The song by David Roth we heard a few minutes ago, "The Five Blind Men," ends with its main point: "Whatever you might think you see depends on where you stand and how you feel." That crucial insight humbles us: none of us has the complete view of what the elephant of truth is. When we truly accept this fact, we can acknowledge that our view is partial and needs to be complemented by others' views. Then we become more disposed to listen and learn. We can grow in our mutual dependence, and then, like the five blind men laughing at themselves, we can find joy in our shared humanity.

Today's service is about opening ourselves to ways of seeing others and ourselves perhaps differently than we're used to. When Martin Zonlight invited me share a few reflections with you, the theme he gave me was, "What can Americans learn from the Israeli- Palestinian conflict?" Last year, one year ago, I spent the first two weeks of August in Israel/Palestine as part of a Peace Builders delegation sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation. We met and listened to many people, Israelis and Palestinians, who discussed their reality and their aspirations. I learned a great deal. The images of those people and places are etched profoundly in my soul. After the service, for those interested, I will show a video presentation of what impressed me, but for the next few minutes, I will share a few stories and make two simple points.

Elyssia and Jonathan were a handsome young couple, she from Australia, he from the United States. They had spent the summer in Jerusalem working for an organization that monitored violations of human rights, both Israeli and Palestinian. They had joined our group to visit some places and people we were scheduled to see in West Bank villages. Together we'd had to pass through checkpoints, where Palestinian pedestrians and cars and trucks sometimes waited hours before they could show their documents and then pass through. We'd seen roadblocks created by the Israeli military that stopped all vehicular traffic into important Palestinian villages, that meant that people had to get out of their car or bus, walk over the roadblock, then find another car or bus or just walk to get where they were headed. We'd seen the Separation Wall snaking deep into Palestinian land, sometimes cutting a village and its farmers off from their land. We'd heard stories of the daily pressures of living under occupation, the long waits, the closures of cities in which people couldn't enter or leave, the harassment, the difficulty of carrying on a normal life.

One day as we were traveling on our bas back to Jerusalem, I asked them what their plans for the future were. "We'd like to immigrate here to Israel and live." "After all you've seen?" I asked. "Yes, despite all we've seen." Elyssia and Jonathan were devout Orthodox Jews. Jonathan and I had walked to the Wailing Wall together. It had moved him deeply. "Perhaps it's hard for you to understand," Elyssia told me, "but this is our homeland. Yes, I'm Australian and Jonathan's American, but this is our spiritual homeland. Here we're not the other; we're accepted. We belong." I listened as she continued. "No matter where they're from the world over, most Jews have this special attraction to Israel. We have been persecuted by centuries. Here we are free and we can be proud of being Jewish. We can celebrate our religious festivals openly and freely in the land of Abraham, Isaac, and David."

She was not being corny or sentimentally nostalgic. She and Jonathan knew the contradictions within Israel. They opposed the occupation. They opposed the home demolitions and all the daily injustices Israeli policy imposes on Palestinians. Yet in the depths of their souls they wanted to forge their future in Israel. I had never understood this depth of attraction to Israel, or the depth of the collective scar Jewish people feel about their being blamed, ostracized, and persecuted for centuries - a scar that leads to this identification with Israel, their land, where they can determine their future freely. Perhaps in people with less direct exposure to Israel's contradictions, this deep soul identification leads to blind and unquestioning endorsement of every Israel does. But not in them, and not in many of the Israelis I met.

This leads me to a simple but important practical point. If we respect people and care about truth, we ought to be careful to avoid sweeping generations about them, especially about whole groups. Where someone says, "The Jews . . .", or "The Palestinians . . . ," or "The Arabs . . . ," or "The Muslims . . . ," our critical antennae need to be on alert, highly vigilant about what generalization follows. If we favor the policies of the Israeli government, we might be inclined to blurt out, "The Palestinians care little about human life. They blow up innocent children in cafes!" A more accurate statement would be, "Four Palestinian suicide bombers blew up innocent children in cafes." If we are opposed to the occupation, we might be inclined to say, "Those Jews in Israel care little about human life. Did you read how they just demolished two more Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem!" A more accurate statement would be, "Under orders from their government, an Israeli demolition team leveled two more Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem."

This issue of the language we use of not minor. Sweeping generalizations paint with a broad brush. For the actions of a few, a whole people is made to look bad. The words we use reinforce prejudicial attitudes within ourselves and spread bigotry among others.

Given the seduction of anti-Semitism in this country and elsewhere, this issue is particularly important if we oppose Israeli policies, whether in Lebanon, or in building the Separation Wall, or in expanding settlements in the West Bank. I would suggest that instead of saying, "The Jews have preventing a solution because of their expanding settlements," we substitute "Israeli government" for "the Jews." That avoids the unfair generalization and places the onus of responsibility where it rightly belongs: among the leaders who decide policy. Of course, even that statement is not fully accurate because within the Israeli government, as in all governments, there is disagreement.

I assume most people in this congregation are liberal, so let me expand on this caution about how we talk Israeli policies and Jews.

1. Not all Israelis are Jews. One million, four hundred thousand are Arab. So if you say "Israelis" instead of "Jews," that's not accurate.
   
   
2. But saying "Israeli Jews" is not accurate either because not all Israeli Jews support the policies of their government. In fact, there's more public protest among Israeli Jews in Israel against their government than exists here in the U.S. in the whole peace movement against our government's pro-Israel policies. So we need to qualify the generalization "Israeli Jews" with "Some" or "Many" Israeli Jews."
   
   
3. We also have to keep in mind that not all Jews in this country, or elsewhere, support Israeli policies, so we can't use the sweeping statement, "If American Jews didn't have so much power and influence, American policy would be different." Some American Jews, despite deep spiritual ties with Israel, are courageous enough to speak out publicly against the policies of Israel, at the risk of being branded self-hating Jews. Others, who love Israel deeply, are sickened at what they see the Israeli government doing against the Palestinians, and see it as a perversion of the core values of Judaism. With film director Steven Spielberg in his film Munich, they fear Israel is losing its soul, and like many of us they want American to be an honest broker for peace and reconciliation, fair to both Israelis and Palestinians.
   
   

So my first point is that we be careful with our language. Yes, we need to take a stand, but let's not blame a whole people for the actions of only some of them. Maybe we've measured the girth of the elephant, but someone else is holding the tail or the trunk. We need to reserve a place in ourselves where we listen, so we can learn more and evaluate more wisely.

My second point is variations on a theme, centering on three people I met during my visit, two Israelis and one Palestinian. The stories have to do with the healing and redemptive effect of life experience, like that of the blind men, that helps us change where we stand and how we feel.

American-born Rabbi Arik Ascherman is a tall, strikingly handsome man, co-founder of the Israeli organization Rabbis for Human Rights. He's a modern day prophet, denouncing the injustices of the Israeli government's actions against Palestinians, and calling for atonement and reconciliation. He's stood before bulldozers preparing to demolish Palestinian homes and has committed civil disobedience often to protest human rights violations against Palestinians. A little story he told our group stays with me. He was a scene of a demonstration in which some Israeli soldiers were beating a Palestinian boy on the ground. Concerned they would kill the youth, Ascherman ran to the scene and tried to pull the soldiers away from the boy, shouting, "Stop! Stop! He's only a child!" Angered at Ascherman's intervention, the soldiers turned their attention away from the boy and arrested the rabbi. The boy ran away. Ascherman never saw him again, but a few days later he heard a story. The boy had told his friends: "A tall man waved me. I don't know who he was, but he must have been Jewish because he was wearing the skull cap." In all the dangerous, sometimes disheartening work he does to change Israeli policies regarding Palestinians, Ascherman is sustained by that boy's story. "The only image most Palestinian children have of Israelis," he told our group," is of frightening soldiers who harass them. Now that boy and maybe his friends realize that not all Israelis are their enemies."

Israeli Rami Elhannon speaks quietly and smiles gently. You sense the sadness within him at time, but more predominantly a deep well of understanding and compassion. Rami fought in the 1973 war in a tank division. He lost some close friends in the war. Sickened by that experience, he turned away from societal concerns and confined his attention to his graphic arts business and his wife and children. Nothing else mattered. But one day his bubble world burst when two Palestinian suicide bombers killed five children in a café in Jerusalem. His 14-year old daughter Smeddar was one of them. For a year he battle with anger. He knew retaliation would do no good, but he couldn't get beyond his rage at the terrible injustice of killing innocent children. His personal loss was eating him up. Then a friend invited him to attend a meeting of a group of parents who had lost children in the conflict. The parents were both Israeli and Palestinian. That evening, hearing their stories and their sorrow but also their determination to work for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, changed Rami's life. He is now and active member of the Bereaved Parents Circle. He and other members of the Parents Circle have given hundreds of talks in Israeli and Palestinian schools. Two years ago they organized a dramatic display of one thousand coffins in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv and in front of the UN in New York. The coffins were draped with both Israeli and Palestinian flags. "Our power is in our pain, Rami told us. "Pain has the power of a nuclear bomb. But our pain might also have the power to put a crack in the wall."

My final story is of a Palestinian farmer with sun-darkened skin and a faith in humanity that's unshakeable. His name is Daoud Nasser, and we visited him on his farm a couple of miles from Bethlehem. Since the 1990s the Israeli authorities have been trying to confiscate his land, even though his family has official ownership papers dating back to 1924.

Among other crops, his land produces grapes and almonds. Twice Israeli settlers have cut down Daoud's trees, and twice the settlers have driven onto his land with bulldozers to cut a road so they could start building a settlement there. When we arrived, we had to walk over a roadblock settlers had made leading up to Daoud's hilltop farm. On the surrounding hilltops, settlements are being built above a small Palestinian village below. You'd think Daoud would be bitter, angry, frustrated. Maybe at times he is, but you wouldn't know it looking at his calm face and hearing the steady determination in his voice. He explained to us that to counter the settlers and get a fair hearing in Israeli courts, he's invited international observers to live on his farm. One young man from Germany, a conscientious objector, lives there to help out with the work, but more importantly to be a witness to what goes on with the settlers or in the courts. He sends out reports so the whole world can know what's happening. Daoud has also established an international camp on his farm. He invites Israeli and Palestinian youth and young people from other countries to gather there and talk together about their experiences and aspirations. He calls the camp experience the Tent of Nations, an opportunity for young people to build bridges, instead of barriers, to deeper understanding. His goal is to keep hope alive. He and his family are determined to keep their land. But they also want to transform their suffering into an opportunity for others to learn a nonviolent way to solve problems and live together in peace.

These three men are examples of many others, both Israeli and Palestinian, whose courage, imagination, and determination to create a just peace are inspiring. Like the five blind men, they, and some of the people in their stories, have transcended their own small personal experience and grown in a generosity and vision that's soul-expanding. Moreover, they have faced an uphill challenge for years, and today it's more difficult than it was last year. But despite the odds, they have not given up. In their perseverance, their faith, and their tenacity, they sow seeds of hope. May we learn from their commitment. May we add our energy, time, and action to theirs, for a fair, wise American foreign policy in the Middle East, and specifically for a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

If you would like to understand more about the conflict in Israel- Palestine and the struggle for peace there, I invite you to stay for my video presentation after the service. Thank you.

We live in dark times, but as the song we are about to sing reminds us, we are called to bring light. Let us bring light.

[Delivered 27 August 2006. Prof. Onorato is a retired English and Spanish language instructor at Modesto Junior College. He approached teaching with the "quiet, focused attention of a monk and the energetic passion and measured optimism of a social activist." He earned his Masters degree in Comparative Literature (English & Spanish) at UC Berkeley in 1969. He has worked since 1970 with the Modesto Peace/Life Center. In 2001, he received the MJC Purdy Award for Excellence in Education, given to one instructor each year. In his mind there is no one spiritual way that is valid; there are diverse paths in the world's major religions, and each offers insight, guidance, and valuable support to its followers.