This was written in response to a trip I was lucky to be part of in 2007. I thought I would repost it as we witness renewed violence in in the Holy Land. Regardless of what one thinks of the theology, the details remain true.
"Can There Be
Peace in Palestine?
- reflections on my
trip to Israel"
Alison Longstaff, August 26th,
2007
Church of the Good Shepherd
Psalm 122: 1-9; Matthew
24:1-13
As
many of you know, I went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land this past
Spring. Because the Holy Land is not
the most stable of regions, preparation for the trip included a day-long
session on culture shock, cultural sensitivity and diversity, and
post-traumatic-stress disorder, among other things. In our information packets we found articles
on how to recognize post-traumatic-stress disorder, both in ourselves and in
our fellow travellers. We learned that
we could be affected by the general atmosphere of trauma-survival among the
peoples we would be visiting. We discussed
how we should care for ourselves and each other should violence occur. It was sobering.
Above
all, we were taught, "The situation in Palestine is
complicated." We must try to
withhold judgment. We must avoid taking
sides, and instead, simply keep our eyes and ears open. Apparently, westerners
characteristically assume that the problems over there could be easily fixed if
someone just said the right thing or took charge the right way. It is not so.
I was
immediately struck by the warmth with which the Israelis in the airport greeted
us. They welcome all visitors. The arrival of tourists helps them not feel
so isolated nor so judged and feared and cut-off from the rest of the
world. We also met our tour guide at the
airport, a Palestinian Arab Christian Israeli.
(picture: The Lion's Gate in Jerusalem. Notice how bullet-riddled it is.)
His
name was Husam, not Hussein but Husam.
He advised us to call him "Who? Sam?" to remember the correct
pronunciation. His name was as
unfamiliar in my mouth as his identity was to grasp in my brain. An Arab Christian Palestinian Israeli. He was
an Arab, which is a blood-line or ethnicity, but he was not Muslim, like many
Arabs are. He was a Christian. There are many Christians in the Holy land
still, Christians descended from the Christians who have been there since the
time of Jesus. He is Palestinian, which
means his family has lived in the Palestinian territories for centuries, but he
is not a terrorist. It is terribly
unfortunate that the western media has somehow gotten many of us in the Western
world to equate "Palestinian" with "terrorist." It is an
emotional and fearful association and entirely uneducated. There are so many good and peaceful
Palestinians. To think every Palestinian is a terrorist is as accurate as
thinking that, because I am a woman and a seminarian, all women are
seminarians. (Picture: Husam [white hat] talks to some of us on the school steps. See the clear, brilliant blue of the sky.)
And,
Husam was an Israeli. Both a Palestinian
and an Israeli? At the same time? Yes.
He was born to a Palestinian family in Palestinian territory, but he is
one of the lucky few to have an Israeli passport. He is recognized as a citizen of Israel. Many Palestinians are not, for all sorts of
reasons, which is a huge part of the problem over there. But he is.
So He is an Arab Israeli Palestinian Christian. Even he doesn't know where he fits.
There
are so many ways I could describe our travels over there. I could speak of the land, the light, and the
locations. I could describe all the many
churches vying to be sitting on the "original spot where" something
religious maybe happened. I could
describe the crazy mix of old and new, and the march of time in a place nearly
older than time.
But I
choose to describe my observations of the people of the land, the desperate
religious sincerity, and the age-old battles for dominance and control. I choose to describe both the beauty and
courage, the resilience and hope in the face of the repeated failures of the
peace efforts. And the heart-breaking
violence that seems to have a life of its own.
(Next two pictures: school children, Christian and Muslim, playing soccer together in Ramallah. Will they also grow up to kill or be killed?)
At no
time did we witness open violence. We
were never exposed to any real danger, ever.
But we witnessed evidence of the tension everywhere we looked. From the thick razor-wire topped walls that
Israel is unremittingly erecting around section after section of Palestinian
territory, to the machine gun toting soldiers, to the bullet holes riddling the
walls of Jerusalem, we could not help but be aware of the tension.
These
people have lived through things I can't even imagine. We had to pass through heavily guarded check
points. We had our bus driver yelled at
by an angry Israeli guard at one check point.
We had soldiers barely out of their teens march through our bus, examining
our passports, machine guns slung on their hips. One pulled off his sunglasses, and looked
just like our neighbour's son, except he had darker hair.
Israel
is a military state, and every young person must spend two years in the
army. Imagine if we lived there. That would be every young person you know,
taught to handle guns. To shoot to kill.
To obey orders. To see violence as
a common occurrence. Jake and Sam,
Stephanie, and Megan and Kate, Heather and Joshua. . . . Both my girls, and eventually, Jordan. And this, not in Canada, but in a country
born in the holocaust, and shaped by a lifetime of hatred and oppression. I simply can't comprehend it.
(picture: overlooking the school's playground in Ramallah)
We
stayed in Bethlehem first, beyond the wall.
The Palestinians nearest Jerusalem live in some of the worst
conditions. Though our hostel was
spacious, clean, and quiet, we saw the rubble and neglect in the streets. The severe water restrictions were evident in
the bathrooms though never shoved in our faces.
Some of us blithely and ignorantly took our long western showers, not
realizing the desperate need for every drop behind the walls. You see,
Bethlehem, a scarce five miles from Jerusalem, is Palestinian. It is the distance of about eight kilometres
from here to the St Jacobs farmers market or from here to Sports World. For that matter, from here to the Carmel
Church, our Swedenborgian cousins. By
now, development is as continuous between Jerusalem and Bethlehem as it is
between Good Shepherd and St Jacobs. It
could be one big city except the Israelis have been and still are erecting a
wall all around Bethlehem, and all around Ramallah, and around many other places. Imagine having friends who lived near the St.
Jacob's farmer's market who were walled in, and never allowed to leave. Imagine them cut off from their jobs, their
doctors, their families. Imagine trying
to invite them to a wedding or a funeral, and them being refused permission to
come. This is the reality of many
Palestinians in Israel. No wonder many
have resorted to violence. Some are cut
off from their family vineyards which have been their livelihood for
centuries. It is arbitrary, cruel, and
they are completely powerless. There is
70% unemployment within these walled areas.
Seeing
the conditions behind the wall and hearing the stories, it was hard not to take
sides against the Israelis. On the first
day, a group of us went to visit a Christian school in Ramallah. Because our bus and tour company had all the
right passes and papers, and because tourists bring welcome dollars to Israel,
our bus was allowed to traverse the two heavily guarded check points in order
to make this trip. Ramallah, yes, the
Ramallah in the news, is another stone's throw out the other side of
Jerusalem. We travelled from the dusty,
broken, and run-down Palestinian streets of Bethlehem into the clean, new, well
watered and beautifully landscaped Israeli neighbourhoods on the right side of
the wall, and then back into the pock-marked, rubble-strewn, and neglected
streets of Ramallah.
We
met some of the most courageous and called teachers and volunteers at this
school, as in the many other Christian centres we visited. The school in Ramallah has several hundred
pupils from Kindergarten to about grade eight.
They are Muslim and Christian.
Yes, this school welcomes Muslim children, and educates them as Muslims. The Muslims have separate religion classes
from the Christians, but also, all the children have religion together once a
week, where they learn about each other's religions as well as the many other
religions of the world. The Christian
and Muslim families in these Palestinian territories are bound together by
their shared hardship. They want only
peace, and for their suffering to end.
(Picture: Children cluster around Debbie Lou and others of us, including our tall photographer)
Everything
looked normal. The children's happy
voices rang out from the recess yard as we sat and spoke with the head
teachers. Debbie Lou, one of our group
who is a music instructor at Wilfrid Laurier, went out to mingle with the
children. When the children learned that
she loved music, they wanted to sing her their songs. One little boy sang her "his song." The interpreter described the story to Debbie
Lou as the little boy happily performed his long composition. It was a song about his grandfather, who was
taken in the night from their home, by soldiers with guns. It was about how he would never see his
grandfather again, and it went on and on.
(Picture: in the crowd is the little boy singing to Debbie Lou.)
The
teachers told us that this type of song is a form of trauma therapy for the
children. That the primary task the
teachers face, daily, is helping the children deal with the precariousness of
their lives. Almost nightly, Israeli
soldiers come into some part of Ramallah and arrest someone or shoot up a home,
occasionally just because they can. It
is a form of intimidation. It is meant
to keep the Palestinians off balance.
The
children come to school chattering about the soldiers being on their street in
the night, much the way our kids might chatter about an extra violent
thunderstorm or a tornado scare. This is
normal for them. The safest place these
children have is the school. The
teachers do everything they can to help the children, Christian and Muslim
together, to feel safe and loved and cared for by God. Even so, in 2002, the soldiers came to the
school during the day. They blasted open the doors and shot up the walls. When the teachers complained to Isreali
officials afterwards they were told, "No one was hurt."
"No
one was hurt." Imagine if a huge explosion
rocketed those doors off their hinges and a mass of armed soldiers stormed in
screaming and ordering everyone onto the floor, and then proceeded to shoot up
our walls and windows. Then after
yelling at us all and calling us names like filthy terrorists, vile English,
dirty Canadians, and threatening to kill us and our families, for several
hours, they left. ? ! "No one was
hurt," simply doesn't adequately describe the shock we all would have sustained
(picture: One of our Canadian peace-workers, one of the seminary professors, and the brave head teacher of the school.)
Just
looking at the blast-blackened and twisted front doors would be enough to bring
all of the emotional trauma back. And we
would be left to pick up the shattered glass, and see our dear sanctuary all
bullet-riddled, and try to decide how to go on.
This
is one tiny piece of one tiny reality in all of the stories and sights we
heard. I haven't even told you about the
three empty dialysis chairs awaiting children who would never show up that day
at the hospital. The guards at the
check-points refused three children permission to come get their dialysis
treatments at the hospital. It makes no
sense. Three children, who would be dead
in two days if they are not allowed through the wall to the hospital for their
treatments. That was four months
ago. Are any of them still alive?
If I
think too much about it all, I get choked up.
(picture: The head teacher and some students.)
The
same day that we visited that hospital, we went to the holocaust museum. We only had a half-hour for the museum, which
needed at least three. I could barely
take it in. I sat and wept and
wept. That night, tempers erupted in our
group. There was shouting and
accusations resulting in withdrawal and tears.
We were all dealing with more than we could handle. The scope of the human on human abuse and
horror was more than we were capable of comprehending. We were shattered.
(Picture:The school pastor looks on and our Canadian tour director talks to the head teacher.)
We
are very sheltered here in Canada. And
we kid ourselves if we think we are incapable of the behaviours we heard of and
saw in Israel. Everyone of us, under the
same conditions, would exhibit much the same behaviours. Just witness the small violence of barking,
hurtful accusations that arose in our tiny, peaceful, Canadian group after the
one day of witnessing the hospital and the holocaust museum. We were overwhelmed. The helplessness and grief had to pour out
somehow. We were able to apologize
and heal within 24 hours. These people
are dealing with a legacy of trauma and violence that spans generations,
crosses cultures, and touches every one of us.
It's not going to be a simple fix.
Though
it is understandable, the fact of the holocaust does not give Israel a right to
bully and oppress the Palestinians. A
battered wife will take a long time, a LONG time before she will trust a man to
treat her kindly. How much more is
Israel a battered wife? The horror of
the generations of abuse must work its way out somehow, and it will take time.
"O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem. . . . How often I
wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her
wings, but you were not ready." (Matt 23:27)
Before
we become too depressed by the stories we've explored together today, before we
decide that it is all hopeless and horrible, let's remember that God was born
into this very place. He did not and
will not give up on us, though He himself, his beauty and love and truth was
spoken into this darkness and treated much the same way. Standing with and bearing the horror, and
still staying open to love is the way out.
And I need not go to Israel to do this work. I can find it readily in my own family and
neighbourhood, and yes, even in our church.
When
you and I work to face and, without passing on the harm, express and release
the hurts and little traumas and small betrayals we face within our lives here
and now, we are helping to strengthen the great global consciousness of peace
and forgiveness. It has long been known
that abuse will be passed on and on until someone is strong enough to stop the
transmission. The abuse will stop when
the human race is ready and strong enough and conscious enough to stop it. AND, what you and I do in our hearts, here
and now, today, makes a difference.
Forgiving my brother, my sister, my father, for abuses and hurts in my
family, is the way I help the world move toward forgiveness. (picture: watching the children at play)
Yes,
there are many active and hands-on ways we can try to help in Israel. They need help. They particularly need volunteers who speak
Arabic. I can put you in touch with any
number of ways to provide support and caring if you feel called.
But
more than that, you and I can stand, hand in hand, and believe in peace and
forgiveness. You and I can look
fearlessly into the horror and hopelessness and speak love into the
darkness. We are not alone in the desire
for peace. We have God on our side. And God is infinitely patient and infinitely
healing. If our hearts break at the
sights and stories, God's heart breaks a thousand times more. But while we become weighed down by
hopelessness, God has never given up and never will give up. He knows what He's doing. Nothing, absolutely nothing is hopeless in
God's care.
As we
read in Jeremiah:
For surely I know the plans I
have for you, says the Lord,
plans for your welfare and not
for harm,
to give you a future with
hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)
Thank
you for listening. Amen.
Special music Calling All Angels by Jane
Siberry
