Human Rights

End of Sabbatical and a new writer friend

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Today is the last day of my sabbatical from Christian Peacemaker Teams, which began June 1, 2012. I ran a search on Google images for “sabbatical” and most of them involved beaches.

Mine didn’t.

I wanted to write my novel Shea, which for biblically-interested people is a retelling of the Hosea-Gomer narrative with the gender roles reversed, and a fascist theocratic government running the U.S. instead of a theocratic government that had adopted elements of Canaanite fertility religions running ancient Israel. For those not interested in the biblical aspect, it is the memoir of Islam Goldberg-Jones, written from prison, telling of how he, his wife Hoshea “Shea” Weber, their family and comrades brought down the Christian Republic that ruled the United States from 2065-2087. He also writes about how he betrayed Shea with three increasingly heartbreaking affairs (which is the parallel of Gomer having three children—although to be fair to her only one was officially by another man.) Mission accomplished.
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I wanted to get Because the Angels formatted as an E-book. Mission accomplished.
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I wanted to get a website set up. Mission accomplished.
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I learned how to use Twitter. I have NOT learned how to spend only fifteen minutes a day on Twitter.

What I didn’t get done
I wanted to help a friend who was a dissident in Iran under the Shah and Khomeini regimes write her memoir. The process turned out to be too painful for her so we had to let it go.

I did not finish filing all the papers in the boxes in the hall upstairs, but I have made good progress in throwing out things that don’t need to be filed anymore.

I still have a room full of my mother’s stuff that needs to be listed on Ebay.

I did not work on my Arabic language study AT ALL.

I did not do a retreat with my spiritual director.

So what have I learned? I’ve been on a cycle over the years where I would become overwhelmed with CPT work, get depressed because I didn’t have time to write the novel that was in me, and then had to leave CPT to do it. I need to figure out a way to take depression out of that equation. And that probably means that I need to actually assign times for CPT work, time for housework, and time for writing work. And within the CPT work, I need to assign time for filing, time for e-mail, and time for Arabic language study, or they won’t get done.

So am I happy to be going back? Not sure. I’m not great with transitions. But having spent a year saying that I do human rights work without actually having done any, it will be nice now to be saying it for real. And I will enjoy interacting with my colleagues again and following what’s going on in Iraqi Kurdistan, Colombia, Palestine, and the Indigenous communities we work with. And I’m pretty sure the idea for my next novel will come to me while I am working, as all the others have.

But oh the conference calls; I have not missed the conference calls at all, or the personality conflicts that arise because we tend to attract intensely committed people, and when you get all that intensity in the same room, well, sometimes people of goodwill can be very hard on each other.

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I’ve had the good fortune, at the end of my sabbatical, to find a writer friend with whom I can exchange manuscripts for critique. The writer’s group I wanted to get together at the beginning of the sabbatical fell through. I met Sara Selznick through She Writes, a forum for women writers—one of the sabbatical indulgences I’m afraid I will have to put aside when I start work again tomorrow. We had applied for the same fellowship and received identical, “you’re very talented and we hope you apply again, but no” rejections. After we exchanged applications, we became a two-woman writer’s critique group. You will find a description of her writing project The Color of Safety on her blog Three Kinds of Pie.

When I edit colleagues writing for CPTnet, I am doing more than one role. My main role is to make sure they provide a voice to our local partners and communicate the realities of their work effectively. But it is also my job to encourage them to become better writers. Their work in the field is the vital part of what we do. Our writer/editor relationship is a vehicle to enhance that work; the writing is not an end in itself. So I generally DO pull punches. I am not blunt about the deficits in their writing (although some of my colleagues may disagree.)

For my novel, Shea, I don’t want someone trying to tiptoe around my feelings. I need people to say, “This doesn’t work for me.”; “I don’t understand what you’re saying here.” “I hate this character.” My regular manuscript readers, who know me personally, tell me when something bothers them, but they usually will pull punches. Other writers won’t. I may choose not to change something based on a critique (one writer friend and I have what we call the Jane Austen—William Faulkner spectrum, with his taste leaning heavily toward the latter), but I want to hear it. I will consider it. And I find it liberating to dispense the critiques as well. I suppose I should check in with Sara to see whether she’s as happy with the arrangement as I have been, because I’ve been more on the dispensing end. But let me just say this: her novel is more than 200,000 words long and I was never bored.

An open Letter to Anne Hathaway and her haters. What am I missing?

My husband is not big on movie musicals, but after Anne Hathaway was interviewed on The Daily Show, he and I both managed to see the Les Miserables this winter. Indeed, I almost felt a spiritual urgency about seeing the movie. And Anne Hathaway’s performance is what I remember most about it.
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I do not want what I am about to write to be misinterpreted. Anne Hathaway does not know what it is like to stand for hours in line at a clinic in Haiti with a sick baby, only to be turned away because she does not have money or the appropriate papers. She does not know what it is like to have a family member disappear in Colombia, or to receive an anonymous letter saying that if she does not leave the area immediately, she will end up dead and floating in the river. She does not know what it is like to have her home demolished because an Israeli settlement wants her family’s land for expansion. She does not know what it is like to face the ongoing loss of land and violation of treaty rights that Indigenous people are constantly facing in North America. She does not know what it is like to live with the casual racism that people of color do day after exhausting day in the United States.

And yet, when I watched her performance, it touched the place the feelings come from when I have witnessed the above struggles of marginalized people as part of my human rights work. Watching her face, I saw the faces of so many other people who have suffered enormous losses. Victor Hugo never experienced the poverty he wrote about so eloquently, and Picasso was not in the Basque village of Guernica when it was bombed by German and Italian warplanes in 1937, but through their art, they brought poverty, injustice, and war to the attention of millions, and people used that art for social change. What Anne Hathaway accomplished in Les Miserables was profound art in that tradition.
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So my husband and I were pleased when she acknowledged all the Fantines of the world at the Oscars ceremony, and were shocked at the negative publicity she received afterward. I sent her the letter below care of her management agency in March after we were aware of the publicity (we don’t really follow celebrity culture). This weekend, when I was in Washington DC for my stepdaughter’s graduation, I was riffling through a recent Cosmopolitan in her dorm room as she prepared to move out and saw yet another article on why Anne Hathaway was unlikeable. So, since for some reason, celebrity culture still finds this topic current, I am going to repost the letter here:

Regarding your comment: “Here’s hoping that sometime in the not-too-distant future, the misfortunes of Fantine will only be found in stories—and not in real life.”

March 15, 2013
Dear Ms. Hathaway,
I am not the sort of person who normally writes celebrities. I work for a human rights organization called Christian Peacemaker Teams (cpt.org) and have served on assignments in Haiti, Chiapas, Colombia, Palestine and Israel, Democratic Republic of Congo and with North American Indigenous communities. I have enclosed a newsletter so you will know the sort of thing that normally occupies my time. Like millions of people I was moved by your performance in Les Miserables (My brother—a SAG member—wrote in his January 25 Facebook status: “exercised his sacred right to vote this morning, knowing that the whole of western civilization depends on Anne Hathaway being recognized for her rendition of ‘I Dreamed a Dream.’”) My husband and I watched the Oscar broadcast this year primarily because we had acquaintances who made the documentary, “5 Broken Cameras,” and because of you.

We so appreciated that you gave a nod to all the real-life Fantines in your acceptance speech. I have worked with people who have had most of their choices stripped away and people who have given up everything, including their dignity, for the sake of their children. You captured their despair and conviction in a profound way when you sang, “I dreamed a dream.”

But I would not have written this letter if it hadn’t been for the media in the past weeks obsessing over the darts in your dress and in general everything except your mention of the real Fantines of the world. In fact, the only thing I found about you acknowledging their suffering was a snarky “Anne Hathaway thinks Fantine was real.”

So that’s why I decided to write. Just so you know that my husband and I noticed, and appreciated it. I’m sure Victor Hugo would have too.

Blessings and peace,

Kathleen Kern

First blogging, Islamic Charitable society

Well folks, now I have both a cellphone and a blog. No wonder people here think I’m younger than 46.

To those of you who are checking in because of my Markie letters, I won’t promise I’m going to keep as up to date on this blog as I do on Markie. Right now we’re a team of 5 and it really isn’t quite enough to accomplish the work we need to accomplish–so I find I’m falling behind on my CPTnet postings, necessary e-mails and other writing.

The two big foci of the work now are organizing and participating in orphanage overnights and visiting people in Wadi Nasara who are getting stoned almost daily by settlers from Kiryat Arba. I’m posting two releases below that haven’t appeared on CPTnet that explain the situation of both.

The United Nations has cited a report we wrote re: the orphanage situation on page 15 of it’s new report to the General Assembly on the Human Rights situation in Palestine:http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/eed216406b50bf6485256ce10072f637/44911f7d52e1cba38525746b00490a94!OpenDocument

Jean Fallon will be leaving us next week and we’ll be only 4. She’s a Maryknoll sister who served 50 years in Japan. As it happens, the only International Solidarity Movement person in Hebron right now is a Japanese guy named Naoki (but everyone at Wadi Nasara calls him “Nokia.”) His English is very limited, so it’s actually been kind of sweet that the two of them can converse in Japanese–he just visibly relaxes when they’re together. I guess that’s one of the nice things about the work here. I mean, in Japan, Naoki, who looks like he’s in his twenties, would probably never strike up a friendship with an American nun in her seventies, but there you go. I have gotten into long theological and biblical discussions with a 22 year old Dutch Mennonite intern here, Marius, which probably would not have happened, otherwise. I mean, there’s only so many people in the world that enjoy that sort of thing and what are the chances I would meet a Dutch guy who enjoys it anywhere else in the world. I’m also enjoying my time with Kathie Uhler (yes it gets confusing) and Jean. We’re all Mennonites and nuns here now.

So, here are the relevant articles. I’m happy to be sleeping in my own bed tonight instead of the orphanage. Fewer mosquitos.

Why we are protecting orphanages run by an Islamic Charity

Before I left for a CPT assignment in Hebron, a relative asked what I would be doing there. I told him I would probably be spending a lot of time at orphanages the Israeli military was trying to close down. “Why are they trying to close them down?” he asked. “Because they are run by Islamic Charities,” I said. “Oh,” he said, nodding, as though the word “Islamic” were a sound reason to deprive several hundred children of a home.

That reaction, however, did not surprise me, given the way that “Islamic” has become synonymous with “terrorist” in western and Israeli culture. And the Israeli military has used this prejudice to justify closing orphanages, schools and other institutions run by the Islamic Charitable Society (ISC) in Hebron, citing a connection between the institution and Hamas.

Yes, most of the Palestinians in Hebron are conservative Muslims—including the 550 employees of the Islamic Charitable Society, and most conservative Muslims support the Palestinian political party of Hamas, just as most conservative Christians in the United States support the Republican Party. That about sums up the connection between ISC and Hamas. A recent U.N. report notes that the Israeli military itself has not found any evidence of illegal activity happening in the ISC institutions.

As I looked for analogies that would explain the situation with Islamic Charities, I thought of the Salvation Army. I remember how much I loved hearing the sound my coins made at Christmas time when I put them in the red metal pot, and the smile the old man in the Salvation Army uniform gave me as he rang his bell beside the pot.

My husband, however, associates the Salvation Army with Oliver North, whom it invited to speak at fundraising events. As someone who cared passionately about the human rights abuses the governments of Central America were committing against their citizens during the 1980s, he thought it was appalling that a Christian organization would provide North a platform, given that his work with U.S. intelligence agencies supported criminals responsible the deaths of thousands of Central Americans.

No one suggested shutting down the Salvation Army’s ministries because of their connection to a man who lied before congress about selling weapons to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. No one in the United States would suggest shutting down charitable institutions for the needy run by conservative Republican Christians simply because a conservative Republican administration initiated the catastrophic violence in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So our Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron will continue to sleep in the orphanages and schools run by ISC during this critical period, when most of the children are at home with extended families and the Israeli military might be more likely to wreck them, as it has already wrecked ISC bakeries, warehouses, and workshops. Because they are facilities built for needy children, and all three Abrahamic faiths count the care of children, especially orphans, as a hallmark of basic human morality.

Families in Wadi Nasara under attack from two sides

The families of Wadi Nasara–a valley on the outskirts of Hebron next to which the Kiryat Arba settlement has expanded–have had to put up with increasing amounts of settler harassment over the years. But in March 2007, when Israeli settlers occupied a Palestinian building across the road bordering Wadi Nasera, families in the valley, most belonging to the al-Ja’abari clan, began facing attacks from two sides.

The homes of three al-Ja’abari families lie literally within a stone’s throw of Kiryat Arba. The eighty people (including fifty children) living there face almost daily harassment from neighboring settlers. On 6-7 June 2008, settler youth entered the families’ property and smashed large rocks against the Ja’aberis’ rooftops, seriously damaging ceilings in two homes, and a solar water-heating panel on another. When CPTers David Martin and Kathleen Kern visited the area the following week, M* al-Ja’aberi told them, “They have thrown stones at us for years. They even attacked Israeli peacemakers who visited our homes. But when they set our home on fire a year ago, we knew we needed to seek the help of international peacemakers in the area.” CPT has since begun daily patrols in the area, along with two other international groups working in Hebron.

On 13 June 2008, a group of eight to ten settlers from the “Occupied House,” as local Palestinians refer to it, crossed the road and entered the home of a multi-family dwelling. They shouted threats and attempted to attack people in the home; however Al-Ja’aberi family members managed to push them out. Settlers also regularly throw trash in the families’ yards and “target” the homes with red laser sightings. When asked whether they called the police during altercations, H.* Al-Ja’aberi, the father of one of the families, told Martin, Kern, and Marius Van Hoogstraten, that the police and army always help the settlers when called during such attacks.

“If I am in the yard, settlers will walk by without looking, but if only children are out, they will attack them,” he told the CPTers.

“The kids grow up thinking everyone is equal,” al-Ja’abari continued. “My son doesn’t know there’s an occupation. If he is hit by a settler, he thinks it’s okay to hit back.” Children learn however, that when Palestinians respond in kind to settler assaults, the Israeli authorities will arrest them and not the Israelis.

On top of the additional violence and harassment that the Occupied House has brought to the people of Wadi Nasara, the Israeli military apparatus protecting settlers living in the house has caused significant hardship. A checkpoint now forces H. al-Ja’abari’s family to walk 600 meters down a treacherous, winding path to gain access to a car (The main paved road in the area runs right by the family’s house, but the Israeli army permits only settlers to use it.) He was forced to take this path after undergoing abdominal surgery; the Israeli military would not allow the ambulance to take him home. “Even if I were dying, I would have to walk,” al-Ja’abari said.

*Names have been changed to protect individuals

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