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As a reporter, he knows context is everything and anyone can be labeled good or bad—depending on your point of view. With West Bank Diary , Levin debunks two myths long part of our popular culture.
The first is that violence committed by an individual Israeli or the state of Israel, the so-called good side, is acceptable and understandable but Palestinian violence is not. For the past three years, Levin has sent Internet reports to friends and colleagues about the everyday life of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and his participation in their lives as a volunteer of the Christian Peacemaker Team. Levin presents them unadorned, unplugged. He resists interpreting their words or transforming them into an academic discourse filled with theory and polemics.
The simple story emerges of two peoples who are unequal in a lopsided conflict and an unfair fight. The core of the Israeli occupation is laid bare for what it is—the violent geographical and political repression of a people by a state backed by its superpower patron. It is not freedom. Further, Levin knows terrorism when he sees it in all its contortions. With his West Bank Diary he demands we look at it too. Some of his accounts unfold in layers, other are a folksy reportage. Levin provides us with documentary evidence of the dehumanization of one people by another.
The insidious violence of the Israeli occupation is exhibited for the waste of precious resources, time, and lives that it is.
The Levellers were a 17th C. They were a religiously-inspired political movement for democracy, human rights, justice for the poor, and peace. So, I have named the blog and dedicated it to the spirit of Richard Overton and the 17th C. Rules for commenting on this blog: Failure to follow these simple rules could lead me to removing your comment s. In the spirit of Richard Overton and the 17th C.
Ordinary saints working to make peace. May God grant us more. Good thing we know better… Comment by Dan Trabue August 3, Has nonviolence been tried and found wanting or found difficult and so largely not tried?
Site info Levellers Create a free website or blog at WordPress. In he developed, in collaboration with the PCSN, his own project of a mobile book-loan service called "Library on Wheels for Nonviolence and Peace" LOWNP in Hebron in order to encourage reading among the youth of the town, and in particular the study of non-violence. Puppet shows are also organized in order to teach children ways towards peace. The library touched thousands of families over the next three decades, teaching traditions of nonviolence and peace in Islam to empower participation in social change.
One estimate puts the number of people which have been reached by LOWNP's work at some 50, people over the two decades. In time Assaily's work received funding from organisations like the World Health Organization , [16] Pax Christi , Caritas Internationalis and Misereor , which enabled him in to branch out by developing a subsidiary Books Along the Divide service in order to furnish with reading materials young Palestinians, in taxis and buses, who found themselves obliged to wait for long periods to pass many of the Israeli checkpoints.
The material consists of texts on non-violence, biographies of Moses, Joseph and Jesus and works penned by Gandhi. Assaily's research on pamphleteering in the several months following the outbreak of the First Intifada , according to which, of the 17 leaflets circulating, actions were called for, and of the 17 methods advocated for resisting the occupation, 26 were non-violent, has been cited by historians such as Mark Tessler, Samuel J. Eldersveld Collegiate Professor , Philip Mattar and others in comprehensive studies of Palestinians and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Once Israeli soldiers razed all the trees in a community's olive grove. So I convened all of the families involved and told themn that the proper response was not to react violently but to persevere.
They had to replant the trees. The first time they did this, all of the seedlings were torn out once more, but on the second occasion we did things differently. To replant them again we bided our time until Israel celebrated the Earth Day festival , when everyone plants a tree. I invited everyone to set about planting trees on that day and no one could raise objections, given the occasion.
In the end the soldiers let us keep our trees in exchange for an undertaking to no longer plant any more trees. This was a good result, achieved without any need to throw stones, something which would have given them a pretext for attacking the local population. Another method is to ask children to bring to school Fanta or Coca Cola bottles, or cans, [b] and then to fill them with pebbles, customarily used in throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers.
The purpose of the exercise is to show children how to make a rudimentary musical instrument, in this case a maraca. He advises them to use these musical devices in front of Israeli soldiers manning checkpoints, rather than throwing stones at them. Nafez lives on the northern outskirts of Hebron. In response to the first Intifada, Harsina settlers built a security fence, and then, in gradually expanded, felling the olive trees and levelling the ground until the encroachment ran close up to his home.
In February further incursions by Harsina settlers encroached on his land: He can no longer access his home by car. Speaking of Palestinians generally, Assaily argues that their principle virtue is patience , but that their great defect is the slowness with which they take on fresh ideas.
His peace-campaigning is ecumenical, in that it draws on the writings of Gandhi , the Qur'an , the Torah and the New Testament. He often works to advise Palestinians demonstrating in Jerusalem on how to devise slogans that are less generic, and more in keeping with the realities of their everyday life. At the outset their fellow Palestinians suspected he and his friends must be either CIA agents or collaborators with the Israelis.
West Bank Diary: Middle East Violence as Reported by a Former American the forced isolation and hell of being a hostage of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah?. West Bank Diary: Middle East Violence as Reported by a Former American Hostage [Jerry Levin] on bahana-line.com *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers.
Issa had his house where he had set up a kindergarten, firebombed in for organizing an encounter between Palestinian and Israeli schoolchildren. In Assaily's view, since both Israel and the Palestinians have been unsuccessful in pursuit of their respective goals. Israel in trying to achieve peace and security through the exercise of force, the Palestinians by recourse to armed struggle, therefore, he argues, the time has come for non-violent pursuit of their respective goals.
What Would Jesus Do? Ich verstehe auch, dass sie uns unser Land deswegen wegnehmen. He obtained a master's degree in peace studies and conflict resolution. Left entangled in the tentacles of cruel overseers, this question is avoided by the current administration at great length. Schwartzbrod, Alexandra 28 August
The US can give them money and weapons but not peace. And the only people who can give us peace are the Israelis.