From August 23-August 30 2004 Arun Gandhi will head a delegation to Jordan, Israel and Palestine to carry his grandfather's legacy of nonviolent resistance to the people of the Holy Land. This blog will be updated daily during the tour.
Click [here] to find the current time in Jerusalem.
Gandhi Tour of Israel & Palestine
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
This reflection was written by Ann Helmke, one of the delegates on the tour:
Climbing a Wall
Gandhi walked to the sea.
Rosa Parks sat down on a bus.
Pete, from Alaska, climbed a wall.
Looking at any one of these in their most basic sense, well, they don’t sound like much. One walked. One sat. One climbed. Three simple human acts. That doesn’t mean that any of these acts were easy. Try walking 241 miles with only a stick in your hand and a pair of sandals on your feet. Try sitting down anywhere where you know you’re not wanted, the surroundings are hostile, and your feet are dead tired from working all day. Or, try doing what Pete did…
He climbed a 25-foot concrete wall by only using his feet and hands along a seam. In itself that was difficult enough, but he also knew that he could be shot at any moment. And he did it in front of an audience of 5000-8000 people.
There we were, the Peace Delegation and Arun Gandhi, in the midst of the largest Palestinian and Israeli peace rally ever, in the middle of Abu Dis, in the exact place where Jesus walked and visited with friends.
The sun was hot. The crowd was filled with energy. There were banners everywhere – “Freedom is our birthright,” “No to Occupation. Yes to Freedom. Yes to Peace.,” “Peace is our birthright.” There were round placards where the Israeli flag and the Palestinian flag were part of one design. The backdrop for the stage was that concrete wall. Cameras and media from all over the world swarmed the crowd. Young and old were smiling and singing. You couldn’t tell who was Palestinian and who was Israeli. The people were ecstatic to be there. They were geared up with the thought of nonviolence and the longed-for day of peace.
A poet read. A Muslim spoke. A Jew spoke. A Christian spoke. They all joined hands together and raised them to the sky in a gesture of unity and peace. Then Arun went to the microphone to speak. He spoke words of nonviolence and the simple yet courageous human acts that are needed to make peace concrete. While he was speaking, the eyes of the crowd and the murmur of their voices began to rise upward. Everyone’s eyes were slowly, with awe and trepidation, following Pete as he began to scale the wall behind the stage. Carefully he would place one hand, one foot after the other in the middle of a seam that went straight up to the top. There probably weren’t too many other people in the crowd who even knew how to do this, let alone the courage, because this is no ordinary wall on the side of a building or between two neighbors’ yards.
The wall that Pete was climbing is being built on Palestinian land by the Israeli government. Its spoken intent is to separate these two neighboring peoples and provide security to the Israelis. The only people it truly separates are neighboring Palestinians, family from family, hospitals from the sick, children from their schools, farmers from their land, the dead from their cemeteries. The wall also only seems to heighten the animosity and anger instead of increasing security.
I know. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve listened to the stories firsthand from the two neighboring peoples. It causes me great despair to see people in such oppressive pain. It causes me great shame to realize how little we know of this in the U.S. and how we’re so entangled in this nightmare politically, religiously, financially. This structure is called by many names. For me, it is the epitome of despair and shame.
I marveled at Pete as he climbed that wall – his dexterity, his sense of freedom, his embodied knowledge of nonviolence. Pete knew exactly what he was doing, just as much as Gandhi knew, just as much as Rosa Parks knew.
In his climb he was making the statement that nonviolence is made up of simple human acts, nonviolence is active and not passive. In his climb he was making the statement that even though walls, metaphorically and physically, are built between peoples there are many ways to overcome them – through them, around them, over them, or simply tear them down. In his climb he was making the statement that even though there are sometimes such great obstacles to peace, so much so that one thinks they have no choice in the matter, a person still has choice.
Pete knew the creative ingenuity of the means meeting the end. He knew that the nonviolent action in regards to this wall needed to be more than staring at it, or complaining about it, or protesting it, or accepting it as total humiliation. I have never seen such a free and liberated and passionate man in my life. And it was contagious. With each foot he traveled, with each cheer that went up from the crowd, people were being filled with the sense of their own freedom and liberation, their own passion and potential choice for peace.
But Pete knew one other important thing about nonviolence. He knew that it wasn’t just about him. It’s larger than that and it’s available to everyone. When he got to the top of that wall he secured a couple knotted ropes down the side to others waiting on the ground. His great act of courage inspired the hearts of those of us below. One by one others began to climb up those ropes to the top of the wall, and when they reached the top they all, we all, became one in solidarity with that freedom and potential peace.
Through my tears I began to imagine Israelis on the other side of the wall climbing up to meet them. It was a beautiful sight in my mind, but as I stood on the stage and turned from the wall to look out across the crowd, I realized that some of the Israelis had already made it. United on the stage and in the crowd were Israelis and Palestinians.
We shouldn’t have to imagine peace but if that’s where we need to begin, so be it. Better yet, why not look at those who are already about nonviolence? Why not support them? Why not become one of them? I don’t know, maybe I’m naïve, but many think Jesus was naïve, as well as Gandhi and Rosa and Pete. Frankly, it makes me no difference what other people think. History informs me. They chose peace, and changed the world.
Comments:
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Nano utilizes Arc Bond Sputtering and Superlattice technology to apply multi-layers of super-hard elemental coatings on an array of precision products to achieve a variety of physical properties. The application of the coating on industrial products is designed to change their physical properties, improving a product's durability, resistance, chemical and physical characteristics as well as performance. Nano's super-hard alloy coating materials were especially developed for printed circuit board drills in response to special market requirements
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