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| It Takes Two Wings to fly – how healing the holy land will bring peace to the World By Caduceus Journal Editor Sarida Brown Sarida Brown: What is the purpose of the Peacemaker Community? Eliyahu McLean: In Hebrew we are called Ruach Shalom and in Arabic Ruh-al-Salam, both of which mean ‘the spirit of peace’. We are an umbrella organization that connects, trains and empowers peace activists to work in peace building with a spiritual foundation. There are a lot of important grassroots projects with a spiritual foundation working towards Arab-Jewish co-existence in the Holy Land, but no one knows what other groups are doing and a lot of efforts are duplicated. So we are connecting the different groups and also providing a support network for burnt out peace activists. One of the principles we are working with is Holy Hutzpa. It takes a lot of hutzpa to hurt another person in the name of religion, of God, of what someone feels that God told them about this land, and many are doing that, Jews, Christians and Muslims. So I learnt from my Rebbe, Shlomo Carlebach, that we have to have Holy Hutzpa to believe that peace is possible, and to believe that in the name of God and spirituality, we can be a bridge for healing and reconciliation. Jerusalem, in Hebrew is Yerusha-Shlom which means the ‘legacy of peace’. In Arabic it is called, Or Shaleem which means ‘the light of peace’. So, we are trying to reclaim Jerusalem as peace capital of the world. We are trying to bring the spiritual dimension in to serve as a bridge between Israelis and Palestinians and to define the land also in a way that even a Hamas supporter and a settler could agree upon. When I am sitting with my settler friends, all I have to do is say ‘Palestinian National Movement’ and the blood will start to boil, and there will be a lot of charged energy; and when I’m with my Palestinian friends, all I have to do is say ‘Zionist National Movement’ and the blood will start to boil. But when I define the land as Eretz ha-Shalom in Hebrew, or Ard il-Salam in Arabic, the land of peace, all of a sudden there is a spiritual definition that bridges the two sides. Or Ard il-Mukadisa, the Holy Land. This is the Holy Land for both peoples. In this approach we can bring together religious leaders, Sheikhs and the Rabbis. In particular I have been working with Palestinian Sufi Muslims, Israeli Orthodox Rabbis and Kabbalists, and these spiritual leaders are trying to bring religion and spirituality to be a bridge, a pathway to peace, and not, God forbid, an obstacle to peace. Over year ago, during the Intifada, I helped organize a Sheikh and Rabbi summit in Eilat. During the meeting the chief Rabbi of Eilat said, ‘My grandfather, and all of my grandfathers, were the chief Rabbis of Halab, which is Aleppo in Syria, and when the Jews and Muslims had a dispute in Halab they solved their dispute in the Jewish court of law and all educated Muslims in Halab knew Jewish law by heart’. Then Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bukhari said, ‘Well that’s no big deal, when my grandfather studied at Al Azhar University, the biggest Islamic university in the world, in Cairo, he studied the Talmud and he knew it by heart’. Then the chief Rabbi of Ramat Gan said, ‘Well that’s no big deal. When my grandfather was the Chief Rabbi of Libya, they used to call him Sheikh Al’Yahud, the Jewish Sheikh, and he knew the Quran and the Quranic commentaries by heart.’ Here we saw that two generations ago the spiritual leaders were more than just on speaking terms: they had an intimate knowledge of each other’s faiths. So both sides asked each other, how can we bring this message of what we have forgotten back to our mosques and synagogues and our communities, to transform the hate, to remind people that we are not so far removed? People say this a 2000-year old conflict; it’s really the last 70 years. Since it is not so ancient, maybe peace is not as impossible as it appears from the cycle of despair that the media feeds. When you bring the focus into the spiritual there is a shift in the possibilities of reconciliation. Absolutely, and there are so many tools within Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There is an elaborate reconciliation ritual in ancient Arab society, involving hudna, ceasefire, and sulha, reconciliation. We want to bring in sulha on the national level, sulha between the children of Abraham. And sulha is something that all Palestinians understand. This involves a transformation on both sides. It’s so easy just to blame Israeli society and the occupation, or blame the Palestinian militancy and suicide bombings, and they are both right. But, we have to get to the underlying issue, which is that they are two deeply wounded peoples in the same land, that are destined and blessed to live together, but we each act our wounds out on each other. For Israelis, we project onto the Palestinians that they are the ‘goyim’, the non-Jews, who have always been oppressing us, rather than seeing their suffering; and Palestinians sometimes forget that we also have an ancient connection to the land and we also belong there. There are two very wounded peoples living in the same home and there is a deep wound. It feels like, even with the best efforts and intentions for making peace, even when you get this close, there is always an energy of woundedness of both peoples that will come up and block the best set intentions. Palestinians sometimes call it the Shaytan, or in Hebrew the Sitra Achra, the negative power; it is almost like the Lords of Chaos. The negative power will even use politicians and people who have the best intentions to cause confusion and separation. Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, the founder of the Islamic Movement, says exactly this: ‘Who am I to negate the dreams of the Jewish people to live in the ancient homeland? If I do there will never be peace. And who are you to negate the dreams of my people to live and to return’? It is a radical statement and most on both sides are not ready for this vision, but we need to be thinking of what’s the highest possible long-term vision where both peoples can live in wholeness in the land. As a Kabbalist, can I find the sparks of Holiness in the Palestinian connection to the olive trees? Many Palestinians and Israelis I have talked to have a deep sense of mourning, because there was seemingly such hope 2 years ago. We say that the Holy Land, this beautiful, sacred and precious land, has become in the eyes of the world Ard il hurub/ Eretz ha-Milchamot the land of war and we do many activities to make it holy. This holiday season we are organizing a Hanukkah-Ramadan celebration in the Galilee Muslim city of Tamra. Here Jews, Christians, Druze, Bahai and others will share the iftar-Ramadan break fast meal with the Muslims and then all the faiths will light the Hannukah candles and offer blessings for peace. Even though in the eyes of the world it’s now seen to be the land of war, Ard il hurub in Arabic, to become Ard el Salam, the land of peace, we are reclaiming the sparks of peace which are hidden in the soil. We will keep the flame of hope alive no matter how bad the situation may seem and how huge the barrier of hatred seems right now, to soften the hearts, to reclaim the tradition of peace, harmony and understanding, which I believe is the inheritance, the legacy for what this sacred land and the peoples who are destined and blessed to live there together have to offer to the world. * * * IBRAHIM ABU EL HAWA: Ibrahim Abu El Hawa grew up and still lives on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem where his family has lived for 1400 years. He is called ‘the ambassador of good will from the Mount of Olives’ because he has devoted his life to work for peace and helps anyone in need – Jews, Christians, Muslims and others. Ibrahim works closely with the Jahalin Bedouin tribe in the West Bank. Together with Eliyahu McLean from the Peacemaker Community he has travelled widely sharing the message that peace is possible between Israelis and Palestinians. He is a family man with many children and grandchildren. We are all the seeds of Adam and Eve and we are all first cousins, the seeds of Abraham. God chose us to be in this land and we have to be here. We don’t have a choice: we have to live together. We don’t want the Israeli government to feed us honey and cake. But we need the freedom and right to live in our land. We ask the government to treat us as people who want to live here and give us rights, for example, for our children to go out to study and come back when they want. We have a lot of love, which we have learnt from our religion, love and peace. A lot of goodness has happened in the land between Jewish and Palestinian brothers, the seeds of Abraham. Often when there is a curfew, Jews take food and help, and hold demonstrations to protest the curfew. They go and share with one heart, one body, hand in hand to bring support to their brothers, the Palestinians. This is very different from the impression that is being given of your country. The world doesn’t know about the people who are sitting down face to face on the ground, asking God to bless Ibrahim and the seeds of Ibrahim and to bless Mohammed and the seeds of Mohammed. Ibrahim is the father of those two brothers, two sons and the seeds of those sons, the Jew and the Muslim here, in this land. People don’t hear the news about the goodness; they only hear about the bad things: how bad it is in Jenin, but no-one hears about how many Jews are sending food to Jenin. No-one saw what happened the day after Israeli forces bulldozed 100 houses in Jenin, when a lot of Jews and Christians came to a special hospital on the Mount of Olives to give blood for the Palestinians in Jenin and in the camps – for their cousins and brothers in the land. Does anybody hear about this goodness in Europe? They make it sound all dirty there. People who have never been here think there is a wall between the Arabs and the Jews and that we are both dangerous people. To the world we have a special word, we say ‘Leave us alone!’. We are both really good people, if the world will leave us alone and stop selling us weapons. The same guns are in both hands, Palestinian and Jew. Your people are scared to come to the Holy Land and they forget what is happening where they live: 12-year old kids carry machine guns in Washington DC and all the violence in the centre of London, but the press doesn’t write about that. You are a rich country, but no-one in our country has to sleep outside on the street as happens in Europe. We are richer than you, because we have a strong family life. If we see someone on the street, we will bring him food, and give him a bed for the night. What can we do, people like myself who live outside Israel and Palestine, to help your vision of peace to become a reality? To carry the word of truth, you have to live with people, not just pick it up from TV, radio and newspapers. When you know the way of life of the people you are talking about, you will talk from your heart not from your mouth. People need to visit and live with the people, eat their food and drink their water and smell the same air. Then you will bless the ground, Mother Earth, and the pain of the other, with love. We want people who really love the land and the people, to pass it on, person to person, not like on TV where all people see is something catching fire, a fast shot of film and they don’t know what has happened. It doesn’t mean anything to them, they don’t know whether there was devastation, or fire or broken homes: they just saw a picture. We need people to carry the message to the leaders of the world, but the leaders don’t listen and don’t have any time for it. They are blind in their minds. And look how much we are suffering today in this small land, the world. So many children in the world are so poor. There are 115 million kids in the Middle East, Africa and the rest of the world who don’t know how to read and write their names. Look at the sadness, the sickness, the drugs, alcoholism, the people on the streets. Where does it come from? From poverty. They shoot a missile and each missile costs one million dollars. Do you know what the cost of that missile could do for those kids? I feel sometimes when I work with children, ‘Oh God, with a small fraction of what that missile cost I could build a school’. We are in the year 2002 and kids don’t have shoes, or electricity or water. Where is the heart of the world, to see and care about these people of the future? Ibrahim, are you saying we should build schools in Israel and Palestine? Around the world. We need schools in Palestine, but it would be selfish to ask just for ourselves. There are about 4-5 million people who live in Israel, and about 50,000 to 100,000 who are too poor to study, but what about the 115 million kids all over the world who can’t write? We are not asking for ourselves, although we do need help. We beg the world, to see how people are suffering with AIDS, famine, no homes, nothing. We need something for the earth, for the world. Ibrahim and Eliyahu welcome your support and participation. To learn more or support Peacemaker Community: There are two websites: www.peacemakercommunity.org/Hebrew/index www.metasulha.org Or you can contact them by email: Eliyahu at eliyahu@peacecom.org Ibrahim at maryhawalyn@alqudsnet.com Or write to PO Box 31894, Jerusalem 91316, Israel. This article first appeared in Caduceus Journal issue 58. It is reprinted with the permission of their editor. For further information about Caduceus Journal, see www.caduceus.info | |||||||||
