The Cherry Orchard

I’ve mentioned CGJT (the Committee to Give Jerusalem to Tibet) before. One interesting feature of this organization is that it does not exist. I made up the name as the fake sponsor of a poetry reading I arranged at the Bowery Poetry Club in the Spring of 2002.

This was a time when the daily carnage in Israel and Palestine was nearly as bad as the carnage in Lebanon and Israel is today. I put posters with this fake organization’s name up all over New York City, and I was then very pleased to find the name living on after the event was over. “The Committee to Give Jerusalem to Tibet (CGJT)” would randomly appear as a fake sponsor of various other event listings at the Bowery Poetry Club for the next month (I’m pretty sure this was the handiwork of club owner Bob Holman, though we never said a word about it to each other).

The name is a joke, but there’s a very serious (and fairly obvious) suggestion behind it. Any long-lasting peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians should involve equally sharing the city of Jerusalem, where great numbers of Jews and Muslims live and worship at historic temples. Realistically, the solution is likely to involve some kind of international overseeing force. This force would need to have sovereign authority, and therefore what we are proposing amounts to the internationalization of Jerusalem.

This wouldn’t be easy to achieve, of course. Battling would occur. I can think of three groups that would vigorously (and violently) fight this type of equitable settlement: fundamentalist Muslims, fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Jews. Nevertheless, it is the right approach and it must be considered.

Jon Stewart recently said as much on The Daily Show while interviewing political critic Vali Nasr, author of Shia Revival. As they discussed possible solutions to the Middle East, Stewart asked why we don’t just internationalize the city of Jerusalem. Nasr and Stewart kicked this around for a long time, agreeing that this might actually work. You can see the video here.

This is the last of a quick seven-piece series on a basic question: we all say we hate war and violence and injustice, so who among us are doing anything about it? I decided to approach this question by looking at those who hold several key roles around the world, grouped not by nationality or religion but by function. Here’s what we looked at:

• Politicians

• Religious leaders

• The United Nations

• Independent Activist Organizations

• Writers, Artists and Musicians

• Theoreticians and Academics

I’d like to conclude with the group I feel closest to: journalists and bloggers (I’m really not interested in discussing the differences between journalists and bloggers, which is probably an overplayed topic). I think we’ve got a pretty lively public dialogue going on here in the USA. We’ve got loud voices like Michael Moore, Bill O’Reilly, Jon Stewart, Ann Coulter. I disagree with at least half of them all the time, and all of them probably half the time — but in the end I’ll just say I’m glad they’re all around to keep the dialogue jumping (as annoying as Bill O’Reilly is).

But there is no shared dialogue on a global level. Over here, we read our over-here newspapers that show upsetting pictures of casualties in Israel and don’t show upsetting pictures of casualties in Lebanon. Over there, they read their over-there newspapers that show upsetting pictures of casualties in Lebanon and don’t show upsetting pictures of casualties in Israel. Oh yeah, and both sides think it’s shocking how the other side doesn’t show photos of their casualties, and never notice that they do the same thing. We need better dialogue between nations, between religions, between languages. I wish some of our proud superstar journalists and supposedly innovative media executives would figure out ways to make this happen.

This is an exciting time to practice journalism, due not only to advances in digital video and networked communications but also to a new level of confidence and bravery among both amateur and professional journalists. I have no doubt that this trend will continue, and I can only hope that TheCherryOrchard.org will find ways to contribute to this trend.