9/11 and making Peace With Enemies

Please note that I wrote this blog when I still attended a Catholic Church—something I have not done for ten years.

Growing up in America, I learned prejudices against Muslims -- that they restrict the rights of women and are religious fanatics willing to blow up people to achieve their religious and political aims -- or so I thought until I got to know some actual Muslims quite well.  I met a few Muslims during college but never became close friends.

I became close friends with some Muslims in the latter half of the 1980s, when I worked as a fisheries observer on Soviet fishing vessels in a joint venture with American catcher boats in Alaskan waters.  The Muslims I became friends with were fishermen from Muslim Republics of the Soviet Union.

While working on the fishing vessels, I learned that the old saying that sailors have a girl in every port isn’t untrue, although not every sailor is equally unfaithful to the woman or women in their lives.  Infidelity on all sides is a common problem for both Soviet and American fishermen I have known.  Fishermen stray, but their wives, often condemned to wait onshore alone while their husbands are away fishing for up to 5 or 6 months, stray too. One of the things that caused me to rethink my opinions of Muslims was what Soviet fishermen from Muslim Republics said about their wives as opposed to what non-Muslim Soviet fishermen said about their wives.

Fishing, particularly in foreign waters, was a well-paid profession in the Soviet Union.

The Soviet fishermen often joked that their wives were busy having affairs and spending their money while they were away at sea.  At least this is what the non-Muslim fishermen often said.

The Muslim fishermen always said, “My wife is a  wonderful hostess, a wonderful mother, and a wonderful partner.”

I commented on this disparity between what non-Muslim and Muslim fishermen said, and a Muslim fisherman replied, “If I criticize my wife, what am I saying about myself?  I am saying that I am a man who has chosen a bad wife.”

His words (and his friendship) caused me to reconsider my opinions of Muslims and inspired me to travel with a peace group, Mid-East Citizens’ Diplomacy, to Israel and Palestine after the first Gulf War in 1991 to find out more about the Arab/Israeli conflict from both sides.  When you see the conflict from the Palestinian point of view, it is challenging to be sympathetic to the Israeli side.  For every Israeli who has died, 10 Palestinians have died.  Moreover, American support for Israelis is very obvious.  I remember visiting a hospital in the Gaza Strip run by the Episcopal Church -- hardly a hotbed of Muslim extremists.  Palestinian street activists would take shelter in the hospital when chased by Israeli soldiers during the occupation. But the soldiers chased the activists onto the grounds of the hospital anyway and often shot people at close range with rubber bullets and sometimes harder ammunition and even grenades.  Hospital staff showed our group bullet shells and hand grenade casings with the words Made in USA or Made in Pennsylvania on them.

What kind of message does that send?

The Israelis are truly taking the land Palestinians own and have owned for a millennium.  They aren’t taking it in one quick invasion that is easily televised.  They are taking it house by house, city block by city block, and farm field by farm field in settlements in Palestinian areas.  Moreover, they choke the life out of the Palestinian economy with endless roadblocks and searches of Palestinians and by blacking out Palestinian ports.  Palestinians have to ship everything through Israel, and Israel allows produce grown by Palestinian farmers to rot on the docks while Israeli produce is shipped through, all in the name of stopping terrorism because, after all, Palestinian terrorism is real.

Israelis have a hard time thinking of themselves as oppressors because, despite the fact that 10 times as many Palestinians have died, every Israeli knows a friend or loved one killed by an Arab bus bomber or, more rarely, a rocket or shell launched from hostile Arab territory.

It makes me think of what an American soldier told me he was doing -- trying to build peace in the Middle East through war.  And why did that soldier end up in the Middle East?

As we were told to prevent anohter 9/11 style terrosit attack on American soil.

The anniversary of 9/11 recently passed.  I am somewhat obsessive about 9/11.  I painted and prepped a spare bedroom to rent in September 2009, and to entertain myself while I was doing menial work, I watched 9/11 documentaries.  I didn’t really mean to watch documentary after documentary.  It just happened that way.

I felt myself drawn in.

I remember September 11, 2001 very well.  I had been asked to withdraw my five-year-old son, who has been diagnosed since then as being on the autism spectrum, from a private kindergarten.  September 10, I drove to that kindergarten and then took my children to a yuppie toy store to buy some educational toys with which I began to homeschool my son and daughter.  I was the wife of a well-paid professional then and could afford to do so.  Tuesday was my husband’s day off, so I was in no hurry to get up and organize my family.  

My husband woke me up with the words, “A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.”

So I got up and turned on the television and watched the North Tower of the World Trade Center burn, and then I watched as a plane flew into the South Tower.  I was still watching when the South Tower collapsed and when the North Tower collapsed.  My five-year-old son and my two-year-old daughter snuggled with me, watching what Mommie was watching, not comprehending what we were watching.

I felt sadness and horror, and my horror grew with the days as patriotism was whipped up and used in ways that incited violence.  Arab shop owners found their premises vandalized.  There was a steady drumbeat to war that even many liberal friends supported.

I felt concern.  I knew my country was changing for good and in ways that were not good.  War is expensive, and something I know is that you can’t change hearts and minds through violence.  You might silence an opponent through fear and exhaustion, but they never stop longing for the justice they feel they have never received.

For 2000 years, Jewish Pasdsover seder prayers included a reference to next year in Jerusalem.  How could we think that Muslims would be any different from Jews?  You cannot take land Muslim families have lived on for 1,000 years and make them feel good about it.

When Americans unreservedly support Israel, we inspire Muslims to hate us because Israel has displaced and killed so many Muslim Palestinians, although they have also displaced and killed Christian Palestinians.  Moreover, Muslim Palestinians find it hard to visit their own shrines in Jerusalem -- the Haram al-Sharif and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Just as Palestinian terrorist violence does not inspire us to change and withdraw our support for Israel, our own violence does not inspire Arabs Muslims to stop fighting for their own land and freedom.

Violence tends to beget violence whether we engage in it internationally or personally, which is the whole connection to this blog on abuse.

To stop others from engaging in violence, you hasve to stop engagin in violence yourself.

Jesus said, “Turn the other cheek.”

People struggle with violence because we humans tend to think we need to protect ourselves, and it is true that there are situations where you will end up dead or violated if you don’t fight - as in a violent rape or murder.

Because of these situations, people generalize the value of violence.

Nonviolence does not mean you accept mistreatment.  It simply means you use respectful, non-violent methods of seeking justice.

Jesus advises people to seek justice by taking your case to community authorities if you have something against your brother.

However, it is true that in acting non-violently, you may end up being beaten up by the other side anyway, but your own non-violence inspires others to support you.

Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Desmond Tutu, and the Dalai Lama have lived their own fights for justice nonviolently and have shown that justice is possible in the long run through non-violence.  In the Dalai Lama’s case, it looks like he will never get the justice for his people he seeks.  What he has inspired instead is much international support for the Tibetan people, which is another form of justice that both Palestinians and Israelis, as well as Americans, would do well to heed.

Ironically, I have been told that many young Israelis go to Dharamshala, India, after completing their mandatory military service.  Dharamsala is where the Dalai Lama lives and is the seat of the Tibetan government in exile.  I can’t help but wonder if young Israeli veterans seek inside themselves a deeper peace that their own perpetually at-war country cannot provide.

But anyway, back to the aftermath of 9/11.  I knew my country was headed for war.  War is expensive and begets more violence.  President Bush had just massively cut taxes, mostly on the wealthy, and was now seeking to begin first and then a second war off-budget.  I knew the wars would not really end and would go on and on, becoming quagmires.  I knew funding for schools and libraries, and healthcare would go down.  I worried about my children’s future and my future.  Sadly, I saw my anti-war position was unpopular.  As I said before, even my own liberal friends wanted to strike back at those who had struck us without addressing underlying issues.

The question that was repeated was why they hate our values and our lifestyle.

What they hated was our actions that were the opposite of the values our country had been founded on -- freedom from a foreign oppressor and the right to self determination.  Why can’t Muslim Arabs want the same freedoms for themselves that we wanted for ourselves in 1776?

I slept with my icon of Jesus and prayed each night.  My heart felt heavy.  I knew I was losing the country I grew up in, and today, 25 years later, I know I was right.

Back in 2001, people in favor of non-violent action like mine called us un-American.  People said that I did not care about other Americans.

But I cared and care deeply.

The story of 9/11 remains my obsession.  I read survivors’ stories over and over, and I watch every new documentary I can find online or in the library.

But I get a different message from their stories -- not one of hating or fearing Arabs -- but one of bravery in the face of daunting circumstances and one of caring for others and cherishing them because at any moment we may lose them.

I am especially inspired by the stories of people across racial and religious divides who helped each other survive and of the policemen and firefighters who went into a burning building and climbed fifty or more stories of stairs to try to save people.

This is the America I love.  This is the America that inspires me.  

Last night I saw a fictional story set during 9/11.  It was the movie Remember Me with Rob Pattinson, who plays the son of a very rich man who falls in love with the daughter of a cop who tried to save people during 9/11.  But that is just a symbolic backdrop for the story.  The daughter of the cop witnessed her mother’s murder ten years before AND SUFFERED SOME unresolved trauma.  Rob’s mother (in the movie) was possibly wounded by his parents’ divorce and his seemingly indifferent father, who neglects his children in favor of work, status, and money.

Gandhi said,  “Whatever you do in life will be insignificant. But it's very important that you do it. “

The Rob Pattinson character gives up the lavish lifestyle his father could support to live the life of a poor student who commutes on a bicycle and lives in a cramped apartment, but he is a major source of support for his artistically talented much younger sister, who has some sort of challenge like the Asperger’s Syndrome my son has that causes her to be socially awkward among peers.  

When his father fails to show up for his sister's showing at a gallery, he rides his bike to his father’s office in the World Trade Center on a summer night in 2001 and angrily confronts him during a meeting.  Later he comforts his sister when her middle school classmates cruelly cut off her hair during a birthday party.  He calls his father and insists that he support his sister -- which the father does in his own wealthy businessman way -- by pulling strings at the board of his daughter’s middle school and by taking his daughter to school in his chauffeur-driven limousine -- an act that causes him to be late for a meeting with his son in his office at the World Trade Center.  He is going to discuss with his son and his lawyer what legal action he can take against the school that is failing to stop the bullying of his daughter.

In one of the movie's final scenes, Rob is seen staring out the window of the World Trade Center on one of the upper floors.  

The screen goes dark, and then there are scattered shots of his girlfriend’s father finding Rob’s diary in the debris of the World Trade Center, his mother and friend and girlfriend all coming out to see the smoke coming from the towers.

In the end, you see his sister and father together at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, his new friend doing well, taking notes assiduously in a college classroom, and his girlfriend riding the subway.

He lived his life with integrity and courage and love and compassion and ended up changing the lives of the people around him just by doing so.

There are two points to this blog.

What we do matters.

In another blog elsewhere, I wrote about how the inaction of Catholics in the pews has made it harder for survivors to come forward and speak about abuse, as well as harder for them to heal.

The other point I am trying to make here is that humans often resort to violence to solve problems, including verbal violence.  Violence almost always makes things better.  I will say that if anyone is in the act of raping you or murdering you, I don’t espouse non-violence because you may be able to stop the rape or the murder by using violence to defend yourself.

But in general, violence usually leads to more violence and often causes other problems for us.

Non-violence is so rarely used as a solution that we really don’t know how to solve problems non-violently.  We are making progress.  The great King Alfred in Dark Age Britain instituted a legal system with courts for justice, which was a vast improvement in justice.  More recently, different ethnic groups, such as African Americans, did not have access to justice through the courts.  Many a black person was lynched in public in the South in the era that followed the Civil War, and nothing happened to the lynchers.

But the legal system is still based on a win/lose scenario. Too often, whoever has the better lawyer wins sometimes.  Other people have experienced injustice but don’t fall into proper guidelines to even be heard in court.

An example of this is women who have had “affairs” with priests.  I’ve met a number of these women and found a high percentage of child sex abuse survivors among them.

They were struggling obviously in some personal way, and instead of being a valuable counselor, they were taken advantage of.  But they cannot get justice and/or compensation because they are of legal age.  Often they are blamed for seducing the priest.

Maybe a re-examination of the requirement of celibacy for priests would help, but there are present clergy who are guilty of the same offense.

To simply blame the Catholic Church for this is unfair because similar situations exist everywhere.  We need to work to change the hearts and minds of all people in the community to change our whole society for the better.

Shame and guilt remain a problem that keeps survivors silent.  Too many of us, me included, don’t know what to say to survivors.

As I write this, I understand that quite a few people will condemn me and say that it is impossible to make peace with Muslims and Arabs and that they only want war.  There may be a few Muslims reading it who say it is impossible to make peace with Americans.

This kind of perspective guarantees ongoing conflict.  How many hundreds of years can we fight?  How many schools, hospitals, libraries, and parks do we lose by fighting years of ongoing war?  What are we fighting for,

The larger society is ot aware that survivors remain estranged from the Catholic Church, and why should they be concerned?  Unfortunately, many Catholics are also unaware that many survivors remain estranged from the Catholic Church.  Most don’t read Abuse Tracker, which is the source of most of the hits on my blog.

Truthfully, the only thing that matters is our spiritual authority.  Our spiritual authority is based on two things that Jesus told us -- love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.  Jesus asked who our neighbor is.

The young man who answered understood -- the Good Samaritan.  In other wors our neigh includes the person who we often find most difficolt to love.

Survivors in general are more fragile than Catholics.  I cannot expect from them what I expect of other Catholics.  However, I think survivors want and need justice and to be cared for.

The easiest way to persuade others to care for you is to recognize that they are frail humans just as you are and are scared and wounded and unable to listen to words that wound, even if they are true.  Many survivors cannot do this because just trying to get through the day is their first priority.  Others have managed to accomplish some healing.  My suggestion to you is that gentler language is easier for the ordinary priest or nun or parishioner to hear.

The therapist noted that I was using non-violent language, although more of a source is actually the Compassionate Listening Project, which takes the concept of non-violent language further.

Changing lifelong habits of anger and confrontation is not easy. You may stuggle to say and do the right thing your whole life. It's a step-by-step process.  Retreats help, classes help, Role-playing helps, journaling helps, conflict helps.

The funny part is that these skills are relationship skills.  They help us not only with our enemies but also with friends and family and loved ones.

       

Remember that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.