My Birthday Wish, by Leah Green

Today is my birthday. As facebook posts came in last night with birthday wishes from Palestinian and Israeli peacemakers – people who I’ve been so privileged to meet, listen to, work with and learn from over the past several decades, I realized that I have a birthday wish also.

Writing today as a woman, as a mother, a peacemaker, a global citizen, a spiritual human being and American Jew, my wish this year is for a Palestinian state. Not because I’m some great fan of the modern nation state with all of its many perils, not the least of which is nationalism and ethnocentrism…but because Palestine is a nation, and deserves its place among the other 192 sister countries that comprise the United Nations.

This September, the Palestinian Authority will petition the United Nations for membership, with plans to declare statehood by the end of the year. Most analysts believe that if it came to a vote today, the resolution would pass the U.N. General Assembly with the support of at least 130 out of 193 member nations. Gearing up to face what one Israeli leader called a “political and diplomatic tsunami” coming their way, some of our own political leaders in the U.S. are beginning to threaten the Palestinian leadership with severe measures if they persist with their “audacious” request for independence, including a Security Council veto on the vote, and cutting U.S. aid.

“Statehood is a game-changer,” said Gershon Baskin, co-Director of the respected think tank, Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information. “Once Palestine is a member state of the United Nations, Israel is no longer occupying ‘undefined disputed territory.’”

"Palestinians prayed near Israeli soldiers on Friday.
They were protesting land confiscation
 in the village of Qusra, near Nablus."
from NY times, April 2, 2011

This “game” is sorely in need of changing. These past decades, I’ve not only been listening, I’ve been watching. The territorial views from all of the high hills and vistas in the West Bank reveal a vast and sprawling network of Israeli settlements extending deep into the heart of Palestinian territory. Half a million settlers – roughly 15% of the Israeli population, now inhabit over 200 trailer outposts, towns and large cities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and their growth continues unabated. A comprehensive report published last year by the Israeli Human Rights Organization B’tselem, which included analysis of aerial photography and relied on Israeli military data, shows that settlements control 42% of West Bank land (this figure does not include substantial additional territory controlled by the Israeli military).

This year, we in the international community have a significant opportunity to help bring sanity and international law to bear on this disastrous and even suicidal settlement policy, by encouraging our lawmakers and governments to support Palestinian statehood, and nurture a healthy future for Israelis and Palestinians.

Even if this is not “your” cause; even if you don’t know much about it, please take some time today and join me in a heartfelt vision for historical and ancestral healing for Israel and Palestine. Send your love – because this is how it’s going to happen, with love, not with more hatred or anger or violence. We don’t need more arguing about victims and perpetrators, we need loving acts that will relieve this vicious polarization and acknowledge the humanity of everyone involved. Send your love – imagine the most graceful, peaceful transition to Palestinian statehood, with humane relations with her neighbors; imagine dignity, justice and safety for all…and please, peaceful nights and sweet dreams.

Thank you for listening. This has been my wish for decades, actually. I hope it will be your wish too. I’m blowing out the candles now.

Leah Green

Founder, Compassionate Listening Project.

"To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, 

but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."

— Nelson Mandela

Rethinking Our Idea of the 'Perpetrator'

by guest blogger, Catherine Keene

Catherine Keene

When I first begin to talk to people about Compassionate Listening, I explain that our work requires us to listen to all sides of a conflict – both victims and perpetrators – in order to get a better understanding of the whole situation and find the humanity in all parties involved. Although most of the people I speak to believe compassion to be an important virtue, many of them have a difficult time understanding why we would want to listen to those whom we believe to be perpetrators. At best, they believe this is a misuse of our time, as we should be listening more to the ones who are suffering than to the ones who are causing the suffering. At worst, they worry that our work will cause us inadvertently to validate the actions of the perpetrators and thereby encourage them to continue doing harm. So although they admire our compassion for others and our good intentions, they think we are somewhat misled.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this concern, and I've come to realize that it arises from a disagreement over what it is that causes someone to become a "perpetrator." If you believe a perpetrator has no conscience and is fundamentally destined toward committing evil actions, there might be no incentive to listen to this person, as there would be no hope for change. Or if you believe the perpetrator is completely illogical or even insane, you might see listening to this person as a waste of time because their perspective is outside reality and there is no point at which you can connect with them. In both instances, you might easily feel justified in listening only to the victims, rather than to all sides of a conflict.

But what if the party we think of as a perpetrator is neither sociopathic nor insane, but simply confused or acting out of fear? Will we help them see why they are wrong if we isolate ourselves from them or physically or emotionally attack them? Can we, as listeners, help to resolve a conflict by taking sides and labeling people? Based on my own personal experience – as well as the listening I have done overseas – I would argue that taking sides only causes all involved parties to cling more tightly to their own views and actions, regardless of which label they are given. Those who are called "perpetrators" often feel that they are being attacked by the outside party that labels them (and thus believe they are the victims), so in order to defend and justify themselves, they act out in retaliation and cause more pain. Similarly, those who are used to being called "victims" often believe themselves to be morally superior to the opposing party and look forward to a time when they can get their revenge. In this way, they become the next perpetrators. This polarization causes both parties to remain stuck in conflict, and the pain continues on.

I am reminded of Einstein's claim that "we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." So what new type of thinking can we use to break out of this cycle? I believe the answer comes in listening to both sides and admitting to ourselves and to others that we are all to blame for these conflicts. Every one of us has said and done things that hurt others – sometimes daily – and the more we attempt to justify ourselves and protect our egos, the more conflict we create. We are all victims and perpetrators in a multitude of ways. Even when we know that we are extremely fallible ourselves, it is so difficult for us to stop judging others and attempting to make them wrong, in order to assert our own identities. But we must keep in mind that when we label someone and judge them, we are internally distancing ourselves from this person. This eliminates the possibility for us to feel compassion towards them, as there can be no "suffering with" when we are caught up in making them wrong.

Just today I found myself becoming trapped in this polarization when I was reading the morning news. I read about a Christian Republican groupin Florida that is planning to commemorate September 11 this year by burning copies of the Quran. I will confess that my first reaction was outrage at the people planning this event, as I disagree that we will be able to make up for the trauma and loss of life in 2001 by insulting almost one quarter of the world's population and causing them to feel unsafe. At that moment, I most wanted to call these organizers and yell at them and tell them that their actions will only spread more hatred. But the more I thought about this response, the more I realized it would not be any more helpful for me to yell at them than it is for them to blame all Muslims for the 9/11 attacks. If I were to call them in anger, they would feel as though I were attacking them and not recognizing their right to observe the anniversary as they wish. They would then see themselves as the victims in this situation and try to convince others to stand up for their cause. I would get angrier, and they would feel more justified in planning their event. Nothing would be solved, and the tension would grow deeper.

So let's see if Compassionate Listening can free us from this trap. Instead of verbally attacking them and trying to make them wrong, I would like to do something truly courageous and attempt to listen to them. I will still call them, but instead of going in with the intent to "hit people with my peace sign," as Pema Chodron would say, I want to remain compassionate towards them and find out why they are so frightened of Muslims that they feel the need to launch an assault against them. If given the opportunity, I will explain that my fiancé is Muslim and I'm reading the Quran this month for Ramadan and that it is actually a book of peace that is full of wisdom, if we take the time to read it. Maybe I'll even ask them if one person there would be willing to read it, before they decide to burn it. (Of course this is based on the assumption that they have not yet read the Quran, but I find that most people who rant about how evil it is have never opened it.) But mostly I want to take the time to listen to them – not by pretending that I agree with what they are doing, but by explaining that it's important for me to understand why they feel the need to do this. It's important for me to remain connected to everyone, especially those with whom I most disagree.

In conclusion, I hope one day we will realize that the peace so many of us desire can never come from anger and hatred – it can only come when we are in harmony with all beings. So long as we insist on labeling some people "perpetrators," we must continue to label others "victims." But if we have the desire and courage, we can eventually get beyond these judgments and begin to practice real compassion.

Cathy Keene is the Managing Director of the Compassionate Listening Project

Listening Through Dementia

By Guest Blogger, YS Thorpe


My friend, who is 91, has non-Altzheimer's dementia. In 2003, already experiencing the frightening signs, she said "I think I'm entering a new phase of my life. I want to think of it as an adventure." She lives today in a locked-door Altzheimer's care facility. She does not know my name.

I cannot not go see her there. Some days I think I just can't go. I go anyway.

Once she was verbal, colorful, vivacious, an accomplished writer, actress, poet, outspoken activist. Now words escape her. All her story lines have come untied.

I think this relationship now asks more of me than lies within my capabilities, yet I show up. Something beyond understanding holds me steady just past what I'd think I'd choose. I listen.

With my entire body, the only listening that counts now, I take in her gestures and her eyes. The rhythms of her breathing, her uncertain gait, her changing face speak for her, teach me to hear.

When she still spoke she said of her condition "The worst is when I don't remember that I don't remember." Today there is nothing for this space without a past but to be a listening presence, embodied: beyond my preferences, my dread (will I be next?), beyond any other place I might think I'd rather be, beyond the insidious desire to make it better, to contribute something of more measurable value, to do something, I am required simply to be simple, bare attention with no frills no fix no facile hope.

On occasion she strikes out with trembling fists against those who would "redirect" her. She has always been a majestic force of nature and does not take easily to operating within reduced autonomy. I am grateful for those whose job it is to get her to the shower, then the dining room, to bed.

At times in spite of high intention my heart wilts. I promise to return tomorrow, or the next day, another day, soon. I wish I weren't so grateful I know the door code, I can leave.

I always return, refreshed. Kiss, touch, eyes, skin, gesture give back my friend to me through ever-changing rhythms, textures, and I hear her present "yes" with a sweetness I've not found in the fleeting enchantments of romance, the delights of measurable worldly success.

No romance, no measuring this! At best clear sight, clear-hearing heart, willing steps into a deep unknowing, a vast home I could find easy to resist.

The Buddhists speak of awareness, of sickness, old age, death as "dukkha" / "suffering." Of our shared time I catch myself starting to say "profound," then the word itself seems a rude, heavy timber crashing into the subtleties of body and mind I dreamed of telling you, lived only beyond words.

Her total silence offers a new and reassuring place for me to discover my own ways of knowing home.

It seems to me she is almost completely focused on an internal "beyond," in relation to which all else is peripheral. So that in brief moments of "reconnecting" it is as if her attention has slipped back out to us through a window, then retreats and the window silently closes again.

She resists intrusion, and I say bless her! I am with her mostly in silence. Yesterday I was feeding her and she smiled the most beatific smile & I melted, but when I whispered "I love you so much" the window closed; even whispered words seemed too much, intrusive. I think there was too much of "I" in them.

"For better or for worse." Plain friendship's vow. Who is not asked to befriend?

There is no escaping this call to care. I'll go today and every cell of my body will be required—no, invited—to be this stripped-down living unnamed yet recognized presence, a new compassion, a way of being listening itself. No more, no less, and absolutely nothing "else."

Within the condition our world calls dementia, I hear the angels sing. They sing for my friend, they sing for me.
(c)2010 YS Thorpe

Gratitude from Sulhita Youth Project

 Dear compassionate listeners,

 In the name of Sulhita youth leaders and many more youth participants who have been and will be in our Sulhita meetings, we would like to thank you from the depth of our hearts for the experience with you. 

You gave us a great feeling of being listened to. At this time it's so hard to find someone to listen to you and to really be interested in who you are and how you feel. Sometimes our work can be so hard and exhausting, especially when the conflict and the violence is getting stronger...sometimes we feel so alone.
Your compassionate being was very energizing for all of us...we all went out full with vital energies and hope, with many ideas of more that can we do...you can't imagine.
I am excited to thank you for this. 
With love from us, 

Elad Vezana, Sulhita Youth Coordinator

(click here to read about our meeting with the Sulhita Youth Project director and participants)

to learn more: 

• visit the Sulha website
• click here to read the story of young Leaders who meet despite the "walls of fear" (wait for the pdf to load)
• click here to support the work of Sulhita Youth Project      

  

Friendship across the Gaza Border: “Hope Man” and “Peace Man” start a movement.

Over two years ago, an Israeli man named Eric Yellin, living in Sderot, created a blog with a Gazan man from Sajaia Refugee Camp. They co-authored the blog anonymously, under the names “Hope Man” and “Peace Man”. The blog spurred a movement, now an organization called “Other Voice”.

On June 3, 2010, our Compassionate Listening delegation met with two remarkable women from Other Voice, in the community center in Moshav Netiv HaAsara, an Israeli community that literally bumps up against the Gaza border. (In the photo on the left, you can see the first of three walls separating the community from Gaza...the town of Beit Lahiya is only 400 meters away). 

Here is an introduction to Other Voice, taken from their website:

 "Other Voice" consists of citizens who live in Sderot and Israeli communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. It is a non-partisan group; we are not affiliated with any political party or organization. Other Voice represents a wide array of the public and its members come from diverse backgrounds and hold a broad range of opinions and beliefs.

We live in a violent and unstable region, in which thousands of people from both sides of the border have been killed, wounded and hurt, including children, the elderly and other innocent civilians. The ongoing violence and escalation of the conflict have deepened the mutual fear and hatred, and destroyed feelings of personal safety. We call for creative action that will bring about a long-term and real solution to the region. We call for creative action that will take the civilians out of the circle of violence. 

Meet Roni (left) and Julia, from Other Voice:

Roni: 

“You are visiting us here today in Moshav Nativ HaAsara, my home, with 480 families with an average of four children per family. We grow vegetables, flowers and fruit. We also grow vegetables for seed production.

Beginning ten years ago, life became much more difficult. Before that, we had good relationships with our Gazan neighbors. They walked over to work here. We used to visit them and celebrate their holidays and special occasions with them. These relationships were undermined from all of the military involvement over the years, and the greater political conflict.

In 2005, our government decided to withdraw the Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip, because the Palestinians wanted us out. And the day after the withdrawal, we had a rocket sent over. It was a direct hit, and killed 22 year old Dana Galkowicz, who was visiting her boyfriend here in our community.

We are living under constant threat – we never know when it will not be a miracle. We’re all deeply affected. If I’m walking down the room, I’m always thinking about where I will go if I hear the rocket alarm. A Thai worker was killed by a rocket just two months ago, here in our community. 

(photo: Israeli soldiers pack up for patrol during our listening session. These soldiers are stationed at the community center.)

Children are quite fearful – many can’t sleep at night. Even so, even with all this uncertainty and fear, no one leaves our community. We have many rental houses here and not one is available. We have a very strong and supportive community. Some in the community think that the only way to be is very strong militarily…and some of us think we need to come to terms with our neighbors and have a good relationship. I’m in the latter camp.

I’m originally from England and my parents came here when I was 8 years old. My husband is an agriculturalist. The Israeli government asked my husband to go to help Israeli settlers in the Sinai (now Egypt) to develop agriculture. My husband left and we eventually joined him for five years there – near Yamit.

My youngest daughter was five years old at the time, and did not know any Arabic or English. An Egyptian girl in her class handed out birthday invitations to every girl in class, except for our daughter. It took our two families two years to break down the defenses and become friends. Our house became a meeting place for Egyptians and Israelis. From my experience in the Sinai, I realized the importance of dialogue. When Camp David was signed, our community was evacuated, and reestablished here, directly on the Gaza border.

In our group, Other Voice, we have different projects. We have friends in Gaza who we can only talk with over the phone or the internet. They’ve come a few times to be with us in Israel. There are many obstacles but we are very determined.

Julia Chaitin:

I live in Kibbutz Urim, which is 15 minutes from the Gaza border.  I am a professor of Social Work at Sapir Academic College. The College is just two kilometers away from the Gaza Strip and has received many rockets.

There was a red alert (signaling a rocket attack), and a student at the college tried to hide under a tree, and he was hit directly. We’ve had so many injured. Their worst effect is the psychological effect - 75-80% of the people here are diagnosed with PTSD.

The communities here are strong, with lots of educational support. There is no-one who lives here who hasn’t had a close call, who doesn’t know someone killed or wounded. My field is the effects of long-term trauma on people. I’ve done many many studies, including the last ten years on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

(Photo: mural on a rocket shelter on the moshav with the words: "from love, peace is born")

I came from the United States in 1972 when I was nineteen years old. I have three children and a grandson. My first war was the 1973 war. Ten of us couples got married that summer on the kibbutz, and on the first day of the war, 2,500 of our soldiers were killed. My husband was called for reserve duty, and he was gone for 6 months…we had only been married for one month. He was on the Egyptian front. I was okay through all of the wars, but I started having a really hard time when my youngest son joined the Army. (I consider myself a pacifist.)

He did go in the army – into a combat unit, and he ended up in the last war with Lebanon - on the border. I spoke to him ten times a day on the phone. He was terrified and asked what I could do. I told him "I can speak with you".

When I came here I believed that Palestinians hated us and wanted to kill us. I went to Hebrew school and studied but I never learned about Palestinians. I did a lot of things, but all with Jewish Israelis. Since the 1990s I have been much more active and have gotten to know and work with Palestinians.

Conditions in Gaza are one thousand times worse than in the West Bank, if you can believe it. Over two years ago, a man named Eric Yellin in Sderot, created a blog with a Gazan man. They co-authored the blog anonymously, under the names “Hope Man” and “Peace Man”. This was the birth of Other Voice. Eric is the founder. I joined two years ago. (Photo: the Walls separating Gaza and Netiv HaAsara)

We have 150 people in Other Voice and the core group is about 15-20 people. We sit in someone’s home or in Sapir College, in a circle, take a cell phone and put it in the middle of the room, and we would speak with our friends in Gaza….men and women, old, young, secular, professional, religious. Since 2007 since Hamas took over, it’s considered an enemy entity, and we are not allowed in and they are not allowed out. All of the borders are sealed. That’s why the lifelines of the telephone and internet are so important.

One very “normal” thing we do is that we all play Farmville on Facebook. I give Ahmad an olive tree…they give us things. All of my neighbors in Farmville are Palestinians in Gaza.

Over the last few days they’ve asked that we don’t call them. Eric has managed to get permits for young people in Gaza for two seminars that we’ve held now. The young people feel caught between Hamas, Fatah, Israel and Egypt. So they lie and say that they’re going to seminars, instead of to meetings with us (Israelis). These last months some of the young people have been questioned by Hamas.

During the war, a number of us came out against it. Within our group, some folks thought the war was a necessity. We sent an open letter to Bibi Netanyahu a few months ago, calling for an end to the siege. Please download the letter and send it to everyone you know. 

The flotilla was a horrible thing. But at least people who have never talked about the siege of Gaza or wanted to think about it, are now talking about it. Just Monday, when the flotilla event happened, our two Israeli friends who live near the Gaza Border went to protest against  the Israeli attack. There was a much larger contingent there of pro-Israeli supporters, and our friends were threatened.

One is a single mother in the moshav, and she was told, “if you don’t write a letter apologizing, we have ways to see that you will no longer be able to live here.” Our reality here is much more polarized, much more black and white. That’s what we’re living here with now, in Israel.  

Please send our letter to anyone and everyone you think would be interested in our work. There are enough of us here who are fueling the conflict, and we don’t need more of them. But if it were up to me, I wold stop U.S. aid to Israel. I do this because I love my country, not because I’m against my country. The message from Monday, from the flotilla incident, should be, “stop the siege, life and dignity for all.”

Roni: Last week I returned from a family trip to Poland – to concentration camps, etc. My thoughts kept returning to this: that we cannot let this happen, given what happened to us as a people. Other family members said, “but you can’t compare.” But it’s not about comparison…it doesn’t have to be as bad as the holocaust for us to be concerned.

Julia: Israeli Professor Dan Bar-On wrote a lot during his lifetime about the “hierarchy of suffering.” Being in the victim situation lets you off the hook. Trying to compare suffering is a no win. And you see it everywhere: “Oh, you weren’t in a concentration camp, you were just in the Ghetto…” and these discussions really happen. I try to tell my students to get off the victim track.

During the second Intifada (Palestinian uprising), there was one front line street in the Israeli neighborhood of Gilo that was getting all the fire from Beit Jala, the Palestinian town across the valley. There was a joke going around at that time that went: okay we’ll sit together in the terrace then…okay, we’ll sit in the living room then… okay we’ll sit in the kitchen then…okay I guess we’ll sit in the freezer – anyone want some schnitzel? We can’t get away from it. We’ve tried to solve it militarily and there is no military solution. The rockets from Hizbollah almost hit the center of Israel. The next rockets from Gaza will hit Tel Aviv – they’ll be GRAD rockets that are much more sophisticated. I think I have a right not to run to a bomb shelter 3-4 times/day. And I think it’s their right in Gaza to live in peace and dignity.

Even if we sign the peace treaty tomorrow, we’re still going to be working all this out for hundreds of years – the fear and dehumanization.

Roni: I have 13 grandchildren and 7 of them live here. Anything I do today, I do for them….for their future. (photo on the right: Israeli soldiers stationed at the Moshav.)

(note: Julia is also senior staff member at the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development (NISPED) – an NGO that works on peace and sustainable human development between Jews and Palestinians within Israel and between Israel/Palestine. See their products that are co-designed, co-designed, co-produced.) 

Read Julia's article in the Washington Post, written during the Gaza War.  

All photos taken by Leah Green and Ellen Greene

Truth is like oxygen.

Today at our Advanced Training we held the Truth Mandala ritual (a gift to the world from Joanna Macy). All thirty-two of us gathered in a tight circle, which was divided into four quadrants. Each quadrant held a symbol - dead leaves for loss and grief, a stick for anger, a large stone to symbolize our cold, hard hearts when we are fearful, and an empty bowl for emptiness - for what's missing. The ground underneath the mandala is the ground of hope. Each person was invited to enter the mandala, pick up the object that we feel drawn to, and speak from that quadrant. Indeed, truth is like oxygen. It takes so much courage to face the times we live in - to continue to generate the strength and courage necessary to feel, to act, and to anchor in a place of compassion for all that we fear - not just for what and who we love.

We entered the circle, one by one, with our tears, sorrow, grief, rage, longing and prayers. Joanna, a Buddhist scholar and environmental activist who brought this work that she calls "from despair to empowerment" to people around the world, knows that when we take the time to feel and express our despair, we are able to move through numbness and hopelessness, and reconnect with joy, clarity, and the energy to act on behalf of our beloved planet. I began using the Truth Mandala in trainings ten years ago, and have witnessed again and again the beauty and power of this ritual. Today, Andrea led us in the ritual, and it was no different.

Today in the circle of the mandala, those participants who have experienced some of the darkest that humanity has to offer, showed us the capacity of the human heart to forgive, and to love. That in itself gives us so much hope. Three remarkable men - one from Sudan - a "Lost Boy" who was forced into being a child soldier; a man who lost his family to the insanity in Rwanda, and another man who miraculously escaped from the war in Chad. And now they are teachers for us, their hearts so full of love...

After the long ritual, we stand in a circle, in silence, arms linked tightly, gently swaying in an ocean of compassion, with no need for words.