Review of Once Upon a Country, a Palestinian Autobiography by Sari Nusseibeh

Once Upon a Country by Sari Nusseibeh

Powerful autobiography and political history from one family’s perspective of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict of the 20th Century!

It restores my hope in Palestinians and makes me realize that the real problem in the Middle East (an elsewhere as well) isn’t any certain group of people, nor even any particular religion, but rather extremism, blind faith, and the dark side of human nature.

The central answer to intolerance is educated reason and the rejection of religious and political ideology!

I seem to have far more in common with this Palestinian, Sari Nusseibeh, than my own relatives for instance, more agreement with him than probably with anyone here on the Central Coast of California, where most people are fanatically supportive of the present administration of the U.S. and the Israeli government, and for various forms of creedal Christianity!

What Once Upon a Country also does is—despite Sari’s evident practical agnosticism and nominal faith—is restore confidence that we as humans can find hope and change despite the almost insurmountable problems and catastrophes of human history.

Sari communicates his life story and rational hopefulness and how he stood for nonviolence and reconciliation in the midst of intense hatred and violence, some even coming toward him and his family.

The book, too, again makes one cognizant of how much human destiny is affected by background, that while we do have some free creative choice (are morally responsible), some of us are better able to choose than others--
how upper class individuals who are bright and secularly educated, can have tremendous impact on their nations and the world, unlike average people who are more likely to be blinded by popular media and religious and political propaganda.

Part of the reason that Sari can be so rational and tolerant is that he comes from brilliant tolerant parents who sent him to England to be educated, where he earned his B.A. Then he earned his PhD in literature and philosophy in the United States at Harvard.

Such a background, while not guaranteeing moderation, hope, and nonviolence, certainly makes such moral qualities more possible than if he had grown up poverty-stricken in an intolerant family in Gaza with only a rudimentary education and filled with intolerant religious doctrines.

The extreme historical irony of reading this book is that Sari has been waging his nonviolent campaign for years yet the news never mentions it, but only the Palestinian extremists with bombs and Israeli settlers taking Palestinian land.

What if the international and U.S. news instead focused on Sari and other Palestinians’ peaceful protests and their efforts at education (such as Mars Elias Schools and Ramallah Friends School)?

This book has reignited my tremendous concern for Israel-Palestine. Thanks Sari!


In the Light of tolerance, education, and creativity,

Dan Wilcox

Guest Post from UPLIFT: "Nobody is Born a Terrorist"

Could you seek to understand a human who has committed a terrorist war action?

FIRST read this, how just yesterday 2 Druze police officers in Israel, guarding a place of prayer, were gunned down by 3 Muslims, and how Muslim authorities supported the murderers:-(

One of the killed police officers, Druze Ha'il Satwi, leaves behind his 3-week-old son and young wife.

"Ha'il's cousin, Sheikh Asaid Satawi, lamented the Border Policeman's loss. "What good is this conflict, to make a two-week-old baby an orphan? I hope these would be the last casualties of this conflict; that the leaders would sit together and resolve the issues. Have every people in their own state. Enough with the bloodshed," he said.

"The cousin described Ha'il as a happy person, who helped all and was beloved by all. "The service in Jerusalem is dangerous, that's well known, but he loved helping people. Everyone around him loved him and his laughter. He was a man who gave happiness to anyone who knew him," the sheikh said."

"The three terrorists were identified as Israeli Arab citizens from Umm al-Fahm: Muhammad Ahmad Muhammad Jabarin, 29, Muhammad Hamed Abed al-Atif Jabarin, 19, and Muhammad Ahmad Mafdel Jabarin, 19. The terrorists have no previous history of security related offenses, according to the Shin Bet."

BUT Muslim leaders supported the Islamic terrorists and condemned the soldiers who stopped the killers
from murdering anyone else:
"A member of the Fatah leadership, Abbas Zaki, said..."The three young men who were killed in Jerusalem were the ones who faced the real terrorism. We are now paying the price of the fake peace from the Oslo Accords. Resistance is the choice of all Palestinians and it is what will free the homeland."

"The Hamas terror organization said the attack "is a natural response to the Israeli terrorism and the dirtying of the al-Aqsa Mosque. The attack shows the intifada continues and that our people are united behind the resistance."
From YNETNEWS.COM

---

FROM UPLIFT: "Nobody is Born a Terrorist"
by Christ Agnos

"Forgive them, for they know not what they do"
– Jesus Christ

"If you’re reading this article, I’m impressed. It is quite taboo in Western culture to have any view other than complete and total contempt for those who commit heinous acts of terror. To entertain another possible view risks being the target of that scorn usually reserved for people whose actions we can comprehend the least. But if anyone is interested in living in a more peaceful world, then there is one question we should be asking that very few seem to be looking for answers to.

What experiences must a human being have, what level of pain and disconnection have they had to endure to be capable of going on a suicide mission to execute disabled people one by one in a concert hall?

From retaliation to prevention

Is there something within you that does not want to entertain this question? Would offering empathy to those committing these acts in addition to the victims of them take something away from the victims? Let me say firstly that my goal by entertaining this question is not to promote some utopic vision of the world that denies the horrific experiences were felt by victims from both sides of these conflicts.

My goal is to find a solution to these atrocities. Whether they are committed in Paris or in Syria, it does not matter. All human life is worth the same. I am interested in prevention and in order to prevent a situation from happening, one must fully understand the truth of what compels that situation to occur.

Children are born wanting peace
There are no terrorist infants

I think it is safe to assume that there are no infants associated with ISIS or Al Qaeda or any religion for that matter. No baby is born into this world hating another race of people. Hate is something that is learned through their experience on the planet.

Omar Ismail Mostefai is the name of one of the “terrorists” that committed the recent attacks in Paris. Sometime between the time that he was born and the time he died committing those violent acts of terror, something happened to him to make him no longer care if he lives or dies so long as the he could inflict as much pain as possible on to the world. Isn’t anyone curious as to what those experiences were, not so that we can justify what he did, but so we can understand why he did it?

I don’t mean the superficial “why” of “because Allah told him to kill all the infidels.” I mean the real deep “why”. What happened to Omar that made him want to kill another human being? What happened to make him decide to join ISIS? Did he have other opportunities for a peaceful life that he rejected? If we are interested in finding solutions, wouldn’t the answers to these questions be relevant?

How can we protect the peacefulness of children?

The truth about terrorism

We have this habit of creating labels for human beings that commit acts of violence towards innocent life. We use these labels to distance ourselves from them. We want to believe that they couldn’t possibly be human beings just like us. And so we use these labels to refer to them: “barbarian,” “savages”, “terrorists.”

The truth is that Omar is a human being anatomically no different from you or me. There isn’t some separate race of being called “terrorists” that want to wipe out all the “non-terrorists.” And this also means recognizing that each of us might be capable of doing the same thing as Omar. The question is what would it take?

For me, I imagine that it would take a truly catastrophic experience for me to want to commit an act of terror. There must be no possibility for me to live a peaceful life. If my family was murdered by a random bomb from the sky, if my government was infiltrated with corrupt diplomats with ties to foreign corporate interests, if access from the land was removed to grow food for people living abroad, I could see myself potentially being susceptible to a fundamentalist message that promised to give me some power, some feeling of control over the outcome of my life. But the truth is I don’t know what I would do. I don’t know what that feels like. But I can’t say for sure that I wouldn’t do exactly as Omar chose to do.

Nobody is born a terrorist
Getting real about solutions

Look, we can continue to engage in the same responses that we have for centuries. We can go on more crusades, drop more bombs, create more chaos, more broken families, more desire for revenge. If we do, I think we should not be surprised when those feeling the brunt of such actions want to lash out and make other people feel what they feel.

Isn’t this what we do when we get hurt and the one that hurt us does not care or show remorse for how they hurt us? Don’t you have a desire to make them feel what you feel?

We all know how to respond to terror attacks with fear and anger. How might we respond with love?

I think we begin by asking some of these tough questions that get at the real root of the desire to commit harm towards another. Doing so won’t be easy. We will have to confront the systemic atrocities that occur as a result of global capitalist society. We will have to confront our own pain that comes from our forced contribution to this system. And we will need to work together to find more sustainable ways of living on this planet.

All of this begins by asking the right questions and making the attempt to understand each other, even when what they did feels unforgivable.

At the end of the day, it’s your choice to respond to all situations with either fear or love. I hope you choose love."

by Chris Agnos
http://upliftconnect.com/nobody-is-born-a-terrorist/

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Compassionate Listening and the Parliament of the World’s Religions

From a news clipping in my files concerning the Parliament of World Religions:

Allegedly, “it was a celebration of religious unity, but last week’s Parliament of the World’s Religions at times resembled a controlled brawl lurching from argument to argument with almost embarrassing regularity. Police had to break up a shouting and shoving match among Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim delegates.”

"The presence of pagans so offended Orthodox Christians that they left the gathering. Later four Jewish organizations followed them out of Chicago, objecting to the presence of...the Nation of Islam. Evangelical Christians boycotted.”
Chuck Lindell, Cox News Service

Hopefully, there was less rancor and more compassionate listening at this year's meeting.

However, “religious disagreement is inevitable...I think what most often blocks friendly disagreement is that we don’t know people of other religions, and we misunderstand them.”
Terry Muck

On the contrary, more often than not, the problem isn’t that we don’t "know people of other religions" and that we don't understand other religions or other ideologies, but that we, oh so tragically,
DO!

As the old saying goes, the devil is in the details.

Outwardly, on first glance, looking at their forward advertising, most religions and ideologies smile and pronounce the usual platitudes--follow the Golden Rule,
be nice,
kind,
and don’t step on others’ blue suede shoes;-)

Repeat--but the devil is in the details!

The horrors are in the very real twisted philosophy and theology of these various belief systems that cause and or lead to so much suffering and harm and destruction of others in our world.

Yes, there are distorted cliches. Once upon a time, before the hurricane of adulthood, most of us were children of hope and innocence, well, naivety.

But even then, there were the generic labeled bad guys--from the communists to the Catholics.

Raised in moderate Baptist fundamentalism, my parents and church taught my sister and I the usual Nebraska 1950 prejudices--that Catholics weren’t Christians, liberals were awful, hard fundamentalists mean, and Pentecostals (which included our dear uncle and aunt) confused.

But as kids my sister and I didn’t know the details. Later as we grew and encountered these enemies, we learned that other worldviews were sometimes much better than the bad descriptions but, too often, actually much worse.

The demon was in the details of the religions' central beliefs and destructive actions.

Real Examples:

God will call you to sometimes commit immoral actions because God is sovereign will and so decides what is good and what is evil.

God created evil.

Malaria and cancer aren’t wrong.

Those humans who criticize our God and our holy book, and our leaders ought to be arrested, jailed, and executed.

God planned the Jewish Holocaust and 9/11.

God is sovereign and before creation planned for the eternal damnation of most human beings. He creates every infant at conception, “in essence, evil.”

Murder and rape and molestation can easily be forgiven but not failure to believe in our creed.

Husbands can beat their wives and women must submit to men.

Women must wear coverings over all of their body and hair.

Little girls should have their private parts mutilated.

Every human is born totally depraved because of what Adam did.

The atom bomb is "God's gift to America."

There are many Gods; there are no Gods.

Killing others for God is good and makes us heroes and "martyrs."

God is both good and evil.

God is only concerned with his own glory and planned all evil to give him glory and "good pleasure."

All other religions are of the Devil.

Etc.

It is difficult to listen with compassionate and empathetic listening, when the person opposite from you spouts horrific beliefs and supports unjust actions which are leading to great suffering, harm, and tragedy for others.

Even seemingly caring religious leaders can disconcert and confuse. Consider this caring quote: “Compassionate Listening is a process rather than a product. It is healing precisely because it does not pretend to ‘have the answers.’ Rather, it engages the participants in processes that have each side seeing the humanity of the other, even when they disagree.”
Rabbi David Zaslow, Ashland Oregon

Sounds so good. But then consider what the Rabbi also wrote! In his book, Jesus, First Century Rabbi, he states that God created evil and is also the opposite of love and the opposite of light!

Then Zaslow quotes “God says, ‘I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create evil. I the LORD do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7 in the Jewish Bible). According to him, “...and always the satan is sent by God for us to overcome.”

Now, Zaslow does backtrack and contradict himself in later pages, but such initial statements are still troubling and confusing—definitely not helpful toward compassion or good listening.

Evidently, he emphasizes the extreme statements to shock the reader, but he also really believes them!

How so unlike other modern American Jewish leaders such as the endearing, caring Rabbi Albert L. Lewis, in Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom or the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who focused on the positive and abhorred what is wrong.

Declaring God started evil and sends evil! That is very troubling.

However:

“Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy.”
Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation
--

And:

A January 2002 Interview with Gene Knudsen Hoffman
(1919-2010)
Gene Knudsen Hoffman, founder of Compassionate Listening, after being influenced by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk who was nominated for the Nobel Prize for his work with opposite sides in the Vietnam War.

Interviewer: "What is the nature of nonviolence?"

Hoffoman: "I don't like the term nonviolence any more. I feel closer to Gandhi when he says truth force, God. I'm a Quaker and I've been involved with peace for fifty years."

Interviewer: "What makes peacemaking so slow a process?"

"First of all, people don't believe in peace, in my opinion. We have never known peace. We don't even admit that we have been in many wars, so why should we make peace? We have talked about ourselves, at least Americans, as being a peaceful people until we believe it no matter what we do. It's a shocking thing. It's a practice of denial."

"Just not facing the reality. We are always calling other people war criminals, yet we're the ones who dropped the first atom bomb."

"We don't live with that reality. It is always the other person, like an untutored child who is always blaming someone else. We're in great denial about it."

"I discovered something in 1985 as I was going around the world looking for new peace initiatives and touring peace centers. I went to a Quaker meeting in London and outside the meeting was a huge sign, 'Meeting For Worship For The Torturers And The Tortured.'"

"I'd never heard of anything like that; I mean, listen to the torturers? Then I decided that I was going to listen to everyone and everything. I started listening to both sides. We can never make peace until we can listen to both sides. No matter who is the enemy."

Interviewer: "If then peacemaking is such slow work because it is the continual struggle to face reality, and also a continual struggle with self-interest, how do you get opposing people to listen to each other?"

Hoffman: "I maintain that we must listen to the oppressor as a human being. The oppressor has grievances, suffering, and we have to listen to both sides. An enemy is a person whose story we have not heard."

"In the beginning you have them listen separately. They get their anger out. They get out everything they feel. They talk about it for a year before they do anything."

"What happens is that as you listen, you change. It's a transformation. People are never listened to as much as they need to be, [especially] children and certain criminal types. It doesn't mean the oppressors are right."

"It doesn't mean you agree with them, and the people have to know this before you go in. It doesn't mean you agree with them, but you look for the truth. You have to discern the truth. It's a process of discernment and intuition and listening."
http://www.peaceheroes.com/PeaceHeroes/jeanknudsenhoffman.htm

So am I willing to listen to those who claim God wills evil, who predestines most humans to eternal torture, who consider little infants, "in essence, evil," who are prejudiced against women, minorities, and other humans as inferior, who advocate that nuclear weapons are good, that life is meaningless and purposeless, that ethics are only "personal preference," etc.?

I try. But it's difficult!

Because I've lived where Muslim jihadists shot up innocent people, personally known many individuals who tragically suffer and are allegedly eternally damned by others, have seen the destructive results of prejudice, injustice, and human rights violations and saw the destructive results of determinism and of the denial of objective ethics by various religious and ideological groups.

But we do need to listen, or we become in our own way, like our enemies.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Part 4: Only Visiting—a Mere Breath

We humans are a “mere breath” here for a brief time and then gone—so very finite, as religion and modern science both teach us.

None of us can permanently “own” anything. The sheer delusion of history has been and still is that anyone--any individual, any group, any nation can “own” land and that their owning this land gives them the right to kill other human beings created in the image of God.

Only God is eternal, only God theoretically “owns” any physical reality. When God gives land to groups of humankind for a finite time (“…he made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation,” Acts 17:26), God does so in order that each particular nation or ethnic group may be a blessing to others! Life is not about taking, but about giving.

Even when God chooses one people to be special messengers to bless humankind and then gives this group a portion of land, their living on the land is always to be based in justice and mercy as the prophets say. “But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Amos 5:24 and “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does God require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8 and “… if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness.” Isaiah 58:10 ETC.

The horrors of human history and the tragic news of the present day show what happens when humans turn to lethal violence in order to “own” land.

No national group has an ethical right to claim sole ownership of any land irrespective of the needs of others--of goodness, love, and justice. Instead, we are to give, to be generous, to share, even sacrifice.

The Spirit of God divides asunder all the honest misguidance, illusion, and pretension of both Israelis and Palestinians who claim some parcel of land is theirs alone! Wait 100 years and the proud “owners” will be gone. These warring nationalistic individuals will be gone with the wind. Only God knows where.

But, agonizingly true, the deeply, incredibly difficult agenda is how to implement a loving, just, fair policy for all people in the Middle East. How does one put into practice the spiritual truth that Jewish people and Arab people need to share, because they are only visiting this earth like the rest of humankind?

#1 The first step would seem to be for the warring parties to become “compassionate listeners” (http://www.compassionatelistening.org/about/history). Tragically most Israelis and Palestinians avoid each other. Not only do they not share, they often do not know each other, let alone have deep open honest conversations. They need to listen to the grievous hurts of the other.

#2 Secondly, they need to ask each other for forgiveness for the past. Horrendous acts of violence, theft, lying have been committed by both sides.

#3 Thirdly, the Israelis and Palestinians need to remember that they as individuals created in the image of God are far more important than any land claims.

#4 Fourthly, they then can go about the difficult task of working out how to function together despite having different cultures, different religions, different mindsets.

#5 Lastly, they will then be able to tackle the issue of how to SHARE the land, not to “own” it, not to fight over it, not to claim exclusive right to it.

There are many more steps, all of them difficult.

Having lived and worked in Palestine/Israel myself, and knowing how difficult human relationships are in my own life, I realize, none of this will be easy nor will it come about in a few years.

But agreeing to LISTEN and agreeing to SHARE are a good place to start.

In the Light of God,

Daniel Wilcox