Copyright 2009
Then in October 2000 ? the second Intifada!
I wrote this article in October 2005 ? I called it
The Gift of The Intifada
My dream for peace has shattered. Just a while ago I sat on the chair together with Nizar from Nablus. We laughed and were so hopeful as we watched the Oslo Accords taking place. I was sure peace was just around the corner. I could almost smell it. Taste it. In an instant, everything is falling apart. Rabin has been killed by one of our own extremists! 13 Arab young men were killed during an uprising, near where I live. The second Intifada started.
I went with Marsha to a peace tent that had been set up in Misgav. We sat in a circle?Jews and Arabs?sharing our fear, our pain, our confusion?not knowing how to be with each other right now. The talking stick was an olive branch, which moved from one to another with a heaviness that cannot be described.
In walked a big muscular macho Israeli who announced that we are going to visit three of the families whose sons have been killed in Sachnin and Araabe ? Arab villages nearby. My heart beats loudly in my body. I shake. Oh my God, I?m in so much fear. I call my husband, who demands I go home immediately. There has been a lynching in Ramallah. I shake even more. I can hardly breathe, and in a moment, I make a decision that was to change my life.
I decide not to listen to the fear. I make a conscious choice to listen to my heart. Taking a deep breath, I tell Marsha that if God put me here right now, there is a reason. I hold her hand, seeking courage for what is to come. We all drive in silence to the families in Sachnin.
We drive through the winding narrow streets. Many men are gathered in the tent that has been set up for the mourners of the two young men. To my amazement, a Jewish father, who too lost his child to this never-ending conflict, is speaking of forgiveness. I am too emotional to hear very much, but I get the gist. This man is the founder of the Bereaved Parent?s Circle.
We visit the woman?each moment, my pain going deeper. We silently get back into the cars and drive to the next village, Araabe. My breath is shallow. My belly is aching. I had no idea what I was about to experience, but my body seems to have known. We are led into the lounge of the house, and all around are young and old crying quietly. There are pictures on the wall of a beautiful young man in a green T-shirt, which has written on it Seeds of Peace.
A family album is passed around. I see all the photographs of the peace camp. How can that be?! I go crazy inside of myself. This child is a peacemaker. I have to hold myself back from not howling with pain. I sit quietly, restraining what I am feeling inside, and allow the tears to silently wash my face.
I go home and cannot sleep. A few weeks later I go back to spend some private time with Jamila, his mother, to hear more because I cannot comprehend what has happened. Jamila shares with me the story of her peace-loving family. How she educated her children and her students about equality, togetherness, and peace. How she sent her children to a Jewish kindergarten; and when Assil grew up, how he went to the Seeds of Peace summer camp. She asks me how she can go back to school and teach now. ?What will I tell my students? Where is the equality, the togetherness, and peace I have been teaching??
I sit quietly listening and am torn apart. I feel my heart being smashed into thousands of pieces. I know what it is like to lose a child. Thank God, He took mine so soon after she was born. I know that pain of the loss of child, her loss being amplified for each year that Assil lived. My heart runs amok with my own pain, remembering how I tried to kill myself after my baby died. Knowing that all that will keep Jamila alive are her other children and the memory of Assil. A mother?s pain is like this vast sea?never-ending waves of pain that tear you apart and only some days, the sea is calm and you can breathe a bit easier, till the next wave smashes on the rocks of your heart.
She shares with me Assil?s writings. I silently read and cry. I am amazed, and I feel the anger rising in my belly. Oh my God, this child was supposed to be a leader of peace for his community and for us all. He understands that there is no separation. My anger turns into shame and guilt. I internally scream at God, outwardly express my disappointment with the system. I want to react?to scream and shout?but instead, I go into action. I act on. This is the gift of the intifada for me. Before this incident, I just complained and was a very passive bystander. I shlepped along with friends who were organizing peace gatherings. That day, as I sat opposite Jamila, I promised myself, that I would act on what I was feeling.
During the year Marsha and I tried to organize a dialogue group between Jewish and Arab women in the area. It petered out pretty soon when the Arab women who came were being called traitors by their friends. The pain was too raw for many of them, and one by one they dropped out.
In the summer of 2001, I flew to Santa Fe, to Rachel to take part in a workshop where I spent much of my time crying and emoting about what was happening in Israel. While I was flying home on the September Eleven, as it is now named?that is a whole other story? Rachel shared her and my frustration and pain with a friend of hers Debra Sugerman, who said, ?Work with the next generation?this is where the solution lies.? And so birthed the Creativity for Peace camp, which brings together each summer 30 young teenage girls from Palestine and Israel.
We gather each morning in what is now being called ?the crying room for compassionate dialogue.? Here the girls courageously go deep into their pain, anger, frustration, humiliation, hatred, rage, and fear. We cry, emote, and release from our physical and emotional bodies all that is pent up and needs expression. In the afternoon the girls have an opportunity to release more through integrative arts, and then it is party time. After having made space in their hearts for something new to sprout, loving friendships are woven, and feelings of love cannot be denied as the enemy slowly turns into the friend.
Feelings of awe and sanctity rise in my body, as I witness girls? who in the morning could not even touch each other in the group hug that we all needed so badly after a release of so much pain?now running through the store, arm in arm to find Jackie the photographer, to take a photograph of them hugging and laughing. When we get home to Israel and Palestine, we make great efforts to meet in order to sustain and nourish the seeds that have been planted on neutral ground, permits being my nightmare.
The intifada has put me on track. Today, I live each day on purpose. These courageous young women have taught me that if we allow ourselves to go deep into our pain, cry, shout, get angry, allow our rage expression in a loving and safe environment, talk about our humiliation and our hatred, and look at all our shadows?transformation takes place. When the love becomes stronger than the fear, we cannot deny what we know to be true. That is the moment that cultural conditioning melts into the background, and new feelings and truths can be cultivated.
I remember the moment a few years ago, while driving from Haifa back home to Rosh Pina, I heard on the radio that there had been another terrorist attack, just where I had been a couple of hours previously. I cried bitterly, feeling so sad, helpless and hopeless, I begged God to use me as His servant for peace. He seems to have heard me loud and clear and is doing a great job in guiding me there. He has taken from me all the material structure that I thought was my foundation?a home and a marriage?and has forced me to go deep into my own pain. My towers were flown into and smashed, and I am starting from ground zero now, knowing without doubt that all the money we earn, cannot buy peace.
Money can buy arms and weapons, and then we can ?fight for peace,? perpetuating the blood circle, generation after generation, or we can spiral up and use our arms for embracing ourselves and our so-called enemies. We can leave our children enormous inheritances to fight over, or we can leave them an inheritance of a better world, where arms are used for hugging. We can teach them that this world is either you or me, or we could teach them that it is you and me.
I was born in South Africa. Knowing that apartheid no longer exists there is what keeps me going and hopeful. Seeing the girls laugh and play, hold hands and giggle?when just a moment before there was the look of contempt and hatred on their faces?this keeps me hopeful. Experiencing the pain and fear of abandonment, betrayal and wondering how I will eat tomorrow, has taught me humility and awe. I have had to go deep into my shadow, to make peace with my past, in order to be able to be the container for peace for these precious young women. I don?t believe in miracles any more, I rely on them.