By Elik Elhanan
Email message
August 27
[Following is the text of a speech by Elik Elhanan recently delivered in Japan. Elhanan, who is a reservist refuser is also involved in the Families` Forum (informally known as `Bereaved Parents for Peace`). A.K.]
Hello, my name is Elik Elhanan and I`m here to talk to you about pain, about living with it and dealing with it. I will tell you of my struggle and of that of my friends in the Israeli-Palestinian bereaved families` forum, families that have lost a family member in this conflict and choose to work for peace. I will talk to you about hope. Of people who instead of taking the easy way, the way of fear and hate, decided to fight for their humanity and for their sanity.
First of all I would like to clarify some fact: the first is that this meeting is a partial one, incomplete. In our activity, as a matter of principle, we do our work together, an Israeli and a Palestinian telling their story together. Unfortunately since visas for Palestinians is a matter of many weeks my dear friend and colleague Ali Abu-Awwad could not come and therefore you will hear only one half of a story that when told in full is so much bigger then the sum of its parts.
The second clarification is that our group is not a political party. It does not have a line or an ideology that dictates what is right or wrong to say or think. It is a group of individuals who are joined only by two things: the pain of loss and the belief in dialogue. The opinions that I represent here tonight are my own and I represent only myself.
Having said That I would like to add one more thing: I am ashamed, as a human being and as an Israeli, of what my government is doing in the West Bank, in Gaza and in Lebanon. I am less concerned with the failings of the others sides, that are far from perfect; I think it is my duty as an Israeli and as a human being to speak out against what is done in my name.
It is not easy to begin to tell you my story: where to begin? It seems that a good choice would be the day I met with my pain, the day my life changed from a reasonable and sensible existence to an existence inhabited by pain, arbitrary violence and grief. The day my sister died. But starting there might give the impression that my life had actually changed while the truth is that this is the reality in our region: pain and death senseless and ongoing. What had happened to me just made me see it, made me realize where I was living. I think I should explain in a way why I didn`t see it before. I think that up until that day I was living in a bubble, like many people do. I didn`t really know the world around me; I didn`t really see my part in it. That day I started the long journey of finding all that out.
I was born and raised in Jerusalem, I had a normal happy childhood. I came from a liberal left wing family, which means I knew something of the situation, I was for peace etc. but I never saw my self as part of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, my life and dreams then were very far away from all that. The reality of Israeli life helped a lot. Even though I grew up in Jerusalem, the biggest Israeli Palestinian city, I never met with Palestinians and never talked to them. As far as I was concerned we lived in different worlds.
When I was 18 I joined the army. It is mandatory, but I went gladly. I believed that it is my civic duty; I believed that one should contribute from oneself to his community; I believed I was going to protect the borders of my country and defend its citizens. I volunteered to one of the Special Forces unites and there I did my service. But even there I couldn`t see myself as part of it all. Again, my dreams lay very far away from all that and I knew that this soldier thing will end one day and I`ll be out. But then one day a piece of reality burst my bubble.
I remember getting the news that there was a bombing and that my sister Smadar was missing while I was training for something or other very far from home. I remember the long way home, hoping, wishing for the best. I got home and the second I saw my parents I knew. My parents had just come back from the morgue where they identified the body of my sister.
Smadar died on September 4th 1997. On that day two Palestinians blew themselves up in the center of Jerusalem, killing eight and wounding another fifty. she was 14 years old. She went downtown with some friends to buy things for school that had just started after the summer vacation. My sister and her friends had the misfortune to be very close to one of bombers. She died instantly as did her best friend. The third friend was critically injured.
When we are confronted with such a situation, the first question is of course, how do I go on? How do I deal with the pain? Society, and I don`t think this is unique to the Israeli one, has several solutions for this problem. One is to be sad. This is a logical solution, it is very sad to lose a sister and staying at home, closing the curtains and sitting in the dark with the memories is a very suitable thing to do. Another option is to be angry. This is also logical. Someone had hurt me. It`s logical I`ll be angry, that I`ll want to hurt back. I refused to take either one of these ways.
For the first: Life is too precious to be wasted in somber reminiscing. I thought that my sister, who was a 14 years old girl full of life and love, deserves better then to be remembered in such a sad fashion.
For the second: I understood that the first victim of my anger will be me. It is very easy to succumb to anger, hate and fear, especially when we are hurt by a faceless menace such as terrorism. You can`t hate someone so you hate something: not a Palestinian but the Palestinian, all of them.
And this prospect of living my life as someone who fears everything and hates everyone was unacceptable for me. The possibility of revenge didn`t give any calm either: who could be the object of my revenge? The man who killed my sister was dead. And would it make me feel any better?
What was missing from my life was Smadar, my sister, and not honor, or satisfaction. And it didn`t matter how many Palestinians would die, she`ll never come back. I decided that I could not allow it to be that because of my pain, more lives will be ruined.
I came to realize that what had happened to me was beyond repair. That to my pain there is no remedy. And that in trying to `solve` it I`ll only destroy myself. I realized that this pain is something to live with and that it`ll never go away.
But at the same time several troubling questions presented themselves. The first: why did it happen? And then: what could I have done to prevent it from happening? And finally: did I contribute to this thing happening?
I won`t bore you with too many details but in the nine years that had passed since that day I have been consecrating my time to answer these questions. The answers are not simple or definite but I learned enough to say this: my sister didn`t die so that Israel would be safe; she didn`t die because Arabs are naturally bad or because Islam is an evil religion. She died because of a political situation, man made and solvable. She died because there is an occupation. She died because of a situation that humiliates and oppresses a whole people and makes young Palestinians believe that their death is as good as their life. And I can say that there was nothing I could have done to stop it from happening. Not because there is nothing to do but because I was a soldier and soldiers can`t solve these situations. Superior training and equipment can`t stand in the way of fanatics. The recent events of our time show us that there is no ! violent solution to violence. If you want people to stop trying to kill you and themselves you should give them a reason to live and a soldier can`t do that. And in the same manner I can say that I had a part in what happened. Not directly but as a part of the system the created that specific reality. I became aware of the contaminating nature of violence, of its incapacity to generate nothing but more violence. For so many years we`ve been killing each other and no one is free and no one is safe. And behind it all there is always the occupation, still there, still growing. I understood that I am a part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: responsible to it and suffering from it.
If we really want to stop the violence, to make sure no more innocent lives are lost then we must struggle for a peace agreement. You can say `it was tried, there were negotiations. There was an agreement. We failed`. I don`t accept that. We must believe that even if it failed once, an understanding and a compromise can still be reached in a way that will respect both sides` fears and aspirations.
This belief has been guiding me in the last nine years. I work for peace in many ways but the most significant one in my eyes is the family forum. In this group there are 500 families that have lost a family member in this conflict, often more then one. 250 from Israel and 250 from Palestine. They know loss and of pain and they still struggle for peace. Through this group I had the possibility of meeting Palestinians, real ones, like a normal Israeli never meets, not stereotypes nor caricatures. Not targets but real people like Ali Abu Awwad that spend 4 years in our jails, who was shot by a settler and whose brother was murdered by a soldier. Nevertheless Ali still wants peace. And there are many others like him. I had a chance to ask them if what we say about them is true: do they really want to throw us in the ocean? Do they really educate their kids to hate us? Is it true that we don`t have anyone to talk to? And ! they answered me that things are not true, that we do have a partner to talk to and that there is much to talk about. And I learned one other thing: that if I can talk to these people, many of them former members of the Palestinian resistance movements, like the one that killed my sister, and that if they can talk to me after losing family members by the hands of soldiers like I was, if we can talk then anyone can and no one has the excuse not to do so. We want to show people in pain that there is another way to deal with it, through hope rather then hate. In that respect it is very inspiring for me to be here in Hiroshima, an example to the victory of hope over atrocities.
In our group we know that peace will only be achieved through dialogue; that it is our duty to promote dialogue because we know best what is the price of not having peace. We know that dialogue and peace can only be promoted by an Israeli-Palestinian solidarity based on respect, understanding and equality. We know that it is imperative that each side will know the story, the suffering and the hopes of the other and we dedicate all of our efforts to promote knowledge. We go everywhere and speak before anyone to say these very simple things: the death of a child is the end, after that death there is no other. Nothing in the world is worth that price. The only way to resolve this conflict is through negotiation, dialogue. And if we can speak then anyone can!
I came to talk to you today because we need your help. We need money of course, everything we do costs money. But not only that. We need support, moral support. We need to know that what is happening over there does not go unnoticed; we need to know that there are people who will listen to us rather then to official voices that have neither the ability nor the courage to propose a solution. We need you to come there and see what is really going on. We need you to go and tell everyone what you have learned.
This is true wherever I speak, but here, today, more so then ever. In these terrible times when the bigot hate of religion is being passed as Western enlightenment; when the name of God and of religion are being chained to serve the vilest ends; when geo-political and economical interests are camouflaged as existential differences of faith, it is extremely important that there will be someone to say different. It is very important that in days when interested parties show that there is only way to believe in god, there will be someone to say that is not true. When they say the gap between faiths is too large, you can show them they`re wrong. Many are saying that maybe once reconciliation was possible but today it`s too late, it`s no longer possible. As youth movements you can tell them that you are the people of today, that it is up to you to decide what is possible in your time. You can show them they`re wrong.
People speak in our name. People do terrible things to others in our name. People send us to do these things and as long as they can they`ll keep on doing that. We must reclaim our voices. If you think peace is possible and that war is wrong your voice should be heard; if you think religion is a thing of love and beauty and not of death your voice should be heard. If there is one thing I learned is that if you don`t say no you`re actually saying yes.
(A.K.) |
