part0015

This contribution focuses on new positive aspects to the situation now faced by the Palestinians. Despite what appeared to be political stalemate, despite the daily suffering and humiliation of people in the West Bank and Gaza, (and escalating harassment of the Israeli government) there are indications that the tide has definitely turned. Reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah will certainly bring change—and that is but one factor. I will then address challenges for spirituality, Church and theology.

There is unarguably- a new political context in the Middle East that is bringing much hope, even though the outcomes are far from clear—as we were very aware at Sabeel’s conference, Challenging Empire , in February this year. In a recent Guardian article, “Europe’s Israel romance is on the wane,” it was pointed out that “Europeans are losing their illusions about Israel, our survey shows. Policy is out of step with the public . . .” ( Abdullah 2011 ).

Whereas in Europe, Israel has historically enjoyed a high level of support, not least because it was perceived as a progressive democracy in a sea of Arab backwardness, at the same time, most Europeans knew very little about the Israel-Palestine conflict .

As recently as 2004 , the Glasgow University Media Group found that only nine percent of British students knew that the Israelis were the illegal occupiers of Palestinian land. Astonishingly, there were actually more people ( eleven percent) who believed that the Palestinians were occupying the territories.

However, according to a new poll by ICM for the Middle East Monitor, Europeans’ perception of Israel has changed decisively, and their understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict, while still giving some cause for concern, has improved significantly. The survey of 7 , 000 people in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain reveals only a small minority ( 10 percent) now believe their countries should support Israel rather than the Palestinians, while many more, 39 percent, think they should not.

This shift in European public opinion may owe something to an improved understanding of the conflict; 49 percent of respondents were now able to identify Israel as the occupying power. However, 22 percent still didn’t know. Reasons for this persistent ignorance about issues that have been long established in international law may reflect media bias, or inadequate coverage of the conflict but could also be a result of campaigns undertaken by the Israeli public relations machinery in Europe. Whatever the cause, the shift in public opinion is clearly not mainly due to the success of a pro-Palestinian lobby but primarily a consequence of Israel’s violation of international law, specifically its actions in Gaza, the 2010 attack on the humanitarian flotilla, (this was said to be illegal by 53 percent of those polled; 16 percent thought it legal), Israel’s illegal settlement expansion program, the construction of the separation wall and consequent humiliation of West Bank Palestinians.

So, across Europe, we note a growing rejection of Israeli policies—(we do not here speak of the US.) While it is important to note that those polled saw fault on both sides, 31 percent considered Palestinians to be the primary victims of the conflict, while only 6 percent thought Israelis the primary victims. Thus European policy on Palestine can no longer be said to reflect the values and aspirations of the European people: there is a disturbing level of disconnect between public opinion and our governments’ actions. Whereas the EU took a decision in 2003 to place Hamas on its list of terrorist organizations and preclude it from any negotiations, 45 percent of those polled said it should be included in peace talks, while only 25 percent said it should be excluded. (A recent survey by the Institute for Jewish Policy research also found that 52 percent of British Jews support negotiating with Hamas for peace.)

It would seem that the results of this study coincide with the epic changes now engulfing the Middle East. Europe’s romantic view of Israel has long been on the wane. The Guardian article concludes:

[Israel’s] 20 th-century image as the battling underdog in a hostile neighbourhood has been shattered by its actions. European governments should bring their policies into line with universally accepted human values. Anything less will be a betrayal of the democratic standards Europe claims to uphold. (Abdullah 2011)

It was by being confronted with the truth of the harsh realities of life in Palestine that a volte-face or awakening consciousness that the sea of change occurred for both Christian and Jewish theologians. One of our speakers, Professor Rosemary Ruether, herself states that when writing Faith and Fratricide , (about anti-Semitism in Christian theology) she was unaware of conditions in the Middle East, which she had never visited, but

came to recognize that the Jewish community was using the anti-Semitic issue to give a blank check to the state of Israel and so I needed to know something about that. So I went on a trip with Jewish feminists that was billed as ecumenical . . . in 1980 , but got to see the realities a bit and then went back for an extended stay in Tantur, meanwhile reading a lot about the issue. Once one sees what is actually happening one has to critique it . (personal e-mail, 7 April 2010 ; italics added)

A similar reaction was experienced by many Christian theologians, myself included. Oxford New Testament Professor, Christopher Rowland was brought up with inherited deep-seated anti-Judaism, and the Holocaust affected him deeply: it was through a succession of personal encounters—together with the effect of Liberation Theology- that he was able to confront the actual realities. The late Michael Prior, Vincentian priest and liberation theologian, came to the situation from a combination of commitment to the Palestinian people, frequent visits to the West Bank, and a long practice of reading the Bible with a liberation exegesis. Yet the process of freeing himself from the dominant school of biblical thinking on the Israeli right to inhabit the “promised land” was not an easy one.

But, if the challenge for Christian theologians was to confront, on the one hand, our own complicity in anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism (plus the legacy of colonialist history and the brutality of the British colonial regime in Palestine) and failure to act in the face of the oppression of the Palestinians, on the other hand, the guilt factor of the Holocaust has been kept alive as a deliberate strategy by the Zionist government.

Secondly, speaking of Jewish religious leaders, activists, prominent people—a crisis of faith and identity awaited those who were prepared to confront the truth. Mostly the awakened consciousness occurred because of being confronted by ground realities. Just to give a few examples. Mark Braverman, an American Jewish psychotherapist, now completely committed to peacemaking, and a courageous prophetic figure, writes:

I am the grandson of a fifth-generation Palestinian Jew. My grandfather was the direct descendant of one of the great Hasidic Rabbis of Europe, a family that later settled in Jerusalem in the mid 19 th century. (Friends of Sabeel North America Lecture)

Born in the United States in 1948 , Braverman was raised in an amalgam of Rabbinic Judaism and political Zionism. He was taught that a miracle—born of heroism and bravery—had blessed his generation. The State of Israel was not a mere historical event—it was redemption . . . So when he visited Israel as a boy of 17 he fell in love with the young state. He was proud of the miracle of modern Israel—creating this vibrant country out of the ashes of Auschwitz. His Israeli family—religious Jews—warmly embraced him. But even as he embraced them in return, he heard the racism in the way they talked about “the Arabs” and knew then that something was fundamentally wrong with the Zionist project: yet his love for the Land stayed strong. He lived for a year on a kibbutz and ignored the implications of the pre-1948 Palestinian houses still in use, the ancient olive trees standing in silent rows at the edges of its grounds. In fact Braverman held to the Jewish narrative until he went to the West Bank. Let’s hear his own words:

  Travelling in Israel and the Occupied Territories my defenses against the reality of Israel’s crimes crumbled. I saw the Separation Wall—I knew it was not for defense. I saw the damage inflicted by the checkpoints on Palestinian life and on the souls and psyches of my Jewish cousins in uniform who were placed there. I saw the settlements. I heard about the vicious acts of ideological Jewish settlers. And words like apartheid and ethnic cleansing sprang to my mind, unbidden and undeniable. And what is more, I learned that 1948 , what I had learned to call The War of Liberation was the Nakba—the ethnic cleansing of ¾ of a million Palestinians from their villages, cities and farms. And I knew that what I was witnessing in the present, the whole apparatus of occupation, was a continuation of that project of colonization and ethnic cleansing. It horrified me and it broke my heart. Most important of all, I met the Palestinian people, and recognized them, no—claimed them—as my sisters and brothers. That summer, 40 years after my first encounter with the Land, I saw all that, and my relationship to Israel changed forever. (Braverman 2009 )

A similar reaction is witnessed to by many Jewish thinkers and theologians, many the children of Holocaust Survivors—the most famous example being of course Marc Ellis. I will cite two more Jewish examples, for specific reasons. The awakening of Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the liberal Jewish journal Tikkun, (remember tikkun olam means the “healing of the world”), based in San Francisco, who had grown up in a Zionist household, visited often by David Ben Gurion and Golda Meir, among others, was dramatic. When he was 22 years old he spent an extended time in a kibbutz in Israel. Though impressed, he was stunned by the lack of social ideals that were meant to be shaping political life in Israel:

It was only when I began to ask about the origins of the kibbutz in the struggle against the Palestinian Arabs that I stumbled upon a terrible truth: the land on which I was working had been owned by Arabs who had been displaced by the Zionist enterprise. (Lerner 2003 , xiv)

It was this discovery that first set him on the search for peace and to start an organization called Committee for Peace in the Middle East. He continues to experience criticism and even personal attacks for his opposition to Zionist policies. The latest incident has been an attack on his family home—three times, to date—by right-wing Zionists, because of his befriending attitude to Senator Goldstone, a South African Jewish judge who wrote the critical report on the Israeli attack on Gaza .

My next example is a woman, particularly associated with Gaza. The Jewish Harvard Research scholar Sara Roy, (now an authority on Gaza) is the child of parents who survived Buchenwald and Auschwitz. She went for research purposes to the West Bank and Gaza in 1985 , and lived a summer that changed her life when she saw the humiliation of the Palestinian people and their treatment by the Israeli soldiers:

It is perhaps in the concept of home and shelter that I find the most profound link between the Jews and Palestinians, and, perhaps, the most painful illustration of the meaning of occupation. For Jews as for Palestinians a house represent far more than a roof over ones head: it represents life itself. (Roy 2007 , 21 )

As the bulldozer pushed through the walls of Salim’s home, it pushed me through all the ideological rationalizations, the pretexts, the lies, and the bullshit that my country had erected to prevent us from seeing the truth: that oppression must accompany an attempt to deny the existence and claims of another people in order to establish an ethnically pure state for yourself. (Halper 2008 , 15 )

This devastating experience led him to found ICAHD, The Israeli Campaign against Housing Demolition. Along with ICAHD it is good to welcome many other Jewish initiatives for peace in Israel and beyond. For example, the growing activism of Jewish Voices for Peace brings hope. This is their most recent statement condemning violence:

Any act of violence, especially one against civilians, marks a profound failure of human imagination and causes a deep and abiding trauma for all involved. In mourning the nine lives lost in Gaza and the one life lost in Jerusalem this week, we reject the pattern of condemning the deaths of Israelis while ignoring the deaths of Palestinians. We do not discriminate. One life lost is one life too many—whether Palestinian or Israeli. (“From Gaza to Jerusalem,” 2011 [emphasis original])

No account would be complete without mention of the emergence of the Israeli “revisionist” historians—including Ilan Pappé, (now based in Exeter, UK), our speaker Professor Nur Masalha, (my colleague at Mary’s), Avi Shlaim, and Benny Morris. What these historians share is that access to the historical archives has given insight and historical testimony to the truth of the Zionist aggression, especially to the truth of events in 1948 . In their different ways they have made a great contribution to altering consciousness, often at great cost to their personal lives.

Thirdly, I want to mention a shift in some Muslim thinking. A recent and promising development is the emergence of Islamic Liberation Theology. In his recent book, Islamic Liberation Theology: Resisting the Empire , Hamid Dabashi writes:

What we are witnessing in much of the Muslim world today, as indeed in much of the world at large, is the rightful struggle of ordinary people for their pride of place, for social equanimity, economic justice, political participation, a legitimate and assertive place in the global redistribution of power. (Dabashi 2008, 255 )

‘‘In the last instance . . . we will have an authentic theology of liberation only when the oppressed themselves can freely raise their voice and express themselves directly and creatively in society and in the heart of the People of God, when they themselves ‘account for the hope,’ which they bear, when they are the protagonists of their own liberation.” For that to happen, that hope will have to transcend its particular (Jewish, Christian, Islamic, or any other) denominational divide and speak a metaphysics of liberation beyond the theology of one or another divisive claim on God. The particularity of that theology will have to speak a universal language, from the bosom of its particularity. (Dabashi 2008, 255 )

This stance has been further elaborated in a Palestinian context. In June 2005 , at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, Dr. Saied Reza Ameli, an Iranian scholar and founder for the Institute of Islamic Studies, London, spoke of the universality of Liberation Theology. Building on the key concept that Liberation theology is an attempt to liberate people of the world from poverty and oppression, he traced its relevance for the Palestinian people in specifically Islamic categories. Its emergence is based on nostalgia for justice and nostalgia for metaphysical values.

Three elements are required. The first is return to God. This will affect our practices on the earth about ourselves and others. Selflessness is the second element. Selflessness, minimization of personal desires and dogmatic attachments to nationality, ethnicity, and even religion are major requirements for caring for oppressed and poor people. This means avoiding all things which can be considered as “selfishness.” “Self” here is not only a person, but it can cover all “collective centralities” such as Eurocentrism, Americocentrism, and Zionism, which cause demolishing and destruction of “others” for the price of supporting the “self.” Furthermore, “Selflessness” is a divine and mystical soul of all divine religions which brings God’s spirit to all aspects of life. . . Here is where the Palestinian problem becomes a global issue for all human beings who care about “others,” here is the position at which “all become equal to one and one becomes equal to all; here is the position at which one can observe unity within diversity and diversity within unity.”

The third point—common to all liberation theologies—is the centrality of justice. Regarding Palestine, the relevance is that the “Chosen society is the oppressed society.” As the Prophet Mohammad said: “Shall I let you know about the kings of the Heaven? Every powerless deprived.” In Islam, he continues, the future is not in the hands of those who kept the powerless deprived. He articulates:

This has a remarkable resonance with the Christian hope from the Sermon on the Mount that “the meek will inherit the earth.” In fact, this was the text of the sermon of the opening service for the recent Sabeel Conference in Bethlehem. Speaking with his back to the infamous Separation Wall, with the Aida refugee camps on his right, Revd. Mitri Raheb, a well-known Lutheran pastor from Bethlehem, used this text to prophesy that empire after empire has fallen—“the Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Ottoman, British. . .Eventually only the meek, the indigenous people, will be left—and they will inherit the land—that has been seized from them by successive empires.”

After these two sections on “new Awakenings,” next I want to stress—in two parts—that it is not that suddenly Europeans/North Americans of whatever faith suddenly discovered the truth, but that this is the effect of the actions of Palestinians themselves who, because of the strength of their own resistance, (often called sumud —persistence, steadfastness), have been able to build up an immense international solidarity movement of thousands of people. This was stressed by Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, at the Sabeel conference and in his book, Popular Resistance in Palestine (Qumsiyeh 2011 ). What he made abundantly clear is that this has historically been a non-violent resistance movement against empire. (The characteristics of this were seen in the uprising in Egypt). Secondly, it has been a movement of both women and men, even if the contribution of women has often been underplayed or even forgotten. He writes:

From the 1920 s and 30 s women took the initiative at critical times and also in the post 1967 years, when the national will was debilitated. For example, the first demonstration in spring 1968 was led by women—and dispersed by force. Similarly in 1968 over 300 women in Gaza demonstrated about the policies of occupation, expulsions and land confiscations (Qumsiyeh 2011 , 117 ). Thirdly, his focus on non-violence is vital. (Apparently there are insufficient places for training in nonviolence in Palestinian institutions). Whereas State power is brilliant at mobilizing fear, shedding fear is vital. Hence prophetic figures like Gandhi and Martin Luther King are frequently drawn on to inspire the heart of non-violence resistance and the sumud of the people. This permeates every aspect of existence. Qumsiyeh writes:

We could write volumes about resistance by simply living, eating, breathing in a land that is coveted. We resist by going to school, by cultivating what remains of our lands, by working under harsh conditions and by falling in love, getting married and having children. Resistance includes hanging onto what remains of Palestine when it has been made crystal –clear in words and deeds that we are not welcome in our lands. (Qumsiyeh 2011 , 235 )

Fourthly, it is a stance that calls out to the world for a response of solidarity, transformation of consciousness and action. In December 2009 Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem sent a plea to the world, “Kairos Palestine.” The document pleads to the world to stand by the Palestinian people, “who have faced oppression, displacement, suffering and clear apartheid for more than six decades.” It gives specific examples of the action needed. Although it emerges from Christian Churches “Kairos” covers Muslim contexts too. At another conference in Bethlehem, the Education Minister for Bethlehem schools, Dr. Barakwat Fauzi (himself a Muslim) spoke of Kairos’s relevance for Muslims and for education. “It (Kairos) comes from our hearts in a country where justice is absent,” he said, “from a context where every family has wounds.” He called on enlightened Christian leaders around the world to oppose the misuse of the Bible. But he also called for programs around the issues of the document to be set up in all Palestinian schools.

So far reaction to the document has been muted. Only the Methodist Church in the UK has so far taken a strong stance in the Report submitted to their Conference last year ( 2010 ), a report—which did not lack controversy—signed by both Jewish and Christians groups.

We, the undersigned, are Christians and Jews who have invested our energies and hopes in working for a just peace in Palestine/Israel. We write to offer our wholehearted support for the “Justice for Palestine and Israel” report being submitted to this year’s Methodist Conference. (“Methodist ‘Justice for Palestine and Israel’ Report,” 2010)

Coexistence is not advanced by the bulldozer’s blade as it demolishes Palestinian homes and uproots olive trees; nor is reconciliation furthered by segregation and a decades-long militarized regime of control. In opposing such injustices, the resolutions simply affirm international law.

We do nothing to advance a just peace without being realistic about the structural imbalance between Israel and the dispossessed, stateless Palestinians. In 1963 , Martin Luther King wrote that the greatest “stumbling block” to freedom was the “moderate” who preferred “a negative peace” which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.

The events in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen have focused world attention yet again on the Middle East. One area which continues to suffer is Palestine, where basic human rights seem as far away as ever. This seems an opportune time for the Justice and Peace Commission to redress a regrettable silence in endorsing a poignant Christian statement which emerged from Palestine nearly 15 months ago. To date it has received very little attention from any of the Christian churches in this country.

This document declares “that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity because it deprives the Palestinians of their basic human rights, bestowed by God,” distorting “the image of God in the Israeli who has become an occupier just as it distorts this image in the Palestinian living under occupation.”

So why the dead silence around the Kairos document except in these few cited cases? What has happened to the prophetic dimension of the Church? Has prophecy left the Church? Are we afraid of the Israeli government? Yet the Palestinians have overcome fear in the face of daily persecutions? (I know this should not be exaggerated or generalized). We here do not live in the face of persecution. Are we afraid of upsetting the Jewish community and being accused of anti- Semitism? Yet Jewish voices are speaking out, putting their lives on the line, being accused of being “Self-hating” Jews, yet standing up for justice and leading activist movements. Are we too enslaved by empire- whether the market forces of globalization, or the superior power of military might? Yet we follow a man who refused to take up arms in the face of the might of the Roman Empire. Are we so consumed with post-holocaust guilt that we are unable to speak the truth about the genocidal acts that the Zionist government now inflicts on another Semitic people?

When I was in Palestine I was reading a new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and was struck by the similarity of context between resistance to Nazi Germany and the lack of resistance to injustice in Palestine by the Churches. Whereas there was all too much collusion between the established Church and the Nazi party, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his colleagues in the Confessing Church, (and we are not very far away here from Chichester, where Bishop Bell, Bonhoeffer’s supporter was active), were heroically witnessing to the authentic prophetic meaning of Church, supporting the Jewish people in the teeth of the murderous annihilation schemes, and risking their lives in the service of truth. Do we not need another Confessing Church, recalling Church to its roots in opposing all non-truth, evil and oppression? Or a wider movement, inclusive of all faiths and in solidarity with secular movements? Do we not need to witness to another reality that does not collude with Empire, and military aggression?

Concretely, this means many tasks. If we cannot wait for the leaders to lead, we begin with the work and commitment of ordinary people. So has it ever been for Liberation Theology. We work for the BDS campaign because this is what the Palestinian people have asked us to do. Secondly, we engage in reading the Bible differently. Still too many people in the Christian Churches are reading the Bible, on the basis of an uncritical a-historical reading of certain Old Testament texts, as if there God gave a mandate to the Zionist government to confiscate Palestinian lands. Thirdly, we engage with responsibly thinking Jewish people in this project. We attempt to work together through difficult issues like the possible meanings of “chosen-ness,” “election,” “superiority” . . . and the image of God behind all these notions. Fourthly, we need to challenge Christian Zionism in its fundamentalist reading of Scripture and to awaken a vision—that the Palestinians have given us—of the just sharing of the land. And finally we need to enter into the vision of non-violence as the way to a peaceful cooperation. And we only need to listen and learn from the many examples the Palestinians give us. And I will lend with one specific story.

Travelling in Palestine in March I met Daoud Nassar, the owner of “The Tent of Nations”—a 100 acre farm, on a hill top surrounded by hills whose land has been confiscated for Jewish settlements. And the Israelis want his land too. This farm is the only example of a Palestinian family which has so far been able to retain their land: Daoud’s grandfather registered it in 1916 under the Ottoman Empire, re-registered it under the Jordanians, then the British—and now the struggle carries on with the Israelis. The neighboring settlers inflict damage on the water system and trees. Once they uprooted 250 olive trees. Three weeks later came an e-mail from “Jews for Justice”—in England!—who promised 250 olives trees to replace them; and they came and planted them! The farm’s daily existence is under threat. There is a plan to disconnect the farm not only from the main road but even from the nearby village. Despite all this, Daoud’s father held the land to be so precious that he wanted to create something on it for peace, so the Tent of Nations was born.

Daoud is a man who refuses to be bitter, to hate, to cling to anger, and finds a way to turn rejection into witness. No running water—so they have dug 11 cisterns to collect rain water. No electricity—they installed solar panels. No building permits—they turned caves into meeting places and prayer sites. No friends—so they open their lives to people of all faiths, Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus. Last year more than 4 , 000 people from around the world came to spend time here.

The determination to keep going in a spirit of non-violence was inspiring. The message of reconciliation shone from clearly: “We need to break the chains of hate—we are learning hope and planting peace.” Daoud believes in small steps for change, relating to all who come to his land in the path of non-violence—treating Israeli soldiers as real people whose eyes need to be opened. The Tent of Nations is a parable of overcoming evil with good. Here we see clearly the vision of the World Social Forum—and surely this should be the inspiration for a new prophetic, Palestinian Liberation Theology?—that another reality is possible.