Attentive JWN readers might recall that last fall I wrote about having taken part in an amazing, four-day course/conference on Leadership for Nonviolence at the UN University’s International Leadership Institute in Amman… After the course, a high proportion of the participants, both “faculty” and “students”, felt so energized by our days together there that they kept in good touch (via email and a specially created Google Group). We constituted a Steering Committee to plan the establishment of a more robust follow-up organization; and the Committee held a short meeting in Amman in late February…
And today, dear readers, I am happy to announce that the website of the Global Network for Nonviolence has gone public; and along with it, GNN announces its birth to the world!
(Small drum-roll there. But mainly, a big bouquet of appreciation to our webmasters Michael Simmons and Linda Carranza, and to the site designer, Martin Kelley.)
If you go to the present homepage, you can learn a little about the incredible, multinational group that is leading the GNN. It tells us that:
- The Steering Committee members are:
* Neven Bondokji (Jordan) and Hagit Tarnari (Israel), co-chairs
* Sagar Gurung (Nepal), secretary
* Michael Simmons (USA), webmaster
* David Foncho (Cameroon) and Zoughbi Zoughbi (Palestine), members
This group then co-opted onto the Committee Jairam Reddy (South Africa) to serve as treasurer and Helena Cobban (USA and Britain) as fundraising director. Dr. Reddy’s position as Director of UNU-ILI is a symbol of our continuing good relationship with UNU-ILI. Group member Linda Carranza also agreed to act as GNN’s web management advisor.
Actually, if you play the great little video that’s there on the present home-page– which was planned and shot by Hagit Tarnari at the end of our October conference– you can most likely pick out all the Steering Committee members except, perhaps Zoughbi Zoughbi and Jairam Reddy.
(Memo to self: Talk to webmasters Michael and Linda about getting the SC members’ bios up as as clickable links onto the site… )
There are so many aspects of GNN that I find really inspiring. One is the talented, committed, and caring group of people involved. Another is the truly multi-cultural flavor of what we’re trying to do– check out the five different language-versions we’ve already produced, of the Mission Statement we adopted in February… with hopefully more to come!
Another is the fact that nonviolence work as such is something that everyone can (and should) do in their own communities, at all different levels, and in their own best-considered way… Speaking for myself, I recall that back in the early 1990s I worked on an Arab-Israeli citizens’ peacebuilding project in the context of a notably different kind of organization, a US-based NGO that focused on “conflict resolution” as such. But I found there were several aspects of that work that troubled me. Firstly, there was the iron control that the US leaders of the organization exercized over the project. And secondly, the way in which, for many Israeli participants, it seemed that getting Arab state nationals and Palestinians to sit down and talk with them was the main (or only) goal they sought– and indeed, for some of them, it seemed that every additional Arab they met was a personal “trophy” for them… Whereas for the Palestinian and other Arab participants, there were issues of very burning concern that they needed to talk to the Israelis about. But many of the Israeli participants refused even to put these issues onto the agenda, seeing the simple fact of the meetings having occurred as being enough to meet their goals. And the US leaders of the project simply indulged that bullheadedness.
And so, that organization’s meetings went on and on, without making much discernible headway at all, but consuming huge amounts of donors’ very well-intentioned funds. (In effect, the meetings merely mirrored what was happening in the “official” peace process during those years.)
With GNN, by contrast, it involves solid principles of universal applicability, –see our Mission Statement!– and and a truly global operating context. And nonviolence work is something people do where they are— it doesn’t depend, for its raison d’etre and future funding, on X number of Israelis being able to get Y number of Palestinians into a room and saying “Look! We’ve had a meeting!” In the GNN’s case, it involves people who are already nonviolence activists in their own countries, and because of the location of our parent institution, the UNU-ILI, these people include people from Israel, Palestine, and a number of Arab countries, along with a broad array of non-Middle eastern countries, who all come together to brainstorm on common challenges, and exchange ideas on what might be good ways to meet them…
And here is the final reason why I find GNN to be so inspiring: This violence-wracked world of ours needs a robust, global nonviolence movement more than ever before– and right now, in many countries of the world, there is a new awareness that the paths of violence that have been taken until now have not brought people the security and wellbeing that they (we) all so desperately need.
The time feels so right for this.
I believe that– especially after the tragic failure of the US’s military adventure in Iraq, of Israel’s military action of last summer in Lebanon, and of so many other military campaigns around the world in recent years– the citizens of many of the world’s countries are definitely open to seeking another, less violent path.
Many people have already been doing great work in the field of nonviolent organizing, for many long decades already, I know. (We list some them on our Links page there, and will be putting more links up soon.) Over the months ahead, the GNN Steering Committee is certainly planning to open up the network’s membership to a much broader group than just the 55 or so people who took part in last October’s conference.
Oops, did I mention that that the new website is still very much a work in progress? I see that the “Contact Us” and “Donate” buttons still don’t have any content. But they will, they will… Our webmasters Michael and Linda, who live in Hungary, are doing some nonviolence trainings in Serbia today and for the next few days. But I think on Monday or so they’ll be able to do the next update of the site.
In the interim, though, I strongly urge you to contribute whatever funds you can to support this great new effort. (Okay, it’s my job on the Steering Committee to be fundraising director… Help me out here, folks, please!) You can contact me to find out how– or with any further questions you have about GNN.
Finally, I should note that one of the first networked actions that many GNN people are getting involved in is activities that impart a specifically nonviolence-focused message to the events being held throughout next week to mark the 40th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan. See the June 5th section of the website for info about and links to some such activities.
(For my part, I have made a big sign that says “Occupation = Violence: End it!” that I intend to use in both an Israeli-Palestinian and a US-Iraq context.)
Anyway, please do go and spend a bit of time exploring GNN’s site. And since you can’t send comments there yet, you might as well put them here… and I promise I’ll pass them on.
Friends, for those interested in the rightfulness of compassion, I am organzing at York a campaign to support the children of North Lebanon and the Palestinian refugee children of the camps in the North affected by these vicious Fatfat Islam attacks. You can do as well!
An exemplary colleage, Ms. Suzanne Jabbour, Director of ReStart Center in North Lebanon is working very hard (as usual!) to distribute supports to the families there, as well as provide crucial psychosocial supports-Send your support, either through organized donations of art supplies, etc. for children, or financial donations to the ReStart Center (one of Lebanon’s best). The link to the center’s website is here:
http://130.227.3.66/usr/irct/home.nsf/unid/JREW-5MSCRG
Not hard to do at all-take action!
KDJ
Wow, even when Jews or Israelis engage in dialogue, Helena finds a way to blame them and talk about their shortcomings!
Gee Joshua that Helena. She must read through paragraphs and pararaphs, ignoring the main theme, to find anything critical of Israel and the jews you agree with.
So what did you think about “The Global Network on Nonviolence” that the post is about? Is it anti-Israeli as well? Guess it must be, if Helena’s such an anti(excluding arabian) semite. Just watch that hate-filled Youtube video on the GWN site. “We want peace”. Bloody terrorists. First thing I noticed, all the people were from countries with low peace index ratings. Like Israel. Where are the Norwegians and New Zealanders? Where are the people who have experience of ever being in a peaceful nation? Is there an Oslo backlash?
As to her line of critical observation above. It was framed as subjective.
To use the recently famous JWN forum “drowning person” metaphor, its nice to swim out and grab a drowning person. It may even look like quite an affectionate embrace from a distance. But its really quite important to keep the victim’s head above the water, if the mission is to be accomplished. Stopping their arms thrashing around is not the priority of somone that is trying to preserve the victims existance.
Anyway it’s dawning on the body of the global village that you and your associates have just about finished the job liquidating the Palestinian nation. From within and without. Despite all our talkfests and pieces of paper apparently designed to stop it. Please don’t expect the nation of Israel to appear righteous and hard done by to the world in that very act of fratricide! It’s too late to put music to that jingle. Even though I am sure there will be many more medals minted through the process.
Helena, this is a lost cause. You do not have the means to stop these people. You can sometimes help stop the tanks but you will never stop the statesmen. If you can be a buddhist about that fine, but Im not sure how one reconciles embracing a mission to right this wrong in the face of so much physical evidence that the exogneous force of will does not exist to do so.
Woopsie. GWN=GNN above. Apologies for any confusion caused.
So Joshua, I’d love to hear about some of your experiences of participating in a dialogue in a highly-charged and very conflictual context. Tell us about it. What did you learn from your participation? What kinds of new relationships were you able to build?
Have you ever engaged in dialogue with Palestinians or other Arabs? What kinds of relationships are you able to build with them? What were the sticking points? How do people’s expectations and needs going into such a dialogue tend to differ?
Maybe you have something to contribute to such a discussion. But I confess I haven’t seen it yet. It seems to me that your personal animus against me tends to get in the way of you saying anything very constructive– or even, being able to do a decent reading of what I’m writing. Your choice, I guess…
But really, this post is about the intense need for, and the possibilities in front of, this project of building a Global Network for Nonviolence. Do you have something to contribute to this discussion? Let’s hope so!
What is this thing called non-violence? It is a sloppy, lazy term based on sloppy, lazy thinking, and deliberately so. In other words it is disingenuous. There is nothing non-violent about human life. From the breaking of the soil to the cutting of a tree or vegetables in the kitchen, violent force is used. Both the capture and restraint of criminals – rapists, murderers and fraudsters, robbers and burglers – is violent. Nobody is saying that it cannot or should not be so. There is no general non-violence, only a stricture as to who may be violent and who not. In other words, the question is: who has the monopoly of violence? And who is excluded?
Oh, but you know what I mean, I hear you say. Quite the reverse. Every one will interpret this sloppy term for his own convenience. There is absolutely no agreement about this.
What about Gandhi, I hear you ask. His message is clear, you will claim. Well, no, it is not. If you read his works you will find mystification, evasion and obscurantism on every page. Even those few aphorisms which have become common currency do not bear close scrutiny. For example, the well know remark about western civilisation (“It would be a good idea”) is no better than a cute, smart-Alecky sneer. Real revolutionaries, like those who opposed Gandhi in his time and others like Fanon, James and Shivji, know that the “western” humanism of the Greeks, the Italian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Marxists is an essential pre-requisite to liberation. It belongs to all of us. Gandhi would tip it all away and substitute a fog of feel-good guff about “non-violence”. Nonsense! Humbug! Hypocrisy!
Racist, too – like Gadhi himself. How can “non-violence”, as a word or an idea, translate from middle-class USA (or middle-class India) to the masses of the world? Only through the evoluee, the assimilado, the convert. Only through the Imperialism of Ratzinger, who holds that the colonised were longing for colonialism. It is idealogical imperialism, and it is the hand-maiden of material, brutal, anti-humanist imperialism, which is the real source of our misery, and which you fail to denounce in your ever-so-respectable “Network for Nonviolence”.
Thanks Helena, I have participated in these types of dialogue. What I found is that they can be very helpful but that people with an agenda can easily derail them.
What I’ve also found is that most of the Jewish and Palestinian participants are generally very polite and willing to really hash out their differences, and that the real problems are those who are not really directly involved in the conflict.
In the case I’m thinking of, the Palestinian participants were really willing to listen to the other side. There was one participant, an Arab American of Syrian and Lebanese descent, however, who repeatedly would rudely interrupt any Israeli participant to throw out various accusations against Israel. There was also one Israeli participant who felt the need to continually respond to other Israeli and Jewish participants to inform them that they were ignorant, ill-informed, and had just not yet understood why Israelis were the source of the evil in the conflict. Not quite as rude, just very patronizing.
The next day we participated in a role play where we each assumed the role of someone on “the other side” and partook in a mock negotiation over the issue of settlements. We were also given a last minute instruction that we had to take an absolute extremist position (so we could not compromise like most of us were naturally inclined to). I played the role of a PNA rep and demanded complete evacuation of all settlements. My counterpart (an American woman of Palestinian and Brazilian descent), was nearly in tears, saying how she was amazed that someone could so eloquently and calmly explain the position, and wished that she could do the same. I actually thought she did a pretty good job as well.
It was sometimes too hard to concentrate, however, because in the adjacent room our American of Syrian-Lebanese descent was at it. He was loud, boisterous, and obnoxious. Rather than try to actually make a sincere effort to make the arguments of the other side, he decided to play a stereotypical Jew, with exaggerated accent and personality. Afterwards, he explained that he was doing this to “show us” how it feels to be humiliated and powerless. I told the facilitator that I was somewhat confused, because I had approached my role in a way to sincerely make the argument with empathy, and that had I been instructed otherwise, I could have done some sort of Palestinian terrorist carcicature, spouting out quotes from the protocols of the elders of zion, mindless sloganeering, and the like. I later got an e-mail response saying that my criticisms were taken to heart.
I wish anyone luck on an effort of non-violence. However, to the extent your attitude permeates it, I am skeptical of the chances of its success. The problem is, quite simply, that you have a very narrow minded, one sided, patronizing, and, yes, antisemitic view of things.
[snip]
[Editorial note: A commenter calling herself ‘Doris’ had come here and left a comment absolutely rife with racial/ethnic stereotypes. The following was kdj’s response. to those, and to Joshua’s, above… Meanwhile, I have deleted Doris’s hate-speech– not the first that she has left here. ~HC]
A question for Doris and Joshua: Why are you here, other than to whine, and might I even say harass?
GROW UP!
Toward compassion:
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=82705
Faked accents can be patronising. In fact just, you know, the whole “vibe” of what someone says can feel patronising, say if you don’t like it for example. E.G if they want to try and restore Palestinians nationhood. Which is antisemitic of course. Therefore the inevtitable destruction of any sovereign palestinian administration, due to it just being too hard to concerntrate on peace. As one simply feels too offended when one is acting so nobly oneself.
And yes Helena you will have to sack the evil Palestinian from the steering committee. As Doris says, their ethnicity is wrong. Israelis only!
Here we see “mainstream” Israel’s committment to peace. Self-convinced that they are compelled for survival to destroy the enemies that “surround” them even though Isreal herself is a righteous and peaceful nation. “Forced” to set impossible terms for peace, rejecting all overtures. The very same genocidal pathology that almost wiped out the jewish people in the last century. Good to see in the GNN video that by no means all Israelis are traitors to peace and humanity.
Dominic, you are wrong. In particular you are wrong about the “tradition” from the Greeks to the Enlightenment (may God wither my hand if I ever use that detestable cant term again}. It is all very well to mention James and Fanon but neither of them was so ethnocentric as to dismiss the enormous non-European experience. The tradition to which you refer, leading up to the dreaded E…., was essentially the Imperial brain in a process of development and self justification. And what it led to, magnificent tho’ it may appear, was in the end a blind alley: a critique of Empire which accepted the necessity of Capitalism, albeit as a “stage” through which humanity was condemned to pass, a hell which would act as a crucible transforming benighted subsistence societies into propertyless and impotent proletarians.
Gandhi begged to differ, and so I suspect did the wise old Marx who was so inspired by the narodniks.
As to non-violence it is something for which none yearn more passionately than the oppressed who understand that violence is the specialty of those who are wrong and don’t care. Let the US army ground its arms and explain its purpose and justification to the people of Iraq. To promote non-violence is not to censure those resisting violent occupation forces but to challenge them to justify themselves before a world which understands the difference between right and wrong. Nothing is more pleasant to the ears of a heavily armed oppressor than the idea that there is no viable alternative to violence.
Bevin, who is dismissing the non-European experience? Where does that come from? The actual problem here is the ex novo character of this “Network for Nonviolence”, heavily based in that respect on Gandhi (see for example their links section), and on the omission of any historically specific material, and not just the “Western” part. That includes the entire history of ideas, which is exchanged for a trite “I want peace” and “non-violence”.
Gandhi’s betrayal is not just of the “West” of which he was as much a product as anybody else (or more so in a sense I will come to in a moment). He also betrayed the most pointed Indian legacy on the very questions that he purports to tackle, and that is the Gita. If I am not mistaken he professed to love the Gita but he betrays it, terribly, which is arguably an even worse violence than what he does to the “west”.
Because religion has always dealt with the human desire to reconcile the undeniable violence of life, from the violence of childbirth and throughout, with the yearning for the peace that we will all inherit, but only in the grave. This is the discussion behind the Gita and from then onwards, in different forms.
It is this great discussion that Gandhi denies, obscures, and traduces. It is the great discussion that this GNN will refuse to be part of.
The ideology of Imperialism is nowadays called Post-Modernism. Yes, of course it had part of its origin in the eighteenth century, although it was obviously not called Po-Mo then. It is the reactionary doppelganger that stalks all human progress, from the days of the Gita (Mahabarata) and before. Gandhi was an exponent. Gandhi is inseparable from the post-modernists. It is Gandhi’s work that allows this GNN a free pass to ignore and obliterate the real fight for peace, which is the fight against Imperialism, a word which cannot pass from their lips.
The GNN sells the pass for a mess of pottage.
Incidentally, I think you are a little out of sequence, Bevin, as regards Marx and the Narodniks. Nor is there anything in common between Marxism and Narodism. The latter was (and is: it, too exists still, but under other names) a patronising projection of imaginary idyllic village stasis by bourgeois people whose interest is that masses of people should be parked harmlessy in rural idiocy. Vandana Shiva and Arundatti Roy are contemproary exponents. Meera Nanda is one of their opponents, just as B R Ambedkar was one of Gandhi’s opponents.
Don’t tell me this is a “western” matter. Do you know what “Maji-Maji” was? Do you know who Nonqawuse was? What makes you think this GNN is anything new? It is the hand-maiden of Imperialism, walking again.
Ommm.
This whole question of nonviolence seems to touch a number of different raw nerves.
I happen to think– based on a careful appraisal of many historical events and of the present world situation– that it is not a ‘mess of potage’. We can, and perhaps should, discuss that at greater length. But Dominic (and others), please let’s keep the discussion calm and friendly?
I think Bevin hit on an important point when he noted that, by and large, most people in the world do understand the difference between right and wrong; and an appeal to that inherent moral sense can generate its own mounting wave of political strength…
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said (quoting, I think, the prophet Micah): “The arc of history is long but it bends towards justice.”
Thank you for your reply, Dominic. Again, I think you are wrong about Marx’s interest in the narodniks. You make the, very western, comtean, error of confusing technological change and labour saving devices with the improvement of life. Most of the world’s population has always lived on the land or close to fishing grounds, unlike you I think that this is marvellous. The horrors of the dispossession and displacement of rural populations into slums where they sell themselves to capitalists or less respectable criminals, where the strong men become thugs and the young women whores, where the old die alone… this old story from England is now being played for the last time in China, where hundreds of millions of country folk are now migrants and mendicants, far from their ancestral lands, family and connections, and in India where the long agony of the village community goes on, smallholders, crushed by usury and bemused by the lies of agronomists, killing themselves.
Are these hundreds of millions to be told that they are but compost to rot so that the flower of freedom might one day thrive? My belief is that the dispute is in essence a moral one: every community that ever was (until this Empire) has strived to keep its sick alive, its children happy and its old people fed and sheltered. It is from these simple bases, not silicon chips or internal electrical power, that civilisation comes. I do not favour stasis but I do say, with William Cobbett, we want great changes but we demand nothing that is new or unfamiliar. This Empire is a runaway train, you seem to suggest that there will be rich pickings at the wreck site. I’m saying there’s a good chance there will be nobody there to pick through the pieces. There are worse things than handmaids to empire, such as beady eyed old maids waiting for their wealthy relative to die so that they may inherit and use their wealth to estasblish sunday schools.
As to non-violence: the struggle is in the minds and hearts of men, the crucial struggles are always non-violent. The struggle for Trade Unions and Co-operatives (a labour of sysyphus) is essentially non-violent, just as the struggle against them is always characterised by violence and corruption.
Finally, you are quite right to point out that there are lots of things that I do not know, it is a quality worth cultivating.
Hi Helena,
It was lovely to see you in that video and to hear your voice (and accent!).
I’m glad you see that “non-violence” touches on raw nerves. That’s good, for now, because it does.
I see a contradiction between your saying in one sentence that most people only understand the difference between right and wrong in an “inherent moral” way, and in the next that the arc of history bends towards justice.
Justice is judgement, which has to be an exact thing and an act of positive will. History is objective, specific, and not mystical. The problem with Gandhi and the post-modernists, both, is that the sequence of thought and action, subject and object, defended in the Gita, is by them denied. The collective human Subject – the free people – is a thinking people, rooted in a knowledge of history, and is neither an ineffable “mounting wave of political strength”, nor a cork tossed upon an ocean.
You’ve got your Nietzches in a knot, if you don’t mind my saying so, and that is a dangerous situation to be in. I think you should get more “reality-based” again.
Bevin,
I love your writing and more especially, your reading. We can only dispute about things we have in common. I do dispute that you can have your Narodism, and Marxism, too. “The Poverty of Philosophy” (1847, and in Lenin’s view the first mature work of Marxism), although it pre-dates the actual Narodniks of Russia, deals with essentially the same question categorically and unmistakeably, and both Marx and Engels never wavered from its conclusions. See, for example, Engels’ “The Housing Question”, more or less contemporary with the Narodniks.
I love William Cobbett, exiled to America for years by one of my ancestors. Cobbett was the better man by far. But a bit wacky at times. He had a scheme for employing unemployed rural people in situ by having them make hats out of straw. There’s a lot of that kind of thinking in SA still, I can inform you.
I won’t say any more about your Narodism. It’s open and frank and people can judge for themselves. But let me clear up the matter of “Maji-Maji” and Nonqawuse and things that you don’t know. I did not mean to condescend. And I agree with you that when any of us thinks he knows it all, that one is finished for useful work. My point is rather that we don’t have this literature in common. Which dooms me to confine myself to your heritage, and that in turn opens me up to the charge of “westernism”.
Not guilty!
There is a huge preoccupation in the literature of the anti-colonial liberation movements with the question of what is to be retained and what is to be repudiated. For example, the polemic of Senghor and Nkrumah. For example, the very last pages of Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” where he says that (I paraphrase) it is not the promise of Europe that is the problem, it is the failure of Europe to fulfill that promise. In other words, we (the “third world”) are the real humanists now. But Gandhi can’t be counted with Fanon. Which is why Gandhi is still a hero in the West, and why Fanon is still a hero in Africa.