Month: March 2026

Rick Sahar spoke about his experience of peace at the HumanKind discussion, at Carterton’s Peace Festival, March 21, 2026

When I look back at the causes I have actively supported, I see a pattern emerging; that it is by facing conflict while pursuing Justice is how I approach Peace-making. I believe I have been influenced to approach Peace in this way from the two paths I have mostly studied; the Jewish tradition I grew up in where I attended religious services and trained and also through the twenty years I studied and practiced Tibetan Buddhism. Many people have followed a similar path and we are sometimes called “JU-BUS”. Both paths encourage robust debate and also the pursuit of justice… and as the saying goes, there cannot be Peace without Justice… this saying was popularized last century by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other religious leaders, as it declares that peace is not merely the absence of conflict (or “negative peace”) but can only be found in the presence of Justice. Justice is widely considered an inherent, natural right derived from universal moral principles and human dignity, rather than merely a human-made law. It is often viewed as an inalienable right to receive fairness, equality, and what is due to an individual, often described as a moral necessity. I believe that in all levels of human existence, that pursuing Justice, preferably with loving kindness, metta bhavana practice, has the potential to create a deep and lasting Peace. I can see a connection as to how this can apply in international relations as well as in our daily personal interactions.

I have veered away from Jewish Orthodoxy, as in the “ortho” “rigid” approach that I grew up in, to practice, as coined by Rabbi Gershom Winkler, a more Jewish “Flexidoxy” way of life… I have decided not to attend services at Temple Sinai, where I am still counted as a member, instead I attend vigils, demos and rallies to show both my support for the Palestinian cause and to express my anger at what Israel says they are doing on my behalf… I told the president of TS that I will not attend services until all references to the “state of Israel” are removed from its constitution and prayer services. Israel is not seeking Peace but instead is pursuing expansion of its territory, to occupy and annex neighboring countries. There are several commentators that Marilyn, Adham I and others can suggest worth reading/listening to, to get more factual information…

Shortly after that 7^th of Oct, I “traded in” my Jewish prayer shawl, known as the tallis, for a kufiyah, a Palestinian scarf. I checked with Palestinians to ensure I was not misappropriating their culture in any way. Instead, I was encouraged, and I made the conscious decision to replace my tallis with a kufiyah, to visibly support those under an unlawful occupation that has led them to suffer a genocide. The kufiyah is used globally as a symbol of a peaceful form of protest against the illegal occupation and a show of solidarity with the Palestinian people. For me it is not only a political statement but also a spiritual one; to pursue Justice, as we know there is no Peace without Justice… I wear a kufiyah to honor Palestinian culture and history and to honor their pursuit of a Just Peace. “From the River to the Sea…” for Palestinians and everyone else, to live equally in one state.

I would like to look at the Hebrew language regarding this word Honor that I speak of. Most words in Hebrew have a three-letter root. The three letters of “chaf (or kaf) vet (or bet) & daled” (כ ב ד), when pronounced as “koved” (not related to the virus; no conspiracy theories, please), is the Hebrew word for “heaviness, mass, or a burden”. When conjugated slightly differently, it could be the Hebrew adjective of “kaved” to describe something “heavy” and there is also a link to the “liver” as “keved”, which you might include in the “kebood”, that is the food and drink to serve guests, perhaps as pate’ (or, in my case, chopped liver) … we do that to show our guests “kavod” (כָּבוֹד), while commonly translated as “honor”, or in religious terms as “glory”, as  its root meaning literally signifies “weight” or “substance”. This describes someone whose presence or their word “carries weight”… that’s where I was going with all this… There is no honor/kavod in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians…

This all seems to have put me in conflict with many in the local Jewish community… but I am able, for the most part, to accept that vulnerable position, to bear that “weight/burden”, which we all now know is related to “honor/respect”, so to try to bring awareness to the prospect of the “Peace” alternative by supporting the establishment of Palestinian rights and statehood…

So I put forward that Peace is not found only by avoiding conflict but also by working with conflict… for example, in January 2025, just over fourteen months ago, a couple of activist friends and I decided to bring our anger directly to the terrorist state of Israel, by establishing an ongoing protest action in front of their embassy on Brandon Street. We called it “Occupy Brandon Street” (OBS)… what? You never knew that the Embassy of Genocide is located there? You would not the first to admit that, as the zionists have been hiding in #36 Brandon Street, the Bayley’s Building, without flag or sign to show they are there. And actually, since attacking Iran, they are no longer in the building as they have created a situation where they do not feel safe, through their own acts of aggression and disregard of international law. The good news is that the Israeli embassy’s lease has come to an end. And the building owners decided their lease will not be renewed. We feel that OBS can take some credit in that as the owners of the building say it has to do with all the noise, loud music, speeches, pavement chalk art and the presence of Palestinian flags held by kufiyah-wearing activists outside their building. We have handed out about ten thousand leaflets to people passing by that give an accurate historical account of the zionists’ apartheid practices in Palestine as well as notice for upcoming rallies. And where will the embassy go, you might ask? They plan to relocate into the US Embassy in Thorndon, their partners in crime… Yeah, we could claim that our “occupation” can take some credit in their forced “displacement”, but actually, it is all their own doing by not adhering to international law and by becoming the greatest threat to Peace in the world.

If you think you could also bear some of this “weight”, once you feel confident in doing so, try initiating a conversation with people you know who may not understand the facts about Israel’s Genocide in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. People need to learn why Israel is now recognized as the greatest threat to world peace. Boycott, divestment and sanctions are what worked in South Africa to take down that apartheid state. We need to go all out in applying this now on Israel. And please check what your KiwiSaver is invested in; are you unknowingly supporting Israel’s war machine? The ASB was made to divest from stock supporting the Israeli Occupation Forces through a campaign by human rights groups, led by local NGO Justice for Palestine (look them up). The ANZ will be next…

Unfortunately, for us all, the current government is useless, spineless, in fact complicit, as it doesn’t have the courage to call out Israel for what it is, or for what the US is doing in Iran and other countries. We need to vote out the current government and vote in one with Cavod/honour, one that would pursue Justice and Peace.     

Thank you for your attention…

Rick Sahar

On Building Peace (Carterton Peace Festival, March 21, 2026)

Kia ora koutou.

I want to share some of what friends and colleagues have taught me about building peace. Palestine has had no chance to do that, so I won’t be speaking about Gaza.  

In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge killed perhaps 20% of their own people in four years. Then they took off their uniforms and went home. They became everyone’s neighbours and co-workers. There was no accountability, no process of truth and reconciliation.

For three years, I directed an organisation whose 80 staff were the former child soldiers and survivors of all sides, in one building. It was volatile, because you do not make peace with people you trust. You didn’t make war against trusted people. You made war against the people who killed your family; the people who ate while your family starved.

Govts and generals can cease firing, but then your and your enemies must build some kind of peace, despite your constant sense of threat. To a war-conditioned body, every threat is a mortal threat.

In response, my colleagues went to great lengths to avoid cornering each other, verbally or physically. The sign of serious trouble was not ‘I’ll kill you’. It was ‘I’ll kill you first!’ That meant that someone felt threatened.

When we heard that, I learned to back away, to clear the angry men’s path out of the building. Then we placed them on either side of the courtyard with the two-storey building between them, to remove the sense of threat. I asked the guys how they devised this method. They said they used to do the same thing in the jungle. Before they fought, units of both armies tried to back away.

These former child soldiers had had their lives stolen, but I used to ask myself whether that mattered to the families of the people they killed. In fact, they all needed so much space for their grief – but peace did not give them space. It threw them intimately together with others who were as troubled as they were.

Under stress, the young men inflicted terrible violence on their wives and children. One man explained earnestly to me that he knew no other way to make a baby stop crying. We set up a refuge for the wives in the big staff kitchen, and we put the cook in charge. We made an iron-clad rule that men were not allowed near that kitchen. With relief, the men complied. We had shown them how to back away.

These young men, my friends, would never know tranquility or justice or counselling – too bad. Peace means breaking the cycle. They tried so hard, with variable results.

Peace, I came to believe, is particularly made by parents. Over and over, I saw parents teach their children ethics, rather than the strategies that had saved their own lives.

The first serious study of Cambodia’s survivor generation found that 80% of them would be considered mentally ill anywhere else. And yet, Cambodia never resumed fighting. Peace got built by people who preferred all of their pain to more war.

I was in Sierra Leone in 2002, as a decade of vicious civil war was shakily concluding. That war was fought partly by marauding armed bands who raped, who lined up civilians and cut off their hands and feet with machetes. I went to a camp for the amputees. It was emptying out very quickly. The director explained that most of the remaining people were emotionally stuck. They were unable to move on.

As we spoke, I watched a mother carry her baby across my field of vision. Some unpunished soldier had cut off all four of their hands. The camp director nodded. His point was proven: she was bitter, unable to move on.

Peace depended on that unimaginable act of moving on. It had nothing to do with justice. It was just better than war. It was up to Sierra Leonians to make peace mean more than that.

Sierra Leone has never resumed war. The country moved on, with or despite those who were not ready.

Also in 2002, I first went to Afghanistan, shortly after the Taliban fell. People had survived one round of war after another. Despite a lifetime of war, Afghanistan’s national council, the Loya Jirga, chose a forward-looking path of unity, rather than revenge.

Hope, I swear is the discipline of refusing to live only through the trauma and the grudge. For five years in Afghanistan, I watched people repeatedly make long-odds choices in favour of peace. Their vision has never been empowered, and a peaceful future is evermore remote for Afghanistan. While a million children were at risk of starvation in Gaza, another million Afghan children were at the same risk, far from the headlines. Pakistan has now initiated a new war by bombing Afghanistan’s cities.

My friends taught me that peace is not declared. Peace is made by people who take a blind leap beyond war. It requires bold, high-risk, future-loving, hourly work. Even with that, peace brings no guarantees.

Now we are all observers of war. For me, being at the scene has meant holding a deep emotional turbulence while trying to support the possibility, or enlarge the space of peace.

I learned not to falsely identify my observer’s pain with the pain of participants. My unresolved anger is not their problem, and no, I don’t know how they felt.

Much as I value peace, I learned not to de-politicise it because peace is never neutral, and Gd knows it is never ideal. I learned to step back, because the compromises of peace are not mine to make. We all speak and dream about a just peace, but we will not dictate the terms of any settlement. They do not have to satisfy our ideals, which we formulate in safety.

That does not render me passive; far from it. We observers must bring our own healthy anchors to the process.

After the 2014 war in Gaza, I felt a rage as heavy as the 5000 tons of bombs Israel had just dropped on our heads. So I studied military accountability. I learned how to direct a principled anger. In Gaza I learned to see through a framework of rights – to place our equal dignity and value at the centre of my understanding of war. That is where my rage finds its aroha.

Hardest was my utter inability to protect anyone. Still cuts me to the core. But I tried to hold my helplessness with some grace, because that is the burden of being the friend.

I think many of us live with a bit of that now. We must refuse to be stunted by our observers’ trauma. We must learn to live with the things we have seen, the moral abdication of our government, and the stories we’ve been told by survivors. We must cultivate that peace-building discipline of hope in the possibility of change. And within the limits of allies, we must do the tireless work of bringing change about.

How is this relevant, you wonder, in a moment of imperialist warmongering? I suggest that we have peace to build here, among ourselves, in our families and towns and our body politic. We do not benefit Iranians or Palestinians by letting Aotearoa become one more zone of conflict.

For me, peace in Aotearoa will be the condition that lets us work together for this planet and all the dimensions of justice upon it. Remember that disinformation is trying to make that impossible. If someone leads you to say, “I’ll never forgive people who don’t join the protest”, then you have just promised never to do the hard mahi of peace.

I also cultivate curiosity, because this world is also beautiful. I have a project: I want to be remembered as the lady who smiled at people when she walked down the street. If I stare at nothing but evil, if I anticipate evil staring back at me, I will be consumed by evil without achieving anything.

With choices like these, I try to honour the peace-builders I have known.

Marilyn Garson

For immediate release

March 4, 2026

Alternative Jewish Voices urges, Stop this catastrophe!

We, Alternative Jewish Voices, deplore Israel and America’s illegal war of aggression against Iran. We also condemned the repression of Ayatollah Khamenei, but that does not justify this war. International war will only bring – is already bringing – more civilian death and destruction. We support the right of the Iranian people to determine their own future.

America and Israel again attacked Iran in mid-negotiation, three days after Iran’s Foreign Minister, Sayed Abbas Araghchi tweeted, “Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon.” No one has offered the slightest contrary evidence.

This war of aggression violates international and US domestic law. After World War II, the Nuremberg Tribunal called aggression ‘the supreme international crime’. We see around us the world they were trying to avert: Israel has waged genocidal war on a trapped community and bombed six countries that were not at war. This morning, Israel is occupying parts of Lebanon. Russia has invaded and pounded Ukraine for four years. Pakistan is bombing the cities of Afghanistan. Trump doesn’t know what to grab next.

We regard the attack on Iran as the latest enactment of longstanding imperial ambitions. How many countries has America tried to bomb into submission? How many times did Netanyahu bomb the blockaded population of Gaza before America gave him the green light and the weapons to commit outright genocide? This week, benefiting from the distraction of Iran, Israel has yet again sealed Gaza behind a total blockade. Aid agencies are again counting the days until they again run out of food.

Netanyahu boasts on camera that this war is “what I have yearned to do for 40 years”. Beware of men who prefer the risks of war to those of peace. Chaos and civilian misery are their signatures, but we share responsibility for their impunity. Even after the horror of livestreamed genocide in Gaza, Prime Minister Luxon acquiesces to more war and speaks as if Trump and Netanyahu are trustworthy public officials.

Luxon’s appeasement disgraces us. We must not support this unfolding disaster, not materially and not out of the side of the Prime Minister’s mouth. We must say ‘No’ in a bold, principled voice; joining states like Spain and Denmark.

As this fire spreads, we must also peer through the headlines and focus on the people of Iran, Gaza, Afghanistan and Lebanon. Civilians need protection, intervention and an end to the games of these warmongers.

We urge our morally vacuous government to stand with the civilians, the law and our future.

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Alternative Jewish Voices – Sh’ma Koleinu is a collective of anti-Zionist Jews from the Far North to Dunedin. We live a liberatory Aotearoa Jewish identity, whether we are religious or secular or cultural. We are part of a movement for collective liberation, here in Aotearoa and in Palestine.

Enquiries: contact@ajv.org.nz