And the longtime peace activist Art Gish has died at the age of seventy after a tractor accident on his farm in Ohio. He had been a longtime member of the Christian Peacemaker Team and made yearly visits to Hebron in the occupied West Bank to monitor settler violence and Israeli home demolitions. I interviewed Art Gish, along with his wife Peggy, last year.

Art Gish: “Christian Peacemaker Teams came out of the peace churches, the Quakers, the Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren, out of the idea that if we’re really serious about peace, we ought to be willing to take the same risks as soldiers take and go into a nonviolent — into violent situations and be a nonviolent presence there. What if people who want peace made the same kind of commitment that soldiers make?”

Amy Goodman: “What do you mean?”

Art Gish: “That we go there, and we take risks, and we stand in the middle, and we work for peace in there.”