| Ghazi Briegeth
and Rami Elhanan
"Brothers in Fate" ... we all have choices September 30-October 1, 2003  |
| Ghazi Briegeth
and Rami Elhanan
"Brothers in Fate" ... we all have choices September 30-October 1, 2003 |
| There are many good and noble people on this earth, and this last week of September, many of us met two of them. Ghazi Briegeth, a 42-year-old Palestinian, and Rami Elhanan, a 54-year-old Israeli speaks of themselves as Brothers In Fate. They announce that they are part of a group whose membership price is the loss of family member. They come together to find ways so their numbers cease to grow. They are the Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families for Peace. |
History is full of stories that tell of strangers brought together by an event, and that event becomes transformational. The people of St. Joan of Arc, and many of their friends were invited to listen and talk with these two men, first at the home of Ric and Vicki Rosow, and then at St. Joan of Arc the next night. In all honesty it is not easy to initially sit down and listen to anything related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because over the years one’s thinking has been numbed by the messages of hope and despair, of meetings, accords and agreements, of peace initiatives and weekly or even nightly accounts of bombings and killings. But when a human tragedy of this magnitude takes on a face and has a human voice and sets of eyes that look to you, you grow quiet and you listen and inside you feel the hurt, inside you cry. You hear the voice of Rami saying, “In life we all have two choices. We can hate and despair, or we learn to find another way to be in this world.”
In today’s world even tragedy has a website and the Israeli-Palestine Bereaved Families for Peace knows that some will find their way to this site and read their message. In life we have choices, some say we can do nothing, yet others, even sometimes just one voice, will say … we can do something. The good people of this earth like Rami and Ghazi started to find a way. The group put billboards in Israel and Palestine that said in three languages, “Better to have Pains of Peace Than Agonies of War.” In 2002 they assembled 1,200 coffins and draped them in Israeli and Palestinian flags and lined them up outside the United Nations building in New York. If they did this again, they would need over 2,000 more coffins. 3,200 are the current number of victims to this bloodshed and 800 of that number were children, caught in the crossfire or blown up by a suicide bombing. Rami repeatedly states that if some other solution is not found, the very state of Israel will be in jeopardy. And so these two noble men respond to every opportunity to speak out and to tell their stories and to plead for some intervention from America and Europe. \
Rami shared a letter his dead daughter had written in school. It spoke about the origins of the Israeli and Palestinian people, that they both believe they have the same father, Abraham.
Since 9/11 conditions have only gotten worse. The Bush Administration totally supports the Israeli government and the repression and barrier construction continue. History does teach us that if you take hope away, suppressing a people will have tragic consequences. The American press and this present administration repeatedly tell us that we must help bring democracy to Iraq, but as a nation we do little to recognize a Palestinian nation. Both Ghazi and Rami in talking refer to the fact that 70% of Israeli and Palestinian peoples want the violence to stop. Both men know that this dance of tragedy between Israelis and Palestinians flashing across our TV screens or in our newspapers raises deep concerns for good people everywhere. We know what happens when you lose the value of life; the loss boomerangs against all society. 
Rami the Israeli, tell his story first. A phone call from his frantic wife in 1997 sent them looking for hours for their beautiful daughter Smadar, a 14 year old who had just gone out on an errand and was found many hours later in an Israeli morgue, the victim of a suicide bomber. Ghazi, a Palestinian, speaks up to tell of saying goodbye to his 31-year-old brother and a few minutes later, hearing shots down the road. In addition, months later his stepbrother was shot by an Israeli soldier. Rami spoke of the despair that followed and his decent into hate and depression. For over a year he emotionally struggled until one day a Jewish friend asked him to come to a meeting. Rami and some 40 other Israelis took a bus to the border of the Palestine territory and then walked a short distance to a place where the same number of Palestinian families was waiting for them. That evening, with the help of translators they told their individual stories of loss and pain. Each person present had lost a family member to this violence, each had made life’s second choice, which is to use their pain in the service the group efforts to find peace.
“And then when the blood of innocents flows like water, there is no significance to deciding; “Who started it? Who is the cruelest? Was it done deliberately or ‘by mistake?’ Which side killed more of the ‘other?’ This mutual bookkeeping that is meant to reinforce one’s moral superiority cannot bring any positive results. On the contrary it reinforces the foundations of hatred. That is why we must redefine the ‘other.” 
“In spite of our bereavement - the personal hell, the fragility, depression and the natural tendency to retreat to within oneself - we know we must not stand on the sidelines and immerse ourselves in personal mourning. We feel that because people are willing to listen to our voices, we have a duty to broadcast our call and try to persuade others. We have suffered an unbearable tragedy and it places upon us a responsibility to tell our truth, to do everything we can to prevent others families from suffering the same fate.” 
Scripture does in fact say that Abraham had two wives. Sarah gave birth to Isaac and Hagar, who is known as the mother of the Muslim people, she gave birth to a son called Ishmael. Scripture goes on to say that Abraham loved both women and his sons, so why asks the young daughter, do the Israelis and Palestinians hate each other so much? Both scripture and history record that it has indeed been a long struggle between these two people. It is haunting to sit listening to these two brave men who risk much in their friendship. They speak as brothers but in truth they have known each other for a little more than a year but they agree that that the animosity between their peoples must end. Rami, whose own father was a survivor of Auschwitz in Germany, and Ghazi the Palestinian, a victim of generations of poverty and discrimination, sit at the table and talk as brothers. Neither would say that this bloodshed was about religion, both men were firm in saying; it is about land and water. It is about the Israeli settlements and the progressive loss of land by the Palestinians. It is about the growing near Apartheid conditions that Israel imposes upon Palestinians.
“No sanctimonious justification can change this absolute reality. There is no value judgment here. We have selfishly manipulated a brutal reality when we should have used wisdom, courage and creativity to resolve issues. The only way to fight war and terror is by stopping war and terror - ending retaliation and revenge. We should be eliminating the causes of terror by treating its roots and reasons; need, hunger, poverty, humiliation, oppression, lack of equal rights and discrimination.”
There are among us, those who do not want our Christian churches to be places where the world’s tragedies are spoken about. This past week a Jew and a Moslem came among us to plead for us to listen to the stories of.the victims that come about because good people say nothing or do nothing in the face of injustice. It happened 60 years ago in Nazi Germany and it is happening again today. 
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