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Peace and Justice Kids Meeting Notes
February 4, 2007
Present: Rachel, Delaney and Marley (thanks for the snacks!), Sage (thanks for the drinks!), and Ariana stopped by but couldn’t stay
Palestine-Israel Presentation
We attended a presentation being given at the Bloomington Normal Citizens for Peace and Justice Meeting by Phyllis, a woman who talked about her experience as a member of a non-violent, “direct action,” political action group in the Palestinian Territories.
Phyllis’s background: She grew up in Bloomington, lived and worked as a social worker for many years in Alaska. Retired from there and was inspired to go to Palestine to do this work. She is currently training to learn Compassionat Listening so she can add it to her practice.
“Build bridges to peace, not walls to hate!” say signs carried by Palestinian protesters in a march shown in one of Phyllis’s slides.
The village she worked in was located on the West edge of the West Bank, ten miles from the Mediterranean Sea, but the Palestinian people who live in the village cannot get to the sea. They can smell it, and they yearn for it in 105 degree heat, but they are blocked by Israel’s IDF from going there.
IDF soldiers are most often 17-21 year old men. Inexperienced and scared, sometimes, themselves. American-made and financed backhoes and bulldozers are used to dig these trenches, which are called “roadblocks.” The IDF shows up sometimes when the Palestinian villagers have gathered to fill in the trenches Israeli soldiers have dug in the road to prevent Palestinians from passing. Very threatening, scary presence in the village.
The IDF comes down and uses tear gas. She learned to take an onion, eat a lemon, or put on really strong perfume to counteract the burning sensation. She showed us a slide of an 18-year old woman who had collapsed from a particularly intense application of tear gas. It was a dangerous situation for her because she needed to get out of there and because three Palestinian men carried her to safety. Her father would have been very angry: Palestinian men are not to touch women.
Apache helicopters fly over the Territories regularly. Very scary.
Regularly people are blocked without warning from getting to their own land, their own orchards and farms and other sources of livelihood. If you cannot get to your land for two years, then the Israelis take it permanently away. The Palestinians are so frustrated to see their very old, very productive and valuable land just taken away.
Children are expected to go to the check points in order to gain passage to their schools. IDF soldiers make the children sit very still and wait, sit and wait, sometimes before they are allowed entry. Kids asked to make art showing their feelings about their situation made drawings that said:
“Where is our peace?”
“They built the wall through our house.”
“I am separated from my family.”
These kids draw pictures of their world with sunshine and butterflies and birds—and the Apache helicopters in the sky.
Many children are very sheltered from obscenities, very serious about school, and very upset by seeing people they love being hurt and killed. Phyllis worries that these kids will choose to lash back at the Israelis and become terrorists themselves.
When Palestinians are carrying guns, they are fair game for the IDF, no matter what.
IDF soldiers in Hummers with big metal screens all around them drive through the villages slowly shouting mean things at kids about their families and the things the kids care very much about. And if a kid loses his temper, and throws a rock at the vehicle, he’ll be shot.
Funeral processions are never attacked. The IDF knows to stay away from such a large gathering of Palestinians.
Compassionate Listening video tape
Gene Knudson Hoffman, Compassionate Listening pioneer
Andrea Cchen, Compassionate Listening Founder
Compassionate Listening (CL) is born of a need for kindness, understanding, and connection. Conflict is what will teach us about this.
Transformation of the energy of conflct into an opportunity to connect.
Standing to listen to people who are shouting with rage.
Not having to be afraid of other people.
Came initially from work in the Middle East—1990s—in the heart of conflict.
Doing the small, but mighty, thing in a world full of people who don’t like one another. Instead, Compassionate Listeners listen to both parties.
Trying to hear and understand the stories of other people who are so different from you that you cannot even begin to relate. “I had no idea.” This having no idea is mostly because we haven’t been listening.
The problem is that people often see with one eye or the other, but we usually do not see with both of our eyes open.
There is a wholeness in being able to take in other people’s stories—especially the difficult stories. Sixteen years. Ambassadors for listening. To tell people they mattered.
If I really am listening hard, then at some point their story becomes my story. It becomes “we.”
Process of rehumanization.
Building trust that has allowed CL to bring Palestinians and Israelis together for CL themselves.
2002 began a Compassionate Listening project in Germany. Taught participants to have the capacity to listen deeply. Really deeply.
Went to Bergan-Belson with Germans and Jews together. Andrea learned that modern-day eGermans feel terrible pain about their country’s history.
Reconciliation is rebonding, re-coming together as a human family.
“When you listen to someone’s story from as close to your heart as you can come, it’s as if you are embracing them. You are holding them here, next to your heart. And this is something they have wanted from someone for sixty years.”
“You don’t know what a teabag is like until it is in hot water.” What you do when you are in the presence of someone who triggers you.
How do we stay in our hearts and stay connected when we are wounded or angry or scared.
Listening our way to wholeness.
Potluck dinner with Bloomington/Normal Citizens for Peace and Justice
PJK-only Discussion
Reminder dates—Please come out!
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