IS THERE HELP FOR THE MIDDLE EAST?
July 27, 2006

War wages in the Middle East. The breath is taken away by terror. How far can human beings go!
Why is there no limit any longer? Why can they afford to do this under the eye of the world public?

We think of our friends in Israel and Palestine and of the people in Lebanon. They write unsettling letters to us. It is hard to bear, to witness the dying and killing every day. There is no comfort and easing of pain for this. How much the soul is struggling to gain understanding of the context and to see the solution! For how long already, for how many lives we had to bear witness to these cruelties! We, who are involved internationally, have to ask ourselves ever more urgently: What is there to do now? Do we have an answer? Do we have an answer that could also be helpful to the ones who are affected? Is there still a perspective to end this killing? Is there any hope at all to save this earth?

The history we all come from is an age-old history of war. We all grew up under life conditions which fed us with pictures of enemies on a daily basis. There is only one answer to this worldwide injustice which erupts right now in the Middle East: Leave behind these life conditions, leave behind the pictures of enemies, and help build another world. This decision is asked of each one of us if we want to change from an age of war to an age of peace. Maybe the cruelties are still necessary to make us take the right decisions. We all live in a worldwide process of transformation; we all need to base our lives on new foundations. The whole solution to our current political and individual problems lies on a new level on which the old separations and animosities cease to exist. We give thanks to all who have the strength in the present situation to not react with hate and such prepare the great reconciliation.

History was not only a history of war. Right from the beginning it was a history of love, revelation and promise. Behind all distortions still the eternal origins are at work which were tied to the word of the “Holy Land”. Israel and Ishmael shall not remain separated forever. The original Kibbutz movement, before its militarization, set a field of humaneness which we can adopt now. Later Kibbutzim and peace villages like Harduf or Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam and others picked up the impulse and kept working on a new field of peace. Meanwhile new projects were founded in other places of the earth which connected to the “Sacred Matrix” that lies behind all turbulences. One of them is Tamera in Portugal. We stand, in spite of our social and geistige (mental, spiritual, intellectual) renewals, on old historical and spiritual grounds. It appears as if a geistiger (mental, spiritual, intellectual) stream has come to us in Europe to do a work of which the fruits can be brought back to Israel/Palestine now, because we all belong together. We are all parts of one great organism which wants to spread now all over the world.

The people of the Middle East now need the protection of an alert public which breaks the international silence and has the courage to call the injustice taking place there by its name. When we criticize a derailed government and a derailed military we do not mean “the Israelis”. A new peace movement has been forming for a long time in Israel and Palestine. In spite of heavy sanctions a growing number of soldiers object to military service or the barbaric orders in the Occupied Territories. A few days ago there was a demonstration against the war in Tel Aviv. There was not a word about this in the news.

Evi Guggenheim, co-founder of the Israeli-Arabic Peace Village Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, wrote the following to us: “We all hope that this nightmare will evaporate soon. It is becoming more and more painful to suffer this violence against which every fiber in my body revolts. An atmosphere of war – we feel it so often. We hear the planes that pass above our heads towards Lebanon. And I don’t understand how the young pilot above manages to do the bombing. All it takes for him is to press a button, - as simple as it is terrible. How can we bring these button pressers on every side to cease pressing them? And at the same time, it is so peaceful on our patio, where we ate yesterday with a friend who was over from Austria... Our children have just returned from their youth club, accompanied by friends. A joyful stream of children marches in, speaking among themselves in their jumble of Hebrew and Arabic.”

Behind all the suffering we see human(e) processes in Israel/Palestine that anchor the issue of peace in our hearts in a new way. On both sides there are women and men, who no longer preach hate and revenge for they have suffered too much. There are peace workers who have understood the suffering of their supposed enemies with their own body – for ever.

I (Sabine Lichtenfels) just return from an Israel/Palestine peace conference in Switzerland. More than ever I have the feeling that what we discuss and plan on such conferences does not comply with the realities any more. While some heat up in discussions about questions of guilt and background, while they still believe that they have to take this side or the other without recognizing the common background, the others continue their game unflustered: they play war. And innocent people lose their life for this insanity.

The aggressors pass on to others what has been done to them. The never changing “karmic wheel” of this whole frightful history goes on and on until realization comes. The victims become victimizer, the victimizer victims again and so on. When you say this you are accused of “anti-Semitism”. Which is crazy even linguistically as the Palestinians are Semites as well. What a military insanity here, what a twisting of truth there! How many journalists who dared to write the truth about places of war once are still alive?

Through our silence we turn into indirect accomplices. Which country has the right to respond to the kidnapping of three soldiers with the collective punishment of a whole population?

Many Israelis, also from the peace movement, say now: But we can not simply watch our soldiers being kidnapped. Many will be indignant once more about our “one-sided” view of things. Are they really not informed that the Israeli military has killed several hundred (!) Lebanese with their attacks during the last weeks? Almost all civilians. We have to know that an international news blackout is put onto the real occurrences which we ourselves are subjected to many times. We can not spare our friends to acknowledge this fact.

The war has gone global today. Violations of human rights occur all over the world today, because the fight of imperial economic powers against powerless people currently rules the whole earth. We no longer believe that official politicians and institutions will cause the necessary change. Too many times we have experienced how former committed colleagues have been consumed by the system as soon as they received an official political function. But we do believe in the initiative and combination of all groups who are determined to surpass the worldwide insanity through a large and realistic alternative.

A human is a human is a human, is a creature of God and the world, s/he does not belong to any nation, nor government, nor system. As long as these attachments exist, conflicts will persist. Very realistically we live in the age of globalisation; this also holds an element of liberation. Next to the globalisation of violence, the globalisation of peace develops in the sense of a new, world encompassing feeling of belonging together. Under the pressure of terror the shoot of a new planetary strength emerges powerfully. We are not children of a state any more; we are children of the world, of life, of love and of the community with all co-creation. Not the craving for power or guns has brought us about but the love between a man and a woman. Why continue to live in a system committing such injustice? Why not fully participate in the work to surpass all these systems?

Our identity is planetary, no longer national. When do people lay down their passports, start with a great migration and leave behind the states which take part in the global politics of violence? When do all the seekers for peace unite, no matter which country, religion or culture they come from? Millions are migrating already towards a new existence beyond states and systems. Can we not build up a large model of reconciliation together? In this sense we co-operate with a growing number of young people on the aim to live and work together within a worldwide movement. A movement which no longer fights against the existing circumstances, but instead develops real perspectives for a fulfilled life in the first place. We call this movement GRACE – Movement for a Free Earth.

With all bewilderment regarding the excesses of violence and barbarism: What is it all about politically? Why is Israel so generously supplied with weapons and money? Could it be that a long planned, more comprehensive political strategy is behind all this? Is it a “calculated war” after all? Is it meant that Israel becomes a base for the American dream of this large “free trade zone” from Algeria to Pakistan, which they call “Greater Middle East”? Is it the same power political concept of the Pentagon which today, in parallel, prepares the war in Iran and secures Israel with the necessary military equipment? We do not want to go into details with this. It would require an extra book with the title: What game is played today on planet earth?

It is dreams of war and conquest with constantly new faces, and constantly the same old structures, which have devastated the earth for ages. And they will continue to do so as long as the causes for this misled development are not eliminated. The causes lie within the human and cultural conditions, which do not enable the individual to live a life in fulfilled love, fulfilled meaning, fulfilled community and fulfilled work. A life which no longer requires the images of enemies. When will the youth of the world stop following the military drafting and obey meaningless orders? They will stop when they have found a perspective in real life which is worth the employment of all their powers and all their passions.

Therefore this perspective must be built up and realized. By the strategy of the opponent, parts of the peace movement are challenged to think strategically as well and build up centres of manifestation where the possibility of a future worth living becomes tangible. We, the signers, began almost 30 years ago to prepare such centres. We call them “Healing Biotopes”, “Peace Villages” or “Peace Research Villages”. ( More information on the internet under: www.igf-online.org.

In the Middle East it is about more than the future of two peoples. If peace is accomplished here, something new for human kind is accomplished. We will do all that lies within our power; the rest will be done by the universe itself, as soon as we have opened up to its healing powers. For we do not live alone in the world, we co-operate with every breath we take, with every cellular movement, with each truthful world and each act of reconciliation with the one higher intelligence which has brought us forth. The healing power will spread in a field building manner as soon as it is accomplished to manifest the rules of the “Sacred Matrix” on earth and create corresponding social, ecological and technological structures. The healing lies within the final reunion of the human and divine world – beyond all traditional religions. All of us – without exception – are part of a process of transformation which leads us to the reconnection to the higher order. The Holy Land emerges where people of our times have taken in this message on a new level and understood it. We give thanks to this possibility – and we look forward to further co-operation.

In the name of love,
In the name of our children,
In the name of warmth for all creation!

Sabine Lichtenfels and Dieter Duhm
(Translated into English by Benjamin von Mendelssohn)

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