People You Should Know About: Bassam Aramin
February 8, 2007 by Rabbi Brant Rosen
Please read this article by Bassam Aramin, the former Palestinian militant whose 10 year old daughter Abir (right) was recently killed during a clash between stone throwing youths and Israeli border police in the West Bank town of Anata.
Aramin is currently a member of Combatants for Peace, an inspiring effort created by Israelis and Palestinians who are promoting a non-violent resolution to this tragic conflict.
Grief cuts many ways. It can inspire deeper hatred, but sometimes, in rare and precious occasions such as this, it can also promote greater healing.
Please, please read Aramin’s article…
Thank you for sharing this article. What a powerful story.
If there was ever a story that intertwines tragedy and hopefulness, this one is it. Thanks also for the link to the Combatants for Peace website. I was sorry to miss their local presentation the other night.
On a related topic, I just finished “The Lemon Tree” a book I know you have recommended in the past. I must echo Brants’s sentiments. This book is a page-turner, and a true story that beautifully illustrates the human side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This reminds me of Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi, who were able to face their attackers with such strength and courage.
I recently attended a class on the topic of nonviolence taught by Jim Kenney at Common Ground Center in Deerfield. He spoke about the myth of redemptive violence, where the hero is empowered to kill those who must be killed , as an act of redemption for “all of us”. This very old myth is now being challenged by a new “myth” - that what will make us whole again is not redemptive violence, but restorative justice. Bassam Aramin is one of the heroes of the new myth, the myth that will hopefully triumph and carry us into the future. Thank you for sharing this story, Brant.
Thank you for sharing this most powerful story, Brant. You always manage to guide us to places that will provoke thought and discussion.
I hope that the social service component of our Israel trip in which we meet with Mideast peace groups will prove to be as interesting, moving, and thought provoking as this article was.
Thanks again, Vickie
The Christian theological work on the myth of redemptive violence and how Jesus used the suffering servant motif to counter it is superb. I think this work also is vitally important for Judaism or at least for Jews seeking to root their nonviolent beliefs in Judaism. I don’t know how Common Ground teaches it but none of it really depends on New Testament materials. We can give prior authorship to the unknown Jewish redactor (or redactors) who united the suffering servant poems of second Isaiah with the messianic kingship material of first Isaiah to produce a profoundly nonviolent purpose for Israel in the Diaspora. I believe that we can find these ideas (usually as undercurrents but sometimes in more pronounced forms and with no more stretching than needs to be done with the New Testament and a great deal less stretching than has been done to make these texts legitimizers of war and violence) in the Torah and other Jewish texts as well.