Another dispatch from the road this week… Thanks for sticking with us as we disrupt our normal routines traveling the galaxy this month in pursuit of peace! We have some extremely exciting things cooking that I’ll be eager to share in the coming months…

If you’re new, my name is Jeremy. My wife Jessica and I moved to Iraq 15+ years ago at the height of the war. Today, our humanitarian work across 10+ countries has been covered by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Al Jazeera, etc.

I help peacemakers like you 10X their impact around the world through a social impact collective called HUMANITE.

I write for those who still have hope.

Jeremy Courtney
HUMANITE

All or nothing…

I was sitting on the Gaza-Israel border last week thinking about you. You peacemakers who still dare to believe and hope and work for change.

A Jewish resident from the security apparatus took us to a lookout and traced the trajectory of rockets that fly from Palestinians in Gaza and fall on Jewish Israeli villages. Then he took us down to the giant wall separating the two communities, erected by the Israelis (and imprisoning the Palestinians) in the name of security.

Another Jewish resident described her unlikely friendships with Palestinians on the other side—their earnest yearning for freedom, for fundamental rights, for life. She’s mocked by some of her Jewish neighbors for “dreaming” of peace through nonviolence. She tells them that they are the dreamers if they think the dehumanizing of Palestinians could ever achieve the peace they proclaim.

I spent the week going back and forth between Israelis and Palestinians; museums and homes; old rocks and living stones; citizens and those who are denied citizenship; Friday prayers and Shabbat dinners; Jews, Muslims, and Christians who all lay claim to the land. Some live under the gun. Some live under the barrage of rockets and falling debris. Some illegally seize, settle, and occupy the other’s land. Some are trying to overthrow the status quo. And all carry an existential fear.

A historic Holocaust haunts the land and our global consciousness, while a daily holocaust is executed underfoot.

I walked away with a couple of preliminary thoughts. One is this: life is rarely “all or nothing”.

All-or-nothing attitudes tend to dominate the social media landscape these days.

From diet to fitness, to entrepreneurship, to politics, to justice work, a lot of the language that cuts through is essentially maximalist.

I wrote an article several years ago for The Washington Post after an ISIS attack in Paris: “The World is Scary as Hell. Love Anyway.”

It was our punk rock declaration from the frontlines of war that we would not participate in the destruction of our enemies. In fact, we would work to transform as much as possible, at least in us, through sacrificial acts of love.

The phrase “Love Anyway” gained traction.

Then it got popular.

We printed t-shirts and hats.

Celebrities wore them.

And within months, “Love Anyway” went from punk rock to elevator music.

Saying “Love Anyway” to a president who wanted to carpet bomb the dirty Muslims back to the Stone Age was liberal and cool. But actually loving your own enemies smelled religious, conservative, and risky. Why? Because it’s a simplistic, maximalist phrase that fails to capture the complexity of human life.

Words that fit on signs are rallying cries. But actual peace is more: governance, security, prosecution, justice, budgets, history, narratives, trauma, grudges, ego, pride.

Peace doesn’t fit on placards.

I left the Gazan border, I left the West Bank, I left Jerusalem, I left the Holocaust museum, I left the Western Wall, I left the Dome of the Rock, I left the Mount of Olives, I left the Sea of Galilee, I left Israel certain of this guiding principle: we belong to each other. But how many more words and actions and practices need to be appended to that? I’m not sure. But it’s what we’re trying to figure out at HUMANITE.

Lasting peace…

Just peace…

Real peace…

requires us to work for the flourishing of our neighbor, not their annihilation.

We cannot bomb our way to peace.

We cannot dominate our way to peace.

We cannot shame our way to peace.

Are there times we should not “love anyway”?

Of course, there are.

I just haven’t found any of them yet.

Jeremy Courtney
HUMANITE Peace Collective

PS — is there more that needs to be said on this? Yes. What does mutuality mean to you? Can you love your enemy while engaging in violence? And what’s the relationship between collective trauma and personal responsibility? Would love to hear your thoughts!

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