Absolute Carmel

What do you need in order to trust again?

Read this post in Hebrew

I’m in Hawaii right now, on the other side of the world lagging 12 hrs behind the Middle East. I wake up with the beautiful blue-green Pacific Ocean outside my window watching surfer-newbies take a shot at the waves as tropical birds stop by my porch checking out their food options.

On the street everyone smiles, many girls wear flowers on their necks or behind their ears, vendors open oysters and embed the pearls into jewelry in front of my eyes, and within 10 minutes walk towards the beautiful green mountains, one enters tropical jungle kingdom with fantastic waterfalls straight from the iconography of LOST.

If there’s heaven on earth it must be here: great weather all year, colorful tropical vibe and the best of American consumerism’s abundance. But instead of simply enjoying that, all I can think of is why can’t we have that too? Why are we condemned to fight for territory? why people in our area are so angry and obsessed? Why can’t we focus on joy and happiness as a top priority as well?

I used to blame our religious differences for it, but my Muslim friends say religion is used as political means in a much more basic struggle for money and power. So few people play this game and yet they manage to keep entire populations apart, breeding hate and stereotyping each other through misguided media.

Today, 11.9.09, a day that is remembered as an international trauma, we choose to start melting these stereotypes through the impartial medium of blogs and align with the light, the love and the hope. Thus, we start with the basis needed for all of that to breed, for the bridges to rebuild: we start with trust.

It’s no secret that our administrations don’t trust each other and as people we barely trust our administrations, so can we trust each other, as people? What needs to happen in order for YOU to restore your trust in the other side which you might perceive as an enemy but actually you don’t know too much about? What needs to happen in order for us to be willing to take a chance on that?

One thing I realized about Israelis lately is that we desperately need to be safe, always in the comfort zone. And so it’s really hard for us as to bare the risks of openness for peace: we feel we’ve done that before and all we got was hurt and terror, so we freaked out, closed up and built a wall on our land and in our hearts.

However, the same way we don’t close our hearts after a love gone sour and we’re willing to be hurt again in order to feel love again, we need to keep that gate open for peace even if it’ll be abused by some on the way. I know, I’m afraid too. But to think peace will sneak up on us peacefully on our terms only is a bit childish, isn’t’ it?

I mean, do we have any other choice but open our hearts in trust even when it’s hard and scary, especially when it’s hard and scary and pray love gets the upper hand?

What do YOU need in order to open up to trust again? Bloggers from the EuroMed area will blog for trust today as part of the “restore trust, rebuild bridges” campaign. Please join us: add “I blog for trust” to your posts, spread the word or record a video response to our clip.

I would also like to recommend a new blog that attempts to build such a bridge to warm up the cold waters of the Israeli-Egyptian peace. Meet Mr. Foul and Mrs. Falafel. I strongly recommend following them as it seems it’ll be both informative and funny.

I blog for trust,

Carmel, Honolulu.

read more bloggers who blog for trust:

Ezz tells the story behind our meeting he never told me before

shehata tells about the monk and the samuai

Sarah tells a tale about a bridge

Stephen Spillane’s flower of identity

samar’s story about the blue glasses

Laurent podcasts for trust

Ari suggests a buttom-up approach

Mehdi writes for trust, in french

Michail asks 5 questions and gives 1 answer

Xavi: 4 funerals and a wedding?

Tags: Anna Lindh foundation, bloggers campaign, dialog, EuroMed, restore trust rebuild bridges, tolerance, trust