Towers and Visions and Dreams
A Reflection from the Middle East Prayer Vigil for Peace
On the Day of Pentecost, as I listened to the stories
of the Tower of Babel and the coming of the Holy Spirit in tongues ot fire,
I was transported to a roof on Mount Zion in Jerusalem’s Old City where I’ve
reflected with fellow pilgrims on the coming of the Holy Spirit. From this
roof, or from a spot nearby, you can see a stretch of the wall cutting off
Palestinians from Jerusalem, from their fields and orchards and families and
friends - a wall which divides Palestinians and Israelis, a wall built to
protect Israelis from Palestinian terrorist acts, according to the Israeli
government.
Once Hebron was like the land in the plain of Shinar.
Before 1929, Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Muslims lived and worked
together and spoke the same language. Under the British Mandate and with the
coming of Zionists from Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, things changed. The language of the Zionists was not the language
of the Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Muslims. When Arabs from outside of
Hebron came into the town and massacred sixty-nine Jews in 1929 and the
British Mandate later evacuated the remaining Jewish community from Hebron,
the language changed even more. Politics ‘confused the language’. It remains
confused to this day, and Hebron is a microcosm of the Israeli Occupation.
With the founding of the State of Israel by UN mandate
in 1948 came Israel’s War of Independence and Palestine’s Nakhba or
Catastrophe. Forty years ago this week, Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza,
East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. This occupation enabled Zionist,
observant Israeli Orthodox Jews to illegally, according to international
law, move back into Hebron. These are descendants of the political Zionists.
Many of the descendants of the pre-1929 Palestinian Jewish community, whose
ancestors were saved by their Muslim neighbors, have clearly said the
present settlers do not represent them.
But this is a story for another time. The story for
this time comes out of the words of the prophet Joel which I heard on
Pentecost: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out
my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams’.
In the late 1980’s Israel deported Mubarak Awad because
he, along with Nayef Hashlamoun and Nafez Assaily, were organizing and
training the Palestinian community in non-violent direction action against
the Israeli occupation. Today Mubarak Awad’s nephew Sami is the executive
director of Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem. Sami told me about a nonviolence
training in a West Bank village last year, to which Hamas community leaders
came. The next Friday in the mosque, the imam preached nonviolence. Sami and
other Palestinians, along with Israeli peace activists and internationals,
are a weekly presence in the villages south of Bethlehem to which the wall
is coming. They are there every week protesting nonviolently the destruction
of orchards and olive groves and the confiscation of land to build Israel’s
apartheid wall. They are met with beatings, tear gas, arrest.
Last spring, our team in Hebron began a conversation
with the community mental health center around building programs for the
children of the Old City. This bore fruit last fall when a football (soccer)
team began playing in the streets, accompanied by CPTers to help insure
their safety from settler attacks and harassment from Israeli military and
law enforcement.
The mayor of Beit Ummar, an agricultural village north
of Hebron, along with CPT and other internationals, accompanied villagers to
their fields near the Israeli settlement of Karme Tzur because it was likely
that settlers or soldiers would try to stop the farmers from working their
fields. When the shebab (young Palestinian men) started throwing stones at
the settlers, the mayor got in the way and sent the boys back to the
village. The mayor of Beit Ummar is Hamas.
The Israeli settlers organize tours through Hebron’s
Old City for visitors who come to stand in solidarity with them. Israeli
soldiers accompany them - for their safety - and often detain Palestinians
who get in the way of the group. This part of the city, although under
Israeli military control, is technically off-limits to the settlers. Because
one of the houses near CPT’s apartment is marked with a star which settlers
identify as a Star of David, the tour generally stops nearby to hear that
the ‘Arabs’ stole Jewish property after 1929, and this is one of the houses.
Most of the time, the soldiers keep the visitors from entering the property.
The elderly couple who live there told us that one day a founder of the
Hebron settler community made his way up to their roof, uninvited, to look
out towards Abraham’s tomb. They offered him tea, and he drank with them.
Issa, Palestinian coordinator for the International
Solidarity Movement in Hebron, has rented a house near the Israeli
settlement enclave of Tel Rumeida. In the past, settlers have tried to take
it over, and Israeli soldiers have occupied it. By moving into this house,
Issa strengthens the Palestinian nonviolent presence in this neighborhood
near the archaeological site of King David’s capital. His neighbors Hani and
Hashem work for the day when Muslims and Jews will work and live and play
together.
As CPT begins its twelfth year in Hebron, we continue
to stand with the Palestinian community and to work with practitioners of
nonviolence - Israelis, Palestinians, internationals. We listen. We tell the
stories. We struggle to see that which is of God in those we perceive as the
Other and in those we see as Enemy. When Israeli forces invaded the
Palestinian prison in Jericho spring a year ago, and abducted a Palestinian
political prisoner because Israel feared he would be released, his political
party threatened to abduct internationals, especially Americans and Brits.
Some internationals left Hebron for the relative safety of Jerusalem until
things calmed down. We stayed. A Palestinian colleague whose family we have
accompanied through three house demolitions and destruction of their crops
and fields and irrigation lines came to us and said, ‘I will accompany you
wherever you need to go.’
‘[Y]our sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and
your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’ And
the sons and daughters, young men and young women and old men and old women
shall act on these prophecies and visions and dreams. It is an honor and a
privilege to stand with these prophets and visionaries and dreamers in
Israel and Palestine. I hope you will join in the work of making these
prophetic voices heard and in bringing to fruition their visions and dreams
of a peace with justice.
4 June 2007
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
Raleigh, NC
To learn more about the prayer vigils visit:
http://www.pepm.org/PrayerVigilHome.htm
To learn more about the Holy Land Trust visit:
http://www.holylandtrust.org
To learn more about CPT visit:
http://www.cpt.org
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