More and even more
Friday morning we left the beautiful Ohalo Manor at Kibbutz Kinneret where we had enjoyed stunning views of the Sea of Galilee and way too much fabulous food. We drove north along the west side of the sea past acres of cultivated land, beautiful rich producing fields, then up into the hills. We wound our way up until we came to the village of Shibli at the foot of Mt Tabor. We met with Aida Shibli at the Bedouin Heritage Center and she told us about her life. A very unusual woman, Aida was divorced and is a single parent. She said that life had been good around the Sea of Galilee but during the Intifada of 2000, 13 people, including a young boy, were killed near her. After that, nationalistic feeling began to grow. It shook people’s belief in the possibility of coexistence. Her father ran a nursery and people would come and argue politics. The situation challenged the Bedouin talent of bringing people together. It was her father’s dream to have a place to present the Bedouin heritage, which would not identify with either side, but would be a place where people could celebrate their identities. The Bedouin center that the family created is a huge tent like building, with low tables and pillows on the floor. In the Bedouin culture, you all sit down all at the same level, with your feet on the earth. Aida believes that the minute you show yourself, and share your truth, this truth will touch the other. You have to let go of changing the other.
Aida’s life story is another demonstration of the human capacity for transforming, anger, bitterness, and fear into hope, acceptance, love, and peace through the process of self-awareness. She talked about looking to the inner occupation, where we are stuck in the way we perceive things with judgment. She shared her view that it is a human tendency to want to be a victim; it is easier than focusing on working towards the future. As a victim, you can get sympathy; you can remain innocent, blame others, and you don’t have to do the hard work of looking at yourself deeply and accepting your own shadow side. In a conflict, both sides must give up their victimhood and forbear comparing the level of their pain and suffering. She had been a peace fighter, an activist, now she saw that there could be no fighting for peace, you have to work towards it and give up fighting and pushing against things. She feels that modern life creates war, our busyness and consumerism creates violence, not peace.
She had her own personal story of having transformed her anger and bitterness and she has the challenge of belonging to a people who have been very impacted. Only 250 Bedouins out of a tribe of 12,000 survived the war in 1948.
She is shining light. She focuses on peace work, spending time at a peace camp in Portugal called Tamira. She talked so much about her philosophy, sharing her wisdom. She feels that trust, transparency, and love are all necessary for peace to emerge. She plans to found a community where Israeli’s and Palestinians can coexist. The first stage, an experimental community at Tamira, is being planned. After spending a morning with this angel, I feel reassured that the boundaries of human limitations are being expanded. www.mytavor.com
We drove from Shibli to Haifa and met with two men who had lost children in a suicide bus bombing in 2003. We met at the cemetery and it was so sad to feel their grief. They have been very active in creative ways to keep the memories of their children alive, to learn to cope with their grief, and to provide greater security for Israel. www.Blondi.co.il
We returned to Jerusalem for the night and met in the evening to talk about judgments. We are all so vulnerable to our thoughts. It is a huge and constant process to follow a judgment down inside us to some unmet need or unrecognized value. I am so humbled by those who have done this work in the face of huge pain and loss.
In Tel Aviv we met with Norma Musih of the Israeli organization Zochrot (“Remembering”,) that works to raise awareness of the Naqba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 ( what the Israelis consider the War of Indepence.) Norma is another angel; another being who has transformed pain, fear and doubt into a clarity of vision where she is sure that truth is necessary for peace. She believes that it will heal the Israeli soul if they take responsibility for the seizures of land and the destruction of villages that took place during the War of Independence. Currently much of the Israeli society refuses to believe that wrong was done. The Palestinian refugees are wounded that no acknowledgement of wrongdoing or apology has ever been made. There are 5-6 million Palestinian refugees and 1 out of 3 refugees in the world are Palestinians. 20% of the Palestinians in Israel are refugees. This means that they have lost their homes and land, were never compensated and are not permitted to return to their homes.
Zochrot is an amazing organization and goes about the very difficult work of consciousness raising in many creative ways. They sponsored a photographic project working with a French photographer who took photographs of refugees from Lebanon and took pictures of the photographs at the site of their home and brought them back to the refugees. They also do gatherings with a large map and have participants put a marker with the name of a destroyed village back on the site of the village and speak to the group about why they chose that village. The stories that emerge are moving, and a source of healing. Zochrot is an educational organization and produces curriculum that has not existed about the Naqba, so that teachers can introduce it into schools.
The organization talks about and accepts the Right of Return (the right of refugees to return to their homes as mandated by the UN). This is very threatening to the mainstream Israeli population. Jews have a fear of being thrown into the sea and fear an Arab influx. The politics of Israel are built on an ‘us or them’, ‘friend or enemy ‘mentality. The State can’t be both Jewish and democratic. No one is speaking about how the Right of Return could be implemented in practical ways, because the mere thought of it is too threatening. But there will be no peace until there is acknowledgement. There could be practical solutions, and the organization has written a proposal that includes a ban on expelling anyone from their homes so as not to create any new refugees. The Right of Return calls for broad social change and change is dangerous. However, according to Norma, it is more dangerous to continue on the current course. She was very clear that it is to uplift the Israeli mentality that she is impassioned by this work. To have real peace and reconciliation, the Naqba must be acknowledged. www.zochrot.org
And we hear stories and they become us and we become them. I am so full. I left the group in Jaffa and went on my own to the beach. My religion is the sea. We take what we are and what we have heard, the suffering and the joy, and we plunge into the ocean to be washed clean, to be deepened, to share ourselves with our source that we may have more capacity. I floated in the warm blue ocean for an hour, felt my feet on the soft sand, the sun warm on my skin and I knew who I was again. I am the man who lost his child to the terrorist attack. I am the bomber, so hopeless. I am the Palestinian mother who loves her sons. I am the Israeli who fears for his survival. I am the leader who must decide and I am the lover of life who relishes pleasure and home and the sweet scents of the garden. I am so much, so I swim it all out into the sea where it can join with rivers of tears that have washed down, carving away at the mountains of silence. I am so much. I stand on the earth and feel it all flow down down deep into the roots of creation to be healed. I am so much that I have my heart cracked open so that what I am rushes out and joins with the heart of the world. I am so much that I have to let it all soar into the sky to be transformed and broken into bits to drop back down like rays of sun to light up what needs to be seen. And I do this for the joy of it. I do this because of the love that it brings me. I do this because it is a miracle that we are here, alive in this time, with this chance to be so much.
And I feel the guiding hearts of the human angels who lead the way and I can reach back and offer my hand in service to those who are looking for help. And I just keep going, despite doubts about myself and my own worth, and about humanity and it’s limitations. I just keep going.