My bags are packed ...

We made a short video of the small but persistent demonstration in front of the UN Egyptian Mission in NYC today, but unfortunately we do not seem to yet have the hang of posting the flip videos on the blog. (This, of course, should be our biggest challenge in life.)

So tomorrow is it - the next time we talk, I will be in Israel/Palestine. I have wanted to do this trip for so long, its hard to believe this is it. I will try to share each of my experiences with you and I hope that you will open yourselves up to what I think we are about to see and to the people we will meet.

I only ask one thing of you. Well, o.k., really two. First, that you read the blog.

The second thing I ask of you is related to a question that a very young Tibetan posed at a conference I recently attended. The conference was hosted by the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, an international network of which I am a part. Each year, we come together in New York to discuss the role of humiliation in human conflict, from personal conflict to armed, national and international conflict. At the conference, we heard from, among others, survivors of a bomb in Iraq, impassioned young lawyers seeking justice for wrongly imprisoned Guantanamo detainees, and two children of Holocaust survivors, both teachers. The first, my dear friend Grace, researched and wrote a book about the amazing Palestinian/Israeli school where Israeli and Palestinian children learn together, learn their own and each others' histories, languages and cultures. The second teacher we heard from teaches hand in hand each summer in Austria with children of Nazis. She spoke of her personal challenge to get by the mythology of hatred with which she was raised.

At the end of the conference, the young Tibetan stood up and asked us what would happen if instead of reacting when we felt humiliated by another human being, we took a moment to take a breath.

I have myself often wondered what would have happened if on September 11, 2001 (or any other explosive time in history), we had had a person in the White House who, instead of seeking revenge and cowboy justice and inciting hatred, had held our hands and told us to breath, who had explained that revenge and bombs only lead to more revenge and bombs; who was not interested in using our shock and grief to justify a power grab but who instead had helped us grieve and open our eyes to peace, nonviolent responses and justice consistent with our Constitution.

So here is my second request of you: when you read something here that makes you feel angry or humiliated or ashamed or disbelief, when you would rather walk away than continue to read, I am asking that you take the time to take a breath (or two). And after you have taken a breath, ask yourself if you can respond with peace and dignity. And then remind yourself that our only chance for peace is to demand the immediate cessation of never-ending cycles of revenge, of shrugging off the deaths of innocents as collateral damage, of allowing genocide, oppression, rape and destruction as the necessities of war, of using war and religion as pretenses to seek oil, power, diamonds or empire.

Peace and see you from Israel/Palestine. Wish me happy hummus munching and olive-oil dipping :).

PS: here is the website for Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies. I highly recommend it. In addition to Evelin's amazing presentations and a plethora of moving papers, I have two papers posted that I presented at various conferences, Relevance of Sexual Violence Against Female Noncombatant Victims of Destructive Conflict in the Study of Humiliation; and Terrorism and Humiliation. Happy Reading!
www.humiliationstudies.org