Rami Elhanan writes, "As long as there is occupation, there will be terror attacks."
Ten years ago, we met Rami Elhanan in Jerusalem, alongside his friend and colleague Bassam Aramim. The two--key participants in the Parents' Circle--spend much of their time speaking to groups like ours (Jews and Christians from the US) about the losses in their lives, the violence in their society, and their commitments to nonviolence and coexistence.
Both Rami and Bassam have lost children to the decades-long occupation and the terror that erupts from within it. Rami's daughter was on a Jerusalem bus blown up by a suicide bomber, and Bassam's daughter was shot to death by a young solider in the West Bank.
The key adversary in all of this, and in our organizing in this ugly winter, is violence, pure and simple. It's the violence of an occupation, rooted in fear and racism. It's the violence of terror itself, terror on all sides, as one group or the other lashes out with whatever rage is available and fires away. It's the violence of hopelessness--fed to Israeli and Palestinian children, day by day by day, decade after decade.
What my faith requires of me is discipleship: to see violence for what it is, to grieve its many faces and losses, and then to recognize how that same violence works its way into my own heart and people. And then, and then, I must find allies and friends, pray hard and long, develop courage and direction, and begin to undo whatever violence I find--the violence within and the violence beyond. It begins with seeing apartheid for what it is, and capitalism for what it is, and imperialism and materialism and (most importantly) militarism for what they are. And then "following" the one whose only way is peace, whose every step is nonviolence, and whose hope is undiminished by suicide bombers, American weaponry and hubris and all the rest. Following means taking the other seriously, and his pain, and his loss. Following means waking up to the violence for which my country is primarily responsible. Following means stepping up to concrete actions for the good, and for peace. Actions like the Apartheid-Free Movement. Actions like a Boycott Movement. Actions like pressuring the government to end American military aid to Israel. If the one real adversary is violence, the path to peace resists all violence, the large and the small, the hideous and the less visible. All of it.
Tonight, again, the US Senate took the cowardly route: turning aside Senator Sanders' attempt to impose some kind of reason and order on the sale and disposition of weaponry (of mass destruction) to Israel. This is disappointing in so many ways. But it only means there is more peace to be made tomorrow, more nonviolence to be tried, more love to be shared. If Rami Elhanan can live that way, I have no choice. I must.
