Gay marriage becomes law in Vermont

I was overcome with joy to hear that the state of Vermont just became the first state in the USA to vote in favour of gay marriage.  I went on to Democracy Now (www.democracynow.org) and listened to Amy Goodman tell us about this momentous event.  Go to her website to hear her speaking to Beth Robinson, chair of the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force, to Rep. Bill Lippert, chair of Vermont House Judiciary Committee, and longtime gay rights activist and to 12 year old Evann Orleck-Jetter, daughter of a lesbian couple, who testified at the public hearings on gay marriage last month before Vermont’s Joint Senate and House Judiciary Committees.

Inspiring Peace

On the 31st March, Sheila Yeger and I held a Peace Fair in Bristol to celebrate grassroots peacemaking initiatives in the Middle East.  We wanted to be inspired and to inspire others with the possibilities of non-violent peaceful coexistence and harmony between Israelis and Palestinians.  We knew of many creative projects where people were working together but we rarely hear about these projects in the news. The media focusses on conflict and violence, giving a misleading impression.  We wanted to show another set of facts on the ground – another version of reality.  So, we selected 20 peacemaking groups and prepared information sheets about each of them.  The groups were:  Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, Sabeel, ICAHD, British Shalom Salaam Trust, Combatants for Peace, OneVoice, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam, Bustan, Parents Circle – Families Forum, Lend for Peace, Creativity for Peace,  Jerusalem Peacemakers, Just Vision, Arab– Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa, Health Project – Naomi Segev,  the McGill Middle East Programme for Civil Society and Peace Building, Seeds of Peace, Gate to Humanity, and the All Nations Cafe. To encourage people to learn about the groups, we made up a quiz which we handed out as they came in. There were questions like:

1. Is OneVoice a dialogue group?

2. What citizenship and national identities do the residents of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam have?

3. What did 4 young American men – an observant Jew, a Muslim Palestinian, an observant Cuban Jew and a Christian Palestinian create together?

There were ballot papers – the money raised at the Fair went to the group with the most votes. As it turned out, it was ICAHD, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions that received the most votes.

In the background, we played the continuous Jewish-Muslim music mix from Radio Salaam Shalom (www.salaamshalom.org.uk).  We set up tables as in a cafe and served homemade food – fatayer (see the previous post for the recipe), baclava, k’mish breut, humus, pitta, salad, dates, nuts, fruit, olives and juice.

The Peace Fair didn’t attract as many people as we’d hope. I don’t know why. I wonder if good news isn’t as compelling as bad news. Maybe it doesn’t generate the sense of crisis and the desire to take action. For me, creating the Peace Fair was fun, informative and inspiring.  I certainly feel more optimistic and positive about the prospects for peace in the region knowing about these wonderful projects.

Answers: 1. No     2. Citizenship – Israeli, National identities – Jewish, Palestinian Arab     3. Lend for Peace (microfinance for Palestinian entrepreneurs)

Counter-Rhetoric

Counter-Rhetoric – Challenging “conventional wisdom” & reframing the conflict. This is the title of a pamphlet put out by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, written by Emily Schaeffer, Jeff Halper & Jimmy Johnson.  It’s a very useful publication since it provides a clear, concise message that frames the dialogue in the context of international law, human rights and justice and does it in short soundbites.  Here’s an example:

Conventional wisdom: “The land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people.”

Challenge: “It’s a genuine historical tie but not exclusive. Jews were the majority in this land for only some 1,900 of 10,000 years of modern history and were the governing authority for even less. Exclusively maintaining the land ignores the 21st century reality, one in which Jews have lived outside of Israel for centuries and must accommodate the other populations who have lived, and continue to live here. .. Jews have no more and no less, a right to the land than any of the others who have populated land, including the Arabs (1200 years).”

The pamphlet is available for £1.50 from ICAHD-UK, www.icahduk.org

Fatayer – an adventure in Middle Eastern cooking

My contribution to a recent Peace Fair in Bristol was to gather some food-loving friends and cook up a big batch of Middle Eastern and Eastern European food together. As well as humus, baklava and k’mish breut, we made fatayer from a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi, chief-patron of Ottolenghi in London. These are spinach bread snacks from Palestine and Lebanon and are exceptionally delicious. I was first introduced to them here in England by my good friend Mirian Walton. Here’s how to make them:
For the dough:
40 ml milk at body temperature
1 teaspoon active dried yeast
300g white bread flour
165 ml water
1/3 teaspoon salt
40 ml sunflower oil
Stir the yeast into the milk. Set aside for 10 minutes, then mix the rest of the ingredients together and knead until the dough is smooth and silky. Cover with a moist cloth and leave somewhere warm for 45 minutes or until doubled in volume.
For the filling:
200g chopped spinach
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1.5 teaspoon salt
1.5 tablespoon sumac or grated lemon rind
1.5 tablespoon olive oil
1.5 tablespoon lemon juice
0.5 tablespoon pomegranate syrup (optional)
2 tablespoon toasted pine nuts
Black pepper
80g feta cheese
Put the spinach and salt in a bowl and set aside for 15 minutes. Then squeeze out as much water as you can. (I’m not sure how important this is as no water came out when we squeezed). Mix all the ingredients, adding the feta cheese last. Taste – it should be a sharp, sweet and sour.
Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. Divide the dough into small portions, roughly 40g each. Dust the work surface with flour and roll each portion into a round about 0.5cm thick and 10cm in diameter. Stretch them to make them thin enough. Place 1.5 tablespoons of the filling in the centre of each circle. Imagining the circle as a triangle, lift 2 sides and pinch them together halfway down, to make a thin, raised joint, then lift the third side and pinch it to the loose edges – you should now have a rough triangle with a Y-shaped seam at the top. Pinch the seam and lift it upwards.
Transfer to an oven tray lined with a baking sheet or well oiled. (If the filling leaks, they stick to the baking sheet so make sure the dough is sealed around the filling and the baking sheet is covered.) Space them 2cm apart. Score with a fork in a couple of places and put somewhere warm to rise for 15 minutes. Brush with olive oil. Bake for 20 minutes. Serve at room temperature if you can wait that long before you eat them.

Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood

In this book, the Israeli historian, Idith Zertal, (Cambridge University Press, 2005) makes a strong case for the way Israel has “appropriated and used the memory of the Holocaust in order to define and legitimize its existence and poliitics”. She argues that the creation in Israel of a particular collective memory about the Holocaust has “led to a culture of death and victimhood which permeates Israeli society, its rituals, and its self-image. The ghost of the Holocaust is ever present in Israel, in the lives and nightmares of the survivors, and in the absence of the victims.” This isn’t a new analysis but Zertal shows how this memory has been constructed and maintained and how it prevents the possibility of peaceful co-existence with the Palestinians.

The media – perpetuating peace or war

After a visit to the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel in 2005, I stopped listening to the mainstream media. Having gained a deeper understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship during the visit, I was painfully aware of bias, distorted framing of the conflict, hypocrisy, and lies in news stories carried by the British media.
But that wasn’t the only reason I tuned out. It was the unstated agenda that disturbed me – an agenda that goes beyond the reporting of events to one that selects only those events that fit the agenda of perpetual war, confusion and despair. Many peacemaking initiatives are never covered by the media and the context in which acts of violence occur are rarely made clear. The consequences of the relentless attention to violent conflict is to reinforce a negative view of human nature, to effectively perpetuate a state of war. In Israel, it is even more blatant than in Britain. Through the media, Israeli leaders “taught us to scoff at belief in peace and any hope for change in our relations with the Arabs. They convinced us that the Arabs understand only force, and therefore that is the only language we can use in our dealings with them. (David Grossman, Ha’aretz, January 2009). The effect is to legitimate the belief that our collective identities (Jew, Muslim, Israeli, Palestinian) reflect real differences between us. In this version of reality, the media make peace that much more unattainable.
Is it possible for the media to have a peacemaking agenda? The visit in 2005 showed me that it is. That visit was with a compassionate listening delegation led by a US organisation (www.compassionatelistening.org). It was a unique opportunity to listen to Israelis and Palestinians as they spoke their deepest truths. The experience opened my eyes and my heart to a different reality – that we have more in common than separates us and that beneath our opposing beliefs are the same fears, hopes, values and needs. What I heard from both Israeli Jews and Palestinians were cries for help and calls for love – to be heard and accepted, to escape the tyranny of fear and victimhood, to be free of demonisation and misrepresentation, to have the chance to live in peace, harmony and justice.
Shortly after the visit, my rabbi invited me to become involved in Radio Salaam Shalom (www.salaamshalom.org.uk), a community media project that does reflect the version of reality I want to create. Based in Bristol (UK), we have an internet radio station staffed by volunteers with one paid co-ordinator. We started with music and discussion-based live shows and now produce fortnightly Jewish-Muslim talk-focused podcasts. Our mission is to “create a multimedia resource dedicated to Jewish and Muslim dialogue, to promote understanding and share awareness of common community values, and to be an innovative broadcaster for constructive Muslim and Jewish communication everywhere”.
We don’t make statements or release official positions and we don’t try to find a common position that we all agree with. We act as a resource to support and encourage dialogue about whatever issues people feel are relevant. There is no censorship. Not surprisingly, Israel/Palestine is one of the topics we discuss. It’s not the only one but with the attack on Gaza, it’s been in the forefront of our awareness. We talk to each other; we interview people working for peace; we highlight projects focussed on non-violent, peaceful change and cooperation.
I’ve used my slot to listen to alternative Jewish voices about Israel, Zionism and Jewish identity. These include a woman whose experience as a hidden child of the Nazi Holocaust led her to support the Palestinian cause; a rabbi explaining why Judaism and Zionism are incompatible; a Jewish woman who campaigns for Jews to boycott Israeli goods; and a volunteer with the Ecumenical Accompanier Programme in Palestine and Israel.. I’ve also provided a platform for Palestinians, including Maha Taji Daghash, peacemaker and academic living in Israel and a woman from the Bay Area Jewish Palestinian Dialogue Group. It’s not all talk – I produced Dove, a drama by a Jewish playwright that explores the pain felt by mothers whose children kill and are killed in violent conflicts.
Every programme leaves me feeling inspired and hopeful. But what really lifts my spirits is the cooperation, openness and harmony between the Muslim and Jewish volunteers in Radio Salaam Shalom. During the latest crisis in Gaza, we kept talking and worked together to produce several podcasts sharing our reactions. As Gandhi says, “be the change you want to see in the world.” We are doing just that.

A Time to Speak Out: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity

January 2009: A Palestinian man in his 60s is driving his two teenage sons back to Khan Younis in southern Gaza when they are fired upon by Israeli soldiers. They are ordered out of their car. One son is shot and dies immediately. The other is shot in the leg. The father begs the soldiers, who are visible and within speaking distance, for an ambulance. For 11 hours, they refuse his request. He has a mobile phone and calls humanitarian agencies, the emergency medical services, the media and another son in Canada but by the time the soldiers allow the ambulance through, his son has bled to death.
To those who are critical of Israel, the soldiers’ behaviour is incomprehensible, a sign of Israel’s moral depravity and barbaric treatment of civilians. To those who support Israel, the soldiers were just protecting themselves from enemy combatants hiding among the civilian population.
I heard this story in London on the 8th March at the launch of A Time To Speak Out: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity, a book of essays by British and Israeli Jews published by Verso Books, 2008. It was one of the examples of medical violations of human rights in Gaza given by Miri Weingarten, Director of Palestinian Occupied Territories of the Physicians for Human Rights Israel. As well as impeding the evacuation of the wounded to hospitals within Gaza and to Israel, she gave details of attacks on medical personnel and the destruction and damage done to health facilities by the Israeli military. When asked how many of the more than 1300 dead Gazans were civilians, she shrugged and said that was a matter for debate. Most people agree that women and children are civilians but what about the men attending a police graduation ceremony? She told us about the hardening of attitudes among the Israel public fueled by the intense propaganda campaign in the Israeli media. The lack of information and the stifling of dissent ensured that Israeli Jews knew very little about events in Gaza. For the duration of the attack, Israeli Jewish peace activitists were placed under house arrest and interrogated, a new phenomenon in Israeli society (not so new for Israeli Arabs who were also rounded up and detained).
By the time, Miri finished her measured, evidence-based presentation, I was in tears. I felt a heavy sorrow for all the victims of this stupid unwinnable war – for the Palestinians (more than 1300 dead, more than 5300 injured, more than 100,000 displaced and homeless, the infrastructure destroyed, the loss of hope, Hamas stronger and more militant than before) and for the Israelis whose psyches are twisted with revenge, hysteria and hopelessness and who are more extremist than before.
It was Uri Avnery, the keynote speaker, who described Operation Cast Lead as stupid and the Israeli government as fascists. Now 85, Avnery is Israel’s leading peace dissident. He fought for the Irgun in 1948, met Arafat during the siege of Beirut in 1982, was one of the founders of Gush Shalom in 1993 and was a member of the Knesset. For more than 60 years he has advocated a two-state solution. In his view, it is the only solution possible. To explain why, he took us back to the end of the 19th century when the Zionist movement grew out of the belief that there was no place for Jews in the emerging nationalist identities of Europe, that our salvation lay in a Jewish state. The Nazi Holocaust confirmed this belief. He said Israeli Jews would never give up their belief in a Jewish state, a need based on a deep mistrust of non-Jews and a fear of being in a minority. A one-state solution is unthinkable, he said, because Jews would be a minority in ten or 15 years time. He was adamant in his belief that people of different national identities cannot live together in one state and that indeed, there is no place in the world where they do.
Despite Avnery’s insistence that Israel is unique and cannot be compared to any other conflicts throughout the world, what I heard from him was an eloquent and passionate defence of ethno-nationalist ideology, no different than that expressed by the British National Party and most other ethno-nationalist movements around the world.
It’s not an ideology I agree with and I wonder how many Jewish citizens of Britain or of any country outside Israel truly believe in this ideology of despair. Our history, like those of Israeli Jews, includes centuries of European anti-semitism and the Nazi Holocaust. Yet, we do not draw the lesson from our shared past that we must continue to fear and mistrust our non-Jewish neighbours. In Britain, we are a tiny minority among a cosmopolitan mix of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities with a white, English, nominally Christian majority. I can’t be the only Jew who appreciates and enjoys this diversity. My experience, my lived reality, is one of freedom and security. Here, I can be open about my Jewishness; I can belong to a synagogue and practise Judaism as and when I choose; I can live and travel anywhere in the country; I can apply for any job and not be discriminated against because of my Jewishness; I can vote and run for political office even though I’m Jewish. My partner’s Quaker identity, my involvement with a Jewish-Muslim community media project, my friendships with non-Jews, my work with parents from across the ethnic spectrum – all these enrich my life.
I left the meeting more certain than before that I wouldn’t trade the sense of security I have as a minority in Britain for the fear and lack of security that Israeli Jews live with as a result of their desperation to be in the majority.

Lessons in compassion

A few months ago, I was walking by the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol where I live. I was leaning against the railing to admire the view when I noticed a middle aged woman wearing a bright pink jacket on the other side of the railing. She was sitting cross legged a few feet from the edge of a sheer drop of 1000 feet. She looked relaxed, as if she had just climbed over the railing to get a better view. So strong is the impulse not to get involved, not to interfere, to remain separate that I rationalised to myself that it was none of my business. I walked on. A few minutes later, it hit me that this woman must have been contemplating suicide and that to do so in a public place was a call for help. Just as I thought about going back to her,  I saw two men in construction clothes leave their work repairing the bridge and go to her. One climbed over the railing, sat down between her and the cliff edge, took her hand and began talking to her. Feeling relieved that someone had come to her rescue, I went on my way. However, I felt uncomfortably aware that I had missed an important opportunity.
Last week, I was walking along a main road to a lecture about Christian-Muslim dialogue when I noticed a young woman sitting in a shop doorway sobbing loudly. Worried about being late, I was walking fast, head down, totally focussed on my destination.  As I zoomed past, the thought popped into my mind that the woman’s grief was not my problem and I hoped she would find relief from her grief. This thought was closely followed by an image of the woman in the pink jacket by the cliff. By this time, I was about 20 feet beyond her but it was as if I hit a brick wall and had to turn back. Without another thought, I wheeled around, went back, sat down beside her and asked if there was any way I could help her. The look of gratitude on her face was enough to convince me that I had done the right thing. I stayed no more than 5 minutes listening to her story and giving her a few words of advice (I couldn’t resist). Then I went on to the lecture which happened to start late so I didn’t miss anything after all.
Both incidents were lessons in compassion, each one a perfect opportunity.

Why Coming Out is My Duty to God” by Irshad Manji

Ten years ago, Irshad Manji gave a speech showing why gays and God are not just reconciliable but “downright compatible.” Irshad is Director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University. It aims to develop leaders who will challenge political correctness, intellectual conformity and self-censorship, teaching that rights come with responsibilities, that we are citizens rather than members of mere tribes, and that meaningful diversity embraces different ideas and not just identities. Irshad is creator of the television documentary, “Faith Without Fear,” which chronicles her journey to reconcile Islam with human rights and freedom. She wrote The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith. About sexuality, she says, “In the end, both the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam affirm that we are creatures of the Almighty, so that knowledge of the self and knowledge of God are synonymous. Which means denial of the self keeps us separated from God (otherwise known as sin). We have a duty to grow into our faith by constantly revealing ourselves to our maker. Coming out to our creator, then, is not just an option. At a certain point, coming out might be an obligation.” http://www.irshadmanji.com/about-irshad

Gaza Dialogue

As an experiment in developing our dialogue skills and our empathy, my latest Compassionate Listening session used letters between an Israeli reserve soldier and the Palestinian whose home was commandeered by the soldiers during the January invasion. Whether these letters are genuine or not wasn’t the issue. We read each letter aloud, broke into pairs to identify what feelings the writer expressed, shared with the group times when we had experienced those same feelings in our everyday lives and carried out a role play imagining that the soldier and the Gaza citizen had met in person to talk. I found it an effective technique for getting beyond the stated positions and arguments which only serve to keep us divided to the emotions which help us connect and understand each other.