Staying on course with my weekly schedule:
- Sunday- Prayer
- Monday- Query from New England Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice
- Tuesday- Role Models
- Wednesday- Musings on a Submission theme from Journals (Friends Journal, Quaker Life etc.)
- Thursday- Article Review
- Friday- Quakers around the world
- Saturday- Nonviolence
I finish up my first week of blogging with a reflection on nonviolence; current nonviolence that is happening in the world. I represent Friends United Meeting on the Steering Committee of Christian Peacemaker Teams, an ecumenical organization that strives to build partnerships to transform violence and oppression. Regularly I get news briefs from the teams on the ground in Palestine, Kurdistan-Iraq, Canada, and Colombia. Last week, this news blurb showed up in my email inbox:
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31 January 2014
PALESTINE: Thirteen-year-old boy arrested, questioned without parents present
Around noon today, 30 January 2014, members of the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron received a call from members of the International Solidarity Movement that soldiers had arrested a boy on New Shalala Street. Members of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) were just leaving the CPT apartment at the time and followed up, but by the time they arrived, soldiers had already taken the boy behind the gate at Beit Romano Settlement.
CPTers arrived and began interviewing children and other bystanders who had witnessed the incident and then reported that the boy’s name was Marwan Khalil al Jabari to the Palestinian District Coordination Office (DCO) and the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH). Witnesses said they had seen no stone throwing or other precipitating event that might have caused soldiers to take the boy.
After more phone calls, the team learned that Marwan was thirteen years old, and the son of Manal al Jabari, an employee of the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem. He had been delivering an item to his father, a vegetable vendor on New Shalala Street, when soldiers took him, accusing him of throwing stones at them. After taking him behind the gate of Beit Romano, they transported him to the police station at Kiryat Arba. His mother waited for forty minutes outside the station before they let her enter, even though Israeli law mandates that parents be present during interrogation of minors and al Jabari knew she had the right to be present when they were questioning the boy because of his age.
The family had to pay 500 NIS (about U.S. $143/ €106) to secure the boy’s release.
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When I was in high school, my brother got into trouble once and called home looking for my parents to help him out. Unable to reach them at the moment, some friends of his lent a hand and later my parents supported him through what ever process he had to go through to deal with the matter. While I remember getting the phone call from my brother and wondering what was up, after reading this article from CPT, I'm so thankful that my brother had the ability to call home when he was in trouble.
I know I worried my parents more than once by coming home after a curfew and when I didn't call when I said I would during international travel. But I lived in a culture, in a privilege where "no news was good news."
Some of the roles that CPT and other organizations like EAPPI and Project Dove do, are observe, testify, and investigate. These may not seem as glamorous as standing in front of tanks, but that observation can relay information of a child's arrest to their parents when no other system does. This witness provides alternative information from what the military in this case and/or the media conveys to the rest of the world. Intentional time devoted to tracking down information from a complicated system is a resource for families to have quicker and more successful reaction time.
This type of nonviolence has its place here in the USA too. While the "See something, Say something" mantra has led to a paranoid sense of being watched by the government, we could be actively observing injustice in the world, speaking out about it, and accompanying each other in making changes. Imagine being in a place where your time was available to accompany someone to obtain food cards. Walking with them to the offices; finding the right place; helping to fill out forms; talking with the government officials; calling out prejudice, racism, sexism, classism; helping someone get what they need and have a right to get.
When I read CPT's stories, I pray a prayer of thankfulness that people in this world are called into such a role. I pray a prayer of "help" to change the hearts of those who oppress others and comfort others who know not where there children have been taken. I pray a prayer of "wow" when I think of the capacity of us all to do this work in the world.