Stop the Next War Now (16 page)

And, apart from our public organizational activity, we women also operate as secret agents. We are not just the mothers, teachers, nurses, and social workers of our societies. We also serve up politics with dinner and teach the lessons of nonviolence to every child in our classrooms, every patient in our care, every client we advise, every son and daughter we love. We plant subversive ideas of peace in the minds of the young before the agents of war have even noticed. This is a long process whose results are not visible overnight, but we believe in its ultimate success.

The women’s peace movement in Palestine and in Israel believes that the time has come to end the bloodshed, to lay down our weapons and our fears. We refuse to accept more warfare in our lives, our communities, our nations. We refuse to go along with the fear. We refuse to give in to the violence. We refuse to be enemies.

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten

that we belong to each other.”

—Mother Teresa of Calcutta

THE PILLARS

OF PEACE

SHIRIN EBADI

In 2003, Shirin Ebadi became the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. One of the first female judges in Iran, Ebadi served as president of the city court of Tehran before she was forced to resign after the revolution in 1979. In her decades of work as a human-rights activist, she has been imprisoned many times.

Violence, terror, humiliation, and torture are an affront to all cultures. Those Islamists who use the excuse of cultural relativism to reject democracy and human rights are ossified oppressors. They have put a straitjacket on culture in the name of “nationalism,” with the intent of denying their own people their rights. They take small things that have nothing to do with the Islamic religion, and are actually in conflict with Islam, and turn these issues into an excuse to go to war.

Democracy and human rights are common needs of all human cultures. Muslims should not be deceived by the claim that Islam is incompatible with democracy and that we must choose between accepting democracy or the tradition of our ancestors. We can have both.

On the other hand, the Western world should not vilify Islam. In the U.S. media, we hear the term “Islamic terrorism” over and over again. Like those in power in America, the media rarely make an effort to separate the crimes of individuals from their religious affiliations. If an Islamic person kills someone else, this misdeed should not be recorded in the Islamic report card. It should not be counted against Islam, just as the misdeeds of some people in Bosnia should not be attributed to Christianity. Similarly, Israel’s disregard for the numerous resolutions of the United Nations about Israel and Palestine should not be blamed on the Jewish religion. Moses was a harbinger of justice, and Jesus was a prophet who advocated peace.

We must not foment a war between the civilizations, which would take the entire world to war. Instead, we must talk about cooperation among civilizations, and we must understand that peace is lasting only when it is based on two pillars: democracy and justice. Without those, it is not truly peace: those who make people quiet through jails and bullets may achieve a silence that feels like peace, but that silence is the quiet of cemeteries. Let’s not forget that for seventy years in the former Soviet Union there was silence but not peace.

But what is democracy? It is not something that occurs overnight. It is not a gift delivered on a golden tray. Democracy is a long process of fighting, challenging accepted ideas, and perpetually striving for freedom. Like a seed that has to be watered every day to become a flower, democracy needs constant attention and care.

Many people who are truly fighting for democracy and human rights face prison, intimidation, and even death. I and many other political prisoners were locked up in Iran, and unfortunately, many of the writers, journalists, political and social activists, and university students who have been fighting for our rights remain in prison. I plead for their freedom and mourn the many others who have lost their lives in this struggle.

Large and powerful countries should not attack other countries on the pre-text of bringing democracy and human rights. The United Nations was established to address violations of democratic principles around the world. When Iraq attacked Kuwait, the United Nations coordinated an international effort to free Kuwait. But when the United States invaded Iraq in this most recent war, it did so despite the objections of the United Nations Security Council, thereby circumventing the global community and ignoring its reservations.

But you cannot export democracy with weapons. You cannot pour human rights on people’s heads with cluster bombs. Military attacks, even with good intentions, do not create democracy. They will only harm democracy as society degenerates into violence.

If one country sincerely wants to support democracy in another country that is under dictatorial rule, the only thing to do is to support the freedom fighters who stand for the democratic institutions of that country. Done this way, the sapling of democracy will bear the flower of freedom.

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the

way of truth and love has always won.There have been

tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but

in the end, they always fall—think of it, always.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

PEACE PRAYERS

HINDU PEACE PRAYER

I desire neither earthly kingdom, nor even freedom from birth and death. I desire only the deliverance from grief of all those afflicted by misery. O Lord, lead us from the unreal to the real; from darkness to light; from death to immortality. May there be peace in celestial regions. May there be peace on earth. May the waters be appeasing. May herbs be wholesome and may trees and plants bring peace to all. May all beneficent beings bring peace to us. May thy wisdom spread peace all through the world. May all things be a source of peace to all and to me. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti (Peace, Peace, Peace).

ISLAMIC PEACE PRAYER

We think of Thee, worship Thee, bow toThee as the Creator of this Universe; we seek refuge in Thee, the Truth, our only support.Thou art the Ruler, the barge in this ocean of endless births and deaths. In the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful. Praise be to the Lord of the Universe who has created us and made us into tribes and nations. Give us wisdom that we may know each other and not despise all things.We shall abide by thy Peace.And, we shall remember the servants of God are those who walk on this earth in humility and, when we address them, we shall say Peace Unto Us All.

CHRISTIAN PEACE PRAYER

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be known as the Children of God. But I say to you: love your enemy, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.To those who strike you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from those who take away your cloak, do not withhold your coat as well. Give to everyone who begs from you; and, to those who take away your goods, do not ask them again.And as you wish that others would do unto you, do so unto them as well.

JEWISH PEACE PRAYER

Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, that we may walk the paths of the Most High.And we shall beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation— neither shall they learn war anymore.And none shall be afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts has spoken.

SHINTO PEACE PRAYER

Although the people living across the ocean surrounding us are all our brothers and sisters why, O Lord, is there trouble in this world? Why do winds and waves rise in the ocean surrounding us? I earnestly wish the wind will soon blow away all the clouds hanging over the tops of the mountains.

A MOTHER’S

PLEA

NURIT PELED-ELHANAN

Nurit Peled-Elhanan is an Israeli peace activist and a professor of language and education at Hebrew University. Her only daughter, Smadar Elhanan, was thirteen years old when she was killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem in 1997. Peled-Elhanan received the 2001 European Parliament Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and Human Rights.

Most of the following is extracted from a speech delivered at the Israel-Palestine Day of Engagement at the ICA London in July 2002.The opening and closing paragraphs come from a speech delivered at the European Social Forum Convention in London in October 2004.

I would like to dedicate this piece to a thirteen-year-old Palestinian girl, Iman El-Hamas, who, on October 4, 2004, joined my own thirteen-year-old girl in the underground kingdom of dead children, which is growing and growing and growing under our feet as I speak. I would like to tell her not to worry: “You will be well received there, Iman, and no one will hurt you just because you wandered off on your way to school or because you wore a scarf on your head. Rest in peace, little girl; everyone is equally worthy in your new world.”

Thank you for inviting me to share with you the struggle for peace in my country. I say “my” country, but I don’t even know if this term is correct anymore. What is mine in this country depends very much on what I identify with, and today it is very hard to identify with anything in a place that has let Death have dominion over it.

And Death has created a new identity for me and has given me a new voice, a new voice that is as ancient as the world itself, the voice of our biblical mother Rachel, weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, for they are not. This new identity and voice transcend nationalities, religions, and even time; the identity overshadows all other identities and the voice deafens all the other voices I have been given by life.

My little girl was killed just because she was born Israeli, by a young man who felt hopeless to the point of murder and suicide just because he was born a Palestinian. A reporter asked me how I can accept condolences from the other side. I said to her very spontaneously that I do not accept condolences from the other side, and that when the mayor of Jerusalem came to offer his condolences, I went to my room because I didn’t want to speak to him or shake his hand. But for me, the other side is not the Palestinians.

For me the whole population of the area, and of the world, has always been divided into two distinct groups: peace lovers and war lovers. Today, on the face of the earth, there rules the kingdom of evil, where for the last thirty-seven years, people who call themselves leaders have earned, through democratic means, the right to kill and destroy and be as vile and corrupt as they please, to have young boys become expert killers, whether in the name of “God,” the “good of the nation,” or “honor” and “courage.”

But these evil people have created yet another kingdom, a glorious kingdom that flourishes and grows larger and larger every day, a kingdom that lives and breathes under our feet, beneath the earth we walk on. That is where my little daughter dwells, side by side with Palestinian children, and where I dwell side by side with Palestinian parents who, for the most part, have never held a gun and have never obeyed orders to kill anyone. There she lies, alongside her murderer, whose blood is mingled with hers on Jerusalem’s stones, which have long grown indifferent to blood.

There they both lie, deceived. He, because his act of murder and suicide did not change anything, did not end Israel’s cruel occupation, did not bring him to heaven, while the people who promised him his act would be meaningful carry on as if he had never existed. She, because she believed her life was safe, that her parents and her country were protecting her from evil, and that no harm could come to little girls who are good and gentle and go through the streets of their own cities to a dance class.

And they were both deceived because the world goes on living as if their blood had never been shed. Both are victims of so-called leaders who keep on playing their murderous games, using our children as their puppets and our grief as fuel to continue with their vindictive campaigns. Children are abstract entities for them, numbers, and grief is a political tool. They know that all they have to do to draw more young, enthusiastic little soldiers into their units is to find a God to ordain this killing. And each finds him in his Bible, in his mythologies. In the name of the Jewish God and the Muslim God, they commit their crimes, while in Ireland and Eastern Europe they kill each other for different versions of their Christian God. And now the enlightened leaders of the West kill in the name of the God of freedom and democracy. But, in fact, all of these warmongers recruit man-made gods to their sides—the God of racism and the God of greed and megalomania.

This is not new in the history of man. People have always used God as an excuse for their crimes. Our children, from a very tender age, learn about Joshua, the glorified leader who murdered the whole population of Jericho in the name of God. Then they learn about the prophet Eliyahu, who killed the 450 priests of the Baal because they practiced a different religion, and then they learn about Elisha, who brought death, with the help of God, upon 42 children who mocked him by calling him bald. Not to mention the adored King David and his terrible deeds.

In a culture that allows killing as a means of solving social and religious problems, and in which people see themselves as the descendants of biblical heroes, these stories overshadow the story about the God who said, “Lay not thy hand upon the child.” But children can also learn about the God who said, “I will have mercy upon them who have not obtained mercy, and I will say to them who were not my people, ‘Thou art my people.’” I believe very strongly that only by educating our children that killing, starving, or humiliating the innocent are unforgivable crimes can we save them from joining the evil forces—the evil forces of Israel and of the Palestinians.

Iraqi street kids, July 2003.