Today on Peace Talks Radio, we profile three peaceactivists who have made an outsized impact on peace.
We want medical research to look for the cure, sosimilarly in peace studies, we want to look for the paths to peace in aconflict, to diagnose the problem, identify prognosis, where it will go if itcontinues on this path.
Later we discuss cultural diplomacy in the Middle Eastwith the Director of the Center for Peace Communications.
The real work isn’t done by governments, it’s done bysocieties.
Different perspectives on peace activism from the pastto the present today on Peace Talks Radio.
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This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series andpodcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I’m series producerPaul Ingles today with correspondent Emily Cohen. For this episode, we’reprofiling people who have shaped discourse around peace and nonviolence sincethe 1970s.
In part one, we’ll profile former Catholic priest andantiwar activist Philip Berrigan, Founding Father of Peace Studies ProgramsJohan Galtung.
In part two of this episode, Joseph Braude, Founderand Director of The Center for Peace Communications with focuses on culturaldiplomacy in the Middle East.
First, we speak with Brad Wolf about his recentlypublished book, A Ministry of Risk, featuring a collection of writings fromPhilip Berrigan. Berrigan was an internationally renowned American peaceactivist and former Roman Catholic priest. He devoted his life to opposingAmerican militarism, the use of nuclear weapons, social inequalities and policebrutality. He spent 11 years in jail and at one time was on the FBIs Ten MostWanted list for destruction of government property and other acts of vandalismcommitted in protest of the Vietnam War.
Emily Cohen:How did you first get interested in doing this project and compiling thiscollection of essays by Phil Berrigan?
Brad Wolf: Istarted reading Daniel Berrigan’s books about ten or 12 years ago and I wasborn and raised Catholic and went to Catholic school and was never introducedto The Berrigans, not to Dorothy Day, not to Daniel Berrigan or PhilipBerrigan. I discovered them much later in life, in my 40s.
Dan Berrigan was the poet and award-winning writer.His books are still in print. I read them which led me to Phil’s books whichwere out of print. The more I read Phil’s books the more I wondered why theyweren’t back in print. When I asked around to people who knew him, they wouldsay, “Phil wasn’t the writer. He was the organizer, the action man. Dan was thewriter.”
I disagreed. I thought Phil was a great writer. It wasa different kind of writing, but it was profound, it was prophetic, it wasright to the point. He had the ability to analyze a situation quickly and getright to the heart of who was gaining, who was losing, where the power was andwho the victims were.
I reached out to a friend of mine, Father John Dearwho actually shared a cell with Phil for nine months and I said, “John, what’sup with Phil’s writings? Why aren’t they being published? Somebody should do acollection.” He said, “Why don’t you give it a shot?” I said, “Okay, I will,”and it led to this.
Emily Cohen:Do you think Berrigan’s message is resonating in a different way now than itmay have five years ago because of some of the current events?
Brad Wolf:I don’t know if it will resonate in a different way. I think it’s certainly newto some people, particularly young people and that was one of the reasons thatI really wanted to get this book out there.
When I was arranging the book and editing it, I did itchronologically, so it was a kind of autobiography that talks about Phil’sjourney. I thought that would really be instructive to young people to see howthis man grew over time and the sacrifices he made. He spent 11 years in prisonfor his nonviolent resistance to war.
It’s not that we all have to spend 11 years in prison,but we all do have some kind of ministry of risk that we can undertake and goabout peacemaking. I thought if people get an idea of Phil’s personality andhis life, they will like him and maybe they will work a little bit harder forpeace.
Emily Cohen:Can you speak to that, The Ministry of Risk, the title of the book? Berrigantook a lot of risks in his life. As you said, he spent 11 years in prison. Hewas a wanted felon, a personal target of J. Edgar Hoover. What does thisconcept, “ministry of risk” mean?
Brad Wolf: Thatcame the first day that I was in the archives at Cornell University. I wasgoing through boxes of papers from the Berrigans. The Berrigan papers are keptat Cornell in DePaul. There are hundreds of boxes.
The first day at Cornell I went through and pulled outa speech that Phil gave in 1974, a homily that he was giving. Another youngpriest was being ordained that day. This was Phil passing onto another ministerhis wisdom about what it’s like to be a priest. The title of it was called, “AMinistry of Risk and Liberation.” I thought, that’s it, that’s the title of thebook, “A Ministry of Risk.” That’s what Phil’s life was but it also lent itselfto each of us being able to take up a ministry of risk. We can all have our ownministry in what we do. We don’t have to be priests or nuns.
I thought it was a great working title for the book.When you look Phil’s speech with that title, he describes a ministry of risk;“A ministry of risk entails going into the breach or into the ditch with thevictims. It teaches two lessons that all of us belong in the breach with thevictims and until we all go into the breach with the victims, the victimizationwill not stop.”
Emily Cohen:He went to the breach in some very dramatic ways to use that turn of phrase. Heburned draft cards. He defaced military equipment. He poured animal blood onprivate property. What is the impact and intention really of these strategies?
Brad Wolf: Theywere very creative strategies of nonviolent resistance. The pouring of blood ondraft files occurred in 1967 in Baltimore. The idea was that draft files werethe hardcopy documents that were used to draft young men to go to Vietnam tokill or be killed. Pouring blood on them, going into the office and pouringblood on them not only symbolized the blood of Christ, but it symbolized thespilled blood of the Vietnamese and the spilled blood of Americans.
It was meant to be a dramatic symbol that would spurconversation at the American dinner table. Phil thought that Americans wereasleep during this war. They were not taking notice as so many people weredying, and he wanted to wake them up. A middle-aged Catholic priest pouringblood on draft files might do that, so that’s what he did. When you think aboutit, that’s a very creative idea. It was not just protesting; it was picking outa selective service office and pouring blood on the files. For that one action,he received a six-year prison sentence.
Before he began serving that sentence, he quicklyorganized the next action at Cantonsville Maryland which is where he and othersused homemade napalm to burn 400 draft files. Napalm was very symbolic becausethat’s what we were dropping on civilians in Vietnam at the time. Theinteresting thing about that is what they didn’t know was that no otherhardcopies of those files were kept, so when they destroyed those copies, itliterally stopped young men from being drafted. That spurred a whole series ofother actions on draft offices by other people. From 1966 to 1972, there werehundreds of drafts raids and hundreds of thousands of draft records weredestroyed.
Emily Cohen:Berrigan fought in WWII and did so quite willingly. It was only later that hebecame a peace activist. How did this evolution occur?
Brad Wolf: Thiswas what was so interesting to read about, to see this evolution because hewrites about his time in WWII. He wanted to go, and he said that he wanted tokill as many Nazis as he could. He referred to himself as “Philip the Bold,”the bravest kid on the block. He defines himself as being a well-trained killerin WWII. He fought his way through Europe.
When he came home, he was very disillusioned at whathe had seen and what he had done. He wrote that he had to look in the mirror ofhis own violence and try to reconcile it with his faith. That led to a longperiod of discernment for him and that’s when he decided to join the JosephitePriest Order which is a Catholic order dedicated to serving African Americans.
He specifically chose that order because of the racismhe had seen in the service when he was in Basic Training in the South. Itoutraged him, so he wanted to work in the African American community. That gothim into Civil Rights activism in the 1950s and started him on his activistroute.
Emily Cohen:Some might say that WWII could not have been won without violence or withoutnuclear weapons and that you can’t put the so-called genie back in the bottle. Whatdo you think Berrigan might say to that?
Brad Wolf:I think he might say that every war plants the seeds of the next war. No warhas ever ended war. WWI obviously planted the seeds of WWII and WWII plantedthe seeds of the Cold War and all the wars that were then outsourced to ThirdWorld countries like Vietnam and Central America.
You’re not going to end violence with violence andyou’re not going to end war with war. Until we all become peacemakers, until weall become fully human and recognize that we are connected with everybodyacross the planet, that we are all literally brothers and sisters, until then,we’re not going to have any kind of true peace. We’re just going to have a lullin between wars and that’s no way to live. That’s not peace.
There is no such thing as a good war. I think Philwould be very comfortable with that idea. That’s something he worked towards.He used language like “becoming fully human,” again and again. I think that hefelt that war or acceptance of war was diminishing our humanity. To become“fully human” meant to care and to work for peace.
Emily Cohen: Berriganhad a complicated relationship with the Catholic Church. He was a priest, buthe was also excommunicated. I found a passage highlighted in one of hiswritings speaking to what you were just talking about which says, “The churchis always against war but never against this war.” What was Berrigan’srelationship with the church and why didn’t he find another spiritual homeafter being excommunicated?
Brad Wolf: Hedefinitely battled with the Catholic Church. From the very beginning, they werealways trying to silence him about Civil Rights, about antiwar activism, but hishome was in the Catholic Church. He loved the intellectual tradition of thechurch, but he thought that it needed to be reformed, that it needed to live upto its creed.
He said, “Christianity and revolution are synonymous.”When you think about that, it’s a powerful statement and not many Catholicswould want to accept that. He looked at the life of Christ and thought, that’swhat we are called to do; you must live out what you believe. You must walk thewalk. The beatitudes in particular were his gospel and that’s what he followed.His hope was that he would pull some Catholics with him towards living out thebeatitudes, towards being makers of peace.
He was of the belief that peace was a verb. You had tomake peace. It didn’t come to you. It wasn’t given to you or bestowed upon you.As a Christian and as a Catholic, you had to go out and work for peace. It wasa contentious relationship, but as with all prophets and saints, there is acontentious relationship that they have with the church. It’s only inretrospect, years, decades, even centuries later that they are seen as havingtraveled the right path.
Emily Cohen:You mentioned that we may have to go make the peace. What is the part that wehave to play? What does it look like for an everyday American?
Brad Wolf:I think that’s an important question because the news is overwhelmingly bad,and we’re bombarded with it constantly from so many different angles. A lot oftimes the response is, “I’m not going to pay attention. I’m going to avert myeyes and ignore what I’m hearing. I just want to go out with my friends or dowhatever.” That is something that we cannot do. When you ask, “What can we do?”Well, the first thing that we can do is pay attention because what’s happeningaround the world with American tax dollars is happening under the name of ourcountry, so as Americans, we have a particular responsibility to stand up anddo something because we’re funding a great deal of suffering and needless deatharound the world. You should pay attention and get involved.
Once you get involved, you start caring and then youwill find your way. Each one of us has a special skillset that we can use. Itmay be organizing, it may be writing, it may be the arts and crafts or music,but there is a skillset that each of us has that can be deployed to make peace,to save lives and to try to make life a little easier for vulnerablepopulations around the globe. There can be no better journey that we’re on thanthat. There can be no better life at the end than a life working for that.
Emily Cohen:Any final thoughts on Berrigan, your book or promoting peace?
Brad Wolf:Yes, speaking to Phil I would say that it’s truly a unique and amazing life toread about. It’s a uniquely American life to read about, a Depression Era boywho becomes a WWII veteran, a Catholic priest, a political prisoner, a fugitivefrom justice as you say, but then he goes on to marry and have children. Hecontinues his antiwar work all the way up until his death.
If you want to read about an amazing trajectory of ahuman being trying to find grace and liberation, you can read it in this book.I think it’s uplifting despite the fact that it’s about war. It’s upliftingbecause it’s the victory of the human spirit.
I enjoyed researching it. I felt energized andempowered by it. My life was certainly changed by all the research that I didand what I read about Phil. I’m glad I got to know him through his words. Inever met him in life, but I feel that I’ve gotten to know him through all ofhis writings.
Emily Cohen:So, what’s next for you?
Brad Wolf:I’d like to find a way to compile all the information that I’ve obtained, notjust about Phil Berrigan, but also about the Merchants of Death Tribunal. I’dlike to find a way to take that work and combine it down to the family, down tothe microcosm because we have violence in families, and we have violence incountries. There is a connection there.
I originally went to work as a prosecutor because Iwanted to work with victims of violence. I realized pretty soon that all I wasdoing was sending people to prison and that was not solving anything, but thatdesire to work with victims of violence continues with me. If I could work on apiece of writing that would connect the violence in the world to the violencein our families, I think that would really be a valuable piece, something forpeople to consider and understand how violence at home can have aninternational effect as well.
Emily Cohen:That was Brad Wolf speaking about his recent book, a collection of writingsabout the Catholic peace activist Philip Berrigan.
Next up, I’ll be speaking about the Father of PeaceStudies, the Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung. Galtung passed away inFebruary 2024 at the age of 93. We invited a former student of his, ProfessorKelly Rae Kraemer, to talk about Galtung’s life and work. Kraemer is aprofessor of peace studies at The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’sUniversity in Central Minnesota. Here is my conversation with her.
Galtung is perhaps most famous for an article he wroteoutlining the concepts of positive peace and negative peace. Can you explainwhat those mean?
Kelly Rae Kraemer: Thearticle was titled “Violence, Peace and Peace Research.” It appeared in TheJournal of Peace Research in 1969 which is a journal that Johan helped tofound in Norway. He explained the concepts of negative and positive peace andthen also direct and structural violence.
The terms “negative peace” and “positive peace” hadbeen in use by activist for example Martin Luther King. He talked about it inhis letters from Birmingham jail, negative peace which is the absence of directviolence and positive peace which is the presence of justice or that absence oftension versus the presence of justice.
What Johan did in this article in 1969 was frame theseterms as scholarly terms to be used by people studying peace. He is known as“The Father of Peace Studies” because he was one of the first scholars to go tothe library and ask about books written by people studying peace. He was toldthat there wasn’t a category for that because people don’t do that.
He took these terms “negative peace,” which he definedas the absence of direct or physical violence and “positive peace” he definedas the presence of justice.
He went on over his entire career to refine theseterms, but the idea was that you could look at the United States and its civilwar over slavery. Prior to the Civil War, we had negative peace, but we alsohad slavery, which was the terrible exploitation of an entire race of peoplewho no say in their own lives or their own fate. There was certainlyinterpersonal violence going on between slave owners and masters and the slaveswho would whip or kill slaves. Being were being sold apart from their families.
There was a structural exploitation built into thesystem where you couldn’t say there was a group of people in a back room makingall this happen. The true violence of slavery was not just in the physicalattacks that happened against enslaved people, but also the structure.
Emily Cohen:Galtung grew up in a family of doctors and terms like “intervention” are verycommon in the medical world. He heard the term at the dinner table when he wasa child. He heard the words, “diagnoses, prognoses.” Can you give an example ofhow these terms might apply to a conflict happening in today’s times?
Kelly Rae Kraemer:This stemmed from Johan’s belief and one of the criticisms of peace study as afield was that it is value-oriented, value-based. One of my other professorscalled it “value explicit.” We value peace over violence. A lot of people wouldsay that that’s not scientific and you can’t do that as scholars. Johan saidthat’s what they do in medicine. Do you want them to say health and disease areof equal value? Of course not! You want medicine and medical research to lookfor cures.
Similarly in peace studies, we want to look for pathsto peace. We want to be able to, in a conflict, diagnose the problem, identifyprognoses, where it will go if it continues on this path and come up withtherapies. His method of talking to people on the ground, not just top peoplewas to look for contradictions to problems that were being overlooked or forsolutions that were being overlooked. He would look for common ground or someway out of the predicament where instead of continuing to shoot at each other,there could be a creative solution.
Emily Cohen:What about in cases where the structural violence per say is more tied totheology or philosophy perhaps like with Islamic Jihad or Islamicfundamentalism? What would he say to that?
Kelly Rae Kraemer:Johan always said that in any religion, certainly in the three Abrahamicreligions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam that you could find what he referredto as the soft version and the hard version. The hard version is that each ofthose religions believe that they are the chosen people.
He studied this at the cosmological level and lookedfor the foundational beliefs that could be the source of these kinds ofviolence such as the idea of being the chosen ones. We’re all familiar withthis idea in Judaism, that Jews are God’s chosen people. That sense of beingthe chosen ones leads to the definition of cultural violence, symbolic culturalpractices that justify structural and direct violence. How do you make slaveryokay? You create a culture where it’s just natural, where it is just how thingsare and how things happen.
In Christianity there is the hard Christianity whereyou have crusades. We have hard Christianity in our own country, the UnitedStates today, people who are ready to take up arms to defend their version ofwhat it means to be a follower of Christ.
There is also the soft version of Christianity, peoplelike the Quakers who are pacifists and will not go to war or take up arms underany circumstance.
What a lot of Christians in the West don’t realize isthat Islam also has soft and hard versions. The word “Islam” itselfetymologically is rooted in the word peace, “shalom” in Hebrew and “salamu” inArabic. Jihad as a word is actually not defined as “holy war” which is whatwe’re taught to think of it as, but as “struggle.”
There are three types of jihads, jihad of the hand, ofthe head and of the heart. Jihad of the hand is violence. You pick up a sword.Jihad of the head is intellectual and how we think about things. Jihad of theheart is how we feel about things.
There is nothing inherent in Christianity, Islam orJudaism that requires people to be violent or to view others as non-human.Galtung’s approach was to study the cosmology and identify the softinterpretations of these religions and try to get people within the traditions toget to know one another and understand what these things mean.
Galtung’s approach was not to take sides. His approachto conflict from the time that he was very young was what he referred to as a “both/and”rather than an “either/or” approach. It wasn’t taking the side of one andfighting against the other, it was finding out what was at the heart of theirgrievances and trying to come up with creative alternatives for things thatthey can do that will put them on the path to peace instead of on the path towar and violence.
Emily Cohen:Any final thoughts? What should listeners be thinking about when applyingGaltung’s philosophies to their everyday lives?
Kelly Rae Kraemer: Toput it in terms that people might be familiar with, it all starts with empathy.Can you put yourself in the other person’s shoes? What are they feeling? Whatneeds do I have behind my neighbor displaying a Trump flag if I’m not a Trumpsupporter? It pushes buttons and may be upsetting if you like your neighbor.Going over to your neighbor’s house and banging on the door and then screamingat them is not going to be productive. If I can look at it and say, “I wonderwhy they put that flag up. Maybe something is pushing their buttons.” Maybeit’s the “Love Your Neighbor” sign in someone’s yard. It could be anything.What need lies behind the desire to display these signs?
There’s passion. We care about our country. We careabout the future of our society. That’s an area of common ground where we mightbe able to meet. Rather than banging on the neighbors’ door and screaming atthem for displaying something that offends me, I knock on their door with aloaf of banana bread and ask them to share a cup of coffee. Maybe as you get toknow your neighbor you bring up the sign that they have displayed mentioningthat it makes you uncomfortable and asking what it means to them.
Emily Cohen:So, approaching interactions with empathy, curiosity and listening.
Paul Ingles:That was Kelly Rae Kraemer, Professor of Peace Studies reflecting on herteacher and The Father of Peace Studies, the Norwegian sociologist the lateJohan Galtung.
You can find both parts of this program on ourwebsite, www.peacetalksradio.comas well as hear all the programs in our series there dating back to 2003. Thereis much more detail on all of our shows there as well and a donate button toowhere you can become a peace leader by supporting the nonprofit work that we’redoing here at Peace Talks Radio. Do help if you can at www.peacetalksradio.com.We want to keep talking about peace on the radio and on the internet. I hopeyou’ll join us for more online there and more in just a moment, part two of ourprogram coming up next. Do stay tuned after this break.
For correspondent Emily Cohen, I’m series producerPaul Ingles. Thanks for listening to and for supporting Peace Talks Radio.
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You’re listening to Peace Talks Radio, the radioseries and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution online at www.peacetalksradio.com.I’m series producer Paul Ingles today with correspondent Emily Cohen.
This is the second half of a two-part programprofiling influential and internationally renowned peace activists. We speakthis time with Joseph Braude, the founder and director of the Center for PeaceCommunications about his work on cultural diplomacy in the Middle East. Braudeis best known for a project called Whispered in Gaza, a collection of 25 voicesabout life under Hamas rule there.
Joseph Braude:We focus on the Middle East and North Africa and we’re about mitigatingconflict both within Arab societies as well as among neighbors across nationalboundaries.
There are a lot of different ways that people striveto advance peace. Much of it is in the category of freelance diplomacy. That’snot what we do. We are about supporting cultural change. We believe that it’sthe cultural environment that makes political resolutions possible. It’s abouteducation. It’s about the messaging of spiritual and moral leaders. It’s aboutthe media which is such a driver of culture in any society. Those are the threerealms that we are working on to try to foster a more positive and forward-lookingmessage.
Emily Cohen:How do you work with the media?
Joseph Braude:We’ve been developing relationships with Arabic media in particular for 30years. I myself have been a broadcaster on national radio in Morrocco inArabic. Most of our staff are frequent guests on Arabic television and radio.We’ve also launched our own Arabic media outlet called Jusoor which meansbridges. A lot of it is the experience of building up a network in ourcapacities and part of it is the relationship with people who want to beplatformed. Whispered in Gaza is of an example of a media project that isdesigned to grant a platform to people who would be in great danger if theyspoke out as they are.
Emily Cohen:Where can people find Jusoor? Where is that broadcast?
Joseph Braude: www.jusoornews.com.
Emily Cohen:How do you find people who are willing to speak out or wanting to work with youbecause your message isn’t the mainstream in much of the Middle East.
Joseph Braude: Itdoesn’t appear to be mainstream because so much of media and politics aredominated by rejectionist actors, Iran for example and its hundreds of mediachannels and the proxies it controls. People are fed up with it. Anyone who haslived in countries that are dominated by those proxy militias has seen themdeteriorate economically, culturally and politically. They want a differentfuture. They just don’t have a way to express themselves freely and safely.
When our group came around looking for a way to builda platform that would enable people to communicate with the outside world, wediscovered that it was not us who was having a hard time looking for people tospeak out, it’s that people have been looking for someone like us. They havebeen waiting for the opportunity to make some noise, to communicate a differentpoint of view. It’s been a very long time, and no Western power has risen tothat challenge. The people within the region who try to do it themselves arequite endangered by extremist groups.
Emily Cohen:You are of Iraqi/Jewish descent. How does your background shape your worldview?
Joseph Braude:It is a hybrid identity because being Jewish relates to the history of Jews inthe Middle East, which is extensive and the situation in Israel today. I feel avery close sense of kinship with Jews. At the same time, having an Iraqi motherand hearing Arabic spoken between my mom and grandmother as a child gave me areal affinity and sense of identification with the Arab world. I personallyfeel no conflict between those two identities. I feel that Jews, Muslims andChristians or Arabs and Israelis are natural partners.
Emily Cohen:It looks like most of the people who work for The Center for PeaceCommunications are of Arab descent.
Joseph Braude:That’s right. In the Unites States, much of our staff is Arab/American and ofcourse in the region where we have many people working with us as well.
The years before I started the organization in 2019, Itraveled to nearly every Arab country. I even lived in Iran as a graduatestudent for a summer semester in 1998. It’s really all about meeting people inperson, forging a rapport and chemistry and attempting to maintain thoserelationships across great distances.
Today social media makes it enormously easier, butindeed, as you suggested, more recently we’ve found that a lot of people cometo us. Some of the best ideas that we pursue are suggestions that are made bypeople from the region who send us an email or reach out on Facebook withideas. Sometimes what happens is we observe that many people in a specific areaare reaching out. It speaks to some kind of trend in Iraq or in Lebanon.
Emily Cohen:Let’s talk about Whispered in Gaza. That’s how I first learned about The Centerfor Peace Communications and became familiar with your work. Can you give anoverview of that for listeners who may not be familiar with this initiative?
Joseph Braude:In Gaza, as in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen there is a whole lot of peoplewho for years have been unhappy about Hamas as a governing actor, about thelocal militia that dominates their lives. That doesn’t make them pro-Israel.It’s possible to be anti-Hamas and anti-Israel at the same time, but this is ageneration of Palestinians in Gaza who have never really been in direct contactwith Israelis. Their experience with Hamas is an organization that starts warsit can’t win, hides underground and leaves civilians to suffer and stealsinternational aid that is meant for the people with many of the leaders livingabroad in luxury.
In 2019, one-thousand Palestinians in Gaza bravedgunfire and prison to wage anti-Hamas street demonstrations, but the worlddidn’t pay much attention. We knew that a lot of Gazans wanted to tell theirstories to the world, and we wanted to find a way to enable them to do that. Itoccurred to us that if we interviewed them and gave them a chance to tell theirstories and brought together a team of animators and illustrators to animateand render the stories those voices told, it could be especially compellingbecause you may not be able to see the Gazans’ faces, but you can inhabit theirlives if it was told empathically enough.
Whispered in Gaza is a series of 25 two and a halfminute clips translated into seven languages which was released with partneringmedia outlets in South America, both sides of the Atlantic, the Arab world andIran in which Gazans describe their experiences of a generation of Hamasgovernance and express their desire for a different future. It’s got a range ofviews. Some people plainly say that they were in favor of the first intifada,the second intifada, but opposed Hamas’ wars because they are so self-destructive.Others expressed a vision of peace and coexistence between Israelis andPalestinians.
We knew that it was very important for those voices tobe heard because both on the far left and the far right, both sides are denyingthat there are a whole lot of Palestinians in Gaza who don’t want to be ruledby Hamas. Each for their own reasons has been conflating Gazan majorities withHamas.
Emily Cohen:Here is a story from one of the interviews recorded for Whispered in Gaza. Thisone is called, “It’s Forbidden to Say We Don’t Want War.”
Woman: The solution willcome from the people and no one else because outside Gaza, they want to keepHamas in place. Judging from what you see in the media, they see Hamas asresistance bombing targets, impacting the scene, leading the Palestinian cause.A lot of the media outlets are working for Hamas, Al Jazeera, Al Mayadeen,their flagship channel Al Aqsa and many others depict Hamas as heroes. For thatmatter, Israeli media itself aggrandizes Hamas which also helps them when theysay Hamas is bombarding Tel Aviv, when they say we are afraid of Hamas, seewhat I mean?
And Hamas keeps going on about war after dragging thepeople into four wars they had nothing to do with. Hamas enters into war as ifGaza were a nuclear state. They tell the media they are capable of all thisdestruction when in reality they can’t even feed their population. If you are aGazan citizen who opposes war and says, “I don’t want war,” you’re branded as atraitor. It is forbidden to say you don’t want war, so people stay quiet, notout of fear per say but because they don’t want people to say that they arespies.
Emily Cohen:That was a segment of a story from the project Whispered in Gaza. You’re tryingto add nuance. When were these recordings done?
Joseph Braude: Theinitial series Whispered in Gaza was done in 2022 and 2023 released in 2023long before October 7. Of course, after October 7, we regrouped with ournetwork in Gaza to give them a chance to comment about life under the unfoldingwar. That became a new series called Voices from Gaza which is also availableon our website.
We continue to do different types of things to elevateGazans to help them organize. As recently reported, we went to the Parliamentsof Spain, Italy, Germany and Canada in addition to the U.S. Congress wherewe’ve held meetings in which Gazans by video conference speak directly withlawmakers answering their questions about what is going on.
Emily Cohen:How has that changed since October 7? Has it been harder to find people willingto speak up and participate in these projects?
Joseph Braude:It has been easier to find people who are not only willing but pray toparticipate. Once it became known that we had created a platform that wouldenable Gazans to express themselves freely and safely, more and more peoplewanted to be a part.
More and more of this expression is arisingspontaneously. We see it on social media. Both The New York Times andthe BBC have recently released reporting focused on Gazans opposed to Hamas inwhich they said many of the same things that the voices that we’ve beenspotlighting have been expressing for years. It’s a time of great flux andthere is a kind of catharsis where Gazans feel that now is the time for them totell the world what they really want.
Emily Cohen:There seems to be a pretty large disconnect between that and what I’m seeing onsocial media which is certainly a more polarized binary.
Joseph Braude:Indeed, we are seeing hyperpolarization on social media, but most of that noiseis not coming from inside Gaza. A lot of people who purport to support thePalestinians are speaking on behalf of Gazans whom they don’t know and have nocontact.
Meanwhile, the same paucity of authentic voices fromthe inside who are expressing a non-Hamas or anti-Hamas point of view isenabling people who are more on the right of the political spectrum to say thatall Gazans are in favor of Hamas.
There is an enormous critical mass of Gazans whooppose Hamas and want a different future, but they are not the voices thatmanifest on social media except for the most part through proactive effortswhether it be our group or reporters like the ones at The New York Timesand the BBC who have been going out and looking for these people.
Emily Cohen:A lot of what Peace Talks Radio does is to try to bring peace and conflictresolution from a macro level to our everyday lives. I’m wondering what adviceyou have or what resources you would point listeners to who are looking for amore nuanced understanding of what is happening in the Middle East and thevarious perspectives in addition to Voices from Gaza and Whispered in Gaza?
Joseph Braude: Thisis not an instant answer to your question, but I think it’s very important forAmericans to learn foreign languages. Relative to other countries, foreignlanguage fluency in the U.S. is pretty low and that’s a severe disadvantageespecially in the Middle East where many of our diplomats and officials who arein charge of helping to resolve conflict are not able to engage directly withthe populations in their language.
Once you study and learn to read Arabic and Farsi,it’s possible to discover an enormous number of dissenting views in variouspublications, outlets of various kinds. Obviously, there are some efforts toproactively translate those voices, we are one of them among others.
Emily Cohen:Let’s go back to how you originally got involved in this work. What is yourtrajectory? What led you to create The Center for Peace Communications?
Joseph Braude:Going way back I’ll say that having an Iraqi mother is a big part of myaffinity for that region. I entered this field through music. In addition toplaying piano, I learned to play the oud which is the electric guitar of theMiddle East.
Over time, it became academic study in college andgraduate school. I spent a lot of time working and traveling in the privatesector in the Middle East.
Eventually, I started to write books in which Iexpressed ideas that I developed through this human engagement about Morrocco,Iraq, Arabic media and the question of Arab-Israeli connectivity.
It was my last book, “Reclamation: A Cultural Policyof Arab-Israeli Partnership” that is actually the cookbook or the foundingdocument of The Center for Peace Communications. It was the journey of writingthe book that made me realize that there needed to be an NGO that did this. Bythe time I got to the end, I decided to call together friends and colleagueswhom I had been working with spontaneously for so long into an organization.
Emily Cohen:Is there anything else that you want to add about your work and what you hopepeople will be able to take from this conversation?
Joseph Braude:I hope that Americans will become more actively and personally engaged inbuilding relationships with peers in the Middle East and North Africa becausehuman engagement is so important in bridging differences, making friendshipsthrough professional contact, through travel, through study. Americans have alot more to contribute to peace and development in the Middle East than theyactually do and it’s because the real work isn’t done by governments, it’s doneby societies working together.
Paul Ingles:That was Joseph Braude, founder and president of The Center for Peace Communicationsspeaking with correspondent Emily Cohen.
In our time left we want to re-air an Israeli-Jewishvoice. In 2018, our Megan Kamerick interviewed Noga Harpaz, an Israeli who wasmoved to join Combatants for Peace, a peace initiative organization launched in2006 by former combatants from both sides of the ongoing conflict betweenIsraelis and Palestinians. Israeli Noga Harpaz spoke of previous flare ups thatresulted in bombings of Gaza and how she and other Israelis were moved to showtheir concern over the violent choices made by the governments on each side ofthe conflict.
Megan Kamerick:How did you get involved with the Combatants for Peace group?
Noga Harpaz:Around the year 2014, it became harder and harder for me to not be active. Inthat year, Israel started the last war on Gaza. The way it was broadcast in theIsraeli media was very hard for me to accept. We got horrific pictures fromGaza of entire neighborhoods being destroyed. We heard that the number ofcasualties reached into the thousands just in a few weeks and many of them werekids.
Growing up, we were always told that the IDF isunique.
Megan Kamerick:The Israeli Defense Force?
Noga Harpaz:Yes, they said that the Israeli Army was unique because its sole purpose isdefense. It has a very high moral standard in that they won’t directly attackthe civilian population, but in Gaza, there were airstrikes on civilianneighborhoods. The way it was explained in the Israeli media was that civilianswere given five minutes warning to evacuate. Five minutes is just not enoughtime, and we saw the result in the number of casualties.
I just couldn’t sit at home and accept that this iswhat my government was doing in my name. I started going to protests in TelAviv. There were big protests against the War in Gaza and at one of thoseprotests there were two speakers from an organization that I didn’t know at thetime called Combatants for Peace. One of the speakers was Israeli and one wasPalestinian. They presented themselves and called us to join them in nonviolentstruggles to stop the War on Gaza.
The Palestinian speaker was so impressive. He talkedto us in Hebrew. He called us to renounce violence. He called us to join handsin the effort to build a future for both nations. How brave was this man tocome to us in the middle of Israel while there is a war going on, so I had tolook up this organization.
Megan Kamerick:What was the atmosphere or the reaction in your community when you wanted toget involved?
Noga Harpaz: Ihave the support of my close family. Luckily, my parents are very, verysupportive and proud of what I am doing. Other people consider me a bit naïveworking towards peace. It’s not the ‘90s anymore. But other parts of Israelisociety that I know through social media that consider me very dangerous,working with Palestinians and Arabs. I am naïve to the point that I amendangering Israel. I am practically a traitor to my people.
Megan Kamerick: Areyou in danger for the work that you do?
Noga Harpaz:The scariest day for us Memorial Day. In Israel, one day before we celebrate IndependenceDay, we have a day that we call Memorial Day. On that day we commemoratesoldiers who lost their lives fighting for Israel since before the formation ofThe State of Israel and since. We also remember the names of those who werekilled in terror attacks. It’s a very emotional time in Israel.
Combatants for Peace is doing Israeli-Palestinianjoint memorial service in which we commemorate the victims on both sides,Israeli and Palestinian and we share our grief and hear each other’s stories,even the most difficult ones. This event for many Israelis is extremely movingand hopeful. Every year we have to have a bigger auditorium. This ceremony isbroadcast live, and we get hundreds of thousands of people watching it aroundthe world. These are bereaved parents who feel that the best way to commemoratetheir son or daughter is by doing something that will make us hopeful for thefuture, to make sure that there will be no more bereaved families.
They got spit on and cursed. It was scary to get themback to their cars. For many Israelis, it’s very hard. They feel that we don’thonor the ones that were lost, so there is a protest in front of the ceremony.
Megan Kamerick:Where do you find hope that you will succeed?
Noga Harpaz:The more people, both Israeli and Palestinian who decide to work together eachday, each month and each year, we see how much our cause has combined and howmuch we have in common looking towards the future.
Paul Ingles: Thatwas a segment of an interview that we aired in 2018 featuring Noga Harpaz ofthe organization Combatants for Peace.
Learn more about our guests on today’s program byvisiting us at www.peacetalksradio.com.Look for Season 22, Episode 9. You can also hear all the programs in our seriesdating back to 2002, see photos of our guests, read and share transcripts. It’salso where you can sign up for our podcast and importantly, also where you canmake a donation to keep this program going into the future. Support does comefrom listeners just like you as well as the Albuquerque Community FoundationTies Fund and KUNM at the University of New Mexico.
Jessica Ticktin is our Supervising Producer. NolaDaves Moses is our Executive Director. Ali Adleman composed and performed ourtheme music. For correspondent Emily Cohen and our co-founder Suzanne Kryderand the rest of our team, I’m Paul Ingles. Thanks so much for listening to andimportantly for supporting Peace Talks Radio.
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