The Winding Paths to Peace

by Dr Raymond Perrier · Published December 6, 2023 · Updated December 5, 2023

Armoured Peace Dove on a wall in Bethlehem by Banksy

In September, we welcomed a group of Northern Irish volunteers in their early twenties to the Denis Hurley Centre in Durban. They spent a few days at the lovely St Augustine’s Primary School nearby, and worked alongside a group of Israeli volunteers who were spending a few months in Durban.

At the end of their time with the schoolchildren, I was pleased to have the chance to reflect jointly with them, and with some South African young adults, on their experience. It is a credit to our Catholic school system that one thing that they were united in was their praise for the young learners — how polite, engaged, curious and full of life they were (in implied contrast to schoolchildren from their home countries).

Then I asked them to reflect on some of the similarities between their situations. I pointed out that, whereas the North of Ireland and South Africa were now (relatively) peaceful, stable societies, both countries had come out of a recent history of violence and human rights abuses. And that for the Israelis, the experience (or fear) of communal violence was still present. Moreover, I pointed out that in all three regions, religion had in various ways been used to weaponise the situation.

I was struck by the fact that the Northern Irish and South Africans — all in their early twenties — were not at all interested in the past. “We just want a good education and a job,” was the common response; any looking back to historic conflicts was seen as hindering those goals. “We can’t keep blaming the past for the present,” they were saying.

Held back by the past

The Israelis so wished that they could agree. “If only we were not held back by the past,” they said, not to wilfully ignore history but to dream of a life which was not weighed down by it.

To offer them some hope, I shared my own reflection. I pointed out that when I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s, there were four major political problems that dominated our worldview and which seemed completely intractable: the Cold War, the Irish Troubles, apartheid in South Africa, and the Middle East. And yet, with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, and the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, three of those problems had — in some way — been resolved. And while none of those situations are perfect today, they are certainly better than they were.

Without offering my views of what a solution might be, I wanted to give hope to the Israelis who were there — and the Palestinians who were not — that even in their situation there might be a resolution.

A few weeks later, Hamas’ terrorist attacks in Israel and Israel’s ruthless response in Gaza triggered a new stage in an old conflict. By the time you read these words, who knows how far it will have gone? The one outcome that I can pretty safely predict will not happen by Christmas is a peaceful resolution.

It is impossible to imagine how we could reach that in the next few months from where we are now; it is increasingly impossible to imagine that we could ever reach it in this particular conflict.

Meanwhile, as we absorb the news from the Holy Land, we are also receiving ghastly news from what is happening in Ukraine; and we are probably not hearing (unless we look very hard) updates on the armed conflicts and fatalities in Yemen, Myanmar, Syria, the Maghreb, or Ethiopia.

How can we celebrate?

In the face of all this, one may ask, how can we celebrate Christmas? I would suggest that it is precisely because of these conflicts — and all the other reasons we have to despair — that we need to be celebrating the arrival on earth of the Son of God.

My challenge to the young Israelis to imagine a better world would have been no less a challenge to previous generations of Irish or South Africans facing political stalemate. Many readers of these lines grew up in a South Africa where it seemed that nothing would ever change: or you worked hard and made sacrifices to ensure that things did change. And change did come about!

Weighed down by today’s worries about corruption, unemployment, loadshedding, poor service delivery, decaying infrastructure and crime, we can easily forget the victories against injustice that were won so relatively recently.

There is probably little that we can do from here to make a direct difference to what is happening in the Holy Land and other conflicts. But we can pray for victims and perpetrators of violence, as I once prayed, in faraway England, for the victims and perpetrators of apartheid.

And we can also commit to keeping ourselves informed of the facts — not to gorge on the digest of violence but to ensure that we do not forget those who are suffering. We can also resolve to try and learn more about the sources of a conflict and so move beyond the headlines to a more thoughtful understanding.

And one thing that we can all do is commit not to add to the violence: social media, the knee jerk sharing of videos and disinformation, or the rehashing of other people’s opinions as our own which might make us feel righteous but may actually cause more harm than good.

Thoughts on a carol

One of my favourite Christmas carols (rarely sung here) is “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear”. The words were written by US pastor Edmund Sears in 1849. He was reflecting on the Mexican-American War that had been raging; he must have also been conscious of the world of military occupation and violence into which Jesus had chosen to be born. Sears offers an image in which “angels bending near the earth” bring a message of peace. But he reminds us of how hard it is for us to hear that message:

And man, at war with man, hears not the love-song which they bring/“Oh hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.”

I usually try to avoid gendered language in hymns: surely, Jesus was not born “that man no more may die” or “to raise the sons of earth”. But in this case, I think the carol’s gendered language is appropriate. It is usually men whose noisy violence drowns out the call for peace: just think of the role of women in the peace movement in Ireland or in reconciliation in South Africa.

I was pleased that a group of “women for peace” (Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Hindu and Baha’i) recently came together in Durban to pray for peace. I was also shocked — but not surprised — that both the Muslim and Jewish women in the group had been attacked by members of their own communities for daring to pray for peace, as though peace was not the desired goal.

Pope Francis has reminded us: “War is always a defeat.” Into a world of “sin and strife” this Christmas, let us do whatever we can to bring peace and faith, silence and prayer. Prayer might feel like a tiny contribution, but it is a way of reminding us all not to lose our hopes and dreams: When Peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendours fling/And the whole world give back the song which now the angels sing.

Published in the December 2023 issue of The Southern Cross magazine