What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war?

HEBRON REFLECTION: Ten years since demolition of Jaber home

August 21st, 2008
in:
Ten years ago this week, the Israeli military demolished ‘Atta and Rodeina Jaber's home for the first time.  "The rubble is still in my face, on the ground," ‘Atta told Christian Peacemaker Team members as he and his family harvested tomatoes in the hot, late-morning sun. "If I forget, the rubble reminds me. Every day."

On 19 August 1998, 140 Israeli soldiers and two large bulldozers arrived to destroy the home that ‘Atta and Rodeina Jaber had built six years before on land where Atta's family has lived for more than 100 years.

Their land in the Beqa'a Valley is in Area C, which is under full Israeli control. Palestinians are routinely denied building permits in Area C.

Neighbors, family members, Israelis and internationals immediately came together to rebuild a two-room house with donated and supplies. But on 16 September, the army demolished this house as well. When ‘Atta tried to hand his infant son to a soldier to take to safety, he was beaten and then arrested. He spent four days in jail and was unable to work for eight months due to his injuries.

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History

In 1984, Ron Sider challenged the Mennonite World Conference in Strasbourg, France with these words:

 

Over the past 450 years of martyrdom, immigration and missionary proclamation, the God of shalom has been preparing us Anabaptists for a late twentieth-century rendezvous with history. The next twenty years will be the most dangerous—and perhaps the most vicious and violent—in human history. If we are ready to embrace the cross, God’s reconciling people will profoundly impact the course of world history . . . This could be our finest hour. Never has the world needed our message more. Never has it been more open. Now is the time to risk everything for our belief that Jesus is the way to peace. If we still believe it, now is the time to live what we have spoken.

About CPT

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) arose from a call in 1984 for Christians to devote the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war. Enlisting the whole church in an organized, nonviolent alternative to war, today CPT places violence-reduction teams in crisis situations and militarized areas around the world at the invitation of local peace and human rights workers. CPT embraces the vision of unarmed intervention waged by committed peacemakers ready to risk injury and death in bold attempts to transform lethal conflict through the nonviolent power of God’s truth and love.