Peace Begins With People
| 3/30/2009 | Posted by Patti under Middle East |
Let their be peace on earth and let it begin with me.
Let their be peace on earth the peace that was meant to be.
With God as our father brothers all are we.
Let me walk with my brother in perfect harmony.
I opened The Star today and encountered an article about a young musical group called “Strings of Freedom” from the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank having travelled to a seniors centre near Tel Aviv to play for the residents. The musicians didn’t know their audience were survivors of the holocaust, many of them didn’t know the holocaust had even taken place. The audience didn’t know their musicians were young Palestinians.
The chances for peace and friendship we can have when we don’t know who we’re talking to. The event was part of Good Deeds Day which is sponsored by one of the richest women in Israel. The reaction in Jenin has resulted in the orchastra being shut down with many claiming the young people were exploited for political gain. I guess it is all about perspective.
As I read the reports on this, the lyrics above came to mind. Many years ago, when my now adult niece was in grade 4 and I was Legion President I invited her class to sing that piece at our Remembrance Day service in the local park. To me, their young voices singing this piece represented all that was right about Remembrance Day. It is not a day to celebrate war but to honour the cost of piece. A day to remember the past and pray for peace in the future.
That performance became even more symbolic for me personally. You see at the very moment that service was taking place my beloved grandmother Instance was being laid to rest. Grandma was a gentle, kind and quiet person who had been touched by war. She had lost relatives in England during the German blitz, she had seen her husband and her sons go off to war (thankfully they returned safely).
Grandma never lost her anger at the Germans. It was expressed in her ever quiet way but it was there and it was not something you could mistaken. I don’t know how many Germans she had ever known in her life but their actions in WW2 shaped her attitude towards them for her life.
Both of the groups in that centre in Israel had a rare opportunity to experience the other group in a way that was non-confrontational. In a way that allowed each group to experience the other without prejudice. More opportunities like that could find a way to peace that years, decades of negotiations can’t but they wont happen unfortunately.
David at Israelity provides an excellent report on the group. I support his final words “So, just like most attempts to draw people together here, the Jenin-Holocaust survivors summit seems to have ended on a sour note. But let’s hope the youth orchestra returns to play again, and that some day, a group of young Israeli musicians might even be able to go to Jenin and play some music there, without having to fear for their lives.” -- right on David.
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