Peace Practice Online in a Time of War

Practice is a messy, miserable reality that deserves its own independent study. What do we do in times of war? This has dramatically changed for me and many others in just the last year or two, where every war seems to be bringing individuals together online to a level of intimacy, collaboration, and care unprecedented, and others to a level of hatred unprecedented. Then there are shades of gray, where how you frame your disagreements, your texts, your cries, your screams, your pleas, your ruminations in the dead of night, all of it yields surprising communications across enemy lines, in all of the many and variegated enemy systems that overlap in international conflicts. A string of people from one side of the conflict becoming the only lifeline for a family on the other side.

My experience this summer is of the Gaza War of 2014, the most recent of many Israeli wars that I have lived through with pain, beginning in 1973 at the age of 15. In the synagogue, on the Day of Atonement, I exited, went to the hallway and cried for about an hour, having just returned from my own exhilarating independent adventure in Israel, knowing that some of the young people I met were facing death now. I tried to go and die there, but my terrified parents prevented me from leaving Boston with the help of my rabbi. So many wars since, my heart is still bruised, and my will still stubborn and stiff-necked to be in solidarity with life, though the lives I care about have expanded and changed.

The Gaza war has been so concentrated and so brutal and so all encompassing that it catapulted me to a new way of communication, through wisdom and poetry. I still am not sure why, but I sensed that many people were so bewildered by the quantity of wars this summer that they needed from me, as I needed from myself, not analysis (though I wrote that too) but something deeper.

So I want to share with you a small fraction of what I wrote to my social network followers who were looking to me for guidance. Most importantly for conflict resolution theory/practice, I want to share briefly in italics why I wrote that. You will find that the genre of wisdom literature is purposively brief, incomplete, but meant to clarify deeply one aspect of murky reality. Fundamentally, the method is best understood through positive psychology and empathic peacebuilding.

Here goes, and take from it what you wish about me or my reaction to war:

SILENCE

The defeat of violence is silence, for in silence there is observation, and observation yields reason, humility and compassion.

To provoke listening online between enemies through an artful combination of reason and empathy, our magic formula for peace.

REVENGE

Revenge and compassion are the same. Both are crying mothers with raw hearts. But one gives birth to Hell, and the other to Heaven.

To negotiate the images of mothers some of whom were committed to revenge and others to the opposite, to provoke empathy for both.

HATRED

When you oppose hatred with hatred you cannot win. Only hatred wins. Embrace those who hate and undermine their hatred from within.

To sharpen the practicality of empathic messaging between enemies.

VIOLENCE

Violent victories by violent people are no victories at all. They just rearrange the map of nonviolent resistance.

To comfort my nonviolent Arab and Jewish friends. Despite their feelings of impotence, when the bombs stop they once again will be the only hope.

HUMAN BEING

When I decided that every human being is created in the image of God I became an orphan. There is no tribe that truly believes that. 

To encourage my peaceful spiritual friends from Saudi to Brooklyn that they are not alone in feeling orphaned by militarized religious structures goading to war.

MOURNING

I do not mourn for Jewish children. I cannot. Only for children. Does that lessen my mourning? My pain? My love? 

To encourage a Jewish hermeneutic of universal care, to move beyond imposed tribal guilt from family and culture.

REBELLION

Rebellion is only freedom when there is a path, and the path is compassion. Otherwise the new master is hate. Rebellion is the mirror image of the oppressor, unless there is vision, and unless the vision is compassion. To discourage rebels from Syria to Tel Aviv to Gaza from mistaking hate for a plan, for a nonviolent vision of the future, this being a principle weakness of progressive rebellions.

SACRIFICE
An Abraham is always pursuing teenagers to slaughter and fulfill his vision, a Voice is always suggesting alternatives, while Sarah and Hagar drown in
a sea of tears dying inside. God of Abraham: Show us the lamb to be offered instead of our slaughtered teenagers.
To redirect religious vision toward a nonviolent God in the midst of war.
 

REVENGE

Revenge for death never comes from victims, but from those who live for the revenge of death. Their lives are death. Listen rather to victims for signs of life.

To honor families of victims in Israel/Palestine in whose name so many kill, while ignoring their message of life and peace.

INVESTMENT

Harsh reality: Spend peanuts on peacemakers, and billions on weapons industries, then expect your children to die.

To simplify conflict analysis to its most basic common sense for policy makers who follow me.

SAVAGERY

It is the savage in all of us that is the real killer to be chained. We dismiss the terrorist and waltz back into war.

To level the war, to prevent projection.

BOMBS

When you burn someone to death, the lungs breathe the fire. But this is as true of a bomb from the sky as it is from a torch.

To concretize the human experience of excessive force as a war crime that has yet to be codified in our international codes, this as a way to demonstrate the crime of bombs for both fighting sides.

DANCING

Warriors dance death at night around a pit of fire, burning their lungs, while angels wait for daylight, so they too can dance.

To remind my peacemaker friends that their day for dancing will come again.

LEADERSHIP

Leaders are followers, and followers are leaders. Neither knows that. They play their respective roles, the blind leading the blind.

To remind everyone of their personal power and responsibility, a fundamental tenet  of C.R. over political science.

LOVE

If you want the joy of loving humanity,

you must endure the sorrow of losing loved ones.

The more you love,

the more you lose.

If you are not prepared,

bitterness will swallow you.

If you prepare yourself for loss

Then the light of love will endure

 Conquer the darkness dividing you from enemies,

 When the men with guns slink into the shadows,

 Exhausted and defeated.

To prevent burnout as the losses begin.

BALANCE

Balance in empathy is a political matter of life and death.

To combine the peaceful power of pro-social emotions with the power of reason to take more than one point of view.

NOTE TO SELF, MIDDLE EAST, AND HUMANITY:

Only the yelling is heard

When you are yelling.

Writing can be yelling.

To simplify the Socratic way of reason and nonviolence.

SEMEN SEEDS

Gestures of kindness are semen seeds. Men get busy, it will make you inherently happy and bear you many children.

To transform men’s violence in war.

DEFIANCE

In war,

In an age of war,

The act of ultimate defiance is,

To make another human being feel wonderful.

To empower

Who is courageous?

Those who can turn an enemy into a friend on Facebook.

Who is wise?

He who conquers his own worst impulses on Facebook.

To guide better dialogue through cultural allusions, in this case Jewish ones.

REFLECTIONS IN MY MIDDLE EASTERN MIRROR

Compassion fatigue.

Strange Expression.

What is the fatigue?

Too much suffering,

Too many people crying,

Too many dead bodies,

Too many people

Demanding that I love them,

But only them,

That I see only their tears,

As they fall upon the bloodied bodies

That once laughed

And danced

And cheered.

Ask me for compassion

And I will refuse.

Ask me who are you?

Ask a peacemaker,

Who

the

fuck

are

you?

Look at that goddam mirror,

Do you know any more?

Or does everything bleed red,

In the cracked mirror,

Which you broke,

In a fit of rage?

Ask me again,

Ask me if I am

Compassion?

Ask me,

Go ahead and dare to ask

My enraged eyes,

And my bulging neck veins,

And my bloodied cheeks.

Ask me if I Am

Compassion?

Then you will come to me,

Then you will see me,

Then I will see me,

I will find me,

I will find you,

I swear to God,

I will find you,

Whether you want to be found or not,

And I will find them,

And you will find them.

Because compassion is a fiery ghost.

I don’t have it, I cannot, I have none left,

Except an atom that runs my engine.

And that atom, when it splits,

There is endless energy,

For me, for everyone.

I am energy,

I am compassion,

And there is no limit,

And there is no fatigue.

Compassion for everyone,

Or Die. Just die.

You cannot live,

You cannot endure the violence,

You cannot overcome the darkness,

Without splitting the atom of compassion,

That is your soul.

To dignify and empower the torturous middle space of the peacemaker.

***Peace in the Middle East photo courtesy of flickr user Grant Neufeld.