Our Way to Fight

IntroductionWhat can I say? Surely there can’t be anything new, nothing that
Israelis and Palestinians haven’t already said about the horrors of
the occupation, the devastating impact on Palestinians, the corrosive
effect on Jews and Judaism.Yet in the face of overwhelming harm, the question arises: “What
can I do?” The victims ask, our conscience asks. So does a shared
interest in a liveable world. What can I do?During Athens street protests in 2008, a Greek blogger answered,
beautifully: “We have a duty to move here, there, anywhere except
back to our couches as mere viewers of history, back home to the
warmth that freezes our conscience.”This book emerges from a journey and a search, to see what
grounds for a just peace I could find in the tormented land that many
call holy. In a world of spin where “peace” can mean anything,
including war, it’s essential to specify: a just peace. Peace without
justice is hollow, a sham, the deathly stillness of tyranny triumphant.
By contrast, a just peace is alive, clamorous, and vibrant with
possibilities. Of course, in a world of spin, “justice” can mean
anything too. This book explores what it might look like, and how
people imagine building it.Our Way to Fight offers no solutions, only stories of extra/
ordinary people fighting for such a peace, on whichever side of the
wall they happen to have landed by accidents of birth.Stories are one way of sharing the belief that justice is imminent.
And for such a belief, children, women and men will fight at a
given moment with astounding ferocity. This is why tyrants fear
storytelling: all stories somehow refer to the story of their fall.
(John Berger)OUR WAY TO FIGHTFor the title I thank Mustafa Staiti, a young Palestinian who makes
and teaches film at the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp.
At one point in our conversation he said, “This is my way to fight.” Like other people featured in this book, Mustafa is a peace activist.
Like them, he is also, in his own way, a freedom fighter. Because
none of the people in this book fights alone, “my way to fight”
became “our way to fight”.What constitutes a peace activist? It depends where you are, at
which end of the gun. If you’re at the shooting end, you have to
stop shooting, and let go of the gun long enough to risk facing the
other as an equal. If you’re at the getting-shot end of the gun, you
have to live as if you were not. Which is more difficult?WHY ME?I’m not Israeli, not Palestinian, not Muslim or Jewish. Then why
write such a book?I spoke my doubts to people on my travels. Often they replied
that if I watched and listened closely enough, my distance would
not be a deficit, but an asset.In fact my distance is less than it might seem. I grew up colonized.
Not knowing better in 1950s and 1960s Canada, I swallowed
the official version that I was fed from birth by family, church,
school and media: As a homosexual, I was a criminal, a sinner, a
degenerate. I was one of them. Offered salvation through electric
shocks – basically torture by consent – I consented.Eventually nature triumphed over mad science, and I emerged
intact, with a deep suspicion of official versions, and a growing identification
with people, and peoples, who had also been designated
them, the other. As they...