Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing

“The Love of Children May Hold the Salvation of the World.” The thoughts in the reading, Bill shared with us a short while ago are right on. What can tug stronger at our hearts and minds than children being hurt or killed in violent fighting or even in natural disasters? It happens over and over again.

Last Sunday I talked about two people who are changing the world in which they live; Rami, the Israeli whose fourteen-year-old daughter was killed in a suicide bombing, and Mazin, whose father at the age of 6 was torn from his home and put in a refugee camp. I also spoke of Mazin’s early memory, as a five- year old, of soldiers kicking in the door of his home. There does not seem to be a day when children are not injured or killed by violence, if not in the conflict between Palestinians and Israeli’s, then in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Africa, Darfur or even from gang violence in nearby Trenton.

I agree with Dennis Rivers, “No country worth living in, can ever be built or defended by killing someone’s children, neither an Israeli state, nor a Palestinian state, neither America nor any other country. To whomever tells me that they must slaughter innocents to achieve their noble goals, I say, heaven have mercy upon your tragically confused soul. If you live, you will live to regret what you have done. And if you die, your life will have been given in vain, for of all forms of violence, the killing of non-combatants generates an absolute imperative for revenge. Each side says, with perfect justification, ‘we will never forget.’” And so the conflict continues.”

And yet, and yet, over and over again, I met truly memorable people during my travels in Israel and Palestine who were able to rise above the imperative for revenge, even though many had perfect justification for wanting and taking revenge. These people, I believe are changing their world and ours.

A very memorable person I met while traveling in Israel and Palestine was eighty-four-year-old Ester Golan. Ester is tiny, independent, talented and determined. She has universal compassion for others.

Ester’s family moved (within Germany) to Berlin in 1937 in an attempt to find a country that they could immigrate to from Nazi Germany. That same year her parents also tried to get her adopted in America, but she told us, “I was turned down with the comment that I was too unattractive in the picture.” Her parents could tell what was happening in Germany and in October 1938 she applied for Youth-Aliyah in an effort to go to Palestine. She even went for a month of preparation camp, but she was turned down because she was small for her age, weighing only seventy-seven pounds. Then in March of 1939, fifteen-year-old Ester escaped Nazi Germany moving to an orphanage in England. She was accepted to go with a Kindertransport to Scotland. Kindertransport brought 10,000 Jewish children to British homes and orphanages between Kristallnacht (night of the broken glass) when synagogues and Jewish shops across Germany were destroyed in November 1938 and the outbreak of the war in September 1939.

Ester told us that she and her parents had an extensive exchange of letters up to the time her parents were deported to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in October 1942. In a parting letter, Ester’s mother wrote, “As long as there is a future, there is hope.” The letter was signed in Hebrew, “lehitraot b’artzeinu” (see you in our country). This wish was never realized. Golan’s parents died in Auschwitz.

Immediately after the war, Ester immigrated to Palestine, three years before the state of Israel was established. She was married in England at the age of 17 and by the time she arrived in Palestine she was pregnant. Golan joined the Palmach and fought with Givati during the War of Independence. I felt that Ester has lived several life-times. It was not until after she was a grandmother that Ester managed to go to university.

Her daughter married in 1968 and had six children. One of those grandchildren was killed in 2002 while fighting in Je’nin. Her son married in 1980 and settled in Jerusalem. Soon, she had three more grandchildren.

Ester has few possessions from her parents except for the letters they wrote to her. She said, “I had kept them in little box until my first husband punched holes into them and stuck them into a file. After we separated they were among a handful of personal belongings he returned to me. Every time I just looked at them even without reading them, I started to cry. My husband gave them to my brother for safe keeping. I felt that I had matured and I asked for the letters. When I reread them for the first time after decades, I was struck by the beauty of them, the loving care that came through in every single one of them. I suddenly realized what a treasure they are.” She recently published them in a book.

Ester credits the compassionate moment of recognizing each other’s humanity as key to living together. She said: “It is essential to get to know one another so that you do not fear the other … Here the Christian Palestinians live in a close area and do not meet the Muslim women. The Muslim women live in a close area and do not meet the Christian women. The Christians together do not meet the Jewish women. In the framework of an interfaith encounter group, we met and nothing happened to us. We survived. We got very friendly. (This) is compassionate listening … I say to the women of the world, move on to the next day. I am eighty-four years old. Every day the sun shines, I have to be grateful that the sun shines. I have a message for the world: Be kind to each other. I do not say love each other, but no matter what happens, be kind to each other.”

Ester is an active member of “The Women’s Interfaith Encounter,” a program founded in 2001 and headed by Yehuda Stolov, who also spoke to us. They were concerned that interfaith dialogue was dominated by priests, rabbis and sheiks, with very few women. This new group gave women an opportunity to talk intimately and freely, without worrying about modesty issues that can arise around men. Since their focus is on the sharing of faith, the women say they are learning more about their own religion and breaking stereotypes about the others.

Ester taught me to avoid group stereotypes and to connect as individuals across divides. In the process, she shows us how to forgive, embrace life, and move forward. Her plea is “…not only for courageous clean human responses, such as tears, to the pain around us, but for people’s right to joy. They are bound together, inseparable, and both ultimately beyond words. Pain must be released for joy to have staying power. Our world needs to have a good cry, people everywhere taking a moment, or more than one moment, to stop talking, to reach out to each other, and to cry. Then we can dry our tears and re-start our conversations fresh, now that we know more about each other than we did before.”

The next memorable person I met who is changing the world was Suleiman al-Hamri. I showed a slide last night of the Everest Hotel in Beit Jala, West Bank, where we met Suleiman. The Everest is an old hotel on a hill top. It is unique because it is one of the few places that Palestinians and Jewish Israeli’s feel secure and safe enough to come together and meet without problems. They feel safe at the Everest Hotel because the wall separating them is not yet complete.

Suleiman al-Hamri is the co-founder of Combatants for Peace. Suleiman was first arrested for writing slogans on walls and passing out flyers. He spent 1½ years in a prison near Hebron. He was arrested again for organizing demonstrations and sent for three years in Negab prison. Suleiman came from a well known family in the Palestinian resistance. His father spent nine years in prison. In 1932, their house was destroyed. His brothers went to jail. He was raised in a family which was badly affected by the occupation and fought it, believing that the only possible solution was a military one.

We asked what motivated him to change his views. He responded that it was a hard decision to come to, but it started when Yitzhak Rabin visited his prison camp. Rabin only spent a short time there, but he was very different from Sharon. He was willing to talk with the PLO leaders both in that jail and later in working for agreements. Suleiman decided to change the way he was trying to achieve his goals. Rather than holding the “Great Dream” of obtaining all the holy land for Palestinians, he chose what he calls the small hope of living in peace with the Israelis.

Combatants for Peace was started jointly by Palestinians and Israelis, who had taken an active part in the cycle of violence; Israelis as soldiers in the Israeli army (IDF) and Palestinians as part of the violent struggle for Palestinian freedom. After brandishing weapons for so many years, and having seen one another only through weapon sights, they decided to put down their guns, and to fight for peace.
Combatants for Peace believe that only by joining forces, will they be able to end the cycle of violence, the bloodshed and the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. “We no longer believe,” they state, “that it is possible to resolve the conflict between the two peoples through violent means; therefore we declare that we refuse to take part any more in the mutual bloodletting.”

They aim to raise the consciousness amongst both Israelis and Palestinians regarding the hopes and suffering of the other side, and to create partners in dialogue. They want to educate everyone towards reconciliation and non-violent struggle. They want to create political pressure on both governments to stop the cycle of violence, end the occupation, and resume constructive dialog.

Combatants for Peace was formed in 2005, but for the first six months Suleiman had to sneak Israelis into his home to talk and plan. The co-founder is Elik Elhanan, a former Israeli paratrooper and ‘reservist refusenik.’ Elik is the son of Remi the member of Berieved Families about whom I talked about in my sermon last Sunday, and who lost his fourteen-year-old daughter in a suicide bombing.

These soldiers talked to each other about the violent actions that they had taken part in and about the turning point which led them to understand the limits of violence. Naturally, these meetings were fraught with many fears. Soon, however, they learned that despite years of fear and hatred, they realized that there is more that unites them than divides them. They believe that violence will only bring more violence. Suleiman continues to be committed to resistance to the occupation of his land by Israel, but in fighting it, he is committed to nonviolent resistance.

Combatants for Peace provides lectures and public forums in universities, youth groups, schools and other groups. They create joint projects which educate towards non-violence. They created bi-national media team that act to influence public opinion in Israel, Palestine and the rest of the world. This past year they did a very public tour through the United States. There are those on all sides who consider the two founders of Combatants for Peace as “A Dangerous Duo.”

As I listened to the memorable people I met in Israel and Palestine, I realized that all of us have experienced wounds. Some of wounds have scars that are visible because of strong scar tissue. Some wounds are less visible, but have equally strong emotional scar tissue. We construct defensive walls around our wounds to protect ourselves. “Compassionate Listening” is listening from our heart, not from our wounds or our defensive walls. It is a simple concept, but not an easy discipline to practice. It takes the help of a caring community.

The most difficult task we face in our world today is to bring people together who fear each other and have been taught to hate each other. My nineteen colleagues in our delegation and I learned how very important it is that we come together as people of different faiths, but all from one common human family.

Religion at its best is something that can bind us together in loving and supportive community. Religion at its worst can also be something that builds barriers of fear and hate that destroy community.

Reading

“The Love of Children May Hold the Salvation of the World”

Dennis Rivers – 2002

Over the past year I have been feeling a deeper and deeper sense of revulsion as I watch and read the news reports of the increasing fury with which the Israelis and Palestinians are injuring and punishing one another. What hope can there be for the world if these two groups of bright people cannot find their way out of the maelstrom of violence? …

Recently, all these feelings formed them-selves into a very clear message in my mind: No country worth living in can ever be built or defended by killing someone’s children, neither an Israeli state, nor a Palestinian state, neither America nor any other country. To whomever tells me that they must slaughter innocents to achieve their noble goals, I say, heaven have mercy upon your tragically confused soul. If you live, you will live to regret what you have done. And if you die, your life will have been given in vain, for of all forms of violence, the killing of non-combatants generates an absolute imperative for revenge. Each side says, with perfect justification, “we will never forget.” And so the conflict continues.

…

This moment in history cries out for the Gandhian wisdom that our ends are only as noble as our means. … Once many people start to believe that noble ends can be served by murder, there is no limit to how bad things can get.

…

…In my view, the fate of children, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and around the world, may be the only moral imperative strong enough to allow adults to honorably relinquish revenge. However perfectly justified each side may feel in hating the people on the other side, wars of all sorts are hell for everybody’s children. By focusing on a better life for everyone’s children, it is possible that the adults in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could relinquish their perfectly justified race toward mutual doom.