And a little child shall lead us

Do you suppose that this little girl chould show us something about living alongside each other in peace? Read this Haaretz article : Israeli girl found wandering through Hebron returned safely home

Hebron Reflection

I recently received this email from a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron. Hebron is a microcosm of the West bank. A small Jewish Israeli settlement has been built in the middle of a mostly Muslim Arab city. The small settlement is protected by over 2000 Israeli soldiers and security personnel. I can say from personnel experience, even if you are a privileged American, dealing with the Israelis in Hebron is pretty intimidating.

HEBRON REFLECTION:

"This is Our Life"By Abigail Ozanne

This morning I was reflecting that in the nearly four months I had been in Hebron I have been cursed, insulted, spat at, pushed, threatened with arrest, detained, tear gassed, had my home invaded by soldiers, stoned, and threatened with death. It is only a taste of what the Palestinians endure.Recently the soldiers arrested a journalist for taking pictures. The soldiers grabbed him, handcuffed and blindfolded him, and led him away. I expressed how sorry I was to his brother. The brother replied, "this is our life."
He said that at different times in the past Israeli forces had shot, beaten, and arrested him.Two weekends ago, after soldiers beat two men, one to unconsciousness, tear gassed everyone in an enclosed space, and arrested several people, including the journalist, I said what a terrible day it had been. Our Palestinian neighbor answered, "this is our life."
I am a member of the Undoing Racism Working Group in CPT. We have been working on addressing racism within CPT. Through this work, I have become more aware of my unearned privilege as a white American. In Palestine this means that I am asked for ID less. The soldiers cannot arrest me although police can. The soldiers are not likely to beat me. If I am arrested, I do not need to fear being tortured. I am allowed to go most places in the West Bank. Soldiers are less likely to invade our home. If they do invade, they are not likely to ransack it. If I am hurt, arrested, or killed, the international community will say that it is wrong. The Palestinians we work with do not have any of these privileges. This is racism.
As I go about my work, I seek to stand with the oppressed, to dare to be vulnerable. I try to listen to our Palestinian partners and friends about their experiences. I try to understand. And I acknowledge that what I experience is only a portion of the suffering of the Palestinians. I have many privileges here not shared by the majority of the population. Additionally, at the end of my time in Palestine, I can go home. For the Palestinians, this is their life.

Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical initiative to support violence reduction efforts around the world. To learn more about CPT's peacemaking work, visit our website www.cpt.org Photos of our projects are at www.cpt.org/ gallery A map of the center of Hebron is at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/fullMaps_Sa.nsf/0/5618737E38C0B3DE8525708C004BA584/$File/ocha_OTS_hebron_oPt010805.pdf?OpenElement The same map is the last page of this report on closures in Hebron: www.humanitarianinf o.org/opt/ docs/UN/OCHA/ ochaHU0705_ En.pdf

The last word

There are a lot of words floating around our media that seem to be used indiscriminately without providing any definitions. Words like terrorist, militant, radical Islamic state and moderate Arab state appear everywhere, but I am not always clear who we are talking about. Unless we come up with a truth in labeling law for the media that requires a definition of terms be attached to each article, we may need another vehicle to decipher the information. Looking at examples of what is being described might be helpful. Under that method it appears that a radical Islamic state is a state that is unable to support US policies because it has sufficient democratic institutions that the government needs to be sensitive to the opinions of its citizens. A moderate Arab state seems to be an authoritarian state whose leaders do not have listen to their citizens and therefore can support US policies. This division does, at times seem to create some odd situations. Recently US intelligence officials showed media representatives a sampling of weapons that they claimed were provided by the “radical Islamic state”, Iran, to Iraqi “militants” and “terrorists”. The officials claimed that these weapons had killed 170 American troops since the beginning of the war. When I heard this I wondered where the weapons have come from that killed the other 3000 soldiers. For answers to questions like this it is generally useful to follow the money. In this case I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that road didn’t lead through the “moderate Arab state” of Saudi Arabia. These are the folks that brought us most of the 9/11 highjackers, the mujahadeen in Afghanistan including Osama bin Laden and who export the intolerant, fundamentalist Wahabist version of Islam throughout the world. This situation raises the question: “How do situations like this happen?”. A few years ago I learned in Sunday School that when one is reading the book known to the church as the Gospel of Matthew and one asks the question “Why is this story included?”, the answer is usually Moses. In the case of the Middle East, when one asks the question “Why is this odd behavior happening?”, the answer is usually oil.

Watch our for the boogie man

During my growing up years, I can remember being admonished by my parents that I had better behave or the boogie man would get me. This admonishment is a remnant of European colonial experience when the Islamic pirates of the Boogle coast of Suliwesi in Indonesia were the most frightening group they could think of. Hence the name “boogie man”. I spent much time looking under my bed and in my closet to be sure that the “boogie man” wasn’t there. On my recent trip to Tanzania and Rwanda, our group spent a day in a small village outside Arusha, Tanzania where I have been involved in projects to assist the local church and establish a health clinic. When we arrived, we were greeted with great fanfare by the residents and leaders of the village. As we mingled with the residents, one of my friends, who is the quintessential grandmother, knelt down to interact with a young girl. The young girl looked carefully at my friend and then burst into tears. As we discussed this reaction with our Tanzanian friends, they said that she had probably never seen a white person before and didn’t know what to make of this strangely colored person. They also said that for many Africans their only experience with white people is that of oppressors and American TV characters who carry guns and kill people. Parents admonish their children that if they don’t behave “the white man will come and kill you”. As the drumbeat towards war with Iran continues, we seem intent on insuring that Iranian parents will have a scary enemy with which to threaten their children. Although it might result in better behavior of Iranian children, I am not sure that we want another group of children growing up hearing “you had better behave or the Americans will come and kill you”. I recently received a photo collage of Iran from a friend. It portrays a country much different than the images that we receive from our media and politicians. A friend who is currently working in Iraq recently said “When my Iraqi friends go on vacation, they go to Iran. They tell me that I should go. It is such a beautiful place.” I encourage you to look at these pictures (click here) and ask yourself “Is this a country that we want to destroy?”.

A recipe for genocide

I have taken a brief vacation from blogging while traveling in Africa. Some was enforced vacation as internet access in the bush was pretty limited. As usual, upon my return from an enforced vacation from news and information, not much has changed. The same old intractable problems that were there three weeks ago are still here today. In these poorest countries in the world, just getting through the day is an accomplishment in itself. People have little time to concern themselves with big power politics and the ramifications of big power decisions for world peace. One of our stops was Rwanda, the isolated mountainous “Switzerland of Africa”. Although we were there to see the endangered Mountain Gorillas, it quickly became clear that even in this country only thirteen years separated from a genocide that killed over 1 million people in three months, big power political agendas affect peoples lives. Rwanda is a beautiful country of intense cultivation on steep mountain slopes. The people are lovely and friendly. One is left to wonder how these people could kill 1 million of their friends and neighbors in just three months. A visit to the Genocide Memorial yields a tale of the introduction of European imperialist racism into a culture that had existed for hundreds of years. Until the Europeans arrived Hutus and Tutsis were divided by economics and class. Wealth was measured by the number of cattle that you owned. (In the US we measure it by the number of cars or houses that you own) Tutsis were those that owned more than ten cows. The Europeans inserted the idea that one group was superior and more deserving than another that over time escalated into a civil war. As it appeared that the Tutsis were about to prevail in the conflict, France, under Francois Mitterand, decided to intervene on behalf of the Hutus. This intervention gave the Hutus the ability and the means to obliterate 1 million Tutsis and Hutus who would not participate. Our guide was a Hutu whose whole family was killed by his best friend because they would not participate in the murder of their neighbors. The resulting enmity toward France is palpable in this former French/Belgian protectorate. Perhaps we can learn something from this tragedy about the perils of big powers trying to impose their agendas and decide who the “good guys” are in civil conflicts that we don’t understand. The unintended consequences can be disastrous. Recent events, however, seems to indicate that these lessons have not been learned. In Somalia the US has intervened on behalf of the warlords and Ethiopian invaders against the Islamic Courts. These are the same warlords that we were fighting in the 1990’s and who have pillaged the “country” since then. In Palestine the US is arming Fatah in their domestic political conflict with Hamas. (To hear a chilling description by Laila el Haddad of her discussion with a leader of the Fatah death squads click here) Ryszard Kapusinski, a Polish journalist who spent over 25 years in Africa, writes in “The Shadow of the Sun”: “That is how the Rwandan drama is engendered, the tragedy of the Banyrwanda nation born of an almost Israeli-Palestinian inability to reconcile the interests of two social groups laying claim to the same scrap of land, too small and confined to accommodate them both. Within this drama is spawned the temptation, at first weak and vague, but with the passing years, ever more clear and insistent, of the “Endlosung” – a final solution.” Take a civil conflict, add dose of big power politics and simmer over increasing heat for a number of years and we may have a recipe for a “final solution”.