[WCUSP] Article on nonviolence mvt in ME

[Tura Campanella Cook]

Begin forwarded message:
>> Headline:  Nonviolence can work wonders - even in the Middle East
>> Byline:  Helena Cobban
>> Date: 11/09/2006
>>  
>> (AMMAN, JORDAN)It was an extraordinary gathering. For four days at 
>> the end of October,
>> 60  people, most from the Middle East, came together here to discuss 
>> how
>> concerted nonviolent action might defuse tensions and help bring peace
>> to this war-blighted part of the world.
>> A distinguished scholar from India helped us engage closely with the
>> teachings of Mohandas Gandhi, and a veteran African-American
>> participant in the US civil rights movement helped us explore the work
>> of Martin Luther King Jr. We heard from Israeli and Palestinian
>> activists about projects to restore wholeness and hope to communities
>> burdened heavily with fear, violence, and foreign occupation. We
>> learned about the quiet transformational work that Christian 
>> Peacemaker
>> Teams have done in Iraq and the West Bank, and explored theories and
>> practices of nonviolent action from around the world.
>> This assembly - a UN-sponsored leadership conference on  nonviolence -
>> brought together Israelis, Palestinians, Iraqis, Jordanians, 
>> Egyptians,
>> and others from the Middle East. One-third of the participants came
>> from farther afield - from Nepal, Uganda, Cameroon, Sri Lanka, Russia,
>> South Africa, and elsewhere - and added a valuable global and
>> comparative perspective to the mix.
>> We saw very secular Israeli activists engaging passionately with
>> socially conservative (and very articulate) veiled women from Jordan
>> and the Palestinian territories. Pro-peace Israeli rabbis in yarmulkes
>> worked with Muslim teachers in flowing robes. There were Christian,
>> Hindu, Buddhist, and secular peace activists, and veterans of
>> nonviolent struggles in South Africa, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere.
>> On the final night, an Israeli rabbi and a young Arab woman sang a 
>> poem
>> composed two hours  earlier by a South African. It told of the dream 
>> of
>> coexistence along the Jordan River.
>> How did this happen - at a time of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian
>> conflict and deadly civil strife in Iraq?
>> It was a combination of hard work and serendipity (you could say 
>> grace).
>> Back in April, Jairam Reddy, the head of the Amman-based United 
>> Nations
>> University International Leadership Institute (UNU-ILI) planned this
>> course to coincide with the centennial of Gandhi's first nonviolent
>> demonstration, undertaken in Dr. Reddy's native South Africa in
>> September 1906. Then, the punishing 34-day war between Israel and
>> Lebanon this July dealt a huge setback to Israel's already fragile
>> peace movement. And between April and October, the violence in Iraq
>> escalated.
>> But throughout that violence-racked summer, small groups in all  those
>> countries continued to believe in and practice the principles of
>> nonviolence. Annemie De Winter, the regional representative of
>> Germany's Friedrich Naumann Foundation, stayed in touch with many of
>> them. She helped UNU-ILI to assemble the rich roster of in-region
>> course participants. Reddy and his staff did the rest of the work.
>> (Disclosure: I gave Reddy a small amount of consulting help on the
>> project.) The Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington made a small but
>> welcome financial donation. Then, given the talent, commitment, and
>> flexibility of the group that assembled in Amman, the four days of 
>> work
>> and learning flowed remarkably well.
>> I have supported many nongovernmental efforts for reconciliation and
>> justice between Arabs and Israelis since the late 1980s, and I've seen
>> this movement traverse times of  hope and times of great setbacks.
>> Considering the difficult conditions it had to confront, I was truly
>> amazed at how successful the UNU-ILI gathering was.
>> Our gathering thrived because of the great human qualities and rich
>> experience of the participants. It helped, too, that so many Middle
>> Easterners can now see that violence - whether direct physical 
>> violence
>> or the violence of oppressive systems - simply does not "work." So in
>> key places, people have become more eager to seek alternatives.
>> The achievements of Gandhi's movement in India and of the (largely
>> nonviolent) African National Congress in South Africa last century are
>> solid examples of the effectiveness of nonviolent mass action that
>> today's peacemakers embrace as instructive models. The teachings of
>> Gandhi, Dr. King, and others do not try to avoid the big  political
>> problems that conflict- ridden or oppressed societies face. Instead,
>> they seek to mobilize new, nonviolent human energies in order to
>> resolve them.
>> Obviously, this movement toward nonviolent action in the Middle East 
>> is
>> still in its infancy. In every country in the region, it is still
>> vulnerable to the forces of violence. But in Amman in October, vital
>> seeds were sown, and vital connections made. Now, we all need to work
>> hard to nurture and strengthen this hopeful movement.
>> * Helena Cobban is the author of "Amnesty after Atrocity? Healing
>> Nations after Genocide and War Crimes."
>> (c) Copyright 2006 The Christian Science Monitor.  All rights 
>> reserved.
>> _,_._,___ 
>>   
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