A Sense of Justice?

A week after our launch and discussions have already begun on our Forum.  I received an email from Rais, Mark’s second victim (see this week’s Close Up). He forgave Mark many years ago, he said, but took issue with Mark ’s attributing his crimes to September 11th. “I know from the video that after he shot Mr. Patel he demanded money,” Rais wrote, “tried to open the cash register and threatened if Mr. Patel didn’t open it, he would blow out his brains. But I read a different story on the site.”

Rais refers to the security camera tape showing Mark killing Mr. Patel. We will play this security video in the coming weeks, as well as clips from our interview with the prosecutor. The tape was used as part of the prosecution’s legal strategy to present the case to the jurors as a robbery gone wrong. This elevated Mark’s crime to capital murder, punishable by death. What exactly was Mark’s motivation, along with the prosecution’s success in achieving the death sentence, merits a separate discussion on this blog in future.  I found, however, the second part of Rais ’s email far more distressing and revealing.

“I went to see Alka Patel (the widow of Mark’s last victim) couple of weeks ago,” Rais writes. “I was very upset and felt pain in my heart by seeing her condition, working seven days a week, losing memory, extremely stressed, no time for the kids, and her daughter was staying with her in the gas station while she was working there…It’s been seven years since 9/11 and not a single charity or humanitarian organization came forward to see how we, the victims and the families, are surviving! There is no Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, Latino leader or any renowned community leader, who always raise their voice against any kind of discrimination against their people. Since, we do not belong to their group, who cares?”

Reading it and looking into the issue further, I realized that we failed to understand that several crimes were committed in Texas after September 11th. First there were the obvious, those of Mark Stroman, now awaiting execution. But the other crime that we never discuss is the refusal of any state or any Federal authority or charity to extend any help to the victims of these hate crimes. This offense is less known and far less spectacular than Stroman’s. But I do believe it is as important and far more revealing about the society in which we live.

Anya Cordell, an activist who launched the Campaign for Collateral Compassion, described in last week’s Close Up the response to her failed efforts to solicit compensation for the victims of all post September 11th hate crimes as ranging from ” indifferent to hostile.”  This shameful inertness toward the fate of the victims stands in stark contrast to the state of Texas’ highly efficient pursuit of Mark’s execution. A federal judge accepted the State’s argument to deny Mark’s Federal appeal. (Read more in Mark’s death row diary). The road to his execution has just become shorter.

The death penalty is usually defended as providing the victims with a sense of justice. Alka Patel told me in no uncertain term that, as a religious person, she opposes the death penalty and never asked the prosecutor to demand it. Delivering justice for Alka and the other victims is far more complicated than simply executing Mark Stroman. Recognition by the state, or any other agency, of their victimhood might have gone a long way to alleviate their suffering, help heal their emotional wounds and give them a more meaningful sense of justice. A brief Goggle search I did reveals that millions of dollars went unspent by the various funds established to aid 9/11 victims. Yet not one charitable organization, neither the Federal or State government in Texas and elsewhere saw it fit to include in the list those few individuals who, in the days post September 11th, were victimized by a rash of violent hate crimes. So it is not due to lack of money that not a penny reached Alka and the other victims.

You can call the future execution of Mark Storman any name you wish, but do not call it justice. It might be one more crime to be committed in this case while the victims continue to await true justice.

Execution Chronicles

September 11th 2008

The launch of this website is, for me, one more step in a life-long journey to understand violence and hate.  Growing up the son of a Holocaust refugee in Israel, I learned from a young age to view the world through particular lenses.  My father did not tell me horror stories when I was little – those came later – but he spoke of his family who had been killed as if they still were alive and with us.  So real were they, that when I learned of their murders, I felt a great loss. Later, when I fought in some of Israel’s wars, I was introduced to violence firsthand. Given these experiences, I feel that every film I have made has been part of a personal investigation into the impact of violence and hate, two frighteningly powerful forces that have shaped my life and the lives of millions of others.

Now I assume most people would understand this description of my work.  That might change, however, after visiting this site.  I can almost hear some of the reactions:  How do you dare to place the victims and their tormentor on the same page? How can you allow a confessed murderer to have a blog to communicate his fear, rage and frustrations while the families of his victims struggle to reconstruct lives shattered by his crimes?  Am I some wide-eyed liberal with a distorted sense of fairness?

This is not the first time I have been subjected to such questions.  During 1994 and ’95, I filmed in Bosnia and Serbia investigating the war crimes of a Serbian paramilitary group.  It was a demanding period, during which I hung around with the most despicable human beings I have ever met, and tracked down their victims in refugee camps throughout Europe.

The documentary, Yellow Wasps: Anatomy of a War Crime, participated in many human rights film festivals and aired on television networks around the world.  During appearances I had to explain and defend myself against charges of giving voice to individuals whom the international community condemned as war criminals.

Three yeas ago, I produced another film, The Junction, the story of the first Israeli soldier and the first Palestinian killed in the beginning days of the second “Indifida” at an obscure road junction in the Gaza strip.  Critics wondered how could I place victims  (Palestinians) and their occupiers (Israelis) on the same level,  “drawing moral parallels between them.” Although all my films are different, they share the same focus and belief.

I feel the complexities of hate crimes, personal violence or political violence gripping Bosnia or Israel can’t begin to be comprehended without trying to understand the participants and what drives them.   How were the members of the Yellow Wasp recruited and what were they after? How did they commit such heinous crimes?  Why did young Israelis volunteer to serve in a military unit to guard isolated Jewish settlements in a sea of Palestinian-Arab population — settlements, which by their very existence, generated violence and resentment?

I have come to realize is that criminals are as human as we are.  The majority of killers are not demented psychopaths, and if we hope to understand the inner forces that create hate crimes, we need to explore the criminal as much as his/her victims. It is this realization that guides this web site.

At the trial of Mark Stroman, the prosecutor in asking the jury to sentence Stroman to death, referred to him as “cancer,” for which the only cure was amputation of the infected limb. This sentiment impressed Nadeem Akhtar, the brother of Duri Hasan whose husband was Stroman’s first victim. (Duri appears on Victims’ Voices this week) Nadeem, a devout Muslim who opposed the death penalty on religious grounds, was swayed by the prosecutor’s argument to believe Stroman’s punishment is right.

“Cancer” is what Nazis called Jews in order to remove them from the human experience. In Nazi films, books, newspapers articles and endless speeches, Jews were labeled a disease that threatened the “volt” – the people. This prolonged propaganda campaign was essential to the success of the Final Solution in deporting and killing millions with minimal protest from the rest of the society.   Prof. Rick Halperin of Southern Methodist University, who will be featured on this site in the coming weeks, actually made a study comparing the language the Nazis used against those the party wanted to eliminate with the language used by proponents of the death penalty.

Now I know many might disagree, but on  the level of the human experience, I do not see much difference between the  prosecutor of Mark Stroman labeling him  “cancer” or  Stroman  lumping poor Asian migrants as ” Arabs” and thus “responsible ” for   the September 11 attacks.  Both needed to reject the individuality of their victims  as a first step in seeking their death.

– Ilan Ziv

KARADZIC AND US

Since the arrest of the former Bosnian Serbian leader, Radovan Karadic, I have been overwhelmed with emails from friends and colleagues . We all found each other during the war in Bosnia, a war that in so many ways has changed our lives. When the war was over, we filmmakers and reporters moved on to other projects and other films . Karadzic’s arrest was a sudden awakening to us all. Suddenly I found myself flooded with memories of people, places and encounters that I thought I had left behind. Compared to reporters spending months under fire in Bosnia , I was truly privileged. I began filming a year into the war. I visited Sarajevo a few weeks after a cease fire was arranged . I filmed in Srebrenica almost 6 months after the town fell and 8000 of its defenders and inhabitants were slaughtered. I was not a war reporter but an “archaeologist “, a “forensic” investigator piecing together the fragments of genocide. I soon realized that an investigation into a massacre can be as taxing as watching it unfolds. Interviewing refugees in the relative safety of exile allowed them to be more open and intimate. Suddenly I was privy to their most intimate thoughts and feelings as they described the experience of horror. I visited the scenes of the crime, like the small city of Zvornik where not a single Muslim inhabitant was left. I drove through the “cleansed” surrounding villages, now eerily empty . I filmed the local discotheque outside of Zvornik which was converted into an improvised concentration and torture center. It is the gap between these “peaceful ” images in the spring of 1993 and the detailed stories of the horror that had transpired there only a year earlier, that made an indelible impression on me.

“For the generation that lives through it , the documents of the War Crimes Tribunal are not that important“, I wrote to a friend , a refugee from Zvornik  now living in Sarajevo. We exchanged emails after Karadzic ’s arrest “…. but for generations to come, , these testimonies like those of the Nuremberg Trials will provide the backbone for our collective memory of what had happened”

I was jolted by the response:

“…I can only hope so… because, unlike the 2nd world war, in the Bosnian war there was no moral winner, and no closure – and that is soooo bad. and dangerous. and I can feel and see the effects of that every day“.

I felt ashamed by the banality of my email. For me the war in Bosnia was a memory, for everyone I left behind, the war was ongoing…no closure , no moral victory, only the danger of a conflict which could reignite.

I decided than and there that I will have to go back to Bosnia . I must continue some how to document the war that was over for all of us foreigners but is still raging in the souls and minds of its victims.
I have yet to work out in the coming months the details of the future project. However for now, please read Ed Vulliamy’s piece in this Sunday’s Guardian. It was Ed Vulliamy, the Independent Television News reporter and Roy Gutman ’s an American print journalist who revealed in 1992 the existence of concentration camps in Bosnia. Their stories led me to Bosnia a year later. Ed’s revisit to Bosnia in the wake of Karadich ’s arrest is a vivid testimony of the war that is not yet over .

\”I am waiting . no one has ever said sorry\”

A night at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto

The Bloor Cinema is a Toronto landmark, an 800-seat grand venue for film festivals and reparatory programming. Last year my film, Six Days (the story of the 1967 war that shaped the modern Middle East), played here at the Jewish Film Festival. This year, a group of young Canadian Jews invited me back with the film, as part of a planned series they’re organizing in an attempt to attract a younger Jewish audience to the festival.

All of this is hardly significant, besides the fact that I am writing this blog in the ornate balcony of the theater. I am alone. The 200-plus audience is downstairs. I am waiting for my film to end so that we can start the Q&A session, for which I came. On the screen both Jordanians and Israelis describe the final battle for Jerusalem in 1967. Among them, I can hear the voice of Hanan Porat, a paratrooper during the war, who grew to become one of the founders of the settlement movement. He is describing the emotional moment before the paratroopers entered the Old City of Jerusalem: “I felt as if I was part of King David’s army.” He had told me this while standing in front of Lion’s Gate, the gate in the Old Cities’ wall through which he and the other paratroopers entered Old Jerusalem.

I have watched this scene hundreds of times and now my mind drifts back to my last time filming in Israel. Recently I was there to film a scene for my current project Faith&Politics, a documentary about the 2008 American presidential campaign. I went to Israel literally following the trail of the biblical leader Joshua, who took over from Moses fighting his way into the Promised Land. The biblical Joshua? you may ask. What does he has to do with American politics? That was my initial reaction until I heard Barack Obama ’s speech in the historic Brown Church in Selma Alabama, a monument to the Civil Rights movement.
“We stand on the shoulders of giants,” Democratic candidate Barack Obama told the congregation. “I thank the Moses generation, but we’ve got to remember now that Joshua still had a job to do…We’re going to leave it to the Joshua generation to make sure it happens.” I was surprised by Obama’s use of Joshua as a metaphor for the Civil Rights struggle. I come from a place where Joshua is a very concrete individual …and a divisive one.
I guess I, too, can be called, “The Joshua ’s generation,” but not in the sense Obama meant. I spent most of my military service in the Jordan valley fighting Palestinian guerilla infiltrators. In fact, a large part of my service was passed in and around Jericho, the city that Joshua allegedly occupied. I say “allegedly,” since part of the filming I did recently in Israel was a debate between three individuals, each holding a conflicting view on the subject.
Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun is one of the founders of Gush Emunim and considered one of the more important rabbis of the settlement movement. “Who is Joshua for you?” I asked him. “The leader of the first settlement project in the promised land,” he replied without hesitation.
I posed the same question to Dr. Nazmi Al Ju’beh, a Palestinian archeologist. For him, Joshua is a symbol of destruction and occupation. As a young schoolboy before 1967, Dr. Al Ju’beh worked for three summers on archeological digs in Jericho and Jerusalem, conducted by noted British archeologist Dame Kathleen Kenyon. In the early 1950s, Dame Kenyon came to the West Bank on a search for archeological evidence of biblical stories. Like many archeologists at the time, she was a devout Christian. Her groundbreaking dig in Jericho proved that the city was destroyed by an earthquake and abandoned before the supposed arrival of Joshua. As an adult, Dr. Al Ju’beh caught up again with Kathleen Kenyon when she came to Bir Zeit University on the West Bank where he was studying archeology. “How do you reconcile your faith with your scientific discovery in Jericho,” he had asked her.
“In my head I know that Jericho was destroyed and abandoned long before the arrival of Joshua. I did not find any archeological basis to the bible story,” she replied. “But in my heart I still believe…so I have a conflict between my faith and my heart.”
Dr. Shlomo Sand of Tel Aviv University, a leading Israeli historian, refuses to treat the bible as a historical document. For him , as a historian, there are too many contradictions and too many events with no archeological basis. “What would you like to me do as a historian? he asked me rhetorically. He claims that for thousands of years religious Jews revered the bible as a theological document, and not as a historical narrative. It was the Protestants, he claims, and later the Zionist movement, that transformed it into an historical document: “They took Joshua from the theological book shelf where he lived for centuries and put him on the historical book shelf…my role as a critical historian is to put Joshua back on the theological shelf where he belongs… it is the only way to calm the region.”
To learn how this debate resolves itself, you will have to see the upcoming film, Faith&Politics. But listening to Hanan Porat’s words blurring in a Toronto theater reminds me of this struggle on how to define the bible. This struggle, I have grown to believe, is at the core of the political divisions not only in Israel, but also in the United States. Is the bible a profound theological document full of metaphors, or the literal words of God and a political guidebook on how to govern our political life as a society? Faith &Politics tries to explore the contours of this debate.

BACK ON THE ROAD…. figuratively speaking

Since our journey was over and I came back to New York, I have not updated the website. Time was spent on viewing the material and preparing further shooting and rethinking on how to have the Web site accompany the project during the editing all the way through the November election. The process is now over and the site is, in a sense, reborn with some differences: no more chasing daily events along the journey (while, at times, failing to keep up with the schedule…) but rather a weekly update of content that will bring you into the editing process as I grapple with the many issues that have emerged from almost 4 weeks of shooting. Yes I know the primaries are over (at least for Republicans) and I am not interested in getting involved in the national guessing game of who will win the Democratic nomination. However, as the recent controversy surrounding the pastors of both Obama and McCain reveals, a multitude of issues are lurking just beneath the surface of the campaign, and religion is clearly one of them.

Those issues are the focus of the film. They emerged from my travels throughout the country listening to so many diverse voices. So from this point on, until the elections, I will try to bring you into the editing room every week not only by posting new interviews and short scenes but also by describing the kind of issues that I feel have surfaced in the campaign. Those Issues are rarely discussed (can you believe it?) In the mainstream press but as the recent controversies have shown are very much at the core of the campaign and like molten lava in unseen underground tunnels, they shape it.

This week I want to introduce to you one of the main contributors to the film, Dr. Randall Balmer; an author and lecturer in Columbia University (and in Dartmouth College this semester.). His current book God in the White House, how Faith shaped the presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, is a very important contribution to understanding the growing role of faith in shaping Politics. I had breakfast with Dr. Balmer in New Hampshire during the Primaries, and I intend to do a few more interviews with him in the coming weeks. I will keep posting short snippets from these interviews in the future.

Next week I am filming in Israel and, among other things, going to Megido (Armageddon) with hundreds of parishioners from Southern California who are converging on the archaeological site where they believe the final battle of Armageddon will take place.

It is going to be a very busy week and I will write all about it in my next blog.

Last but not least our site is now connected to ARTE (The French German public television.). I am hoping to receive questions and comments from European viewers and will post them on the site soliciting comments from readers in the United States.

Until Then,

Ilan

P.S. In the Name of the Victims is being screened in the Israeli Parlaiment on April 1st . I will dedicate an  entire blog and a mailing to this important development.

Dinner at Matty’s

 Again too long a gap between blogs. Now on top of intense production schedule some health problems at home and my pre-occupation with them. My only consolation is that when we come back to New York on Feb. 6 there will be plenty of time until the election to tell the story of our journey in details and share with you the many insights I gained on the road. The more I travel I realize how privileged I have been. There is virtually no chance that on my own, and without the “assignment” of the film, I could have had such a unique opportunity to travel to so many small and diverse communities, which are well off the media’s radar, and engage in such intimate dialog with ordinary folks.

I have spent the last 4 days in Anderson County in South Carolina’s “up country”. In the short video we  will upload tomorrow  you will be able to glimpse a community meeting that was held in connection with the project to discuss faith & politics. We also spent a day with supporters of Christian Exodus – a small political initiative that aims at installing conservative Christians in key positions in County and Community boards, as a means to transform them politically and demand further freedom from the federal government. The last 2 days before the South Carolina primaries were spent following both Obama and Clinton supporters. All of that deserves many more detailed blogs, pictures and footage. I’ll just share with you my impressions of last night’s “watch party” in Matty’s restaurant—a down town eatery in Anderson.

It was such an amazing night for me precisely because I did not want to attend it. Our original plans were to follow Carlvin Jones (the young Obama volunteer from Spartanburg whom we followed as he visits barber shops and beauty salons to energize the Obama votes) to what was billed as Obama’s victory party in Columbia. Plans did not work out and we were invited to Matty’s for a small gathering of members of the Democratic Party to watch the results instead. The prospect of spending dinner in a small local restaurant while on television the crowds were building up to listen to Obama’s speech frankly depressed me. “The night was lost,” I said to myself. How wrong  was I ! To begin with, many of the people whom we followed in the past few days  showed up at Matty’s. Obama’s supporters and few supporters of John Edward supplemented them. There were a few dozens of us perched on high chairs around the giant TV screen. The debates and discussions began almost immediately since CNN projected Obama’s victory the minute the polls closed at 7pm ”with 0 of the precincts reporting”.  “How is it possible?” exclaimed Gracie Floyd, a feisty African American member of the Anderson county local council. Rev. Dr. George L. West, director of pastoral services for AnMed Health, was posing with several of the participants for a “unity picture”, recruiting people from adjacent tables to “stand in for Senator Biden and Governor Richardson”, who had already dropped from the race. But all of this is not worth telling if not for the crowd’s reaction to Obama’s victory speech. Once again as in Iowa I saw first hand not only the power of Obama’s speech but the deep yearning it taps. We were there together, middle aged African American and white supporters of Obama and Hillary as well as young volunteers of Obama’s campaign after a long day at the polls. They too were racially mixed. There was  our crew from New York and California. There were devout Christians and some “cultural Jews” like myself. One could see instantly the electrifying power of Obama’s words on the crowd. “Have you heard such a speech in the past 40 years?” Asked me  Dr. John Walker who had voted for Edwards (“to keep the discussion going”, as he put it). We followed John’s wife Brena, a Hillary supporter, for the past day. “It is like the 60’s again,” told me  an ordained Baptist Minister and a retired professor of philosophy of religion in a local theological college. One could close one’s eyes and imagine such a scene in a New York joint. But this was not New York but Anderson, South Carolina, a former member of the Confederacy whose flag proudly stands at the foot of the State House.

For the past days the wonderful councilwoman Grace Floyd tried her best to convince our camera that though she admires Barak Obama she supports Hillary because of Obama’s lack of experience. Grace looked solemn watching the little spell bound crowd gathering around the TV set.  “You can do nothing about it”, I joked, “This goes much deeper than intellectual arguments,” I said as I pointed at the amazingly mixed crowd and Obama’s ability to bring it together. “It is like with Martin Luther King Junior,” she whispered  as if surprised by her own words. She too sensed that there was something there beyond logical arguments and counter arguments. It was for me a moment so pregnant with meaning and history not to be forgotten. “Martin Luther King Jr. too had a very thin resume,“ told me Rev. West when I asked him about Obama’s relative lack of experience.

“What did you learn from your journey up to now?“ Asked me  the   former Theology profesor before going home. “I will write you about it” I said trying to buy time. I did not tell him that my head was buzzing with ideas. I did not tell him that all of a sudden, watching Obama’s speech in that company and in that town, my entire film came into focus. I started this journey as a devout secularist alarmed by the intrusion of religion into political life. Barak Obama’s speech was fueled by his religious and moral beliefs. The audience in the restaurant—all devout believers—sensed it and reacted to it precisely because of its moral vision. But suddenly at Matty’s I sopped being an outside observer anymore! I was no longer just a secular Jew who arrived from Israel few decades ago… I shared the vision too! No, no… I am still very much secular and have no plans to convert, but I suddenly understood that the real debate in this country is not between seculars and people of faith. With 90% of Americans seeing themselves as people of faith, that debate has been settled centuries ago . The real debate is between what kind of religious vision will dominate and influence American politics and how it can co-exist with the 1^st constitutional amendment.  I will write another time  about the clash of those two visions.

Tomorrow we are in Florida with a Huckabee supporter and will also interview Rev. Joel Hunter, one of the new generation of leaders in the Evangelical Christian movement who is trying to expand the movement’s vision and moral concerns.

 

Until later

 

Ilan

On the road to Kentucky

 

Check  out the new video we just posted. We began to interview ordinary folks whom we meet on the road.

This encounter is from Arabica Coffee shop “the best coffee in Eastern Ohio” as the sign promises. As it turns out we stumbled upon a group of young people, leaders in their local church. In the next days we will post our conversations with other patrons , as well as with people outside the post office. Fascinating stuff. Most of our scheduled interviews and discussions are with religious activists across the political and religious spectrum. Our chance encounters are with ordinary folks. All of them so far described themselves as people of faith however their views on religion and politics is highly nuanced and quiet sophisticated.

We will keep posting more of these “chance meetings” as we continue in our journey.

Tomorrow we visit the Red River meeting place and the association (all made out of volunteers) who reenact and commemorate the Second Awakening – the great religious revival of the early 19 century which began right here only 30 min drive from our hotel.

Good night from Franklin Kentucky

Ilan 

 

Back on the Road!

  We are back on the road after a short stop in NY. I am writing this blog as we drive through Ohio.

In the late afternoon we will be in Parma, OH, talking to supporters of Governor Huckabee.

Tomorrow, another day’s drive to Kentucky to film what promises to be the highlight of the journey so far- a visit to the Red River Meeting Place in Logan county where I will meet members of the Red River association who are gathering every year to commemorate and re-enact 18^th century religious life. The small hut and Meeting Place is the actual site where the Second Awakening—the religious revival movement that reshaped America’s political and religious landscape—began in the late 18^th century. We were promised an 18^th century service and authentic dinner. I wonder what it’s going to be like! We will talk about the election and about politics. For me this active association is yet another proof of the impact religion had and continues to have on American public life. The weekend is supposed to be cold. The small stone and wood hut has no real heat but even as I picture us huddled in the chill I am sure it will be a fascinating experience.

Watch the new clips I put up. It will give you a taste of some of the voices from the New Hampshire primaries. In the next few days we will upload more material and more portraits of the week.

Until tomorrow

Ilan

 

REFLECTIONS OF THE MORNING AFTER

I am in NY where I will film for two days with an anarchist Catholic couple. I will also edit with the help of my French Co Producer Serge Gordey, the first part of a news report for the French German Public TV Channel ARTE about the Primaries process. On the 17th I will continue the journey until Feb 6 a day after Super Tuesday. In a future blog I will map out my route and anticipated encounters in my travels from NY to Kentucky, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. I will reach Oklahoma before Super Tuesday. This quick stop in NY allows a moment of reflection, as I try to share with you my impressions from the first leg of my journey.

1.

I have been living in this country since April 1974 yet I found my journey a fascinating study of a country I thought I knew. The point was driven home for me when I met Randall Balmer for breakfast the morning after the New Hampshire vote. Randall is a scholar and an Episcopalian priest. I met him in his temporary residence in the Marriott Hotel in Lebanon New Hampshire. Randall who is teaching in Columbia, and is a visiting professor in Harvard school of divinity is teaching a semester in Damrouth College. America, he claims, is one of the most religious countries in the world with close to 90% of the population describing themselves as people of faith. It is a fact that one forgets living in NY. My journey among the believers that started in Iowa not only convinced me about this reality but also convinced me that somehow we all have barricaded ourselves in our respective communities. With this lack of dialogue, we not only grow apart but also become distant and belligerent. No I am not naive and suddenly yearn for some mystical harmony, but when you are on the road meeting ordinary folks, you suddenly realize how much room there is for dialogue and how much the cultural differences in this country have been exploited by political, and… yes, religious leadership as well. This became clear to me in the wonderful evening I spent with the Rice family, or when I was following, for two days, Pam Colantuono and State representative Maureen Mooney, both supporters of Senator McCain. Maureen and Pam were in charge or energizing religious communities and encouraging them to vote for Senator McCain who won the New Hampshire primaries on the Republican side. Those few days convinced me how much in common we do have and how much could be gained by a sincere dialog that not only explore the differences but also search for a common ground- a compromise that would allow co existence over the perpetual cultural war, which has poisoned our civic and political life. I think that this fatigue from the cultural war fueled the campaign of Barak Obama. I sensed this fatigue everywhere I go and realized that it does provide an opportunity for the future. If we secularists will realize that religion in America will never go away and it is the dominant factor in this country’s political life, we will open ourselves to explore a venue of dialog and search for common ground. If the people of faith will realize that the success and the unprecedented flourishing of religion in this country has been possible because of the separation of Church and state, they might look at diversity and even secularism less suspiciously. I know it is a difficult dialogue. It was for me when Donna Rice explained to me her religious objection to the Hate Crime bill, and how many of its elements could penalize anyone preaching against Homosexuality. The bible has few sentences against homosexuals and if you believe, as she does, that the bible is the word of God, how could you ignore these commands?

It’s easy to dismiss this objection by resorting to stereotypes but the first amendment also protects religious practices without discriminating against any faith. Yes it was tough to listen to her arguments against the proposed bill. A bill I hold so important. However, Donna will be the first to express her disgust and horror of hate crimes committed against gays. Born and raised in Wyoming she was particularly horrified about gay hate crimes committed in her state. So listening to Donna one can clearly see the contours of a potential compromise that will allow her to follow her faith in her own church while allowing a progressive legislation against hate crimes to proceed and become a law. At the same time I am sure that people like Donna, Cliff, Pan and Maureen have had their share of hard time while confronting my firm and unshaken secularism—in such contradiction to what they hold as the real Truth. The only point I am making is that the easiest solution is to focus on our differences and it is much more complicated to explore our common ground.

 

2.

The second point I take from these first ten days of the journey is the ultimate maturity of the voters. We tend to construct intellectual arguments and analysis that is so removed from the reality of the voters. After Iowa I expected to find most evangelicals to support Mike Huckabee. However, it became clear to me that evangelical voters are much more sophisticated than to fall into the cliché that they could only support some one of their own. The success of Senator McCain and the discussion with people like Pat, Maureen, or Donna convinced me that their choice of candidate is far more complicated than simply rooting for the one that wears his religion on his sleeve. As one of the many volunteers for McCain had told me (he was an Orthodox Jew) I am voting for a President not for a Chief Rabbi.

 

3.

I came to appreciate the constitution’s ability to set broad principles rather than bury ideas in details. It leaves every generation to interpret these powerful moral principals. Like the Talmud in Jewish tradition, this interpretation is a vibrant and dynamic process. Retreating into our respective bunkers to hide behind stereotypes is an escape from the duty to continue to argue, debate and re-interpret. 

“I did exactly what you did,” Randall Palmer told we when we met. He meant that he went to Iowa and New Hampshire to follow the 1998 nascent candidacy of Pat Roberson, a televangelist preacher and the host of the 700 Club. As we recall, Robertson’s candidacy fizzled out. Randall Palmer’s anecdote suddenly helped me to place the current unfolding campaign in a historical context. Yes, we do not know how the campaign will finally end. But the results of the New Hampshire primaries demonstrate, in my opinion, is how complex the process is and how it can be easily squeezed into our neat black and white categories.

I will try to write a new blog every day (I said Try) so until tomorrow,

Take care

Ilan

January 7th- The night before the New Hampshire Primaries

I was hoping to write a longer blog to describe our wonderful dinner at Cliff and Donna Rice’s home, followed, by what I thought, was a very moving discussion in a Mennonite church in Pennsylvania. But tomorrow is the New Hampshire primary and we will be working from early morning following Maureen Mooney and Pam Colantuono who are organizing the Catholic and Evangelical votes for Senator McCain. We will be with Maureen in, what she hopes, will be a victory party for John McCain. The senator is ahead in the polls. We also plan to follow Sam Osherson whom we found on the Barak Obama campaign’s web site among the people of faith for Barak Obama. Sam is Jewish and see his support for Obama as a political act, rather than a religious one. If we can manage it we hope to follow Sam to the Obama’s victory party. The polls predict that Senator Obama will win the New Hampshire vote as well. A victory here in New Hampshire will bring the African American Senator closer to the nomination and will reshape the rest of the campaign. As you can see the schedule is indeed grueling and I hope to be able to catch my breath soon after the New Hampshire primaries and to write much longer and substantial blogs. The journey has been fascinating; the diversity of views on religion and faith is indeed impressive. So there are lots of tales to tell and ideas to communicate and explore. Those need to be (and will be) written under much calmer circumstances. We have a sort of a break for few days after the New Hampshire primaries and I will use those days to get up to speed.

But I cannot finish this short blog without telling a small anecdote:

We filmed tonight at the McCain headquarters in Manchester New Hampshire where Maureen, the Republican Party State representative, and a volunteer are among the hundreds that work the phones calling potential voters and offering help in getting them to their voting places.

In this beehive of activity I found one orthodox Jew who like the hundreds of volunteers has been working for days to energize the voters. My final question to him was how does his faith influence his vote? He seemed to be surprised: I am working for McCain to get him elected as a president you know,  he told me with an ironic smile, not for the chief Rabbi. A clever view I thought and a very healthy one on where Religion end and the State begins. More thoughts about that later.

Though I am not sure I will be able to blog tomorrow we did manage to cut a short snippet from our wonderful dinner in Valparaiso Indiana and tomorrow we will put up another video blog.

Good night from Manchester, New Hampshire.

Ilan