“Think about the Other”

Yaniv Reshef, a former Israeli soldier, watched from a distance of 12 miles, the bursting mushroom clouds high above the Palestinian cities and towns of Gaza caused by exploding bombs dropped by fleeting F-16’s. He felt the ground, farmed by his family for as long as he could remember; shake beneath his feet with each new cloud.

He thought about his own experiences as a foot soldier in one of the most elite and feared brigades called the Golani. Memories of times when he threw shock grenades through the windows of sleeping Palestinians for fun, or held his gun to the head of a child within an innocent household, now stirred his conscience.

Yaniv also recalled the meetings he helped organize for Combatants for Peace in the neighboring Israel town of Sderot so that the people there, who had been recipients of crude rocket fire from the other side of the prison-like fence, could hear his Palestinian and Israeli partners tell their stories.

Bassam grew up in the ancient city of Hebron, and remembers as a young boy seeing an elder in his community shot from behind by an Israeli soldier. The memory remained with him. At 17, he was caught planning an attack on Israeli troops, and spent seven and half years in prison for that act. Inside those walls he learned Hebrew, and saw a film about the Holocaust. He heard the story of the other. He knew that continued violence was not an answer.

In 2005, he co-founded Combatants for Peace and like Yaniv and others, he refused to use weapons again. Even when his 10 year old daughter Abir was gunned down two years later by an Israeli soldier from behind as she left her classroom, Bassam remained committed to ending the violence.

On March 24th, over 100 gathered in the sanctuary at Trinity to hear the stories of the two former soldiers who hadn’t known each other before the 30-day tour of East Coast cities, but who had become intimately close during those days on the road. Many of those in attendance came from outside the Arlington community. What they heard was riveting. What they recognized was a courage of conscience for which the Combatants had received an award just a week before at the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, MA.

Later that week, at the closing ceremony for the tour at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church in D.C, Bassam was unable to attend the meeting. Yaniv filled in for him, and told Bassam’s story which revealed how deeply he had come to understand his new friend’s inner voice and outer experience. Growing up just several miles from one another in the southern regions of their now separated lands, neither of them was given that opportunity to know each other before. At the closing, Yaniv translated a poem by a famous Palestinian poet, Mahmood Dawish.

Think about the Other

When you are making your breakfast, think about the other.
Don’t forget the food for the doves.
When you are making your wars, think about the others.
Don’t forget those who seek peace.
When you are paying your water bills, think about the others.
Don’t forget those who drink from the clouds.
When you are returning to home, to your home, think about the others.
Don’t forget those who live in tents.
When you are sleeping and counting the stars, think about the others.
There are some who can’t find a place for sleep.
When you are given your spirit a space to fly, think about the others.
Think about those who lost their right for words.
When you are thinking about the others, the distant others,
Think about yourself, and say, “I wish I were a candle in the dark.”