“In a recent visit to the peacemaking communities of Holy land, I found an astonishing (and hardly reported) web of hundreds of organizations fostering reconciliation and peace in powerful ways among goodhearted people on all sides,” writes Jack Kornfeld in his March 7, 2008 report A Shining Web of Good Hearts and Goodwill in Israel and Palestine. “Careening around the West Bank through armed checkpoints and guardposts, guided by the wise Sheik Abdul Aziz Bukari and unflappable Jewish activist Eliyahu Mclean, founders of Jerusalem Peacemakers, I was led to meet with leaders (and sometimes to offer teachings to).”
I know everyone he mentioned. I’ve done a trip much like that. I know those people and hundreds more. Perhaps you know them too. Know them or not, they need you now.
They are Combatants for Peace who worked together to build a playground in memory of a little girl killed by a soldier’s rubber coated bullet, so that her classmates would know that Israelis and Palestinians seek to set aside violence to care about them and build peace. They are families in Gaza who crossed the border into Egypt to bring supplies to needy people in their neighborhoods. They are children, mothers, fathers who in February held hands across the length of Gaza to ask the world to end the siege and give them a chance to live a normal life. They are the Israeli peace groups who brought a convoy of 40 tons of aid to the locked gates of Eretz. They include a young woman from Sderot who joined the convoy and spoke of a better way.
They and so many more need a way to hold on to hope.
On March 10th, 2008, after the killing of the eight students in a Yeshiva in Jerusalem, a group of Christian Peacemakers living in Hebron wrote an open letter to “our Israeli brothers and sisters”.
“Hebron CPTers offer our deepest sympathy to our Israeli friends and wish to express our deep sorrow for the violent deaths of the 8 students and those injured from the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Words simply are insufficient at a time like this, but all we have to offer you are our condolences—foremost for the loss of precious lives but also for what this kind of violence does to us all. Innocent victims continue to bear the brunt of this cycle of violence.
Hope is also a victim, especially at this time of fragile efforts for Peace. Together, we have struggled with you, Israeli activists, for years, to put our nonviolence into action in order to bring about a change for a Just Peace both in Israel and Palestine. Every loss of life is heartbreaking, pushing the cycle of violence into a steep descending spiral.
Please know that we are in mourning with you at this time. We also pledge our continued efforts to work nonviolently with you for a Just Peace.”
