Religion can encourage spiritual renewal, social reforms and world peace. Religion can become the foundation of psychological identity, human maturity and a healthy self-awareness. Religion can inspire forgiveness, reconciliation, humility, spiritual discernment.
 

What are some beliefs that religions can agree on? The fundamental unity of the human family, the equality and dignity of all human beings; a sense of the sacredness of the individual person; the value of the human community. Religions can agree that might does not make right; that love, compassion, unselfishness, truthfulness have greater power than hate, enmity and self-interest. Religions can agree to stand on the side of the poor against their oppressors. Religion can have a profound hope that good will finally prevail. As St. Paul says, sometimes we need to hope against hope, even when there seems no natural basis for hope. (Religion for Peace: Proceedings of the Kyoto Conference on Religion and Peace)

Humankind has abolished particular customs like incest, cannibalism, and slavery. Why should religions not be able to abolish war? Why should not religion be able to promote the minimum that would allow human persons to grow as individuals and as communities?

To have world order we need a world ethic, a basic consensus without which laws will have little effect. We obey stop signs because we recognize that stop signs prevent accidents. We ignored prohibition because we lacked a basic consensus about alcohol. Religion can moderate and lead us toward a common consensus at least on essentials.

Fr. Helmick uses as a principle the Presupposition of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. “It should be presupposed that every good Christian ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbor’s statement than to condemn it. If one cannot interpret it favorably, one should ask how the other means it. If that meaning is wrong, one should correct the person with love. If this is not enough, one should search out every appropriate means through which, by understanding the statement in a good way, it may be saved.” If we listen to another’s story, they may be more likely to listen to ours.

God calls all of us to a spiritual Jerusalem. God is faithful to a people of faith.

Are we intrinsically selfish? Is the only effective motivation competition rather than cooperation? The Parliament of the World's Religions declared a global ethic in 1993 which says the present agony of the world need not be.
"We declare we are interdependent. Each of us depends on the well-being of the whole, and so we have respect for the community of living beings, for people, animals, and plants, and for the preservation of Earth, the air, water and soil.

What would it mean for tomorrow's world if the religious leaders of all religions, great and indeed small, decided today to give resolute expression to their responsibility for peace, love of neighbor and non-violence, for reconciliation and forgiveness? If from Washington to Moscow, from Jerusalem to Mecca, from Belfast to Teheran, instead of helping to foment conflicts religions were to help in resolving them?. . . There can be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions."
(Hans Kung, Global Responsibility, In Search of a New World Ethic (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1991, 75, 76)

Does the United States, indeed all nations, need a council of conscience to which its leaders turn in time of crisis? Would a genuine United Nations also need such a council? Religion can help in the formation of councils of conscience at all levels.

If religious people took the integral teaching of their faith seriously, what a telling force religion could be in the quest for regional and world peace!

Academics can carry on abstruse discussions that intellectualize the enormous suffering in our world. We can do incalculable damage if we try to cram other people’s horrors into the boxes of our abstract preconceptions. Too often a minority suffers at the hands of the majority not because of anything it does itself but because the majority has need of a scapegoat.

At the same time I think we need serious interdisciplinary academic research and analysis. I think we need peace studies at all levels.

I felt privileged to walk where Jesus walked. I want to carry his values to the holy land for the sake of holy people who live there. I hope with the help of others to bring a message of a peace with justice to all.


Fr. Benjamin J. Urmston, S.J.
Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio.
http://www.xu.edu/peace/ben.htm
 

Coming home.  Jewish members of our discussion group said the Tikkun Conference was like coming home.  Except for Jewish songs and prayers, the beautiful synagogues, the Rabbi’s, strangely enough, to me also the Tikkun gathering was like coming home.  It was the most hopeful Conference I have attended since my pilgrimage to Mondragon in Spain in 1988. Despite predictions of apocalypse by research scholars and Rabbi’s, it was an incredibly joyous and encouraging event.

Tikkun in Hebrew means with God to heal and transform our world.  At creation God said it was very good, but God didn’t say it was perfect.  With God’s help, that’s our job.  Let us use means that embody the end.  The farther away we get in the means we use to our goal of peace with justice, the farther away we will be from achieving our end.  One speaker said that the Palestinians have a right and a duty to a just insurrection but not of course to attacks on civilians.  A Rabbi countered that a non-violent Palestinian intifada would have been effective if it had been joined by just as large a non-violent Jewish protest.  By our silence, in what ways are we all responsible?

The Tikkun community has a vision.  I have a vision.  I think we all are tempted not just to assert our individual identity but to project our selfishness and ego-centrism onto God.  Then we worship a militaristic and materialistic god of our own making.  God is wholly other.  God’s ways are not our ways.  I find my security in God and in God’s plan for us.  But I don‘t easily conclude that I know that plan in detail.  My vision is fashioned from Scripture, the teaching of the Church, reading the signs of the times, my own experiences and insights, practicing Ignatian spirituality.

We can pray for all the gew-gaws and trifles that we think we need and then feel good about it because we think all these material possessions have come from God.  Prayer becomes a way to covet and be selfish.  There’s not one singular pronoun in the Our Father.  Too much of our religion is self-improvement which can be selfish improvement.  God bless America and our world.

Social justice isn’t winning.  It needs more of the Spirit.  We want to ally ourselves with all the forces of healing and transformation.  We need to look at our light graced story.  We don’t affirm the advances we have made.  Let us affirm the positive even in our enemies.

One of the presenters was Susannah Heschel, associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth, author of On Being a Jewish Feminist.  She is the daughter of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was an ally of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Susannah said we want to stress Jewish values, to teach and live the sacredness of each human person, made in the image and likeness of God.  What is the purpose of Jewish survival from persecution?  To be Jewish or to act Jewish?  To respond to violence with collective punishment or to live in accord with the Covenant?

Amy Goodman, news anchorperson at Pacifica Radio and host of Democracy Now said the mainstream media are the voices of the elite trying to manufacture consent.  We protect individual dissenters when we all speak out.  If we’re going to send soldiers into harm’s way, we need a public discussion of the reasons.

Did I think the Tikkun Conference was too idealistic?  On the contrary, I liked Tikkun’s utopian vision of healing and transforming our world.  Outer transformation needs inner healing.  Loving and caring are integral parts of healing ourselves and others.  We need to actively foster awe and wonder of physical creation and of one another.  We want to experience and recognize ourselves and each other as holy.

Our culture leaves us no time to do what we really believe in.  We need to advance our agenda to go beyond advancing our own agendas as rational maximizers of self-interest.  We need to respond to one another and our universe with joy.  Present structures are not only unjust, they keep us from connecting to the deepest truths of the universe and make it harder for us to recognize one another as fully free, fully conscious, self-creating, loving beings.  The globalization of Spirit is the antidote to globalization of capital.

Dr. Jerome Slater is University Research Scholar at State University of New York at Buffalo.  He is the author of many articles on the Arab-Israeli conflict for Tikkun and for academic journals.  He sketched a terrifying but likely scenario.  Sharon will continue to destroy the Palestinian Authority and all moderate Arabs as he is doing now.  Hamas will take over as is happening now.  Sharon will then invade the West Bank and Gaza.  The Palestinians will flee to the neighboring nations from which they will continue the conflict.  Eventually the Palestinians with the willing and sometimes unwilling help of Arab nations will acquire biological and nuclear weapons.  Apocalypse will follow.  Only a strong US intervention will prevent an imminent cosmic cataclysm.   No one doubts that social injustice is the fertile ground in which terrorism grows.

A common misconception is that Yassir Arafat missed his chance for peace.  But the deal he was supposed to accept would have controlled water supplies, relinquished the right to return of refugees, given East Jerusalem to Israel, kept military check-points even within Palestinian territory.  Actually the details of the offer were never put in writing.

The framework for a just peace is clear: A viable, contiguous Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital; the end to the 1967 occupation; the right to return of Palestinian refugees, (but controlled so that the Jewish population is not overwhelmed); a shared old city of Jerusalem by the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religions.  It’s just a matter of how much blood is shed before a just settlement occurs.

The Core Vision and Founding Principles of Tikkun are astounding!  I’m not ready to accept every detail, but the general analysis and thrust is excellent.  “We were all slaves in Egypt; we believe that we are all harmed by oppression directed at any group or individual. .  In solidarity with the oppressed, we wish to see the democratization of economic and political institutions and a redistribution of wealth so that all people can share equally and sustainably in the benefits of the planet.  We hope to have the courage, in the tradition of the Jewish prophets, to speak truth to power.  At the same time, we will challenge the lack of a spiritual dimension in the agendas of our allies in progressive social change movements. . . The media is one of the many institutions that speeds up time–protecting us from the quiet moments in which we might doubt the whole way our lives are being lived.  Instead of finding our own pace, we find ourselves rushing about, seeking machines and gadgets that make things go faster, becoming accustomed to media and technology which speed the pace while shallowing the intellectual and emotional level of our daily consciousness.  We learn to forget the past, focusing only on the new while devaluing the old, which leads to decreasing literacy and an increasing difficulty in following a complex discussion, sustaining a long-term relationship, or committing to social goals that can’t be accomplished immediately. . .the illusion that the ‘real world’ is the world of power and wealth. .

We are told that spirituality should be left in the home, relegated to the weekend, kept separate from the pragmatic decisions that should shape politics and the business world. . we refuse this kind of ‘realism.’  The spiritual life can give us a level of mindfulness, focus, and calm so that we can re-center ourselves and discover what we truly value. .the spiritual practice of Shabbat, a twenty-five-hour meditation focused on turning our energies from ‘getting things done’ to a ‘celebration of all that is’ can empower us in the struggle to heal our planet. . The Biblical idea of a Sabbatical Year for all and the Biblical idea of Jubilee, with its call for a redistribution of land and wealth back to a basic equality once every fifty years, provide us with inspiration for how to learn from the wisdom of sacred texts. . We do not seek a spiritual melting pot, but a world in which plurality and difference can be respected, even as we affirm the unity of All Being, the interconnectedness of all with all. . Our well-being depends on the well-being of every other human being on the planet and on the well-being of our environment .  Everyone is invited to be part of loving, spiritually deep, emotionally satisfying and materially thriving communities of their own choice, and to live in a world in which mutual respect and care are the common sense truths by which we live. .

Those of us who are Americans can no longer worry only about what is ‘best for America’ and as Jews we can no longer worry only about what is ‘best for the Jews’”

Rabbi Mordechai Liebling gave a truly inspiring talk on money and spirituality.  Money does not belong to us but to God and the community on whose past achievement we all build.  The Rabbi encouraged all of us to involvement in a detailed way in corporate responsibility.

There’s much more, but I hope this gives you some idea of the richness of the Tikkun Conference held in Stephen Wise Free Synagogue and Bnai Jeshurun Synagogue in New York City, Jan. 19-21st, 2002, by design Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. week-end.  There were over seven hundred participants, mostly Jewish, 25% Christian, 5% Buddhist, 2% Muslim.

(See Tikkun   http://www.tikkun.org   The Shalom Center http://www.shalomctr.org

Jews Against the Occupation  http://www.jewsagainsttheoccupation.org)

The Parents' Circle, United Bereaved Parents in Israel and Palestine  kaptchuk@mediaone.net

Jewish Peace Fellowship  http://www.netax.com/%7Envweb/jpf

Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel  http://www.jppi.org

Jewish Voices Against the Occupation    http://www.jvao.org/
 
 

1. INFORM YOURSELF  of other perspectives besides those you typically find in the media. Don't say, "I don't know enough"--because Tikkun can help you get the information you need to become an activist for Middle East peace.
a. Want to get daily updates from the non-American media and perspectives you don't normally hear?  We have a daily email
of this sort (not balanced--it's the side you don't hear in American media, and it doesn't always reflect a TIKKUNish perspective, but we make it available because we trust your ability to hear information and decide for yourself).
Just send an email to: TIKKUN-ISRAEL-Open-heartedness-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Sometime by the end of the summer we will have printed Michael Lerner's new booklet--Healing Israel/Palestine.  In the meantime, you might want to read Avi Shlaim's book The Iron Wall.
b.  Subscribe to Tikkun magazine.
 2. Join our MEDIA CRITIQUE group--and challenge the daily distortions in the media. The idea is simple: every day we will post articles or summaries of media reports that ought to be challenged. You'll find the article or summary, plus a critique of it. You can then call the media in question and complain, and insist that they start covering the perspective of those who favor peace. You will find phone numbers of people who can be suggested as spokespeople for The Tikkun Community.
Go to www.tikkun.org, scroll down to the section on The Tikkun Community, and in that section scroll down further till
you find a category of "Media Critique."  Read through the options there--click on each one.
Or you can actually send us a media story and either ask us to critique it or you can send your own critique along with it, and we will consider posting it at the site. If you want to joiin the group, contact Samantha at: tikkun_olam@hotmail.com or  magazine@tikkun.org

3.   Get a group of people together in your community and form a local branch of The Tikkun Community (if you haven't joined yet, please please do so--online at www.tikkun.org, or by sending $120 to TIKKUN, 2107 Van Ness Ave, Suite 302, SF, Ca. 94109). If you tell us you want to form a local branch, we will help you get started.

4. With your local Tikkun Community branch, go visit publicly elected officials. Many are running for office this Fall--so this is the right time to demand that they change their position on  the Middle East or lose your support. Ask them to endorse our  Middle East peace initiative.Or, go to your local city council, county supervisors, state legislature, and ask them to introduce our Peace Initiative. Or, if you live in a city or state where you can put something directly on the ballot, collect signatures
to put this on.

Here is a first step--take the resolution below and get it endorsed by the local chapter of whatever political party you are part of (Democrats, Greens--and don't be so sure that you won't find some responsive voices even among Republicans), by local unions and churches and synagogues and mosques and ashrams, by social change groups involved in peace, justice, civil liberties, and human rights work, by civic organizations and neighborhood associations, by prominent and respected local personalities and educators, and by people seeking elected office (let them know if they want your vote in November that you want them to sign on to this or some version that raises these points that you yourself construct in accord with what you think will work in your locale)--and finally try to get locally elected officials to pass it as a resolution in your local city council or county supervisors or state legislature (or, if they won't, try to collect signatures to put this on the local ballot for a direct vote--it will be a wonderful way to create a local conversation that is really needed):

City Council or Board of Supervisors Resolution:

Whereas we recognize the humanity and fundamental decency of both the Israeli and Palestinian people, and wish to see them living  in peace with each other, side by side in a safe Israel and a safe Palestine, And Whereas we abhor acts of terror and violence against Israeli civilians, and reject the notion that these attacks on civilians can ever be justified (no matter how justified the anger at the Occupation), and whereas we abhor acts of terror and violence against Palestinian civilians, destruction of Palestinian homes, confiscation of Palestinian land and property, and other violations of their human rights, and whereas we reject any  notion of moral equivalence because we see each act of terror and violence as uniquely awful and a violation of the sanctity of human life, And Whereas we see all attempts to put the blame primarily on one side or the other of this conflict as yet another way to keep the conflict going and as fundamentally obscuring the way that both sides participate in co-creating the struggle, And Whereas the continuation of this conflict is destructive to the people of the Middle East, counter to the best interests and values of the United States, and might contribute to an increase in Anti-Semitism and anti-Arab sentiments both worldwide and in our own community,
Be It HEREBY RESOLVED THAT THE CITY OF ________ SHALL:

I. Call upon its representatives in Congress to ask the U.S . government to support an international intervention (either through
 the UN or through some other appropriate multinational force) to separate the two sides, provide protection for each, and impose a settlement on both sides which includes: a. Return of Israel to its pre-67 borders, with minor border changes mutually agreed upon (including Israeli control of the Western Wall and Palestinian control of the Temple Mount)
b. Creation of an economically and politically viable Palestinian state in all of the pre-67 West Bank and Gaza with small border changes mutually agreed upon, and with its capital in East Jerusalem c. An international fund to provide reparations for Palestinians and generous resettlement opportunities in the new Palestinian state d. Recognition of Israel by Arab states and peaceful relations with all surrounding Arab and Islamic states e. Sharing of the water and other resources of the area and joint
ecological cooperation to preserve the ecological balance f. Security cooperation by both Israel and Palestine with international
participation and supervision to empower both sides to take decisive action to curb extremist elements that seek to block a peaceful resolution by resorting to provocation or violence against the citizens and/or territory of the other
g.  International guarantees of the military safety and security of Israel and Palestine, either through inclusion in NATO, a bilateral mutual defense agreement with the U.S., or some similar arrangement guaranteed to protect Israel and Palestine from other states which may have hostile intention

II. Assist in the collection of voluntary contributions from the citizens of This City  and those who study or work here funds to be allocated to non-profit organizations for the following purposes: a. to provide aid for families of victims of terror, violence and military actions in both Israel and Palestine
b. to create an office of Middle East Peace in Washington D.C. which will provide public education to our elected representatives in support of  peace in the Middle East consistent with the ideas in this proposition. The Office of Middle East Peace will be administered by and responsible to the City.
c. To provide education to our own citizens about the complexities of  the Middle East situation, education which reflects the  perspectives of those who are committed to points 1 a-g above.  Organizations receiving these funds shall prove that they  genuinely support the right of the Jewish people to their own homeland in Israel, and genuinely support the right of the  Palestinian people to their own homeland in the West Bank and Gaza, reject violence as a means to achieve ends (including both Palestinian violence and Israeli violence) and demonstrate that they will clearly and unambiguously include this kind of even-handedness as well as support for an end to the Occupation in their public educational activities.

5.  College students and faculty: anyone you know in either of these two categories should be urged to attend the founding conference of Tikkun Campus Network  on Oct 11-14, 2002 in NYC.
 

6. COME TO WASHINGTON DC, April 27-29, 2003, for our Teach-In to Congress about Middle East peace.

7. Check the website at www.tikkun.org every few days-- and check at that site for  Current Thinking, for our latest media critiques, sign up there, and check in regularly to our Calendar.  Read the current discussions in the section on The Tikkun Community, or get active with one of the projects.

8. Help us fundraise to make possible these activities. We have very little at the present moment--we need your help. Would you set up a house party for Tikkun--and show a video tape we have (we have 3 topics: a. Israel/Palestine   b. The State of the Spirit c. Jewish Renewal). Then, see if you can get people invited to either join The Tikkun Community or donate to support our work.

9. Help us with volunteer work. Best would be to come to work with us at our office in San Francisco. But others could do emailing, letter writing, and phone calling in your own area,using your own phone or email.

10.  Don't let others tell you that opposing the policies of Israel today is anti-Semitic or "self-hating."  Insist that they expose themselves to this other perspective--because we firmly believe that the best way to be pro-Israel at the moment is to give Israel some "tough love" and push her to get out of the West Bank and Gaza, help  organize reparations for the Palestinian refugees, and take steps to generate a two-sided dynamic of repentance and atonement for all the unncessary killings, maimings, pain and fear that each side has caused the other. And don't let them tell you that you have to choose sides--this is precisely the moment to be BOTH pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.

Want to be in contact? Call Josh at 415-575 1200

*********************************************************
If you haven't joined The Tikkun Community yet, please DO SO NOW --at www.tikkun.org  scroll down to the section of The TIKKUN
COMMUNITY, read the Core Vision, and join!!!

Most of these articles are from someone named Sirius in  England who gathers for us the news from Israeli newspapers, Arab sources, and the English media. Today they mostly focus on the issue of the terror attack by Israel against a civilian residence where 140 people were injured, 14 were murdered, and among them one Hamas leader.  What is particularly interesting is the growing evidence that this was calculated by Ariel Sharon to stop the announcement of  an agreement among Palestinian groups to cease all further attacks on Israelis inside the pre-67 borders of Israel. Why does he want a ceasefire? Because a ceasefire would increase pressure on him to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, whereas his ideology leads him to want to hold on to the West Bank and Gaza no matter how high the cost in Israeli lives.
        Shabbat Shalom.
        Rabbi Michael Lerner

"With complete disregard to the sanctity of human life, Israel unleashed an F-16 fighter jet to raze a residential neighborhood in teeming Gaza," reports the Jordan Times, no stranger to criticism of Israel. "Fifteen people, among them eight children and a two-month-old infant, lost their lives when Israel reduced a three-storey building to rubble. The wounded number more than 150."

The paper calls the attack "another massacre, another war crime that Israel cannot defend or justify". It goes on: "Sharon is no man of peace. He is a man of war, blinded by his historical hatred of the Palestinian people ...His record since assuming office shows that he is constantly trying to ensure the continuity of violence simply because this Israeli government knows too well that peace will expose the bankruptcy of its policies and political beliefs."

Jennifer Loewenstein, writing for the Palestine Chronicle in Gaza, takes up the theme. "Heaps of concrete, broken pillars with wire sticking out, people's shoes, clothes, bedding, strewn haphazardly among the rubble, dust everywhere, a hole in the landscape where a two-story apartment was just yesterday: the hardest part for me is how familiar it has all become," she writes "The Israelis are masters in the art of destruction. And as I wander through another mass of wrecked lives I'm struck by the sense of deja vu that comes over me."

In America, some criticism of the attack is almost as severe. The Hartford Courant writes in an editorial today that the attack was "an atrocity. There is no other word to describe it. When Israeli civilians are killed in suicide bombings or other kinds of attacks by Palestinians, Israelis call it terrorism, and it is. But the killing of civilians and the assassination of Palestinian leaders are no less acts of terrorism. There is no way that an Israeli jet fighter can fire a missile at residences and not risk killing noncombatants.... The cycle of violence in the region - attack and counterattack - brings ruin to both sides."

The Boston Globe says that if Americans are tempted to "dismiss the missile attack in Gaza City" as a "kind of inevitable accident that accompanies a cycle of Palestinian terrorism and Israel's antiterrorist retaliation", then they should listen to voices such as those of the Israeli human rights organization, B'Tselem, which said military commanders "must have considered the fact that many civilians would be hurt".

The Globe finds Mr Sharon's remarks after the attack particularly galling. "At best," it says, "this is the thinking of a tank commander with no grasp of the art of statecraft. At worst, it is the boasting of a hawk in power who deliberately launched his missile attack at a moment when high-level Israeli and Palestinian officials were meeting to discuss security cooperation and after Hamas leaders spoke publicly about stopping suicide bombings ... More than ever, American mediation is needed to rescue Israelis and Palestinians from their descent into pure vendetta."

In Israel, the centre-left newspaper Ha'aretz calls Mr Sharon's comments "cold-hearted". Public support for targeted assassinations, it goes on, had depended on the understanding that the army would take care not to harm innocents - in its words, "pinpointed prevention".

"That certainty, which is a vital, moral foundation for Israeli society in its war against terror," it says, "has apparently been undermined in the wake of Monday's operation in Gaza. How could it have been expected - or even hoped - that the bomb would focus only on Shehadeh and his aide, considering the physical surroundings where the mission took place?"

Ha'aretz also criticises the timing of the attack. "There were indications in recent days that for the first time in many months, there was a chance for progress toward a ceasefire. In that light, there is no choice but to question the wisdom of the approval given by the prime minister and the defense minister to an assassination."

But in an article headed 'Answering the critics', Israeli rightwing website Arutz 7 publishes the response of Rabbi Rafi Peretz, a reserve pilot in the Israeli army, to a question about the fact that children were killed in the raid. Rabbi Peretz said: "First of all, I'd like to make clear what type of evil people we are dealing with. Two weeks ago, we lost one of our former students, Captain Haggai Lev, while his unit was engaged in searching for arms-smuggling tunnels - and listen to the circumstances under which he was killed. "He was told that the enemy was using small children as scouts. When he went to check to see if this was in fact the case, he was shot and killed by a Palestinian sniper. This shows our ethical level compared to theirs. We great regret the loss of whoever was innocent among them, but when they take civilians as their cover, then though it is difficult, they must know that this has a price."

The Jerusalem Post is more measured, arguing that the responsibility for the death of innocent civilians "lies heavily on Palestinian shoulders".

The paper says Israel has generally taken "extreme care" to avoid civilian Palestinian casualties. "That the opposite proved the case is both tragic and deplorable, and possibly reflects an intelligence failure that the government would be wise to investigate so as not to repeat ... But that is about all Israel owes its Palestinian foes, and about all the 'international community' [its quotes] is entitled to demand of Israel."

The paper first argues that the Palestinian Authority must take responsibility, for releasing Shehadeh from a Palestinian prison and refusing requests to have him rearrested. "Plainly, no Palestinian civilians would have been wounded in an attack indeed, no attack would have been necessary had Shehadeh been properly imprisoned." It goes on to say that it has "no sympathy for the Palestinians who joined in spontaneous pro-Hamas rallies that erupted in the Gaza Strip following the attack".

But it also criticises the words of the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who condemned the attack yesterday. "Shehadeh operated from a densely populated Gaza City neighborhood precisely because he knew the children on the street served him as a shield against assassination. For Mr Straw to condemn Israel, and not Hamas, in the wake of the attack serves only to
reward Shehadeh's cynical tactics in the first place."

Finally, it notes that the Pentagon "accounts for its killing of dozens of Afghans celebrating a wedding earlier this month as an accident that took place while US forces were in hot pursuit of Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar", and continues: "We await Messrs Straw, Annan, Moeller, and Fleischer's pontifications on that score, as well as any insight they might have on how to conduct an accident-free war on terrorism."

On that subject, Time magazine takes a cynical view of American condemnation of the Israeli attack. "Moderates looking to revive peace efforts and demilitarise Palestinian politics are likely to find themselves drowned out by the hard men in the battle for Palestinian public opinion. That won't help the Bush administration shore up support for its main concern: going after Saddam Hussein.

"Images televised around the Arab world of Palestinian children killed by an Israeli missile are likely to spark new rage on the streets of Arab world that will be directed against both Israel and the US, at a time when Bush is trying to get all Arab allies on board for an invasion of Iraq.

"When Vice-President Cheney courted Arab support last April, he found US allies in the region uniformly warning that they could not be seen backing Washington in the face of the anti-American anger among their own people .... "Saddam Hussein - who has recently embarked on a diplomatic offensive to shore up Arab support for Baghdad - is unlikely to have been displeased by Tuesday's events."

I would have done the same

My son was killed by a Palestinian fighter. But Israel's occupation is to blame for his death

Yitzhak Frankenthal Wednesday August 7, 2002
The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,770434,00.html

My beloved son Arik, my own flesh and blood, was murdered by Palestinians. My tall, blue-eyed, golden-haired son who was always smiling with the innocence of a child and the understanding of an adult. My son. If to hit his killers, innocent Palestinian children and other civilians would have to be killed, I would ask the security forces to wait for another opportunity. My beloved son Arik was murdered by a Palestinian. Should the security forces have information of this murderer's whereabouts, and should it turn out that he was surrounded by innocent children and other Palestinian civilians, then - even if the security forces knew that the killer was planning another murderous attack and they now had the choice of curbing a terror attack that would kill innocent Israeli civilians, but at the cost of hitting innocent Palestinians, I would tell the security forces not to seek revenge.

I would rather have the finger that pushes the trigger or the button that drops the bomb tremble before it kills my son's  murderer, than for innocent civilians to be killed. I would say to the security forces: do not kill the killer. Rather, bring him before an Israeli court. You are not the judiciary. Your only motivation should not be vengeance, but the prevention of any injury to innocent civilians.

Ethics are not black and white - they are all white. Ethics have to be free of vengefulness and rashness. Every act must be carefully weighed before a decision is made to see whether it meets strict ethical criteria. Our ethics are hanging by a thread, at the mercy of every soldier and politician.

It is unethical to kill innocent Israeli or Palestinian women and children. It is also unethical to control another nation and to lead it to lose its humaneness. It is patently unethical to drop a bomb that kills innocent Palestinians. It is blatantly unethical to wreak vengeance upon innocent bystanders.

It is, on the other hand, supremely ethical to prevent the death of any human being. But if such prevention causes the futile death of others, the ethical foundation for such prevention is lost. A nation that cannot draw the line is doomed eventually to apply unethical measures against its own people. The worst in my mind is not what has already happened but what I am sure one day will. And it will - because the political and military leadership does not even have the most basic integrity to say: "we are sorry". We lost sight of our ethics long before the suicide bombings. The breaking point was when we started to control another nation.

My son Arik was born into a democracy with a chance for a decent, settled life. Arik's killer was born into an appalling occupation, into an ethical chaos.  Let all the self-righteous who speak of ruthless Palestinian murderers take a hard look in the mirror and ask themselves what they would have done had they been the ones living under occupation. . It is this depraved hypocrisy that pushes the Palestinians to fight us relentlessly -our double standard that allows us to boast the highest military ethics, while the same military slays innocent children. This lack of ethics is bound to corrupt us.

My son Arik was murdered when he was a soldier by Palestinian fighters who believed in the ethical basis of their struggle against the occupation. My son Arik was not murdered because he was Jewish but because he is part of the nation that occupies the territory of another. I know these are concepts that are unpalatable, but I must voice them loud and clear, because they come from my heart - the heart of a father whose son did not get to live because his people were blinded with power.

As much as I would like to do so, I cannot say that the Palestinians are to blame for my son's death. That would be the easy way out, but it is we, Israelis, who are to blame because of the occupation. Anyone who refuses to heed this awful truth will eventually lead to our destruction.

The Palestinians cannot drive us away - they have long acknowledged our existence. They have been ready to make peace with us; it is we who are unwilling to make peace with them. It is we who insist on maintaining our control over them; it is we who escalate the situation in the region and feed the cycle of bloodshed. I regret to say it, but the blame is entirely ours.

I do not mean to absolve the Palestinians and by no means justify attacks against Israeli civilians. No attack against civilians can be condoned. But as an occupation force it is we who trample over human dignity, it is we who crush the liberty of Palestinians and it is we who push an entire nation to crazy acts of despair."

Yitzhak Frankenthal is the chairman of the Families Forum. This is an edited version of a speech he made at a rally in Jerusalem on Saturday July 27 2002.

comment@guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,770434,00.html

The Boy Who Kissed the Soldier: Balata Camp By Starhawk

"What source can you believe in order to create peace there?" a friend writes when I come back from Palestine.  I have no answer, only this story:

June 1, 2002:  I am in Balata refugee camp in occupied Palestine, where the Israeli Defense Forces have rounded up four thousand men, leaving the camp to women and children.  The men have offered no resistance, no battle.

The camp is deathly quiet.  All the shops are shuttered, all the windows closed.  Women, children and a few old men hide in their homes.

The quiet is shattered by sporadic bursts of gunfire, bangs and explosions.  All day we have been encountering soldiers who all look like my brother or cousins or the sons I never had, so young they are barely more than boys armed with big guns.  We¹ve been standing with the terrified inhabitants as the soldiers search their houses, walking patients who are afraid to be alone on the streets to the U.N. Clinic. Earlier in the evening, eight of our friends were arrested, and we know that we could be caught at any moment.

It is nearly dark, and Jessica and Melissa and I are looking for a place to spend the night.  Jessica, with her pale, narrow face, dark eyes and
curly hair, could be my sister or my daughter.  Melissa is a bit more punk, androgynous in her dyed-blond ducktail.

We are hurrying through the streets, worried.  We need to be indoors before true dark, and curfew.  "Go into any house," we¹ve been told.
"Anyone will be glad to take you in."  But we feel a bit shy. From a narrow, metal staircase, Samar, a young woman with a wide, beautiful smile beckons us up.

"Welcome, welcome!"  We are given refuge in the three small rooms that house her family:  her mother, big bodied and sad, her small nieces and
nephews, her brother¹s wife Hanin, round-faced and pale and six monthspregnant.

We sit down on big, overstuffed couches.  The women serve us tea. I look around at the pine wood paneling that adds soft curves and warmth
to the concrete, at the porcelain birds and artificial flowers that decorate a ledge.  The ceilings are carefully painted in simple geometric designs.

They have poured love and care into their home, and it feels like a sanctuary.

Outside we can hear sporadic shooting, the deep OEboom¹ of houses being blown up by the soldiers. But here in these rooms, we are safe, in the
tentative sense that word can be used in this place.  "Inshallah¹, "God willing¹, follows every statement of good here or every commitment to a
plan.

"Yahoud!" the women say when we hear explosions.  It is the Arabic word for Jew, the word used for the soldiers of the invading army.  It is a
word of warning and alarm:  don¹t go down that alley, out into that street. "Yahoud!"

But no one invades our refuge this night.  We talk and laugh with the women.

I have a pocket-sized packet of Tarot cards, and we read for what the next day will bring.  Samar wants a reading, and then Hanin.   I don¹t much
like what I see in their cards:  death, betrayal, sleepless nights of sorrow and regret.  But I can¹t explain that in Arabic anyway, so I focus
on what I see that is good.

"Baby?"  Hanin asks. "Babies, yes," "Boy?  Son?"

The card of the Sun comes up, with a small boy-child riding on a white house.  "Yes, I think it is a boy," I say.

She shows me the picture of her first baby, who died at a year and a half. Around us young men are prowling with guns, houses are exploding, lives
are being shattered.  And we are in an intimate world of women. Hanin brushes my hair, ties it back in a band to control its wildness. We try to talk about our lives.  We can write down our ages on paper.  I am fifty, Hanin is twenty-three.  Jessica and Melissa are twenty-two: all of them older than most of the soldiers.  Samar is seventeen, the children are eight and ten and the baby is four.  I show them pictures of my family, my garden, my step-grandaughter.  I think they understand that my husband has four daughters but I have none of my own, and that I am his third wife.  I¹m not sure they understand that those wives are sequential, not concurrent<but maybe they do.  The women of this camp are educated, sophisticated<many we have met throughout the day are professionals,teachers, nurses, students when the Occupation allows them to go to school.

"Are you Christian?" Hanin finally asks us at the end of the night.

Melissa, Jessica and I look at each other.  All of us are Jewish, and we¹re not sure what the reaction will be if we admit it.  Jessica speaks
for us.

"Jewish," she says.  The women don¹t understand the word.  We try several variations, but finally are forced to the blunt and dreaded "Yahoud."
"Yahoud!" Hanin says.  She gives a little surprised laugh, looks at the other women.  "Beautiful!"

And that is all.  Her welcome to us is undiminished.  She shows me the shower, dresses me in her own flowered nightgown and robe, and puts me to
bed in the empty side of the double bed she shares with her husband, who has been arrested by the Yahoud.  Mats are brought out for the others.
Two of the children sleep with us.  Ahmed, the little four year old boy, snuggles next to me.  He sleeps fiercely, kicking and thrashing in his
dreams, and each time an explosion comes, hurls himself into my arms.I can¹t sleep at all.  How have I come here, at an age when I should be
home making plum jam and doll clothes for grandchildren, to be cradling a little Palestinian boy whose sleep is already shattered by gunshots and
shells?

I am thinking about the summer I spent in Israel when I was fifteen, learning Hebrew, working on a kibbutz, touring every memorial to the Holocaust and every site of a battle in what we called the War of Independence.  I am thinking of one day when we were brought to the Israel/Lebanon border.

The Israeli side was green, the other side barren and brown. "You see what we have made of this land," we were told.  "And that<that¹s what they¹ve done in two thousand years.  Nothing."

I am old enough now to question the world of assumptions behind that statement, to recognize one of the prime justifications the colonizers have always used against the colonized.  "They weren¹t doing anything with the land: they weren¹t using it."  They are not, somehow, as deserving as
we are, as fully human.  They are animals, they hate us.

All of that is shattered by the sound of by Hanin¹s laugh, called into question by a small boy squirming and twisting in his sleep.  I lie there in awe at the trust that has been given me, one of the people of the enemy, put to bed to sleep with the children.  It seems to me, at that moment, that there are indeed powers greater than the guns I can hear all around me: the power of Hanin¹s trust, the power that creates sanctuary, the great surging compassionate power that overcomes prejudice and hate.

One night later, we again go back to our family just as dark is falling, together with Linda and Neta, two other volunteers.  We have narrowly
escaped a party of soldiers, but no sooner do we arrive than a troop comes to the door.  At least they have come to the door: we are grateful for
that for all day they have been breaking through people¹s walls, knocking out the concrete with sledgehammers, bursting through into rooms of
terrified people to search, or worse, use the house as a thoroughfare, a safe route that allows them to move through the camp without venturing
into the streets.

We have been in houses turned into surreal passageways, with directions spray painted on their walls, where there is no sanctuary because all
night long soldiers are passing back and forth. We come forward to meet these soldiers, to talk with them and witness what they will do.  One of the men, with owlish glasses, knows Jessica and Melissa: they have had a long conversation with him standing b