Eliyahu McLeanThe Sulha Peace Project, Jerusalem Peacemakers, Middleway |
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Personal Transformation and Personal Story:
“ I was sent [by the Israel Action Committee on the Berkeley campus] to spy in on a class called Palestine, a class devoted to Palestinian history--'48, '67-- the Palestinian narrative. I started to hear the Palestinian narrative on everything I had been defending as an Israel activist. I really started to question a lot of the assumptions I was spouting. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Religion and Political Peace Processes/Political Leadership:
“ The problem is that the negotiations that happen in Washington or in Europe are between English speaking academic Palestinians and English speaking academic Israelis. They don't incorporate any of the people-to-people approach, the grassroots elements. They leave out the religious and spiritual dimension, which is often missing from statecraft. We're trying to reclaim the indigenous tools of Middle Eastern peace wisdom-- the sulha, text study-- tools found within Islam and Judaism in particular, but of course also in Christianity and in all the traditions here. Spirituality deals with the trans-rational level, the non-rational world, with spiritual ideals. Sometimes if you try to approach this conflict only from a rational point of view, you don't get anywhere; it's almost like deadlock. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ I'm trying to approach the chaos and the conflict that seem to be completely unsolvable by getting out of the box of the usual ways of trying to approach this conflict-both in peace activism and in the official governmental level peace talks. I'm trying to bring in this other dimension. This is the Holy Land, and it's not the Holy Land for nothing. If you try to approach people-the simple Palestinians on the street, the vendors, falafel stand owners, taxi drivers, bus drivers-many of them, on both sides, if you try to approach things purely from a political, rational level, you won't get anywhere. But if you bring in the spiritual dimension, I find that sometimes you can make bridges in amazing ways. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Religion and Conceptions of Peace:
“ You can have a settler rabbi and a Hamas sheikh working together for peace, because they're speaking a common spiritual language even though they're coming from diametrically opposed political points of view. I like to say that spirituality is trying to find the underlying place of unity between contradictory opposites, places where there might be a resonance and a commonality between two opposing sides, even settler and angry Palestinian, or Left wing and Right wing. It's almost like in this world, things are divided, but the place from which everyone originates, the ultimate place, is a place of unity. So the idea is to remind people that our source is the same source. We come from the same source, whether you call it a monotheistic God, or the Native American Great Spirit, or the Great Buddha, or whatever. I want to tap into the field of energy, the place of unity where people come from. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Obstacles and Challenges and Fear:
“ Both societies are committing violence-Israel sending in missiles to kill Hamas leaders and Hamas sending in bombers. Ibrahim Abu El Hawal from the Mount of Olives, with whom I also work, says, "God chose two of the most stubborn people in the world, the Arabs and the Jews, to live in this land." We both refuse to budge. We are two deeply wounded peoples sharing this land. We act out of wounded-ness and fear, not what's really in our best interest, and in fact we make the wounds deeper. We Israelis are traumatized by our history, the Shoah, the Holocaust. Palestinians have been displaced and traumatized. You can't talk rationality to someone who's traumatized. I think it's a huge obstacle, the collective national traumas that we are both oozing, and it's perpetuating the way we behave. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Vision and Lessons Learned:
“ One thing I have learned in this work, and this is something that I call having a spiritual perspective, is to let go of attachment to results. Just to do the work because it's the right thing to do, even if things are a thousand times worse than they are today, and to not be attached to what happens. It's hard not to be attached, is it not? Just to let go of attachment, of the idea that my work is going to result in X. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Community Responses to Peace Work and Suicide Bombing:
“ Several people I've known have been killed in suicide bombings [...] One guy was an Israeli Vipasana Buddhist meditator, Alon Goldenberg, a hippy guy with dreadlocks I used to dance with. He was on a bus in Wadi Arah, and he was killed by a suicide bomber. I went to sit with his parents in Yaffo. His father is a fisherman. After two hours of talking about Alon and his life and everything they had gone through, they said, "So by the way, what kind of work do you do?" To be honest I felt kind of ashamed in that context to say I work with Arabs, with Palestinians, for peace and understanding. I didn't know what his father thought. A year later we met again at the unveiling of Alon's tombstone at the cemetery near Tel Aviv. As we were standing over Alon's grave, his father asked, "Eliyahu, are you still working with the Arabs?" I said, "Yeah," and I thought, "Okay, here it comes, what's he going to say, and over his son's grave, too." He said these words that I hold with me to this day, that I think of when you ask if I get discouraged. He said, "Eliyahu, I'm counting on you." ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ Responding with love, harmony, bridge building, has to be the answer, just to keep plugging away. Sometimes I think maybe in our generation there won't be peace. But it may be that in two or three generations, when "the great peace" breaks out, they will look back at our work [...] and say it's because even in the times of darkness and chaos they held the flame of light, that today we have peace. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Religion and Perceptions of the Other:
“ Tich Nhat Hanh says, "I am the pirate and I am the rapist and I am the raped. I am the criminal and I am the police…" I really try to hold the whole picture, and that includes the experience of the hilltop youth and the right-wing settlers, and the experience of the disenfranchised refugee and the Palestinian who supports Hamas. That seems like an almost impossible place to be politically-where does that leave you? But I think that's where my spiritual roots come in, to somehow be able to hold all of that and then to organize meetings, events, projects that somehow connect to that. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ On some days, like when I was in Baghdad, I felt very Zionistic. I felt that with this much hatred in the Arab world, yes, we do need a homeland, we do need to defend ourselves. When I heard what Israel was doing in Gaza, I felt like an anti-Zionist. I always find myself swinging between both and end up coming back to trying to sort of hold it all. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
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