Guerilla Compassion

A sermon Offered by Rev. Tim Kutzmark
Sunday, SEPT 24, 2006 • Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading

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I am against boys becoming heroes at ten . . .
And yet, when fire cremates my friends
my youth, and country
How can I stop a poem from becoming a gun?
—Rashid Hussein, Palestinian Poet

Jathibiyya has never killed anyone, not anyone she knows about.  But she hated, she hated with a vengeance. She hated the Israeli officials who decreed that Palestinian schools were to be closed down.  A teacher herself, she hated that her children’s minds had become political pawns.  Still, she couldn’t help but laugh at the irony: “No wonder all the kids are on the streets throwing rocks,” she said.  “Where else can they be but in the street?  It is illegal for them to be at school.”

Jathibiyya has never killed anyone, not anyone she knows about.  But she hated, she hated with a vengeance.  She hated the young soldier who kicked her friend in the stomach, as he lay curled on the ground.  They had been resisting the occupation.  Minutes before, the two of them had wrapped their faces in shawls and joined the mob surging into the street.  Ahead she saw the Israeli squadron standing near the jeeps.  She saw the terror in the soldiers’ faces as the Palestinian crowd descended, hungry to spill Jewish blood.  She looked at the soldiers.  “They are just boys,” she thought, “They are not much older than my students.”  As one of those boys kicked at her friend, Jathibiyya wished she could kill him with her bare hands.  But the easiest weapons were the rocks at her feet, the very rocks that made up the land Arab and Jew were fighting over.  “They wanted it?  I threw the land back at them, hard.”

Jathibiyya has never killed anyone, not anyone she knows about.  But she hated, she hated with a vengeance.  She hated who she had become.

Palestinian Poet Mu’in Basisu writes:

None was left of this people,
This land . . . 
None but bare bodies floating on mires
Leavings of kin and a child
None but swelled bodies
Their numbers unknown
Here wreckage, here death,
Here drowned in deep waters
Scraps of my people and my country
Scraps of a bread loaf still clasped in my hand
Here quivering dead eyes
Here lips crying vengeance.

In the land some call Palestine and others call Israel, and in the land known as Lebanon, this has been a summer of rage and rockets.  This has been the summer of tanks and terror.  But brutal summer is nothing new for this land, where, for thousands of years, blood has flowed as religiously as prayer.  The unceasing struggle to seize control of this contested country has left no one unsoiled.  Make no mistake. No one—not Muslim, not Christian, not Jew, not anyone--can hold their head high in the shadow of Jerusalem.

The earliest indication of pre-historic people making a home in the hills around what is now called Jerusalem is some 300,000-600,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic Age.  We know for sure that great cities and dynasties rose and fell in the land, beginning about 3200 BCE, over 5000 years ago.  This is some thirteen hundred years before Abraham is said to have journeyed from Mesopotamia (Iraq) to claim this land for his descendants, who became the Jewish people.  Around the time of the mythological Abraham, about 1800 BCE, this land was dominated politically by the empire of Egypt, and influenced in cultural and religious affairs by the Kingdom of Syria.  Egypt called the land “Retinu.”  One of the nineteen cities of Retinu was called Rushalimum, probably named for the Syrian God of the evening, Shalem.  This name from four thousand years ago is the first written record of the city that would eventually become known as Jerusalem. 

From that moment forward, the battle for possession of this arid land is well documented and never ending.   Brace yourself for a whirl-wind tour of just a few highlights of this history of carnage and control. The names change, but the blood and barbarism is the same.  Trans-Jordanian nomadic tribes skirmish and slaughter.  Walled cities are built and burned.  In 1250 BCE, the tribes of Israel escape from slavery in Egypt and invade.  King David unifies the tribes into a Jewish kingdom.  Civil war splits the kingdom.  In 587 BCE Babylon destroys it.  The Jews are exiled.  The Jews return.  Persia rules.  Greece takes over.  Then Syria takes control, killing over 40,000 Jews.  The Jews force the Syrians out after a bloody war of resistance.  In 161 BCE, Rome becomes an ally with the Jews, then a conqueror.  Jews revolt.  In the year 70 CE, Rome destroys Jerusalem and slaughters countless Jews.  Remaining Jews are exiled throughout the world.  Christianity takes hold.  Persia invades and slaughters the Christians.  Christians retake the land.  In 637, Arabs invade and conquer the Christians.  In 1099, Christian crusaders re-conquer in a Muslim bloodbath.  Muslims retake the city in 1187.  On and on into the modern age. (Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths, by Karen Armstrong, 1996)
 
In 1878, Jews dispersed around the world begin a migration back to their ancient homeland, in part because of increased persecution in Eastern Europe and Russia.  Tensions between native Palestinians already living on the land and the arriving Jews escalate.  Secret treaties between Britain and Arabs are drawn, establishing an Arab kingdom.  Britain takes Jerusalem from the Islamic rule of the Ottomans in 1917.  By 1920, Jewish and Arab rioting and killing are commonplace.  Pre- and post-holocaust attempts to find a peaceful solution prove impossible.  73,000 more Jews pour into the land after World War II.  In 1947, Palestinians refuse a UN solution —accepted by Israel—that would partition the land into two nations, with Jerusalem protected as a separate international city.  6,000 Jews are killed in a six-month campaign of terror. Fighting continues; Israeli guerillas target British troops.  Palestinians are massacred and driven from their homes.  In 1948, the State of Israel is proclaimed.  Egypt and Syria invade, vowing to drive the Jews into sea.  Fighting back, Israel conquers Arab land for its own.  Without a country, 1.7 million Palestinians are crammed into the Gaza strip and the West Bank, and Israel builds 140 new settlements in the occupied territory. On and on.

And now, a new and deadly intifada, or freedom fight, has exploded, killing Israelis, Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and, this summer, Lebanese.  Palestinians have proudly packed explosive into back backs and slaughtered innocent men, women, and children. Arab terrorists have shot thousands of rockets into Jewish communities.  Israel has invaded the country of Lebanon in an attempt to wipe out the pro-Palestinian terrorist infrastructure that had been woven into the heart of that country.  Israeli bombings have killed innocent women, children, and men, and left Lebanon decimated.

The questions and struggles that torment this land and her people are equally specific to that place and universal in scope.  They—and we—ask: In the midst of protectionist policies gone deadly, how do we hear the humanity that lives behind the battle?  In the deadly stench of fermenting religious fervor, how do we remember not to hate those who may hate us?  In the struggle for survival, how do we protect not just our loved ones, but the promise alive within all people?

A struggle for survival seemed far removed the night I met Jathibiyya.  It was June.  We were at a graduation party in Cambridge.  I was pouring myself some sparkling water when this strong-looking young woman walked up and said ‘Hello.’  We traded the usual early summer pleasantries, which led to my asking: “Are you graduating tomorrow?”  “No, I still have more work on my research.”  “What is your research?”  I asked.  “I’m learning how the Jews educated their young people during the Holocaust.  My research explores the ways the Jews secretly educated their children when education was declared illegal.  I want to use this information to help education in my country.”  “What is your country?”  I ask.”  “My country is Palestine.” 

She tells me how she grew up in the occupied territories, and had been a grade school teacher.  When Israel closed the Palestinian schools, she applied to Graduate School in the United States.  “We are schooling our children secretly,” she says, “and I want to find out how to do this in a better way.  In the midst of this war, I want to ensure that our children do not have their minds shrivel into nothing.  And, education can be a means for social change.”  She pauses, then looks away: “But I can no longer stay here in the United States.  My people are dying. I must go to my country and be with my people.”

We refill our glasses. “Can I ask you something,” I say, “something personal?”  “Yes,” she replies.  And so say: “How do hold onto hope?  How do you live with such violence, such killing, so many cries for more killing?”

She paused for a long time.  Then her eyes sparkled.  She spoke: “Do you remember, in the Hebrew Scriptures, the challenge The Holy One presented to the Jews, and, really, to all people?  Remember, Muslims read the Hebrew Scripture too.  This is what Allah said to all people: “See, I set before you this day life and death, blessings and curses.  Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”

She went on: “Very few people in my land are choosing life anymore.  They think that they are fighting for life.  I thought I was fighting for life.  I never killed anyone, not anyone I know about.  But I hated, I hated with a vengeance.  I hated them when they closed down the schools. I hated them as I hurled rocks.  I hated them when my friend was kicked.  But most of all, I hated them on that night when the truck stopped at my house. 

Before this, it had always been in the street.  Now, it had come to my home.  In the midnight darkness I could hear whispered commands, the scrape of boots on the gravel.   Not wanting to wait, I opened the door and stepped back into the house.  Soldiers poured in.  “Please,” I begged, “please be quiet.  My little nieces are sleeping in the bedroom.  You can search the entire house, just please, don’t scare them.”  The soldier in command stormed towards the shut bedroom door, smashing his boot through the latch, kicking it open.  My three and four-year old nieces began screaming.  “Don’t hurt them,” I begged, as I started hitting him.  The soldier knocked me away, and kicked at the bed.  I could feel myself burning to grab a knife or sharp stick, anything to kill this monster.  But in the midst of that fire, something cooled.  And in that cooling, my hate and my heart broke open.  It was as if Allah himself had whispered: “Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”  It sounds so trite.  But at that moment, I knew it was me that had to change.  I was tired, so tired of being pulled deeper and deeper into this pit of rage and revenge.  I had to stop.  I couldn’t change the chaos around me—that was out of control.  But, somehow, I realized that I could choose how I would live in midst of this chaos.”

Jathibiyya smiles as she remembers:  “I went up to the soldier, who was still kicking at the bed.  I looked at him in the eyes: “Do you have a little girl?” The soldier looked stunned. “Yes, I have a little girl,” he said.   “Is she afraid of the night?”  The soldier stared at me.  “She cries at night when I am not there.”  “What is her name?”  “Her name is Hannah.”  “My nieces’ names are Dalia and Ahlam.  And if you like, you could sit with them and I’ll bring you some cake.  There is enough for everyone.”  He did not kick the bed again.”

“From that moment on,” Jathibiyya says, “I never hated again.  I feel the hot impulse, but it will get me nowhere.  It will get us nowhere.  Now, when I walk in the streets, I smile at the Israeli soldiers.  I say “hello.”  I stop and ask them about their girlfriends, their wives, their children.  I touch their arms, gently. What I do is simple.  I see them as human beings.  I talk to them as human beings.  I treat them as human beings.  I can do this no matter how I am treated.  We can do this no matter how we are treated.  They can do this no matter how they are treated by us.  Anybody can do this at any moment, no matter where you are, or what you are struggling against.  We can all surprise someone with the experience of their own humanity.”

She paused: “Does it make a difference?  I believe it does.  They see themselves reflected back through my eyes.  And, at the same time, they no longer see me as a Palestinian who must be broken.  They are forced to see a person in front of them.  And if they see me as a person, maybe they will see my neighbor as a person.  Maybe they won’t shoot the thirteen-year-old boy throwing the rock.  Maybe they will talk to their friends.  Maybe enough of them will convince their leaders to stop and listen.  Maybe enough of my friends will convince our leaders to stop and listen.”  She stopped for a moment, then said, “Maybe then, we will both choose life.”

Compassion as the answer—choosing life as the answer—it sounds naïve, yes?  But what else do we have?  Rocks don’t work. Rockets don’t work.  Guns don’t work.  Isn’t that what Gandhi knew?  Isn’t that what Martin Luther King taught? Isn’t that what Nelson Mandela learned.  Isn’t that what Desmond Tutu lived? And something changed in India.  Something changed in South Africa.  And something might change in the hills and valleys of Palestine and Israel.  Something might change in us.

Jathibiyya looked at me, and I saw her eyes toughen: “Yes, compassion and open hearts create individual change.  And individual change is the beginning of transformation.  But we must be careful not to loose ourselves in utopian dreams.  Remember—don’t ever forget—individual change is only the first step.”  She continued: “A lasting solution can come only if all this individual change combines into social change.  Compassion is the key, but it is only the starting point. The path of guerrilla compassion must then carefully orchestrate non-violent acts of resistance.  This path of guerrilla compassion must then unleash non-violent protest and peaceful civil disobedience.  This path of guerrilla compassion must then begin a massive international education effort, shedding light on the realities we are facing in this crisis, lifting up the plight of the people in the midst of the crisis.”  Turning revolutionaries—or oppressors—into lovers is not enough.  The path of guerilla compassion must not just be about open hearts.  It must be about open-hearted hands working hard to transform through peaceful but passionate means.

Author Salman Rushdie, who knows first-hand the deadly sting of extremist Muslim reaction, said recently in an interview: “When the Catholics of Northern Ireland became disillusioned by being represented by the IRA, that is what brought the IRA to the peace table.  At that moment their power disappeared.” 

We must make the power disappear from all those who would abuse it.  We must make the power disappear from all those who turn poems into guns. We must make the power disappear from those who turn children into soldiers.  We must make the power disappear from those who turn teens into terrorists.  We must make the power disappear from those all those who turn cities and countries and lives into rubble.

We must give power to those like this brave woman from Palestine, who challenged herself, who challenged her people, who challenged her oppressors, to choose life.

We must give power to those like this brave women, who challenges us to choose life.
May it be so.  Blessed Be.  Amen.

 

© Copyright 2006 Rev. Tim Kutzmark