Spirit in Action

Refusing to be Enemies - Nonviolence in Palestine and Israel

Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta's book, Refusing to be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israeli Occupation delves deep into sides of the conflict that most US media never approach, and does it through the words of Palestinian & Israeli workers for peace, plus a few people outside of the Middle East. There's both more reality and hope in this work than we've been led to expect.

Broadcast on:: 05 Jan 2014
Audio Format:: other

(upbeat music) ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ - Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ - Today for Spirit in Action, we're headed to Canada to talk with Maxine Kaufman-Lakusta about her book, Refusing to Be Enemies, Palestinian and Israeli non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation. It seems that all my life, the Middle East has been in turmoil unresolved and sometimes with little sense of hope. In spite of the number of guests I've had over the years dealing with the Middle East, Maxine's book has brought to me impressive new depth and knowledge about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and a number of rays of hope for the future of the region. Maxine Kaufman-Lakusta joins us today, by phone from Ontario, Canada. Maxine, welcome to Spirit in Action. - Thank you. - Right at the moment you're in Ontario, where do you live normally? Do you travel a lot? - Well, I live normally in Burnaby, British Columbia, which is the city directly to the east of Vancouver. I guess you could say I travel a lot. I try to get to Israel and Palestine every year or two, depending how much speaking I'm doing to keep things up to date. Keep my feel for the place up to date. - You're traveled to Israel, to Palestine, to that region. When did it start? - When I finished high school in June of 1959, I look forward to joining a labor Zionist youth movement workshop, so-called, in Israel, starting that fall. Once I was there, I wanted to stay, at least for another six months. Actually, I wanted to stay, period, but that wasn't doable. And I ended up with a compromise of staying for an additional six months with a group of Israeli kids who were headed towards entering the Israeli army in a branch called Nahau, which is an acronym for fighting pioneer youth, because that branch of the Israeli army provided the nuclei for nuclear war and reinforcing groups for existing ones. And I figured that was the best way to really become part of these kind of closed communities. And that's what I wanted to do with my life at the time. - So you were closely identified with Israel as a youth, I'm growing up as a Jewish youth in Canada, I believe? - No, actually I grew up in San Francisco, California, the US, and I didn't have any identification with Israel until, well, I guess you could date it from when I was 12, and I saw a film in my Jewish Sunday school about a children's village in Israel where they were absorbing basically child survivors of the Holocaust who were orphaned, or for some other reason couldn't be kept in their families. And the children's villages, so-called, were modeled on the arrangements for the education of children and people's team, which at that time were pretty well universally set up that the children had separate housing from the parents. That's the part that appealed to me. Kids didn't have to live with their parents. What a great idea. (laughs) - Do I detect coming of age issues going on with you? (laughs) - Well, I just kind of, I tended to prefer other people's parents to my own, and, you know, I mean, it's fairly common, I think. Yeah, so my initial attraction to Israel was via the keyboard center, it wasn't really political, so much as the idea of liking that kind of community. There were other things about it too, you know, it seemed to, I think the simplicity, the same simplicity attracted me in part to Quakers, also the idea that, you know, you were just sort of in this farming community, I mean, times have changed, right? But back then, it seemed like it was kind of really back to basics, and making your own entertainment, dancing and music and stuff, and none of all this fancy stuff like paying money to go to be entertained, and, you know, big buildings and all the rest of it. So it sounds like there's a wonderful sense of community of group spirit that was part of what called you there. - Yeah, absolutely. - In writing the book, or in assembling the book, because you're a writer in the book, but you try and be a passive commentator as much as you can, I think. - Absolutely. - In writing, refusing to be enemies, Palestinian and Israeli non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation, isn't saying the words, "Israeli occupation tantamount to defiling the national identity of Israel." How common are those, is that phrase within Israel? - Well, it depends by whom, I guess. I mean, I think it's recognized by everyone from the Zionist left word to the non anti-Zionist left, that the situation is a military occupation by Israel of the Palestinian territories. It's pretty widespread. It may not be the majority attitude. - I think the official term is administered territory. - So from your first experience, they're finding a good sense of community, a thriving sense of community. And there's some Jewish folks who I led folk dancing, because Israeli folk dancing is my favorite form of folk dancing. I led that for their bar mitzvahs and for their graduation parties. So they did their time visiting in Israel and then joined a community there and have moved their sense. - How did your identity and your relationship to Israel change over the years? - Well, I think that last six months with the Israeli kids really sort of disabused me of any kind of sense that the kibbutz was still a pioneering venture. That was already in the past by the late '50s. So it wasn't so attractive. There was, in fact, a trend towards having, in more kibbutz teams, having children stay with their families at least to a certain age or after a certain age. Things were changing. Then when I went back to the state to university and after about a year of university, studying sociology and anthropology and things like that, I kind of lost my taste for nationalism in general, including dinosaurs. So, you know, that kind of faded away. I didn't go back again, actually, until '79. That was for a three-week friends United meeting sponsored, Quaker sponsored so-called work camp in Romola in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in a Palestinian city, Romola, at the friends' schools there. So, you know, this was my first opportunity to meet Palestinians on their own turf as it were. So I really then only began to get a really gut feeling for how attached they were to this land that, you know, I knew that the Jewish people were attached to and had been for thousands of years. But these folks had been living there for hundreds if not thousands of years and this is where their roots were. They weren't going anywhere voluntarily. So we would, you know, really have to work out some way to live together because this is an area that we both love and we both consider it to be our homeland. - How did it come that you assembled this book refusing to be enemies? - In 1984, my elder son was going to be participating in a student exchange program with somebody in the South of France and he thought he would, you know, trains around Europe and check this out and let out. And out of the blue, he asked me if I could show him around this wall for a while since I knew the place. And that caught me kind of by surprise. And I thought, oh, you know, that's kind of neat. But if I'm going to spend all that money to go all that way, I'd better have something a little bit more significant to do than just doing a tourist thing with my son. So I consulted with some friends and message I got was, well, why don't you do recorded interviews for maybe a radio series on Canadian broadcasting, corporations have something called ideas and they often have contributions from freelancers. And I thought, okay, and I went and I talked to the producer at the time and he told me what kind of equipment to get and he told me one thing that I forgot which at least partly contributed to the non-acceptance of what I submitted to them and that is he said, be sure that people hold the mic no more than six to nine inches from their mouth. Well, I forgot. So most of what I recorded wasn't broadcast quality. Even in the course of transcribing the interviews that I did in week or so visit that I made at that time. And then in a subsequent 12-day visit the next year. Just the course of transcribing those interviews, I got the sense that there was a lot more there than what you could put in a couple of one-hour shows and that really a book made sense. So I actually did put together a manuscript made up of minimally edited interviews from those two trips and I submitted it and I realized later how close that came to be published. I'm trying to place this with respect to Intifada, the first, the second. - Right, this is before either of them. - So when you're doing interviews in that first visit, who are you interviewing and why? - Israeli and Palestinian quote-unquote, peace activists, people from both sides who wanted to figure out a way to live in peace. And what I was seeing was that they were both saying the same things, they both wanted the same things and I thought that it would make sense and would be useful to put those kinds of statements together in a book so that people could see that they were after the same things. - Let's talk about the broad sweep or the main recordings that you've included in refusing to be enemies. - This is not the same book. - Right. - These are newer interviews, except from one or two that are folded from the earlier work. This is an entirely different set of interviews. Some of the people are saying, but that earlier book, a book that never happened, it is. - Well, let's deal with the book that did happen, refusing to be enemies, the one I've read. And it's extensive. There's nearly 500 pages in it, most of which is the interviews that you did as opposed to your words. Why did you choose to do it that way as opposed to summarizing what everybody said and spitting it out in 10 pages? - Well, a couple of reasons. Certainly would have taken more than 10 pages, but first of all, I'm not there anymore. And so I don't feel I can speak for even the Israeli peace act of this. In just in general, I mean, who hears what Palestinians are saying and who hears what radical Israelis are saying, not a whole lot of folks over here at any rate. And even over there, I mean, it's far more accessible and the press there is, at least when I was living, there was far less censored than the US press that I grew up with in the '50s, probably even less than now, except if you go on the internet. But even so, those who didn't want to know didn't read those papers. So I thought it was really important to have something that would have their words. I wanted to keep my interpretations or analysis or whatever to minimum for that reason. And also because I'm lazy, you know, I wasn't-- - I don't believe that, Maxine. - I was not interested in writing a book. I was interested in getting the voices of Palestinians and Israelis who were working separately or together to bring an end to the occupation and make possible future for both peoples. And I wanted people to hear their words, not what I said their words were. And I resisted putting in any analysis. But I did want to work with a Palestinian partner. I had-- there was an intermediate stage between the book that never happened and refusing to be enemies. And that was a little pamphlet kind of booklet that was called "Creative Resistance," which was anecdotes of nonviolent activism by Israeli and mixed groups. And it purposely didn't deal with Palestinian groups at that time because I didn't feel it's appropriate for me to speak for people who were doing so much nonviolence during the First Intifada. And, you know, they had their own approach to interpreting it. But at that time, when I was doing that with 1992, '93, I couldn't find a Palestinian that had the time and energy to work on parallel volume, which was what I envisioned at the time. So when I came to do refusing to be enemies, my decision was I wasn't going to even start on the project until I had a Palestinian partner. And that partner turned out to be Hassan Andoni, who was working as a physics professor at Belgrade University, which he still does, as well as, at the time, being the director of the Palestinian Center for Repotional between peoples in its horror near Bethlehem. As a physics professor, a very methodical person, he very sensibly said, I don't want to have just a bunch of anecdotes. I want these people to be asked either the same or similar set of questions so that I can draw conclusions. And he said, but don't worry, you know, I'll do it. I will analyze what you give me. And I will write something about the analysis, you know. And draw conclusions about, for instance, how Israeli and Palestinian resistance to the occupation works best. Does it work best in coalitions and so on between uni-national groups? So does it work best in combined groups and so on? OK, fine. But then he didn't end up having the time to do this because he got really involved as one of the co-founders of the international solidarity movement. So I kind of had this bounce back to me, but in a form that required a lot more editing than my usual way of interviewing where I would say, what do you and your group do and why? That was only the first section of the book, but the rest was all these other questions and needed a lot of cutting and pasting and connecting them with my comments. And then one of the acquisitions editors at one of the publishing houses that I approached early on said, if you want anybody, others and academics, to read this, you need to do some analysis. You need to give them a little bit of your idea of what's going on here. And he really gave me ideas that became the conclusions and epilogue sections. And then, of course, I have the analytic essays by both my Israeli and Palestinian editorial partners and an additional Palestinian, Jonathan Kuttab, who's a pacifist lawyer, very articulate about non-violence, from a religious pacifist part of you. And Starhawk, whom most North Americans probably know as what my husband refers to as a wicked superstar in another life, I need to tell my folks that come to my presentation. She's a nice Jewish girl from the States who's been in solidarity with the Palestinian cause for many years and has also been banned from Israeli health territory for a number of years because of her involvement with the international solidarity movement. So we have these four different points of view to analysis, and I thought, you know, that's plenty of analysis. Somebody doesn't want to read all of the interview excerpts. They can go right to the back of the book if they like, but the interviews are there if people want to see real words of the people who spoke about this stuff. I would like to emphasize that it's the second edition or the paperback edition that came out in the spring of 2011 that I would hope people would look for because it includes an afterwards that brings things up to date to 2010 and also kind of sets out the progress in three areas. Those are boycott divestment sanctions or BDS, the joint struggle of Palestinians with Israeli and sometimes international support along the route of the wall, the separation barrier in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and non-cooperation with other oppressive measures of the Israeli occupation by Israelis inside Israel, which in early 2010 wasn't happening except for the very important exception of military refusal, but for the general population was not happening until mid 2010. So if people, if listeners happen to encounter the hardcover or even the unofficial paperback that has this yellow cover, that is missing the afterward and I invite you to go to my website, which is refusing to be enemies of the book on one word. Wordpress.com and download the PDF of the afterwards of the book. We're speaking with Maxine Kaufman-Lakusta, refusing to be enemies, Palestinian and Israeli non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation, came out in 2010, succeeding edition since then. It captures a broad swath of the recent history of peace, non-violence, struggle in the Middle East from both Palestinian and Israeli perspectives. And I want to say, Maxine, the book for me, I got educated about a number of things. I consider myself at least nominally educated about that struggle, had a long-standing concern about that, both as a Quaker and as an individual. But I came to understand a number of things that have never been reported to me. So, I mean, of course, I know that the Antifada's existed. And I knew actually that there was a first and second, but I didn't understand about the different qualities of those groups. I didn't understand about the cultural differences between Israelis and Palestinians that made working together such a thorny issue. So, let's talk about a few of those aspects, things that came out, both through the interviews and the analysis, and the essays that came later. The different characters of the two Antifadas, I got the sense that the first Antifada included a lot more nonviolent struggle, that the second one included more elements of violence, perhaps. Is that a fair estimation from your point of view? I think that's one way to look at it. The first Antifada, which most people who were following it at the time, certainly from North America, was quite violent, was by some estimates between 80% and 95% non-violent in terms of actions that were called for by the unified leadership of the Antifada and were actually carried out. They were just things that didn't make the news, like flying the Palestinian flag, displaying the colors of the Palestinian flag because these were illegal until the Oslo Accords in the fall of 1993. All sorts of commercial strikes were very popular. There were alternative institutions, for instance, that were started in the '60s and '70s, many of them that kind of came to the fore during the first Antifada and were a form of resistance, you know, just growing your own food, for instance, victory gardens. At least one person I know was arrested for activities that centered around victory gardens and other self-sufficiency measures. And alternative school classes and alternative university classes, because these schools and universities were closed by the occupation administration for months at a time sometimes. And so they would have classes in people's homes or public buildings or whatever, and if they were caught, you know, people got arrested. So all those kinds of things. The second Antifada started out with some violence and in its early months was a lot more violent than the first Antifada, partly because there were arms that had been distributed to Palestinian police forces and so on. In this interim period where supposedly peace was being built. Also because any early non-violent resistance by Palestinians was so heavy-handedly put down by Israeli violence. But over time, you know, by the time I started my interviews in fall of 2003, what was mainly happening from the Palestinian side were increasing amounts of non-violent resistance actions. And they took a different character because Israelis were coming in support and jointly resisting, for instance, the wall that started going up in 2002. But, you know, the silver lining to this terrible construction is that it provides a meeting place. And so, you know, you could have Palestinians demonstrating on one side of the wall and Israelis demonstrating in coordination on the other side with internationals often on both sides. So that has developed extensively since then, for example. I read from a number of people that they recognize that the non-violent techniques of the first Antifada were much more effective. Absolutely, yeah. That understanding, I certainly have got it nowhere from other media up until this point. And I've interviewed a number of people from the U.S. who've been over there, but also people from the Middle East. I talked to Ayyad Bernat. He was here in Eau Claire. And so I interviewed him about his work in Berlin. So I had some sense before, but all of a sudden, I said, "Oh, when I talked to Ayyad, he told me, you know, he's strategically, he will use non-violent techniques." That's not because he's a pacifist, however, unlike me, who I'm a religious pacifist, he says, "This is what works, and this is what we've learned." I saw a lot of testimony to that effect in refusing to be enemies. Yeah, and you know, one of the few religious pacifists in there is Jonathan Cutab. And what he says, he says, when he's talking to Palestinians who advocate for armed struggle, he says, "Look, we can't out-violence the Israelis." So why don't we try non-violent? He says he doesn't argue from the pacifist's point of view. In whatever kind of a battle you're going to choose a method that you can do better than the other side, that you have a fighting chance at least. And a lot of people are coming to the conclusion or have come to the conclusion that that's non-violence. We're speaking today with Maxime Kaufman-Lakusta. She has assembled a very important book called "Refusing to be enemies Palestinian and Israeli non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation." She's here today as my guest for Spirit and Action, and this is a northern spirit radio production on the web at northernspiritradio.org. On that site, you'll find eight and a half years of our programs for free, listening and download. You'll find links to our guest to find Maxime. You'll probably want to go through refusing to be enemies the book dot wordpress dot com, but it's a lot easier to remember northernspiritradio.org. There's also a place to post comments. We love two-way communications. We want to listen to you too, so please go to northernspiritradio.org. Post your comments. While you're there, consider making a donation. There's a donate button you can find our address. Your support, we depend upon it. Also, I want to remind you especially to support your local community radio station. You get a slice of the news and of music that you get nowhere else. And so, first of all, remember to support those stations carrying this program. Again, Maxime Kaufman-Lakusta is here with us today for spirit and action. She spent an awful lot of time in the Middle East. Her book assembles vast amounts of first-hand testimony of both Palestinians and Israelis that lead us to really understand the situation. I want to go through some more of the things, Maxime, that I didn't understand before. One little historical fact that I didn't know. I knew about Rachel Corey and I've done interviews with her aunt and others who were connected with her death as part of the international solidarity movement, ISM. But I didn't know that after she was killed, I think you mentioned in the interviews somewhere there, that two more people who were killed within a month or two or something of her. I had known about Rachel. I thought maybe she was kind of an exception. But then I just went out to the Wikipedia site and found out about the Irish volunteer who died and Brian Avery shot in the face and British volunteer who got killed. Israel has somehow weathered the storm that I thought would happen when people realized that our money from the US billions a year are going to subsidize people who are killing innocent people, a non-violent witness over there. Yes, well, of course, most of the innocent non-violent people killed over there are Palestinians. There was such an uproar, I think, in the wake of the killing of Rachel and Tom Herndall who died later that they haven't done it since. I mean, that's 10 years ago. So there was this brief time where they thought they could get away with killing internationals and they realized that wasn't working. So one of the things that I hadn't known about, you've got the first intifada, you've got the Oslo accords, and you've got people working on, okay, how are we going to implement this piece? What's going to be the specifics that we're going to hammer out? So there's this period where it appears that the Israeli nation, Israel, continues to confiscate land and take advantage of the weaker side. So at a certain point, people are fed up with it. Then there's a term that happens in many of the interviews, normalization, and I had not known of the concept and what it meant on the ground in Palestine. Could you explain it and give some examples, some of the testimony that you heard? Yeah, well, normalization basically is the benign translation is just having normal relations, right? I'm making relations between the two sides normal, so sitting down and having tea together, something like that, you know, making music together. However, what became obvious was that the situation wasn't normal, wasn't becoming normal, that basically the Israeli administration still had its foot on the neck of the Palestinians, that it was not appropriate to act if the things were normal, because that kind of led to kind of a non-movement in the direction that needed to happen, to get rid of oppression. So just for an example, I was living in Jerusalem in '93 when the Oslo Accords were signed, and I didn't leave for another two years, so I witnessed the euphoria that immediately followed the signing. People were dancing in the streets, people were so happy to be able to display the Palestinian flag, and then what happened was people got increasingly frustrated and angry, because as he said, the settlements continued to spread, even though the conditions of Oslo said there shouldn't be new settlements. Okay, we won't call them new, we'll call them a neighborhood of the settlement two or three kilometers down the road with a lot of Palestinian-owned farmland in between, you know, and they got away with it, and Palestinian homes would demolish even at a faster rate, and there was construction of what they called bypass roads, connecting settlements with cities inside Israel, kind of blurring the green line or the 1949 armistice lines that divided between the West Bank and Israel proper. The building of those roads didn't even start until early '95, so about a year and a half after Oslo. People were just so upset, and this was just very, very different than what was being reported outside. You know, I'm upset by it. Going back and forth, I would see this blatant disconnect between the North American and even European media coverage of the so-called peace process and what I could see before my eyes. So it's not surprising that the Palestinians who were experiencing that got disillusioned, and finally the umbrella organization of the Palestinian NGOs just said, "Okay, enough. We're going to cut off any activities with Israelis except," and they made a very clear exception, that a lot of people didn't notice, but they said that their prohibition on doing activities with Israelis never applied to solidarity projects of Israeli human rights organizations, or Israeli institutions that support Palestinian rights, and they specified those rights. So it changed the character of what kind of participation by Israelis would happen, and you know, a lot of people dropped out, a lot of dialogue groups that hadn't gotten beyond the talk and T-stage stopped, but those that had progressed to actual solidarity might have a better chance of continuing, and certainly this whole new thing of Israelis going in support of Palestinian-led struggle along the wall became a major factor. Another thing that I learned from the book that I hadn't understood was the difference in the personalities, I guess you could say that, of course there's always a span of introvert, extrovert, outspoken, quiet people in any populace, but on average it appears that the Israeli personality is assertive, forceful, outspoken, whereas there's a Palestinian norm of being deferential, which made it very thorny for the two groups to work together because the person who stands up, and I'm usually one of them because I'm a very assertive person who says what he thinks, the other people don't get out their ideas even because they're being deferential. Talk about some of the thorny things that you heard about how the two personalities of Palestinians and Israelis work together. Well, I actually heard this first from a Quaker anthropologist that I interviewed who was there with Christian Peacemaker team, Kathy Campafner, so it's an eye-opener for me. She describes the, it's really a style of communication. They use an Arabic word for it, actually, "dukary," which means straight ahead, you know, but, you know, in referring to language it means direct, and the Palestinian norm being much more kind of circuitous and indirect, and I had noticed even in my visit in '79 how much more polite Palestinians were than Israelis. So, yeah, that could be a problem, and most of the Israelis I spoke to, though, remember I'm only speaking to non-violent activists on both sides. I'm not speaking right to people right across the population, but they had become aware of this and were being careful, not to try to steamroll their Palestinian partners. In fact, there was really strongly expressed recognition of the fact that, you know, to kind of make up for the way things were in the political situation that it had to be very clear that the Palestinians were in charge, but Israelis and internationals were there in supporting role only. You know, my mind is truly boggled, Maxine, about the number of people identities and groups that you've identified, and these are all related in some way to this non-violent struggle, this non-violent dealing with the tensions in the Middle East. I want to just toss out a couple names, and there's so many more that I'm not including. There's many dozens in the book. Let me just toss out a couple of them so that people have some ideas, some are Palestinian, some are Israeli, and some incorporate maybe both Israeli and Palestinian and internationals. There's a wide assortment here, rabbis for human rights, Holy Land Trust, Hope Flower School, Palestinian Center for Prochmoam, ISM, the International Solidarity Movement, there's Israeli groups like how does it pronounce? Maxim. Maxim Watch. Maxim Watch. Checkpoint Watch. Physicians for Human Rights. There's Yeshqevo, Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, Tiyush, a new profile piece now, anarchist against the wall, combatants for peace, and I want to talk about combatants for peace because that was a moving account, evidently a very striking one for both elements of the population, Israeli and Palestinian. Tell me what combatants for peace is and what you heard from people about that group. Well, it's a group of former fighters, former combatants, both Israeli and Palestinians. It was formed actually, trigger was in the fall of 2003. There was a group of 27 Israeli Air Force officers, some of quite high rank, who wrote and signed a letter to the Israeli Minister of Defense calling the targeted assassinations and quotes of Hamas leaders in Gaza war crimes because not only were they killing these leaders, which might be considered, I don't know, a legitimate act of war, if you think war is legitimate, but Gaza being as densely populated as it is, they inevitably would kill hundreds or thousands of innocent bystanders, children, women, noncombatants of various sorts. The Air Force officers had become disgusted with this, so they called war crimes. They would dismiss from the military about a month later and some of these guys who were involved in this got to thinking that there must be Palestinians who also realized that violence was just not the way to go and they decided to go find them and put together a group together and this is what they did and at first they were very, very low-profile, didn't want to make their presence public, they were already operating when I did my second set of interviews in late 2005, early 2006, but I didn't hear anything about them until I was there in 2007, but basically they would go and talk to people in both communities, they would say we were violent, we made the change from violence to non-violence. If we could do that, anybody can. One of them said to me, you know, this is really a good strategy because nobody would listen to nice guys for peace. You know, they were in fact former combatants made a big difference. You know, somebody says, you know, I was a soldier and I realized that that wasn't the way to go and people were more likely to listen. What they were saying basically is that their refusal to do violence isn't the end, it's a means to the end of being able to talk to the folks on the other side and work together for some kind of peaceful resolution of the situation. I like Al-Haman says, quote, "I will not speak with someone who, after talking to me, will go and prepare an explosive belt or who will shoot its soldiers at a check point." In the same manner, I don't expect a Palestinian to talk with somebody who the next day, he might meet at a check point or who impose graffiti on his village. So by refusing to take part in the military, they're making each other more accessible and then they want to, you know, show that there's somebody on the other side that you can talk to and that even somebody who's been violent can become non-violent. Their official website position is for a two-state solution, although Yamtansa Piera points out that everybody really has their own individual point of view. But most of the Palestinian supporters are from FATA and that party line is for two-state solutions. You know, there's no way that we can adequately talk even about a list of the topics that are included in the 500-page book, refusing to be enemies, Palestinian and Israeli non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation. So there's just one or two more points and then I want to ask you a little bit more about you, Maxine. One of the things that you deal with in the book, I guess later on, is exactly that point about the two-state versus other possible solutions, other possible futures for the area. I guess in the United States, everyone is pretty much, yeah, well, yeah, two-state solution, good. It's a non-issue, go ahead, let's do that. I found out that there's still controversy and a deeper understanding of the identity of the people there and what the ramifications of two-state solution are that it's not a no-brainer. Yeah, I mean, it might have been feasible closer to 67, but if you look at a map, there's a set of maps that are getting more and more widely distributed informal postcards or posters that are put up on public transit or such like that show 1946, where you can see that most of the land was somehow or other being used by Palestinians, whether they owned it directly or had a lease or whatever, and then the 1947 partition proposal by the UN, which would have granted to a Jewish state about 55 percent of the land of historic Palestine or the British Mandate territory. So no wonder the Palestinians weren't happy with that because sort of like if somebody took over your backyard and then gave you part of it back, right, and then it shows the familiar map of Israel proper with the West Bank, colored green as if it were under Palestinian control, but in fact it was annexed by Jordan or by Trans-Jordan, which then became called Jordan because it was now trans-ansys Jordan and the Gaza Strip that was administered by Egypt. That one was until 67, but then you have like more or less the present and the West Bank looks like a Swiss cheese in reverse or a Dutch cartographer referred to it even back in the 80s in Archipelago, you know, just a bunch of little islands, you know, some of them not even connected to each other because of the bypass roads and so on, and increased settlement construction, particularly now in an area called E1 that threatens to divide the north and the south of the West Bank from each other completely, which is almost divided now, and so on. So it makes the idea of, you know, a governable and viable Palestinian state really questionable even if you think it's the best idea. Many people feel that, you know, ultimately money the people I spoke to, ultimately, you know, a single state where everyone has their vote and so on would be ideal, but the question is how you get there. When I talk to people about their visions for the future, a couple of things surprised me. One thing was that a number of people, particularly Palestinians but also one or two of the Israelis, didn't even talk about what form of political solution would take, one state, two state, whatever. They just talked about the characteristics of the society. They wanted to see freedom, equality, vibrant society, creativity, and the rest of it. But the other big surprise was that a number that were almost equal to the number that cited a two state solution, which is party line, as I've said, as the the all and end all, or at least as a step on the way to a single state, a similar number cited some form of confederation. And that, really, to me, looked like and looks like the most feasible least midterm solution, short midterm solution. Jeff Halper goes into a lot of detail in his book, "An Israeli in Palestine," describing what he describes as something like the European economic community was in the early days where you could live and work in any part, and not just Israel and Palestine but a regional confederation with maybe Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, maybe once things settle down in Syria and Egypt, them as well, maybe even Iraq. It could live and work in any part, but you could only have citizenship and voting rights in your one section. That would make possible the fulfilling of the Palestinian right of return, because apparently something upwards of 90 percent of the land from which they were basically ethnically cleansed in '47 is not being used by anybody. The other bits can be dealt with. There was a really interesting delegation, joint delegation, by a Palestinian organization, Badiyu, and in Israeli organizations of hook, and they took people to Cape Town, South Africa to learn from the experience of the South Africans with the post-apartheid situation, learn from the positive and the negative outcomes that they had. Then they sat down and talked about how they would deal with post-occupation situation and how they would implement the right of return, and things like if there's already an Israeli family living in a home that somebody wants to come back to, how would you deal with that so that nobody would be left homeless, things like that, the practicalities. So people are thinking in those terms, I think having that arrangement where no matter how many Palestinians are living inside the borders of what's now Israel, these newcomers would not have a vote there. They would have a vote in a Palestinian state. That would go a long way to alleviate the fears of those Israeli Jews who still feel that if they were not in the majority of the voting population, if they were ever, God forbid, another threatened holocaust that they might not be allowed in there, as Jews were not allowed into most countries during an immediate aftermath of World War II. Seems to me at least as an interim solution, that's our best bet. I don't know whether we'll get to that, but I think it's a hopeful idea that it just puts it, you know, thinking outside the box in one state to state. There's more possibilities than that. Let's talk a little bit, Maxine, about you and your view in this. Number one, you've got a significant amount of affection for Israel. Part of your youth was spent there. You refer to yourself as a Quaker Jew. What is a Quaker Jew from your point of view? Well, this particular Quaker Jew, as you know, one Quaker is everybody has their own view of whatever. My basic historical, cultural, whatever you want to call it, identity is as a Jew. But the flavor of Jew is Quaker because that's my spiritual home and has been for now 50 years. How compatible is that with Jewish practice? I mean, can you imagine a Quaker Jew bot mitzvah? It's an interesting thought. I just visited with a couple on Bainbridge Island. She's from a Jewish background. He's from Quaker background and they both consider themselves Jewish friends with Quaker Jews. I can't remember how they put it. And there's some to a bonnet food, which surprised me because mine weren't. You know, I'm really different. To me, Jewish practice is pretty well limited to, you know, maybe I'll go to the synagogue for one or two holidays. They may have, may or may not have a passover cedar. That kind of thing. But you nothing further, certainly not keeping kosher or having my kids be bonnets for a bot mitzvah. So again, everybody has their own way of doing it. But I think there are basic compatibilities that, for instance, I mean, neither of us believe in original sin. There are a lot of principles of Judaism at its best at any rate that are similar to Quaker ideas or Quaker practices. You know, the idea of tikkun olam of trying to fix the world, so to speak, you know, really resonates. And, you know, I've been asked on a number of occasions by rabbis or observant Jews, you know, why do you have to look for our field? You know, all these things that you see in Quakerism there in Judaism as well. My answer is that, well, you know, maybe because I'm lazy, but the Quakers that I've met tend to be more in touch with these things, more alive for them, maybe because most of them are from different backgrounds. And so they've purposely chosen a Quaker way, whereas, you know, you grow up in a Jewish family, you might just do these things because your family did them, right? It's like, you know, voting for a certain party because your parents did. You know, so that's my approach anyway, but everybody's approach different, I think. Did you try any other religious groups, ideas, identities between being pure practitioner of Judaism and deciding that you're a Quaker? Were other places accessible to you? I think coming from a Jewish character, there's so many Christian groups which would be antithetical. Yeah, well, first of all, I never was a practitioner of Judaism, particularly. I mean, I went to a Jewish Sunday school, but my family never kept kosher. I avoided pork for a very long time, and I don't need any four-legged animals, so that's not a question. But my father had rebelled against the North about stop-bringing, and my mother had been raised very kind of what we'd call reform, but basically not particularly observant. So, you know, just because I went to a Jewish Sunday school, mainly because I enjoyed studying Hebrew, I wanted a language that, you know, I could speak that other people wouldn't understand, just like my Chinese friends could speak to each other, and I wouldn't understand them. Actually, I had thought about going to Chinese school, but I would have been a disadvantage because most of the kids would be starting grade one, and I was only about in grade six when I started thinking about this, that'd be there with all these little kids who spoke at home. So, that one had been great, but then I found out about Hebrew schools. Oh, good, you know, so that's what I did. So, it wasn't really a religious thing so much. As to other practices, I did sort of briefly sporadically practice and meditation, but I'm not really good at sitting still. So, I read a lot about practices in a whole other thing, and of course, there's a lot of jubus around and kubus. And to be clear, you just use two terms that are not necessarily known, and so kubus are quicker. Quaker Buddhist and jubus are Jewish Buddhists. Yes. Because Buddhists in this kind of, I mean, it's not strictly speaking religion, many people feel that, it's more of a philosophy. But a couple of years ago, our meeting did a series of Quaker Quest program, that parents general conference has been promoting. And it has, you know, panels of three Quakers talking about this, that, and the other subjects. And one of the subjects was our all Quakers Christian. And my little presentation begins, this one's not. In fact, before I applied for membership, I needed to sort this out, because every time I kind of thought, you know, this is really where I want to be, and I want to show my commitment by joining a meeting and so on, somebody would get up and make some kind of statement that was exclusively Christian. I mean, I'm quite happy to be side by side with Quakers who are Christian, but when they say you have to be Christian to be a Quaker, that does not feel very inclusive to me. Finally, I heard a statement of this sort at yearly meeting and I was kind of complaining about it, about loud in the restroom there, while I was washing my hands. A woman was washing her hands at the next base and was in charge of the interest groups, and she said, "Well, why don't you have an interest group on that?" And in those days, this is in '76, it was really informal. You just wrote a subject and they gave you a room and people came. And so I wrote, "Is there a place for non-Christian Quakers?" And of the 250 or so folks at a yearly meeting, about 25 showed up, which is a pretty good turnout, I thought. And by the end of that, I'd heard enough that I was reassured that definitely there were plenty of friends who felt that you could be a Quaker without being Christian. One more part about your background that I wanted to include in here. Since you're identified with Quakers, it's pretty natural to be connected with non-violence or pacifist ideas or practices. Not every Quaker is a pacifist by any means, but again, because we don't have a single litmus test. But my question is, are you a pacifist and what made this non-violence study that you conducted in refusing to be enemies? Why non-violence is this central to your life? I do you have to worry about that on the streets of British Columbia often? I don't know whether I would label myself pacifist. It depends on what your definition is, I suppose. But I certainly believe that achieving your ends by violence is not the way to go. If you have any alternative whatsoever, and I believe that there's always an alternative in international relations, and there's just slowly to put together armies to kill each other. I mean, how dumb and wasteful it is. And so when I see that people are seeking non-violent ways to resist, and I like the image of being able to just say no in large numbers, being able to stop oppressive actions, measures, whatever, standing up to unjust authority. I've been an anti-authoritarian since day one. It appeals to me, but I don't see any point in harming the other side. Yeah, this doesn't make sense to me. As is often the case, there have been more riches in my visit with my guests such that we can include all of them in this broadcast. But don't lose hope. You'll find bonus excerpts with all kinds of interesting aspects and tidbits at northernspiritradio.org attached to the main program for broadcast. We've been speaking with Maxine Kauffman-Lakusta about her book Refusing to be enemies Palestinian and Israeli non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation. Find Maxine on the web at refusing to be enemies, thebook.wordpress.com, or just follow the link from northernspiritradio.org. Maxine, you've brought together a wealth of information, personal sharing, and perspectives on this also crucial topic of non-violence in the work of those in Israel and Palestine. And you've done it with decades of dedication. Thank you so much for your sustained caring for all of the peoples of the region. And especially, thank you for joining me today for Spirit in Action. Oh, thank you. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing.