Foreword By Marianne Williamson

American bestselling author, political activist, spiritual thought leader, US Presidential Candidate 2024.

No one can authentically encounter the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without agony. The hatred, fear and suffering in this drama are so real and seemingly intractable, it’s like a horror story that never ends. Nothing seems less helpful than those who would presume that there are easy answers.
“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. I’ll meet you there,” wrote the poet Rumi. The problem is not that people don’t believe this field exists; the problem is how hard it can be to get there. In Israel and Palestine – and elsewhere in the world- there is so much pain, and there are so many layers of often unprocessed trauma that stand in our way as we seek to reach it. How blessed are those who do the work of trying to pave the way.

God knows, some brilliant minds have tried. But perhaps that is the point: the mind alone can’t do it. As Einstein reminded us that the problems of the world will not be solved with the level of thinking at which they were created, our species stands perched in a mysterious limbo: will we perpetuate the madness of humanity’s collision course with itself, or will we consider the possibility that there might be another away? There is a new kind of peacebuilding rising among us, going way beyond the purview of diplomat or soldier. For peace is not the absence of war; war is the absence of peace. True, fundamental peace is not an artificial comfort; it is a return to our essential nature. It is raw. It is emotional. It is real. At times it is harrowing. It stems from facing the internal wars that are reflected in our external violence. Peacemakers aren’t softies. They’re the bravest of the brave.

It’s difficult to read this book by Nitsan Joy Gordon without awe at her emotionally bravery, and the bravery of the women who have joined with her – both Arab and Jew – to pave a path to peace for themselves and others.  That path is not a path of avoiding their pain, but of allowing themselves to feel their pain; not a path of explaining themselves, but of listening to others; not a path of always saying yes, but of sometimes saying no. The courage to remain awake, not only to one’s own pain but to the pain of the other, is the work of the modern peacemaker. The women in this book are extraordinary examples of what that looks like and where it can lead.

In A Course in Miracles it is said that the “holiest spot on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love.” Whenever I have read that line, and I have read it often, I have thought of Israel and Palestine. The Holy Land, the place where several major religions find their portal to God, is a place on the planet where the peace of God seems sometimes hardest to attain. Whether looked at from a political or a spiritual perspective, this cannot be an accident. There – in that holy yet tortured place – lay both the problem and the Answer, humanity’s greatest division and greatest opportunity for peace. It is a land of an ancient hatred longing for a present love.

Reading this book, you feel such a present love is possible, even if only expressed in fleeting moments of resolution. Nitsan Gordon was only five years old when her father first told her to seek resolution. It wasn’t to be just with her little brother, as she might have thought then; the search for resolution was to be her life’s calling. In order to claim that calling, however, she would have to enter the darkest regions of her own pain, acknowledge the pain of others and invite them to dwell in those regions with her. Her work, and the work of the other women whose stories are told in this book, is truly the Great Work.

And they do it so well. What a blessing on Israel and Palestine, and a gift to the entire world.

October 2022.

Healing, Transforming, Peacebuilding and Never Stopping
By Leymah R. Gbowee

Nobel Peace Laureate, peace activist, social worker and women’s rights advocate. Founder and President of the Gbowee Peace FoundationAfrica,based in Monrovia.

Be bold. Step out. And never walk on tiptoes,
because anyone who walks on tiptoes can never
leave footprints for people to walk in.
Leymah

Throughout my years of working for healing, reconciliation and peace I have seen in intimate ways, both large and small, how women and children bear the brunt of wars and mass atrocities. In my country, I have met and worked with women who were raped and tortured, vulnerable children who became soldiers, and even children who, while on drugs, raped and killed innocent victims. I have seen homes that were burned, destroyed and looted. I have experienced the physical and emotional tolls of war firsthand: I have held children in my arms who were hungry, and cradled women who lost their children to violence. Amidst the despair around me and even stretches of intimate violence in my own home, I struggled to survive and raise a family and knew I wanted to do something to change structures and systems of violence.

I often wondered why women who bore the brunt of war were expected to remain quiet while men debated how to make peace. From firsthand experience I realized that peace-building isn’t just ending a fight by standing between two opposing forces. As Nitsan Joy Gordon so effectively demonstrates in her book, it is also those moments of holding and healing those victimized by war. It is supporting them in becoming strong again, and bringing them back to the people they once were, where glimpses of peace shine through. It is helping the perpetrator rediscover their humanity and dignity so they once again become productive members of their communities.

Women have such an important role in healing and in creating a culture of peace, a culture where people learn to see beyond the walls of stereotypes, those walls that obstruct our ability to get to know one another and see each other’s humanity.

When I visited Israel in 2016, at the invitation of Women Wage Peace, I wondered why the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has lasted for so many years, why it can feel intractable.  Through my conversations there, it was clear that a majority on both sides want to live in peace and security.  It was also clear how both sides experience pain and worry for their families, how they see themselves as victims. I wondered why some of the parties try to convince people on both sides that there is no partner for peace.  I realized that like in Liberia and other parts of the world the answer lies in both individual and collective traumas. Our experiences of violence and war program us to view the reality around us from a place of fear, suspicion and hostility.

When I read Together Beyond Words: Women on a Quest for Peace in the Middle East, I learned about similar and different strategies towards peace as compared to the ones we used in the Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET). But a common thread across both is the desire to work through traumas and towards collective healing.

The approaches I read in Nitsan’s book can be used as great tools in conflict areas to help survivors work through their individual and collective traumas and strengthen their role as peace builders. Women can become peacemakers when they have safe places to release the pain that keeps them from feeling their own strength.

We are now in unprecedented times, our communities, countries and Earth are in grave danger. The world is calling for us to listen, and to change. We are each being asked to do our part to heal and resolve our conflicts.

I call on all who read this book to join the courageous women and men who continue working for peace, in the collective making of a better world. And I want to express my gratitude to all peacemakers in Palestine, Israel, South Sudan, Congo DRC, Central Africa Republic, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and around the world. May God continue to guide and sustain you.

October 2022.

Photo: Courtesy Michael Angelo’s Wonderland