Searching for faith, justice, peace, community, and snarky humor from Jerusalem to Washington, DC and beyond.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Back from Mexico and having a cold
Hey folks,
I’m back, from BorderLinks and from having a cold (caught it on the plane, not in Mexico, so stop with the stereotyping!).
Will get some posts up about it soon. Awesome folks I was on the trip with will be posting reflections on the OnFire blog.
Here’s the first short reflection I wrote–to be honest more of a recording of the answer to a question I asked in a migrant shelter we visited run by a church in the town of Artas:
Tell Them (in response to the question, what do we say when we go back?)
Tell them:
what you are hearing
Tell them:
Migrants are not criminals
nor are they terrorists
Tell them:
They are people - struggling for a better life.
Tell them:
Their crime is trying to work.
Tell them:
You cannot quell this tide.
Tell them
the same thing that the migrants told us
at the other border
the Mexico-Guatemala border
before they grabbed hold of the train
when we told them that they would suffer and what could happen and the risks
They told us:
“Better to die in the struggle than die of hunger.”
All Saints Sunday was last week. In church, we lit a candle and named people we were remembering that day–people who had passed away in the past year, or any time, really.
November is a strange month for me, often. But of course, there is plenty of mourning to go around. I lit my candles.
And if we start adding up the numbers, the awful numbers, from other wars and humanitarian conflicts that we are complicit in as U.S. citizens? Or that we are complicit in by our inaction and our apathy?
We start running out of candles.
We all have our own mourning to do. But light a candle, today, for the forgotten victims. And pledge to speak out on their behalf, even if you can only speak out for one, even if your voice sounds weak in comparison to the rumble of a world rampaging on like an out of control train.
And then maybe, someday, we will learn to listen to people when they speak out for themselves. Before they become victims of our silence.
“If we don’t speak when we mourn for our dead, how can we ever be asked to speak again? It’s a question that deserves its mark.”
Trip to the Border and Action for Patients, Not Profits
Hi folks,
I’m heading out tomorrow for a trip to the US/Mexico border. The trip is organized by OnFire, the young adult chapter of the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA). Which is a fancy way of saying it was organized by my awesome housemate and co-mission intern Jen, who is working at MFSA here in DC. It’s a delegation with BorderLinks, which is an organization that arose out of the Sanctuary Movement and which provides experiential education on cross-border and migration issues.
You can read more about the trip and OnFire here, and more about BorderLinks here. Here’s MFSA’s website, just for good measure.
Before I head out, I wanted to share something with you. This following week, people across the U.S. will be taking action on behalf of health care for all people–on behalf of patients, not profits. The actions are organized by http://mobilizeforhealthcare.org. I’m proud to be connected in one way or another to many of the people involved with this effort, from Sam Pullen, who is a house mate and good friend of my co-Mission Intern Christy, to Rev. Heber Brown, who blogs at Faith in Action and is doing amazing, Spirit-filled work on behalf of peace and justice in Baltimore. To learn more and find an action near you, click here.
In a country this wealthy, in which we spend so much money feeding the Global Violence pandemic with military aid and military spending, it’s ridiculous that we don’t have the imagination and the courage to make health care a basic right for all. It’s time we stop letting fear and misunderstanding rule the debate. If you can, take action for justice this week, or support the mobilization in other ways, by clicking here. There are worse reasons to be arrested than taking on insurance companies!
How Not to Do Mission, or What I Learned from Hanging Out with Job’s Friends
I led a prayer service at my home church, Baldwin Memorial United Methodist, last Wednesday. I talked about how we define mission and what we can learn about it form the book of Job–specifically, what we as the U.S. church can learn about how not to do mission from the way that Job’s friends relate to Job’s suffering.
These are my notes–it always looks a bit weird to post these because I never really speak directly from them, but if you’re interested, you get the gist.
If you’re not interested, this is a blog, so it’s pretty easy to opt out…I’ll never know.
So, since I’m a missionary and all, or at least that’s what they tell me, I figured I’d give a prayer service on mission. Or more specifically, on a question that I think we have to keep asking ourselves as a church, which is, “what is mission?”
I hope by now there’s no doubt in our minds that, in order to be the church, we have to be in mission—that is, active in ministry outside of this building. Otherwise we’re sort of a social club, and I like my clubs with a bit more rhythm, to be honest.
But the question of how we define mission, what we mean by mission, is a very important one for us. I don’t think there’s one right answer, but I think the question needs to be asked. So I thought maybe I’d share a few thoughts, a few minor insights that have been gifted to me in my time as a mission intern, and then we’ll pray together.
When I was in college, I was an international studies major. My understanding of mission and missionaries was basically as a remnant of the colonial project. Mission meant we were right and they were wrong, we were enlightened and they were savages, and we needed to convert them, in cooperation with exploitative, abusive, and imperialistic colonial regimes, if necessary—which it usually was. So I wasn’t so big on this concept of mission until I started having conversations with people, including people in this church, who were asking the question, “What is mission?” in a whole new way.
We’ve been reading Job in the lectionary, so I think I’ll talk about mission in light of the book of Job, or at least in light of a brief, snarky synopsis of the book of Job. You should know that I consider the author of the book of Job to be the greatest satirical writer in Biblical literature, so please forgive me if a bit of dark humor slips into this prayer service a bit.
Oh, Job. “Have you considered my servant Job,” God says to Satan, just before God takes the very un-Methodist step of apparently gambling away Job’s livelihood and family to score a pride point with Satan. As I said, it’s satire, I think. What sort of silly explanation for suffering would that be? Now, the early listeners to this text were people who had suffered, who were suffering. Exile. Abandonment. Destruction of homes. So, they considered God’s servant Job, and they learned that sometimes, suffering is through no fault of the ones who suffer. That sometimes, what God gives us is not an explanation of suffering but rather the sort of Divine encounter that gives us the strength to rise from the ashes of suffering.
Here in the American church, one thing I’ve noticed is that we have a really hard time accepting that we’re not always the main character in the story. When we read Job, we take God’s word at face value and we consider God’s servant Job. So, we read Job, and we ask questions like, “Why is there suffering? What does suffering mean? Is suffering my fault?”
These are powerful questions, and I don’t want to scoff at them. But if the author of the Book of Job were to get a crack at rewriting the book for a U.S. church audience, I think he’d edit the text to say, “Consider Job’s friends.” Here’s Job, right? He’s lost everything in a bizarre Divine gambling accident (seriously folks. Don’t gamble. It ruins everything). And Job’s friends come along, and in Chapter 2 we read the following: “Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home—Eli from Towson, Bill from Silver Spring, and Zack from Glen Burnie. They met together to go and console and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw his suffering was great.”
So far so good! Job’s friends show up. They weep for their friends’ suffering. They make the basic step of solidarity with Job in the way they know how. And they sit with Job, for 7 days, and they don’t say a thing.
And then they have to go and ruin it.
For the next 30 CHAPTERS, Job’s friends try to convince him that it’s all his fault. I know some people who really appreciate the poetry of the book of Job. Personally, I find those 30 chapters to be a bit excruciating.
And then, God shows up, and reminds everyone, in a very God-like way, of who exactly God is. God speaks out of a whirlwind—a WHIRLWIND, folks!—and really lays it down: “Where were you when I laid the Earth’s foundations? Where were you when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?”
Now, since we usually read this book with the idea in mind that we’re Job, we usually read God’s response as a rebuke of Job. But I think it’s mainly a rebuke of Job’s friends. Who are you, says God, to tell my servants that their suffering is their fault? Who are you to talk to them as if you have all the answers, instead of just being with them in the midst of their suffering?
What is mission? If you ask Job’s friends, mission is about explaining to someone why they are suffering. It’s about having the answers, and making sure that people without The Answers get them.
But what if Job’s friends had just sat with Job and listened? What if they had seen their role, not as having the answers, but as encountering God as God is present, even in the midst of suffering?
In the end, it’s not the answers of Job’s friends, but their encounter with God that transforms the situation. It’s not their speaking that matters. It’s their listening.
There is a lesson here for us, as a church, about what mission means. In his small book Listening to the Groans (Upper Room Books, 2007)—named after the passage in the letter to the Romans in which Paul describes the church, Creation, and the Spirit all groaning in prayer, South African Methodist pastor Trevor Hudson says the following:
Sadly, we who call ourselves by the name of Christ are not good at listening. During World War II theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the few German Christians who resisted the tyranny of Hitler. In the midst of that national trauma, he helped build a confessing church….In [a] book called Life Together, written over sixty years ago, Bonhoeffer wrote these words: “Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening.” He goes on to say that Christians who have stopped listening to their neighbor will soon stop listening to God as well.
Hudson goes on to tell the following story, about a conversation with the founder of the Church of the Savior, an ecumenical congregation whose ministries are based right down the street from where I work in Adams Morgan in Washington DC. I quote:
One day just before I came back to South Africa I was having a cup of coffee with the pastor of this remarkable congregation, a man named Gordon Cosby. I asked him a question I sometimes ask people I respect: “If you could say one thing to me, what would it be?” He was quiet for a few moments and then he answered, “When you go back to South Africa and stand up to preach and teach, remember always that each person sits next to their own pool of tears.” I have never forgotten this image….Each one of us carries in our hearts personal wounds as well as the wounds of the nation. Each one of us groans, not only with our own painful longings, but also with the painful longings of that part of the world where we live.
What if, as a church, we started thinking of mission as listening to the groans of our community and the world around us, as Hudson suggests? What if our mission is one of listening more than one of talking? What if we’re called to sit and to listen and to mourn with those who are suffering the most in our world? What if that’s where we encounter God? What if mission consists of acts of basic solidarity with and accompaniment of the oppressed and the disenfranchised, rather than with providing “The Solution”? What if we learn hope from those we are sent to serve, and not the other way around?
Let me end with this. Listening doesn’t mean being passive. If anything, listening—listening carefully—to the groans of our world ends up making us active—and sometimes, getting us in a lot of trouble.
[At this point in the service I told a story about the village of At-Tuwani, in the South Hebron Hills of Palestine. I talked about the rather bizarre experience that At-Tuwani had when Tony Blair visited the village–armed convoy and all–and gave a speech promising electricity and a clinic before being whisked away, leaving the village, just as it was before he came, with Israeli military demolition orders on its clinic, cistern, and many of its houses. Then I contrasted that with this amazing recent action, which was able to come about because the friends of At-Tuwani–those Israelis and internationals who have bothered to come and meet and get to know the Palestinians of the South Hebron hills–listened and listened well. You can read about it from an Israeli perspective here. I’d link to the story on the Christian Peacemaker Teams website but the site is down for maintenance right now, darn!
What is mission?
It’s a lot of things. But as someone who likes to talk, let me suggest that our mission—as Christians who are used to the United States, are used to power, are used to getting our way, and are used to talking—might just be to listen, and to listen well.
From PSP: Farmers, Along with Solidarity Activists, Return to Saffa to Work
Find out how to support Palestinian nonviolent resistance and sustainable agriculture by reading below. For more opportunities to support Palestinian farmers, click here.
This Sunday, 5 Israeli activists and 3 international activists with PSP, along with other Palestinian volunteers, joined the family of Abu Jabber Soleiby to pick olives on their land in the valley just below the Bat ‘Ayn settlement. After the deployment of a large number of soldiers last week that prevented anyone from entering the area, this week the Israeli military was caught unawares and the farmers, along with the solidarity activists, were able to work in the privately-owned Palestinian fields for nearly 2 hours, picking olives from the trees remaining after several acts of vandalism by Israeli Jewish settlers that destroyed much of the agricultural land in the area.
The action on Sunday was also an opportunity for the group to assess the area and plan for the rebuilding of vitally needed structures on the Soleiby land, including fencing for the grapevines and the reconstruction of a water well. If you would like to support this rebuilding project, which will include a replanting of the entire area with hundreds of fruit trees later in the winter, please consider making a donation via our website at: http://palestinesolidarityproject.org/donate
“This is the Israeli notion of a fair deal: We’re entitled to do whatever the hell we want to the Palestinians because, by definition, whatever we do to them is self-defense. They, however, are not entitled to lift a finger against us because, by definition, whatever they do to us is terrorism.”
Derfner slams the reaction of his countryfolk to the Goldstone Report on war crimes in the Israeli assaults on Gaza. And he is harsh in his judgment of this belief in the exclusive right to “self-defense”:
“Here is our idea of the “laws of war”: When Israeli bulldozers rolled across the border into Gazan villages and flattened house after house so Hamas wouldn’t have them for cover after the IDF pulled out, that was self-defense. But if a Palestinian boy who’d lived in one of those houses threw a stone at one of the bulldozers, that was terrorism.”
Of course, as every snark aficionado knows, your last line is the one that matters.
Well, well, well. Another month without blog posts. I’m getting worse and worse at this. Have had another busy month, spoke at several churches, attended the Friends of Sabeel conference in DC (and got to reconnect with Spirit-filled trouble maker Heber Brown III, whose Faith in Action blog I definitely recommend!), and attended (and much to my surprise participated in) an incredible, spirit-filled, action-for-justice-motivating worship service prepared by some of my best friends here in DC in preparation for the National Equality March. Hopefully I’ll have some pictures available soon.
Also I played with and fell madly in love with a puppy named Anja. Pictures on my Facebook page.
I am in love with this puppy
Let’s see what I’ve got for you here.
Lots of great updates on the US Campaign’s blog, click here.
Well, administrative detention has claimed another Palestinian activist. Mohammad Othman, who I met in the village of Jayyous while working with a Sabeel delegation, was arrested after returning from Norway, where he was spreading the word about nonviolent resistance in the West Bank and how the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement supports such resistance. You can find out more about Mohammad’s situation, and take action, by clicking here.
Speaking of Mousa, I chatted with him the other day and he tells me that his organizations, the Palestine Solidarity Project, needs funds to help farmers in the Saffa area whose trees have been attacked and destroyed by settler groups. Click here to find out more about PSP and donate. Mousa’s village of Beit Ommar has had to once again deal with tragedy this past week, as Mehdi Sa’id Abu Ayyesh, a 17 year old who was shot in the head with live ammunition by the Israeli military in March 2009, died of his wounds. His funeral was attacked by the Israeli military, a common occurrence in Beit Ommar.
My friend Bekah, who happens to be Mousa’s partner and one of the co-founders of PSP, will be on a speaking tour in the U.S. soon. I’ll publish dates below.
Finally, a couple of videos to share.
First off, here’s Father Miguel d’Escoto, outgoing president of the UN General Assembly and Nicaraguan liberation theologian, talking to Paul Jay of The Real News about the UN and Palestine. It’s worth watching, as is another segment in which he talks about the UN’s response to poverty and the need to reform the United Nations:
And here’s one of the winning entries from the Ctrl.Alt.Shift film competition, “No Way Through,” which puts the situation in the West Bank in perspective by imagining what it would be like to try to get an ambulance in London if it was filled with checkpoints and cut in half by the apartheid wall. Check it out, and see the rest of the competition winners by clicking here (warning: this is a little bit graphic):
PSP is about to begin its annual speaking tour of the United States. We are still filling some time slots for the tour, and are interested in expanding it to other regions of the country. If you are interested in hosting our speaker, Bekah Wolf, International Coordinator and co-Founder of PSP, and arranging an event at your university, church, mosque, synagogue, or community center (particularly if you are on the East Coast), please email us at: palestineproject@gmail.com ASAP!
Bekah is available in the Northeast from Oct. 17-Nov. 4; in the Midwest from Nov. 6-18; again in the Northeast from Nov. 18-23; in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest from Nov. 29-Dec.5 and in the Southwest from Dec. 6-Dec. 15.
We also hope to extend the tour to other regions into January so if you live somewhere that isn’t listed, or the dates for your region are not possible for you and your group, please contact us anyway!
Exact dates and locations for events will be available soon.
Thank you for your support in making this tour a success. A brief bio and description of Bekah’s talk is below:
Beyond the Rhetoric: What everyone needs to know about the current realities of the Israeli Occupation and prospects for a just resolution in Palestine
While the White House is paying increasing attention to a ‘Middle East Peace Process’, and Israeli politicians are using every delay tactic in their arsenal, the reality of the on-going Israeli Occupation has been all but lost in sound bites and empty propaganda. Bekah Wolf, who has lived the last 3 years in the Occupied West Bank and is the International Coordinator for the Palestine Solidarity Project, is going on her third nationwide speaking tour, bringing an eyewitness’ account, along with a critical analysis of the realities of Israeli occupation in 2009 and what they mean in an international context, especially with regards to the recent UN fact-finding mission headed by international jurist Richard Goldstone, the prospects for renewed three-party negotiations, and the upsurge in the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaigns.
________________
Bekah Wolf is an American with Israeli citizenship who has worked in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 2003. She is the international coordinator for the Palestine Solidarity Project, a Palestinian organization dedicated to organizing and supporting popular, unarmed resistance to the occupation based in the village of Beit Ommar. She is speaking on behalf of the PSP committee, a group of Palestinian men and women (all of whom were prevented from traveling to the United States to speak themselves), including her husband and recent political prisoner, Mousa Abu Maria. For more information about PSP, please see our website: http://palestinesolidarityproject.org
–~–~———~–~—-~————~——-~–~—-~
Free Palestine!
Visit the website for more information and updated articles from the ground in Palestine:
http://palestinesolidarityproject.org
I’m headed out on vacation but quick before I leave: “Last week, the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, a former member of the South African Constitutional Court and former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, released a 575-page report documenting violations of human rights and international law, war crimes, and possible crimes against humanity committed before, during, and after Israel’s December 2008-January 2009 assault on the occupied Gaza Strip.”
You can read more about the report, get resources, and TAKE ACTION to support the recommendations of the Goldstone Report by clicking here.
You can see interviews with Richard Goldstone, read commentary, and get resources at the US Campaign’s blog: http://endtheoccupationblog.blogspot.com
In my last post I talked a bit about experiencing the difficulties that Palestinian Muslims face in getting to Jerusalem during the end of Ramadan.
Here are some news reports from this year showing the same thing.
(Note: I’m not a big fan of PressTV but I think this report is useful, if only to have a visual. The English translation from one of the Al Jazeera reports isn’t the greatest, but you work with what you have):
Of course, it’s not just during Ramadan that Palestinian movement and access is severely limited by the infrastructure of military occupation. Here’s a video from earlier in September of the Bethlehem checkpoint in the early morning:
Lailat al-Qadr, Eid al-Fitr, Rosh Hashanah…and what I was doing a year ago
This past week has been an important one both for Muslim and Jewish communities around the world.
Muslim communities celebrated Lailat al-Qadr (“The Night of Power”) on September 15, the holiest day in the Muslim calendar; and today celebrated the Eid al-Fitr, the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Jewish communities around the world celebrated Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Eid mubarak and shana tova to all those celebrating. Prayers of peace and blessings to all.
There have been a lot of moments this past year of my life when I’ve moments of sudden realization about what I was doing a year ago. This week has had a lot of those.
Last year, on the day of Lailat al-Qadr, I went to Qalandia checkpoint (in the West Bank between Ramallah and Jerusalem) with my friend Peter and members of the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Accompaniment Program. The reason we were there was to monitor a situation that happens every year around this time. Thousands and thousands of Palestinians attempt to come into Jerusalem and pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque on this holy night. Many of them are denied entry and turned away. Last year, we watched families get separated, as men were told to stand in one line and women in another, unable to wait for members of their family if they got through, not knowing whether or not the rest of their family had been denied or let in.
You can read my post from that day last year here.
I’m just going to share some pictures, which I think mainly speak for themselves–sort of a “what I was doing last year” culture shock album, if you will. You can see the rest of my pictures by clicking here, and see Peter’s pictures by clicking here.
Mounted police charge into a crowd of women at the checkpoint
The women's line with armored personnel carriers in the foreground
The men's line
Kurt Vonnegut's subtitle for "Slaughterhouse Five" was "The Children's Crusade"
Photo by Peter Miller
Photo by Peter Miller
Photo by Peter Miller
Photo by Peter Miller
Photo by Peter Miller
Photo by Peter Miller
Photo by Peter Miller, coming back through Qalandia checkpoint
I’ve taken a break from the shameless self-promotion for a little while (although having a blog I suppose counts as a constant act of self-promotion), but here’s a few links:
Here’s an article about the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement in the Jewish Daily Forward. It’s pretty good–some inaccuracies, particularly characterization of our work as “pro-Palestinian” rather than “pro-human rights and international law” and as being somehow caught up in a quest to destroy Israel rather than to bring justice and peace, but overall not a bad piece. I’m quoted in it briefly, you can read the full article here.
Pretty good BDS piece from Americans for Middle East Understanding, I’m interviewed about the US Campaign’s website of all things, read that here.
And I was interviewed on Uprising Radio on KPFK in Los Angeles, you can listen to that here.
An excerpt from the sermon I gave this morning at St. Matthews’ United Methodist Church in Bowie, MD:
I was asked, today, to speak on the topic of “Seeking Peace in the Middle East.” It’s a topic that Jesus Himself wondered about as he looked down on Jerusalem and wept, decrying a city that “does not know the things that make for peace.”
So what are the things that make for peace?
What I want to propose to you today is that as followers of the Human One, Jesus Christ, we cannot talk about peace without talking about justice. And we cannot talk about justice unless we are willing to take the side of the oppressed, the marginalized, the patient widows who struggle against systems and governments that are stacked against them.
Now by justice I don’t mean vengeance. I mean the restoration of right relationships. I mean a special concern for the stories and struggles of the marginalized and the oppressed. I mean doing God’s work of creating a world that is more merciful, more kind, more uplifting, that provides what everyone needs for life and life abundantly.
The call for justice is integral to the scriptural witness. Just look at Deuteronomy 16:20, when God tells God’s people the following: “Justice, and onlyjustice, you shall pursue, so that you may live in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” Or look at Psalm 85, where the Psalmist envisions a future in which God “speaks peace to God’s people,” in which “justice and peace will kiss each other; faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and justice will look down from the sky.”
The call for justice is certainly there in the prophetic literature. Micah, for example, paints a beautiful landscape for us by linking a vision of peace in which “nation shall not lift up sword against nation” with a vision of justice in which “all shall sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” And who among us has not heard the words of Micah 6:8, which ask us what the Lord requires of us and answers, simply, “to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God?”
Perhaps these words would be a scriptural footnote, if they were not echoed by Jesus in the Gospels, Jesus who in Matthew 23:23 calls the Pharisees to task for giving “mint and dill and cumin” while forgetting “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” “It is these,” says Jesus,” that you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.” And when we do neglect these things, Jesus says, we are like “blind guides,” who “strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.” Anyone who has ever seen a camel in person will pick up on the satire.
But the text that I want to use to frame our search for peace and justice in Palestine and Israel is from Luke, chapter 18. It goes like this:
“Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice.” For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming to me.”’ And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to God’s chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will God delay long in helping them? I tell you, God will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Human One comes, will he find faith on Earth?”
When we look and we see the suffering and the injustice and the violence in the Middle East, and especially in Israel and Palestine, it is easy to lose heart. But Jesus has left us with a story about a woman with a strong faith who refused to lose heart. As I’m sure you know, widows in Jesus’ day were protected because they were vulnerable. Cut off from a source of livelihood or familial protection, the widow was supposed to be cared for by the community. But under a situation of harsh Roman occupation—an occupation which, we might speculate, could have cost her her husband and sons and widowed her to begin with—this widow finds justice and protection blocked by an unjust judge—a judge who is satirically described as saying to himself, “I don’t fear God OR have respect for ANYONE.”
Jesus holds the steadfast widow up as an example for us not to lose heart. And he explicitly ties the story in to the quest for justice for marginalized or disenfranchised elements within the community. And so I think a good question to ask, if we are serious about seeking justice and peace and the presence of God in the midst of all that we see in Palestine and Israel, is “Where are the patient widows steadfastly demanding justice?” And if they are there–and I guarantee you, they are–a second question to ask is, “Are we listening to them?” And if we begin to, we will quickly start asking ourselves, “And how do we respond?”
from CPT: Israeli military delivers demolition orders for six Palestinian homes
From Christian Peacemaker Teams in At-Tuwani in the southern West Bank:
CPTnet
17 September 2009
AT-TUWANI: Israeli military delivers demolition orders for six Palestinian houses.
[Note: According to the Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, and numerous United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Settlement outposts are considered illegal also under Israeli law.]
In the afternoon of 13 September 2009, members from the Israeli District Coordinating Office (DCO), accompanied by Israeli soldiers, delivered demolition orders for six Palestinian houses near the village of At-Tuwani.
Palestinian families recently built these houses on their own land in the Humra Valley. On the night of 16 July, while some of the houses were still under construction, one building was destroyed and a nearby olive tree damaged. The Palestinian family suspected that Israeli settlers from the nearby settlement Ma’on or the outpost Havat Ma’on had perpetrated the vandalism. The family began rebuilding their house the next day.
On 20 July 2009, the Israeli military delivered stop work orders on the houses and two other structures, including a cistern. Now that the families have received demolition orders, they fear the Israeli military will soon destroy the houses.
The Israeli military severely restricts Palestinian building in the South Hebron Hills region, designated Area C under the Oslo Accords, which means it is under full Israeli control. However, the nearby Israeli settlements of Ma’on and Carmel and the outposts of Avigail and Havat Ma’on continue to expand. Members of Christian Peacemaker Teams and Operation Dove have documented continuous expansion in these settlements since 2004.
The following is a message I received from the International Movement to Open Rafah Border. Your prayers, presence, and action are, as always, requested:
> List of Palestinian farmers & other civilians shot in Gaza Strip’s rural communities since the declaration of the ceasefire on the 18th of January 2009
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> Several farmers and other Palestinian civilians have been shot by Israeli forces while in rural communities since the 18th of January 2009 when Israel declared a unilateral “ceasefire”. This list includes only confirmed cases of Palestinian civilians killed or injured by gunfire or (shrapnel of) artillery shells. It doesn’t include Palestinian civilians killed or injured by air strikes, previously unexploded Israeli ordinances, or injured while trying to escape from Israeli gunfire. It doesn’t include cases of casualties reported but not confirmed with their names
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> According to this list, 7 Palestinian civilians (among them 3 boys and 1 girl) have been assassinated and 28 others (among them 7 boys, 1 girl, 2 women) have been injured by IOF gunfire or shelling.
>
> In this list we should probably add the case of Ahmed Abu Hashish who went missing on the 21st of April and his dead body was found on the 14th of June by a group formed by locals (including his father and activists of the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative) and ISM Gaza Strip activists that went under Israeli gunfire too. Ahmed Abu Hashish is believed to have been assassinated by IOF troops.
>
> 1. 15 September 2009, Khan Younis: Fadi Odeh Abu Mu’ammar, 28
> 2. 15 September 2009, Khan Younis: Muhammad Odeh Abu Mu’ammar, 26
> 3. 9 September 2009, Beit Hanoun: Maysara Mohammed Hussein al-Kafarna, 24, wounded by a gunshot to the right foot.
> 4. 4 September 2009, Beit Hanoun: Ghazi al-Za’anin, 14,was wounded by a bullet to the head and died the following morning.
> 5. 2 September 2009, Beit Hanoun: 17-year-old ‘Abdul ‘Aziz al-Masri, was wounded by a gunshot to the right foot.
> 6. 24 August 2009, Beit Lahia: Mas’oud Mohammed Tanboura, 19, was seriously wounded by several bullets to the chest
> 7. 24 August 2009, Beit Lahia: Sa’id ‘Ata al-Hussumi, 16, was instantly killed by two bullets to the chest
> 8. 23 August 2009, Beit Hanoun: Fawzi ‘Ali Qassem, 63, was wounded by a gunshot to the left thigh
> 9. 22 August 2009, Sheikh Zayed, Beit Lahia: Murad Salman al-Wazir, 17, wounded by a gunshot to the left leg.
> 10. 21 July 2009, Abassan: Majed Majdi al-Farra, 20, was wounded by shrapnel to the right hand
> 11. 19 July 2009, east of Gaza city: Ahmed Zuhair al-Semari, 22, was hit by a gunshot that entered the abdomen and exited the back. Kidnapped, transferred to Israeli hospital where died.
> 12. 15 July 2009, Abassan Jedida – Faraheen: Karem Hamdan Sarem Qudeh, 16, injured by shrapnel, above the eye
> 13. 2 July 2009, Juhr Ad Dik: Husam Abu A’yesh, 24, was also injured by shrapnel
> 14. 2 July 2009, Juhr Ad Dik: Hiam Abu A’yesh, 17, killed by Israeli shell
> 15. 5 June 2009, Shoka, Rafah: Khaled Ismail Mohammed Jahjuh was shot in his lower spine
> 16. 3 June 2009, Beit Hanoun: ‘Ali Mohammed al-Zummara, 65, injured by shrapnel in the back
> 17. 3 June 2009, Beit Hanoun: Saleh Mohammed al-Zummara, 66, injured by a gunshot to the left hand
> 18. 3 June 2009, Bedouin village ‘Um An-Nassir’: Ahmed Tawfiq Abu Hashish, 17, injured by shrapnel to the left shoulder and foot.
> 19. 3 June 2009, Bedouin village ‘Um An-Nassir’: Saleh Ahmed al-Madani, 17, seriously injured by shrapnel to the neck and the left shoulder
> 20. 20 May 2009, Beit Hanoun: Ziad Salem abu Hadayid, 23, was shot in his legs with live ammunition by Israeli forces.
> 21. 7 May 2009, Rafah: Randa Shaloof, 32, was shot in her hand and chest with live ammunition by Israeli forces.
> 22. 3 May 2009, Beit Hanoun: Mohamed Harb Shamia, 12, was injured in his leg and abducted by Israeli forces.
> 23. 3 May 2009, East of Jabalya: 30-year-old Mona Selmi As-Sawarka was injured by shrapnel wounds to her chest
> 24. 2 May 2009, Khoza’a: Nafith Abu T’eima, 35, injured in his neck by shrapnel from Israeli forces.
> 25. 10 March 2009, al-Maghazi refugee camp: Muhannad Sehi Abu Mandil, 24, was shot in the left foot with live ammunition by Israeli forces.
> 26. 24 February 2009, Khoza’a: Wafa Al Najar, 17, was shot in the kneecap with live ammuntion by Israeli forces.
> 27. 18 February 2009, Al Faraheen: Mohammad al-Ibrim, 20, was shot in the right leg with live ammunition by Israeli forces.
> 28. 14 February 2009, Jabaliya: Hammad Barrak Salem Silmiya, 13, was killed when Israeli forces shot him in the head with live ammunition.
> 29. 27 January 2009, Al Faraheen: Anwar al Ibrim, 27, was killed when Israeli forces shot him in the neck with live ammunition.
> 30. 27 January 2009, east of Deir Al Balah: Mohammed Salama al-Ma’ni, 21, was wounded by a gunshot to the left thigh.
> 31. 25 January 2009, Khoza’a: Subhi Tafesh Qudaih, 55, was wounded by a gunshot to the back
> 32. 23 January 2009, Khoza’a: Nabeel Ibrahim al-Najjar, 40, was wounded by shrapnel from a gunshot to the left hand by Israeli forces.
> 33. 22 January 2009, Sheyjaiee: 7 year old Ahmed Hassanian shot in the head
> 34. 20 January 2009, al-Qarara: Israeli soldiers shot Waleed al-Astal, 42, in his right foot.
> 35. 18 January 2009, Khoza’a:Maher ‘Abdul ‘Azim Abu Rjaila, 23, was killed when Israeli forces shot him in the chest with live ammunition.
The mainstream Israeli press is superior to the mainstream U.S. press in a lot of ways, and apparently “level of snarkiness allowed” is one of them, because it quickly becomes evident (if you didn’t pick up on it from the title of the piece, “A Modest Proposal,” a reference to the Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay in which Swift satirically proposes that Irish parents eat their own children in order to curb starvation) that Giora is letting Carmi and her crew have it, satirist style.
Just to give you a taste, here’s how the piece starts:
Like the president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Prof. Rivka Carmi, I too believe the demand that Dr. Neve Gordon resign as head of the university’s Department of Politics and Government is a legitimate and even modest demand, given the financial damage the university will sustain if he fails to do so. Accordingly, it is up to Gordon, who desires what is best for his institution, to comply with the demand forthwith.
Here’s how it ends:
Students, you are our future, and I have a modest proposal for you: Stay in the ivory tower. Try not to see reality as it is. And certainly do not describe it with pejorative words like “apartheid” or try to change it. Try to understand, in practical terms, what is worth studying and what you are better off not publishing, since your future depends mainly on the degree of flexibility you can display and on your ability to toe the line. Above all, you must remember that to adapt is to survive. See the Carmi case.
In between, Giora quotes a letter written by students to Carmi, which, if I can find a full version of, I will share, because the quote is priceless:
“We are taught history, but we are forbidden to learn from it. In gender studies, we are taught to identify violent discourse, but we are expected to go on speaking the routine and familiar militaristic language. We are taught to be social workers, but not to identify with exploited cleaning workers. Learning is allowed, but not drawing practical conclusions - especially not in a newspaper, in English, with a large circulation.”
On Monday night, I was hanging out with some young adults from Dumbarton United Methodist Church and Wesley Seminary at the Cosi’s at Metro Center.
We were having our regular Monday night Bible study, in this case on a passage from the letter of James, 2:1-17. Here’s a couple of excerpts (without which this story isn’t as powerful):
“My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favouritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person with dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please,’ while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there,’ or, ‘Sit at my fee,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kin-dom that God has promised to those who love God? But you have dishonoured the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you really fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’….What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you hav faith but do not have works?”
1) What is your first impression of the text?
2) How the text make sense in your life experience?
3) What is difficult about the text?
4) What in the message of the text could change your life?
We’d reached question 3 and were about to move to question 4 when a man approached us.
He asked us if we were studying the Bible. We said yes.
He told us that he was homeless and couldn’t see very well, but asked if he could listen in. We said of course, and read the passage again. Go back and read it, again, with that in mind.
As we talked, we found out that the man’s name was Ray. He told us some of what it was like to be homeless in the city, to not have a sense of protection or shelter or community. He talked about sleeping on a bench–in fact, the one moment in which any anger was evident in him was when he talked about sleeping on a “goddamn bench,” a phrase that I think has a certain literal application given the text at hand. He also spoke about not feeling accepted by a church community, of having “no place to go and hear the Word.”
Now, as I’ve said many times before, one of the fun things about this blog is that I never know who (if anybody) reads it. So I don’t know what you think when you read “the Word.” (It was def. capitalized when he said it). That’s a long discussion. But we all need a place where we can hear the Word, I think. Or at least a Word. A word of compassion. Of being included. Of mercy. Of justice. Of truth. Of comfort.
So many unhoused people in this city, and so many of them might go a whole day without ever really hearing a word, or at least a kind word, directed to them, as a person, a human, an individual.
At the end of the evening, some people from the group gave Ray the little money they had, and we all prayed together. We prayed for Ray, and Ray prayed for us, and for all people experiencing homelessness. When he left, he told us he felt like he had “some armor on for the night.” Because it’s a battle, living without a home, in the capital city of the richest nation on the planet.
Guess that sort of answers question number 4.
— — —
On this blog and in all sorts of other places, I’ve often written about the question, “What is mission?” I’ve written about mission as relationship, about mission as justice, about mission as listening, about mission as solidarity.
And Ray’s gift of his presence at our Bible study was another reminder to me that, after more than 2 years in this mission program, I still haven’t even begun to answer that question.
How many times over these past 8 months in DC have I rushed to work, using my busy schedule as an excuse not to talk to or even acknowledge a human being asking me not just for money but for acknowledgment of their personhood? Too many times to count.
My mission placement here in Washington, DC, is at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and indeed my work here educating at advocating and sharing my experiences on behalf of a just peace in Palestine and Israel is a mission. When I forget that this is a ministry, when I lose that focus, I lose motivation and I lose clarity and, most importantly, I lose legitimacy.
But in the end, that’s a placement. That’s work. And mission, if it’s to mean anything–ministry, if it’s to mean anything–is something that happens every step of the Way.
Mission isn’t about me talking–or writing this blog, for that matter. It’s about listening and being open–to Ray, for example, who ministered to us much more than we ministered to him.
Whose mission is it?
And who is mission?
Those questions are just as important as what.
Thank you, Ray. May God be with you, and with us, reminding us of the need for compassion–and the need to end this societal sin of empty houses, forced evictions, and children of God sleeping on Goddamn Benches.
Sam’s working with Christian Peacemaker Teams in the West Bank. I bumped into him a couple of times while I was there, although I unfortunately didn’t get to know him that well. His blog is always great, but I was particularly struck by his recent post on the occupation as disembodied actor. I left a long winded comment on the post so I won’t talk about it anymore, just read it. Also check out his post on how bad theology kills people and some recent great news from the World Council of Churches.
“This short film has been pulled from official selection at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) in protest against their Spotlight on Tel Aviv program and in solidarity with the Palestinian call for a boycott against the Israeli government.
It will available here online for the duration of the festival (until September 19th, 2009).
