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Bearing Witness Blog: The Companion to the Newsletter for Western Socially Engaged Buddhism


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LINKS TO BUDDHIST
JUSTICE AND ACIVIST WORK

   Dalai Lama/Bernie Glassman


JUSTICE & ACTIVISM
MULTI-MEDIA

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Non-Violent Resistance in the Promised Land
by Eve Marko

Sensei Myonen

Sami Awad is a Christian Palestinian, not a Buddhist, yet colorful divans lining a large room in the offices of Holy Land Trust, the nonprofit he founded and heads, serve as meditation mats and cushions for staff and associates. Each Friday morning he participates in a nonviolent action around the Separation Wall that often turns violent (“I have to call my wife and parents as soon as it’s over to tell them I’m okay.”). But he has attended a few of the Zen Peacemakers’ bearing witness retreats at Auschwitz and plans to send several of his activists to participate in the multifaith, multinational retreat for youth that will take place there in November 2010.

If the past is any sign, these young people will get bewildered, even suspicious looks from many of their peers, especially Israelis who can’t conceive of the presence of Palestinians at sites of former concentration camps. But when I saw Sami last January, he told me that his nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation had changed dramatically after his visits to Auschwitz, including how he perceives and talks to Israeli soldiers. “I tell my people that if they can’t bear witness to the suffering of the other, then they’re not really doing nonviolent resistance.”

The West Bank and Gaza get more press for violence and government corruption than they do for their nascent yet active nonviolent resistance movement, which was founded by Sami’s uncle, Mubarak Awad, who was exiled by Israel for his trouble. While this movement has been responsible for several re-routings of the Separation Wall, alleviating the suffering of some families and villages at the loss of their land, one could see the Wall’s implacable progress as it encircles Bethlehem from the back window of Sami’s office. Yet Sami himself is usually in the best of spirits. He has been threatened by Israel’s military against his participation in nonviolent actions; he has also had trouble with his own government, the Palestinian Authority. A few years ago he invited His Holiness the Dalai Lama to visit Bethlehem (and the West Bank) for the first time. His Holiness agreed, but the invitation had to be withdrawn when the Palestinian Authority, fearful of China, threatened Sami and his family and associates with imprisonment (Israel’s Friends of Tibet obtained for Sami a rare special permit to enter Jerusalem for a private meeting with His Holiness).

As he himself ruefully admits, many of his own activists and other Palestinians don’t understand his life’s priorities. He goes on pilgrimage with Arun Gandhi in the footsteps of the Mahatma and works in peace villages in Colombia. He should be limiting his work to Palestine where there is so much to do, they say. But Sami sees it all as one thing. Yes, his priority is always the Palestinians, but suffering is universal, and the work to relieve suffering knows no boundaries.

This is the reason why his interview with Michael Lerner, Founder of Tikkun Magazine, is reprinted here. For Sami Awad is a bodhisattva, a man of spirit and vows, undeterred by expectations yet with his feet firmly on the ground, a quietly glorious instrument of peacemaking. May his work be blessed!

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