Faithful Democrats
Extremists are everywhere. In the past week the world has
witnessed the extremism of Hamas in Gaza,
knowing that every act of extremism places resolution further away.
I was struck by two realities while visiting the Holocaust Museum
in Israel.
The first reality is that oppression and genocide can be
within our reach, but unless they touch us directly, few of us can get beyond
objectifying them as acts of evil foreign to our own capacities as "good"
people. The best our minds can do to grasp the horror of the situation is to
stereotype oppressors as "evil" and the oppressed as victims.
There are times, however, when we have difficulty
distinguishing the oppressor from the oppressed. A recent example has been the
Baltic crisis, where we have been on both sides of the conflict. There are
times, as well, when the oppressed becomes the oppressor.
Here in America, the evangelical church is struggling with
its identity and mission. Somehow, it has managed to merge international policy,
military policy, technology and economic power together with the Gospel of
Jesus Christ to the degree that we may have come too far to find our way
back. Human rights have given way to American foreign policy.
Too often we hear from committed Christians, "Better that we
kill "them" over "there" than have "them" kill us over here!" The problem is that the distance from "here"
to "there" grows shorter with time and complicity until it is too late. The
church, instead of being a counter-cultural force it was intended to become, is
compromised by silence, seduction and subversion, killing the vitality of the
Gospel.
A graphic example of the nationalist church living in the
midst of oppression was posted on Sojourner's Magazine (http://www.sojo.net) on February 19, 2007. It
was a scene at the altar of Madgeburg Cathedral in 1933…Hitler had just come to
power. Swastikas ringed the altar. The dean gave an address from the pulpit:
In
short, it (the swastika) has come to be the symbol of German hope…Whoever
reviles this symbol of ours is reviling our Germany…The swastika flags around
the altar radiate hope – hope that the day is at last about to dawn…"
Fast forward to a declaration of the confessing church in Stuttgart in October,
1945, where remnants of the scattered church were gathered to acknowledge
publicly their guilt and responsibility:
Unending
suffering has been brought by us to many peoples and countries…We accuse
ourselves that we did not witness more courageously, pray more faithfully,
believe more joyously, love more ardently…
The faithful who did love more ardently, did so at the cost
of ostracism, isolation and peril to their own lives. It was my privilege
personally to know two Roman Catholic families who lived through the
Holocaust. One migrated to Canada after living out the war in self-protective
silence. Its members insist to this day that the Holocaust never happened.
The Dad of the other family supervised a work crew from a
prison camp, daily helping a Jew to escape. He was sent to Buchenwald and his
wife to Auschwitz toward the end of the war. He was beaten so badly that he
eventually died of his injuries. It took him 2 years to round up his children
from convents where they had been placed.
The point is that we can neither condemn the church nor its
members for their complicity with oppression, nor can we stereotype the
oppressor or the oppressed. While millions went along and kept their heads down,
thousands, including even some Nazi Party members, put their lives on the line
for what was right and against what was wrong.
The Psychology of Grouping
The second reality is that survival of the individual often
comes at the cost of the greater good…We rugged individuals will fight to the
death for protection of our own rights which we are certain are being violated
by others fighting for theirs. This leads to grouping of classes of people whose
very organization is to reinforce the perception of oppression of its members. Beyond
the culture of the church, other examples are the NRA, both major political
parties and labor unions.
These groups hunker down and pit themselves against the world,
thereby becoming self-fulfilling prophecies of their worst nightmares. It
devolves into a ghetto camaraderie among equals.
What is interesting about grouping is the ease with which
one can become a "member" and the pain coincident with trying to get out. "They
give you enough room to wiggle around, but don't try and pull out," someone
once said. I am reminded of a friend who once joined a fraternal organization
but decided when he had a chance to experience it that he wanted nothing to do
with it. There was, however, no procedure for quitting. He went through literal
Hell before he was able to get his name off the membership rolls. They would
rather have him be non-active than break the code of silence.
There are a number of old sayings that support this phenomenon
of grouping. Among those are "What you don't know can't hurt you," "It is
better to be safe than sorry" and "There is safety in numbers." Grouping with others of similar perceived
oppression narrows our lens on life and reinforces denial of the reality around
us.
The fact is that while what you don't know can keep you in
reasonable comfort for the short term, a society of disparate groups, each with
only one or two self-serving foci, is a society that is in danger of
disintegrating simply because it no longer is a society but has become
tribal. Stereotyping of one tribe by another is the glue that holds together
each tribe. What you don't know may not kill you, but it will kill the
conventions that hold a society together. Each tribe builds walls to protect
itself against incursion.
In a world of ultimate accountability, safety now will mean
sorry later. The walls that we build to protect ourselves from others eventually
become our prisons.
"Safety in numbers" is rule by majority, a rejection of our
Constitutional Republic form of government envisioned by the founding
fathers. "Safety in numbers" rejects the American principle of protecting the
minority from the tyranny of the majority.
When the Oppressed Becomes the Oppressor
Conversation with Joughbi
Joughbi, Founder and Director of the Palestinian
Conflict Resolution
Center in Bethlehem…
Joughbi is a Palestinian Christian, a graduate of Notre Dame
University and one of the 15 elected members of the Bethlehem City Council…His
grassroots organization is a center for family conflict resolution…His focus
has been dialogue and conflict resolution on matters of faith, politics and
social life within the Palestinian community…
Joughbi is a big man, towering well over 6 ft…He has been
arrested by the Israelis 18 times over the past two years for doing the very
thing he was doing on the day he walked with me along the Palestinian side of
the wall – talking about the Palestinian perspective of the wall…Since the
Israelis can imprison a person without charge for up to 6 months (similar to
that under the Patriot Act in the US), I asked him for how long he has been
imprisoned…The answer was "sometimes as much as 3 months."
From our perspective, the prospect of saying goodbye to a
husband, wife or even a child in the morning and not seeing them again for 3-6
months is an alien reality…But that is a way of life for many social service
advocates on the West Bank…
According to Joughbi, who formed his organization in 1995,
the West Bank is at a crossroads…The strength of
the Palestinian people has always been community-building, now in a state of
chaos…There is a split between statehood and the power of community, which, as
we have noted above, can evolved into another form of imprisonment…
76% of Palestinians live on less than $2 per day…The 750 km
wall is an unhealthy response to threat and represents a failure to have
learned the lessons of E. Berlin and South Africa…He says it this way:
"They say that fences make good neighbors; I say that good neighbors make good
fences."
More than 80% of Palestinians are exposed to layer after
layer of ongoing trauma…Problems include kids bedwetting and a number of
stress-related diseases…Domestic violence is on the rise…Palestinians are prone
to listen to news on the hour, every hour, a phenomenon experienced only rarely
in the US…
Palestinian women suffer greatly from their inability to
serve or satisfy their families effectively…
The very insecurity brought on by years of Palestinian
Intifada and refusal to recognize the state of Israel has convinced Israeli
society that their only remaining option is to permit their government to project
its resources against those Palestinians who have been marginalized and
stripped of their political power…As a result, there has risen within the
Palestinian community a loss of spontaneity…It is easier to travel to Germany
than it is to go next door…
As each side lives in fear and anger, people like Joughbi
try to re-direct Palestinian energy from hate of the Israelis to hate of the
Occupation…Thus, his message to Americans is not to become pro-Palestinian but
simply to stand against injustice…Injustice comes when each side engages in
wishful thinking that the other side will disappear…It will not happen, even if
they are hidden from each other by a wall…
While the Palestinians have been carved into unconnected
territories, thus making the 2-state solution extremely difficult, the
alternative (a one-state solution) is impossible…Israelis are committed to the
disappearance of the Palestinians ("Out of sight; out of mind); Palestinians
are committed to "We have the right."
The wall causes fragmentation on both sides…Chaos is not
restricted to a border…The only justice is restorative justice that corrects
mistakes of the past and helps both sides to grow…Punitive justice never works
for the long haul…
One of the major errors on both sides and in the US is to
demonize one side or the other…The story is told of Pres. Clinton's desire to
hold informal peace talks at Camp David…Arafat refused to attend until
pressured to do so and agreed only under the condition that he not be blamed if
and when they fell apart…They fell apart, and Arafat was blamed in the US
media, thereby taking both Begin and Clinton off the public relations hook…
The Dysfunctional Family of Abraham
Religion, according to Joughbi, ought to be a resource for
peace rather than for conflict…The four corners of an unhealthy square in the
region are Archeology, History, Theology and Politics, all working to destroy
trust and creating the "Dysfunctional family of Abraham."
Joughbi works to help people stop cursing the darkness…He
holds youth camps to teach kids how to relate to each other through drama and
play…He helps women move beyond the clichés of religious and cultural domination…He
helps families settle their internal problems through non-violent means…His
belief is that peace is possible only through reconciliation, restorative
justice and collective responsibility (as it has worked in South Africa)…
"If we dwell on our victimhood, we will not move from being
an oppressed people…We must empower the weak and bring the strong to their
senses…"
Suicide Bombers and the Media
Suicide bombers, according to Joughbi, have given rise to
the wall…We must learn, however, to talk about violence inclusively…What that
means is that we must understand that ones action, however justified, cannot
work if it is a violent reaction to another's…
There are 3 types of violence at play in the region:
1. State-sponsored
violence
2. Settler
violence
3. Environmental
violence
The wall is part of the violence that Joughbi
deplores…Historically, such actions have enjoyed a very bad history (E. Berlin,
S. Africa, the Mason-Dixon Line, the Iron Curtain, the Baltic conflict, the Rio
Grande River)…It comes down to a simple formula…When you have nothing, you have
nothing to lose…That is the point at which you are most dangerous…
The media looks at the Palestinians, not as individuals, but
as numbers…That is why they will report Palestinian deaths as numbers killed…On
the other hand, the media looks at Israelis as individuals and will always
report their deaths with attendant personhood… Contrary to accepted dogma about
Palestinians, nobody wants to their son to be a martyr…
Here, however, is the reality…one-fourth of all Palestinians
have been in prison…Their land has been confiscated; their freedoms have been
taken; unemployment has skyrocketed; they have been beaten and humiliated; kids
have seen their parents demeaned at checkpoints and cowering in fear of being
imprisoned…
500 Palestinian villages have been leveled since 1948…The
judicial system employed against Palestinians is that of the British emergency
laws of the early 20th Century – that you are guilty until proven
innocent…There is a crying need on both sides to put a human face on both
occupier and occupied…
Extremists are everywhere…In the past week the world has
witnessed the extremism of Hamas in Gaza,
knowing that every act of extremism places resolution further away…
According to Joughbi, dialogue is only skin deep…We need a
new campaign of religious dialogue to learn to accept one another as we are and
to foster a culture of forgiveness… There is no hope in chaos…The failure to
deal effectively with social and economic chaos pushes the struggle into the
camp of the extremist…That is dangerous for both sides of the wall…The only
resolution to hopelessness is annihilation, a condition that will not stand the
scrutiny of the world…The enemy can never be a kid throwing rocks…
Jougbhi advocates for a hope that arises out of non-violent
struggle…Shuttle diplomacy humanizes each party to conflict and breaks down
stereotyping…The only route to healing is to listen to each other…To listen is
to validate the emotions of others, even if you do not agree with their
position…
"We need to separate the problem from the person," Joughbi
says…"We need to allow the other to save face…"
He has resolved thousands of cases since 1995 involving
disputes between neighbors, kids abusing animals and domestic conflicts…He
boils it down into three factors:
1. We
must not claim a monopoly on pain…
2. We
must build hyphenated character: "We may be oppressed, but we shall never
become the oppressor."
3. We
must teach our children to become global citizens and to reject limiting reaction
to local examples…
Finally, Joughbi advocates for developing a language of
reconciliation that extends beyond our own ghettoes…
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