People I meet still ask, why this one time completely secular Jewish American atheist and mainstream television network foreign correspondent gave up that career to become a full time volunteer member of CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams). And I tell them it has everything to do with my kidnapping by the Hizballah in 1984 back when I was running CNN's Middle East bureau in Beirut. Up until that time, I had believed quite emphatically and unquestioningly in what you might call the efficacy of violence. In other words, I was convinced that in certain situations violence worked. Coupled with that belief was also my atheistic or perhaps only agnostic disbelief, a disdain for the entire concept of faith, which perceived no rational connection between my sometimes "yes" belief in the efficacy of violence, and my always "no" disbelief in God.
But in captivity after ten days of intense contemplation, I reasoned my way to a complete conceptual turn around: to an always belief in God and a never belief in the efficacy of violence. It was triggered in part because of an ah! ha! moment in which I experienced a sudden insight as to the absolute inability of human violence to achieve any condition that can be of permanent value to humankind.
With respect to nonviolence, it became clear to me in captivity that the absence of nonviolence as a primary motivating force in terms of conduct--in terms of human behavior in other words--remains undoubtedly one of the most crucial problems that the world needs to face up to without blinking, if humankind is to survive.
We need to face up to the undeniable effects of rationalized violence, because, to begin with, too many people--especially here at home in the United States, and, of course, elsewhere--only give lip service to teachings about nonviolence as taught for instance by Jesus during his Sermon on the Mount. By their actions however, it is clear they are doing their best to turn Jesus into a nationalistic tribal God of war.
Well, thoughts such as those--especially love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you--led in time to my identifying what I have since then called the context of my captivity: and which I have been describing ever since as "the futility of violence." For instance, I don't see much difference between noncombatants killed as a result of the calloused collateral damage of so-called Just War or those killed by the calloused collateral damage of so-called Jihad. (In fact the first instance of Jihad--so called Holy War--is in Exodus…not the Koran. In both cases—Just War/Holy War--there is a reprehensible game of violence-rationalizing, violence condoning going on, which is intentionally and meanly being pursued by too many Christians, too many Jews, and too many Muslims…but happily by not all of any of the above.
So, as you can see, I am not concerned with just the futility of the violence of the so-called bad guys, but the futility of the violence of the so-called good guys too. In fact viewed through such a lens, I find it difficult too much of the time to be able to say with confidence exactly who the good guys are or who the bad guys are. In other words, the truth I discovered in captivity is this: Violence doesn't work.
This one hundred eighty degree turnaround took place took place very soon after our hostage ordeal began. So I had several months to ponder those new for me understandings and convictions. Then shortly after midnight on the 343rd day of my captivity--on Valentine's day 1985--discovering that I could be free from the chain securing my captivity, I tied three blankets together, said a prayer, and then thoroughly frightened forced open the shutters to a window next to my pallet, climbed through it onto a balcony, tied the blankets to a stanchion, slipped down the blankets, and crept down a mountain side to freedom, or more specifically stumbled upon the Syrian army, which enabled my safe departure from Lebanon.
After being reunited with my wife I quickly learned that my escape was no accident but had only been possible because of the behind scenes efforts of Sis and Arab (Christian and Muslim) and Jewish friends. This network was successful in time in connecting with one of my youthful guards who was apparently persuaded to be "careless" about that chain. So Sis and I remain mindful and always thankful that ours is one of the very very few joint-husband-and-wife-rescue- efforts to have succeeded.
After that both Sis' and my life moved in dramatically new directions, which the day before I was kidnapped a year earlier neither of us would have predicted. In keeping with those beliefs and for almost twenty years now, she and I have repeatedly traveled back and forth to the Middle East--and in particular Palestine and Israel-- to "do" nonviolence. We go there to "do" nonviolence in order to try-- along with so many others but never enough--to build and maintain the bridges connecting nonviolent Palestinian Arabs (Christian and Muslim) with their nonviolent Jewish partners living in Israel and elsewhere and then--again alongside all of them--try to keep those bridges open. I think you could call that bridgekeeping.
To sum up: We have become involved in nonviolent bridgekeeping in Palestine, we have signed on to the struggle against both physical walls and walls of the mind in Palestine, because it's our firm belief that if the world can't get nonviolence, and nonviolent bridgekeeping "right" in the so-called Holy Land where the concept of community first began--and then almost immediately began to come unraveled--then the world won't be able to get it "right" anywhere else. But I want to tell you that living nonviolently in that violent part of our violent world (which we still insist on calling--can you believe it?--the Holy Land) can be an uneasy and easily misunderstood (and even more easily demonized calling). But demonizing our actions and the actions of others is what is happening. As a result, we are grateful to be working closely with and along side the hundreds of thousand of Jews living in Israel and elsewhere in the world who do "get" it, who do "get" nonviolence, and who do "get" the need to get in the way of wall building.
And because they do "get" all that, they are horrified by the Israeli state's brutal occupation and relentless whittling away of Palestinian (Christian and Muslim) culture, society, and polity, while at the same time surrounding what's left with that high thick hard as rock wall. So they and us are involved in that joint effort to limit, curtail--to even reverse if possible—the Israeli government's (enabled primarily in recent years by the United States government) dreary decades long confiscatory colonial enterprise: a colonial enterprise characterized by the relentless and obvious intent to forcefully convince the several million Palestinians living in the West Bank to get up and abandon what belongs to them.
And because they--along with us--"get" it; they are--as are we--not fooled by the agreements reached last week by Israel's exclusivist government with the Palestinian Authority. They are not fooled by their on going attempts to turn the Palestinian Authority into a Quisling or Petain type subservient leadership. They and we are not fooled by the Israeli government's for the moment successful attempt to turn the Palestinian Authority into prison trustees so that the Israeli government will have the space and time to complete its permanent colonizing occupation and eventual annexation of more than half of the West Bank: the half in which 99 percent of its relentlessly growing settlements are located.
So, if by chance my skepticism is unfounded, and the Israeli political establishment is as serious as Palestinian leadership is about peace, territorial justice, and political parity, you should be reading or hearing about Israel returning all the land it has expropriated in the West Bank to the Palestinians…just like Sharon "says" he intends to do in Gaza. But, I don't suggest holding your breath waiting for that to happen.
Certainly twenty years to the day following the joyful conclusion of our it turns out joint Valentine's Day caper neither Sis nor I intend to be holding ours. I suspect that we and all our much to be admired partners will be at this work for quite some time to come.