peace movement humanitarian among iraq abductees

November 28, 2005

The UK “News Tele­graph is confirming”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/29/nirq29.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/29/ixnewstop.html what many of us in the peace move­ment have been wor­ry­ing about all day: that at least some of the four west­ern­ers abduct­ed in iraq over the week­end were mem­bers of the “Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams”:http://www.cpt.org/
bq. A British anti-war activist abduct­ed in iraq was inves­ti­gat­ing human rights abus­es with a group called the Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Team when he was held.
Nor­man Kem­ber, 74, the only publicly-named abductee, is a for­mer sec­re­tary of the Bap­tist peace Fel­low­ship in Eng­land and a board mem­ber of the Eng­lish Fel­low­ship of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. He’s been an out­spo­ken oppo­nent of the war in iraq. In the “April/May 2005 edi­tion of FOR’s newsletter”:http://www.for.org.uk/plinks0405.pdf (pdf) he talked about chal­leng­ing him­self to do more:
bq. Now per­son­al­ly it has always wor­ried me that I am a ‘cheap’ peace­mak­er (by anal­o­gy with Bonhoeffer’s
con­cept of ‘cheap’ grace). Being a CO in Britain,talking, writ­ing, demon­strat­ing about peace is in no
way tak­ing risks like young ser­vice men in iraq. I look for excus­es why I should not become involved with
CPT or EAPPI. Per­haps the read­ers will sup­ply mewith­with some?
Here at Non​vi​o​lence​.org, I’m occas­sion­al­ly cha­tised for being more con­cerned about west­ern vic­tims of vio­lence (indeed, how many iraqis were abduct­ed or killed this week­end alone?). It’s a fair charge and an impor­tant reminder. But per­haps it is only human nature to wor­ry about those you know. I’ve prob­a­bly met Nor­man in pass­ing at one or anoth­er inter­na­tion­al peace gath­er­ing; I might well know the three uniden­ti­fied abductees. I sus­pect a peace move­ment vet­er­an like Kem­ber would be the first to tell me that paci­fists should­n’t sit con­tent­ed­ly in middle-class com­fy arm­chairs sim­ply sout­ing slo­gans or dash­ing off emails (Quak­er Johan Mau­r­er, wrote an “impas­sioned blog post about this just last week”:http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2005/11/saturday-ps-nancys-questions.htm). Part of the rea­son folks put them­selves on the lines for orga­ni­za­tions like Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams is that they want to do their peace wit­ness among those fac­ing the vio­lence. When the vic­tims aren’t just “them, over there” but to “us, and our friends, over there” it becomes more real. This is what the fam­i­lies of the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary casu­al­ties have been telling us. Now, with Kem­ber and the three oth­ers miss­ing, our wor­ry is made more real. For bet­ter or worse, the peace move­ment is scan­ning the head­lines from iraq with even more wor­ry tonight.
Our prayers are with Kem­ber, as they are with all the miss­ing and all the vic­tims of this hor­ri­ble war.

Signs of Hope

November 26, 2003

I think I some­times appear more pes­simistic than I real­ly am. Here are some of this week’s rea­sons for hope.
* Being in touch with Jorj & Sue and Barb and Tobi because of these writ­ings (could the “Lost Generation”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000147.php be mud­dling towards a new coalesence?)
* A small flur­ry of recent talks and pam­phlets about redis­cov­er­ing tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism: Mar­ty Grundy’s 2002 lec­ture _Quaker Trea­sure: Dis­cov­er­ing The Basis For Uni­ty Among Friends_, Paul Lacey’s _The Author­i­ty Of Our Meet­ings Is The Pow­er Of God_ , and Lloyd Lee Wilson’s “Wrestling With Our Faith Tradition”:http://www.ncymc.org/journal/ncymcjournal3.pdf (PDF)
* Tony P. say­ing he was griev­ed that Julie has left the Soci­ety of Friends and car­ing enough to talk to her. Thank you.
* A fly­er I saw this week­end, writ­ten by PYM Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion staff. It was a list of what they thought they should be doing and it was real­ly pret­ty good (why don’t they’d print this in _PYM News_ , it’s much bet­ter than their boil­er­plate entries this issue). Even more I hope the work does take a move in that direction.
* Thomas Ham­m’s The Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca, which just came in yes­ter­day. It’s per­haps a lit­tle too intro­duc­to­ry but we need a good intro­duc­tion and Ham­m’s the one to write it. His book on Ortho­dox Friends, Trans­for­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism is amaz­ing­ly well researched and essen­tial read­ing for any involved Friend who wants to under­stand who we are. He’s work­ing on a com­pan­ion his­to­ry on the Hick­sites, which is very much needed.