Making Peace with Your Enemy

I have been busy organizing events for  2 peacemakers from Israel and Palestine, who are members of Combatants for Peace.  These are Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters who have decided to lay down their arms and to pursue non-violent approaches to resolving the conflict.  Two representatives have come to the U.S. to receive a Courage of Conscience award at the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, on March 13, 2009.

The Palestinian, Bassam Aramin, lost his daughter when she was shot by an Israeli soldier on her way home from school.  He explains that taking a stance of revenge would be the easy thing to do; the harder avenue is to adhere to non-violence, and that's what he has chosen.  Bassam had been in an Israeli prison from the age of 19 for 7 years;  he recounts the dialogue that he had with his jailer, in which the jailer came to see Bassam as a freedom fighter, rather than a terrorist - and in which Bassam came to understand the fear of the jailer and of Israelis.

Yaniv Reshef,  the Israeli,  talks about his experiences serving in the army;   he and his unit, heavily armed from the war in Lebanon, were transferred to Gaza, a densely-populated civilian area where their equipment was inappropriate. They infiltrated houses in the middle of the night, and woke up families.   On one night, their unit of 6-8 soldiers gather up a family in one room, and as they're questioning the family, they hear scratching noises from a nearby cabinet.  They point their M15's towards the cabinet, ready to shoot the terrorist who's hiding there - only to find themselves targeting a family of rabbits that the family raises for food.