every one MUST read it:

New Activism is Needed
A speech by Uri Ayalon for the Summer University, Tamera, 2008

I want to share with you some thoughts about my life as a peace worker in training. The anger at injustice was seeded in my heart when I was a child. My parents told me that all the human beings are equals and that we have to share all that we have with everyone. But I couldn't understand why other people lived in the streets while we lived in a comfortable house. I became a little bit older and my parents warned me that if I tried any kind of drug, I'd end up being a junky. But I couldn't understand how that fit together with their own addictions like cigarettes, coffee and shopping.
My parents taught me to love animals; but they also taught me how to eat them. When I asked my parents about sexuality, they said that, "sex is a beautiful thing that you should have only with your wife who will be the love of your life." But when all the family would watch "Dynasty" together [a masterpiece TV melodrama], they put their hands over my eyes whenever there was an erotic scene on the screen.

My parents taught me to pray for peace. But they also taught me that I should go into the army to protect my country and to fight my enemies -- the Arabs. When I asked my parents about who was here, in the holy land, before the state of Israel was established, they answered: "No one." But when I read some history books, I realized that this land was settled hundreds of years before mostly by Palestinian farmers.

I'm thankful and grateful to my parents and for all the things they gave me - among them my life. I believed my parents when they told me there is no justice in this world. But somehow this thought didn't damage my belief that I should and can change that. On the contrary, since my childhood I could feel my responsibility to the whole planet to which I'm deeply connected. I knew that no one is happy until every one is happy; no one is free until every one is free.

For a long time in my life the meaning of this sentence was that I'm not allowed to be happy. How can I be happy when I know what is happening in Africa, in Colombia, in Tibet, in Palestine? I became an angry activist in the first line of the anarchist Israeli movement. We cut fences and blocked bulldozers, and we were arrested again and again. I enjoyed being the radical big hero with not a small ego. I felt that, like the American activist Rachel Corrie who was killed in Gaza strip while she was protecting a Palestinian house from being demolished, I could also give my life for the freedom of Palestine, for the end of the occupation. Rachel would now be twenty-nine years old, like me. But she gave her life for the Palestinian struggle when she was only twenty-three years old.

In this struggle, the Palestinians changed from enemies into friends, my comrades of a combined struggle. We had totally different thoughts about women's rights, animal rights, hierarchy, and other core issues, so we were united not by a common vision but by a common enemy -- the Israeli state. It was clear that when the occupation ended, we wouldn't have anything to talk about. I said that I believed in the co-existence of Israelis and Palestinians, but I didn't have any picture or vision for it.

From demonstration to demonstration, from action to action, I started to realize the depth and the wide scale of the crisis areas in the world: I witnessed the crisis area in which my enemies, the soldiers, are living in. I witnessed the crisis area in my heart, the crisis area in my wounded trust in people, and the crises area in the area of love. I realized that we, as activists, are doing the same thing as our parents: we tell them and we tell all the world that we want peace, but we are looking forward for the next conflict with the soldiers. We speak about solidarity, but we are hiding our jealousy, comparison and competition. We are shouting against the consuming culture and its systematic sexist brain washing, but we are afraid to approach each other. So often we need alcohol as an excuse for a physical contact between man and woman. We say that all the world should live without any borders, in small communities instead of states, but we can't even deal with the issue of washing dishes in our community. We know so well what we are against, but we don't have a clue what we are for.

In the last few years, since I've been in contact with Tamera, I started to understand this anarchistic sentence in a different way: if no one is happy until everyone is happy, then I should be happy in order to allow other people to be happy as well. I should free myself in order to support another's freedom. In other words: Be the change you want to see in the world, not only as a slogan but as a concrete question. What does it mean for a concrete project in ME? My task is to be happy - not to forget the madness in the world, and also not to forget my deep responsibility for creating another world; not to be ashamed of my privileges as a white middle-class man, but to use them for creating another world -- here and now.

I still want to give my life to the revolution, but now in a positive way -- not to die for it but to live it fully, to dedicate my life, to give it all of my efforts, my spirit, my energy. I want to be a servant of the transformation and healing; in this way, to make a truthful contact, to find a calm space between humans, to listen to each other and to reflect each other, to create new spaces and new structures of trust. This is new activism for me. This is the quiet revolution in which I'm active these days.

As a student here in Tamera, I found myself rehabilitating again and again my inner crises area, knowing that my personal issues are global issues. As we all deal with the wish for security, safety and intimacy, we all search for being part of the unity again; and we all trying to bridge the gap between the fairy tales about the prince and princess who lived happily ever after -- to the reality which doesn't include any princes, or includes much more than one princess...

I believe in this project because of its complexity and its holistic perspective. In order to achieve peace we can't fight nature and the animals. In order to achieve peace, we need to include in our peace work not only the Middle East, but the whole world. In order to achieve peace we need to find new ways for raising children. We can't create a new peace culture without new answers of alternative technology. We can't live a full life in an isolated way, separating ourselves from other people and separate ourselves from God. We can't live in peace as long we are still fighting our deepest longings and desires.

I believe in this project because it allows me to touch my truth, to express it and to live it. This is peace work because truth builds trust, and trust is the basis for peace. I believe that a Peace Research Village in the Middle East can change the whole world by creating a strong field of a new culture in a acupuncture point on the globe. For this we need Israelis, Palestinians and people from all over the world that will commit to a life in peace, in truth and in trust with each other -- as a live model which will prove that reconciliation is possible. This project gives me a new vision for how peace can be achieved and how it can be lived, because it emphasizes that, as life is not only a lack of death, and health is not only a lack of disease, peace is not only a lack of war. Peace is a new path of life that we still need to imagine, to envision and to dream of.

For this dream I need your help; I ask your help. There is an urgent need to move from talking into action. A lot of words were said on this stage in the last four days. Now it's time to start thinking about the next step, about the day after the Summer University. What kind of change will we commit to in our life? It is too easy to go back to sleep now, to say, "I had amazing days of inspiration and new contacts and now I go back to school or to work." I could say, "I gave my speech and now I can go rest." But the world situation demands from us a new kind of activism. We are not allowed any more to say, "We didn't know," or "This is how it is; there is nothing for us to do." We are not allowed to lie anymore to our children, and we are not allowed to lie to ourselves anymore. We have to choose every day, every minute and every second, between making war and making peace, or making love. The time is running out. It's zaman el-salam, zman leshalom. It is time for peace. INSHALLA. AMEN.


IF YOU WANT MORE INFO ABOUT THE SUMMER UNI. :
www.tamera.org or
www.summeruniversity.tamera.org

!ULTREIA!