Becky Schachter: God bless the peacemakers 

From the river to the sea, are two peoples who long to live in peace, safety and dignity. Something that seems to often be lost in the binary, simplistic cries for freedom and justice.

And within these two peoples is the vast diversity of identity, history, place and perspective of what that means. Intersectionality doesn’t even begin to cover all the differences and intersections, but it is a concept that helps understand and bring pause and humility as we hold our shared humanity and cry out for an end to dehumanization of and retaliation against all peoples.

If there are two sides, it is between those who choose a side from fear and righteous rage, and those who can choose to engage in the extraordinary hard work of mutual recognition and reckoning with interrupting violence, including language that further causes harm and separation.

God bless the peacemakers. They are my teachers.

Becky Schachter

Northampton