I.
Introduction
In July 2016 Mennonite Church
Canada’s biannual Assembly 2016 in Saskatoon saw the passing of the following
resolution:
Resolution
Whereas:
· We are called to “follow Christ in the way of peace, doing justice,
bringing reconciliation and practicing nonresistance” (Confession of Faith in a
Mennonite Perspective, article 22);
· We believe God calls us to speak truth to power, urging our governments,
institutions, and businesses to take peaceful and nonviolent action against
injustice where it occurs;
· We hear continued pleas from Palestinian Christians that Western
Christians take notice of the suffering of all Palestinians under Israeli occupation;
we also recognize and lament the
suffering of Israeli citizens
· We believe it is God's will that Israelis and Palestinians live with one
another in peace, justice, freedom, and security;
· We lament
Israel’s ongoing and increasingly entrenched military occupation and settlement
of Palestinian lands in contravention of international law, including its
violations of Palestinians’ rights to movement and self- determination;
· We hear Palestinian Christians urging
us and fellow-believers around the world to exert economic pressure on
Israel--through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions—as one of the few remaining
options to end the occupation and facilitate a just peace with the Palestinian
people;
· We
recognize the complexity of the conflict between the state of Israel and
Palestine.
· Even as we address the situation in Palestine-Israel, we confess our own
complicity in the colonization and oppression of the Indigenous peoples of
Canada, as well as our history of racist attitudes and behaviours toward Jews--
Therefore, be it resolved
that:
· We look to the gospel of Jesus Christ for guidance and grace in our
responses to the Palestine and Israel context;
· We commit ourselves to ongoing prayer, searching, and discernment
concerning the ways in which we as congregations, communities, and church
members are impeding or facilitating, ignoring or promoting, the quest for a
just peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
· We affirm the efforts of Israelis and Palestinians who are committed to
non-violent ways of overcoming the injustice in their region; we commit ourselves to working in
partnership with them and Canadian Jewish and Palestinian communities
· We urge our member congregations to deepen their understanding of the
Israel-Palestine relationship through the study of educational materials on the
topic and through participation in learning tours to the region;
· We ask the Mennonite Church Canada General Board, along with regional
churches, congregations, and members—to avoid investing in or supporting
companies that do business with Israeli settlements and the Israel Defense
Forces, and companies that are profiting from the occupation of the Palestinian
territories; and
· We encourage the government of Canada to support measures that put
pressure on Israel (including through economic sanctions) to end the occupation
and work for a just peace, in accordance with international law.
The phrases in bold were added
after the original resolution had been prepared to accommodate the concerns of
representatives of the Jewish community who met with some of the MC Canada
leaders prior to bringing the resolution to the floor.
In keeping with the “be it
resolved” part, I, as one of two official delegates of our church – Peace
Mennonite in Richmond, BC, prepared the following as a presentation delivered
to our congregation on December 11, 2015 in the adult Education period after
our worship service. Actually, there were only about a dozen in attendance, out
of probably some 130 at the worship service prior. This was in spite of a verbal announcement I
gave during the service, quoting the first two lines of the well-known
Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and promising to give it new
meaning in my presentation. I thought a focused approach to the subject in my
talk titled “O Little Town of Bethlehem, Then and Now” would be particularly
appropriate now during the Advent season. The presentation included a number of
illustrations, mostly from my own photography, in PowerPoint.
Ever since my wife Anne and I had
been in Israel for our first visit earlier this year, we had wanted to share
our experience and speak about what we learned. You see, this was not a typical
tour where you visit the so-called holy sites and that's it. We did our share
of that, but we also took part in a number of events and visits that give us
much more information, both history and what is going on the Holy Land in now.
To begin with, I asked those in
attendance:
II.
What do you know about the little town of Bethlehem as
we sing about it at Christmas time?
[Slide 1 – Map of NT time]
1. In
the first place – who knows what Bethlehem means? – House of bread. Kind of
fitting, right? After all, the Bread of Life was born there.
2. If
you have never been there or read much about it other than what the Bible tells
us, you would be forgiven for thinking it is a small village on the hillsides
of Judea. After all, every Christmas we sing, “O Little town of Bethlehem.”
[Slide 2 – Rachel’s tomb]
3. Its
first mention in the Bible is Genesis 35:19-20. It was where Jacob buried
Joseph’s mother Rachel after she died there in childbirth with Benjamin when
they were returning to Canaan from Padan-Aram. You will remember, that is where
Jacob had fled to when he had a difference with Esau over their birthright. Rachel,
moving from home and family, making a long trek when pregnant, could have been
experiencing the same exhaustion and trauma that many Palestinian mothers
experience in their own land today.
I pointed out
that Rachel, as a Jewish matriarch, has had her tomb walled off by the state of
Israel, with a long protected road link to Israel, as the site is actually in
Palestine. It’s just one of many ways Israel exerts authority over Palestine.
This is illustrated in this slide.
4. You
would no doubt also remember that Bethlehem is where a character of the Old Testament
book of Ruth, Naomi, is from. She
and her family had fled as refugees into Moab, across the Jordan River, in what
would now be the state of Jordan, because of famine. Indeed, there are many
refugees in Palestine today who suffer want, but have nowhere to flee to. They
don’t have the freedom to choose as Naomi did. Eventually, when the famine was
over, she and her daughter-in-law Ruth went back to Bethlehem, as our church
had just studied in a series on that book. Ruth, a non-Jew, went on to become
the ancestor of Israel’s most beloved king. She was well-accepted in Bethlehem
then, unlike the acceptance many of her background receive in Israel today.
5. That
book in the Bible also leads us to the second thing that I'm sure most of you
know about Bethlehem. It is the birthplace
of the king mentioned above, David.
6. Then,
it was the place the prophet Micah predicted, over 400 years before it happened
[Micah 5:2, quoted by the Jews to the wisemen as we heard in our pastor’s
message last week, in Matthew 2:3-6], where the Messiah would be born.
7. Then,
finally, in connection with the season, we all now do know it as the birthplace
of David's descendent Jesus, Immanuel.
[Slide 3 – Hotel & lobby picture]
8. Finally,
and this is not something we focus on or would like to focus on very often, but
perhaps, as we will see, bears more relevance to the present situation: it is where
King Herod slaughtered
all the baby boys under the age
of two in his effort to do away with Jesus, whom he feared as a potential
threat to his throne. This was because of what he learned about Jesus and
Bethlehem when the wisemen, as we call them, following the star, came to visit
him looking for where the king was to be born.
[Slide 4 - Chapel of the Holy Innocents]
Indeed, there is a place, right
in the greater complex of The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem that is
allegedly over the bones of these children and called the Chapel of the Holy
Innocents. It is in a cave under the Church. It was discovered in 1967. We will
have more to say later about how this relates to the present-day situation
here.
III.
What do you Know About Bethlehem Between Then and Now?
1. As
far as history goes after the time of the New Testament, there are a couple of
significant points to be made about Bethlehem.
When the Roman Empire became
Christian under Constantine after AD 313, he dispatched his mother Helena to
Israel to secure the sacred sites with Roman tax money.
One of the things she did was to
begin building a church at the site of the Nativity in AD 326-39. Some of it is
still there, underneath layers that have been built on top of it over time.
However, recent excavations have uncovered some beautiful mosaics that one can
still see.
[Slide 5 - Mosaic]
2. The
other point is concerning the Syrian St. Jerome, who some of you may have heard
about. It was during his 30-year sojourn in Bethlehem, beginning in AD 386,
that he translated the Bible from Greek and Hebrew to Latin.
This is known as the Vulgate
Bible and was the Bible of the church until the time of the Reformation. He
also wrote a good deal of liturgy that the Roman Catholic Church has used since
then. The cave where he lived with some evidence of that, including his tomb,
was only re-discovered in 1967. It is part of the Church of St. Catherine.
[Slide 6 – St. Jerome]
IV.
What do you know about Bethlehem today?
[Slide 7 – Map of city and in
relation to Jerusalem]
1. In
the first place, it is no longer a village, but a city of some 22,000. It lies
some 6 miles south of Jerusalem, so you can even walk between the two, as some
do.
2. Also,
it is not in Israel, but in Palestine. In fact, it is the capital of one of the
16 administrative districts or governates of Palestine.
4. Long
ago Bethlehem was a Christian town, but now the Christians only comprise less
than 20% of the population. Many Palestinian Christians have emigrated because
of the difficulties of life there today. The rest of the population is mainly
Muslim.
We stayed in Bethlehem for
several days. This is one view of the city from our 11th/top floor
hotel room... and the appropriately painted mural in the lobby.
[Slide 8 – Bethlehem today]
You can see the minaret of a
mosque in the distance, which was lit up with green LED lights at night! and
the local Chamber of Commerce building in the foreground.
And this was the beautiful
sunrise over the Jordan hills to the East we were treated to at 5:30 AM on our
first morning there.
[Slide 9 – Bethlehem sunrise]
5. However,
and many of you have probably never heard this, Yassir Arafat, whom you would
remember as the head of the former Palestinian Liberation Organization, decreed
before his
death that Bethlehem should
always have a Christian mayor. Apparently, he reasoned that with the Christians
becoming a minority, they would not have enough say in how things went in
Palestine, especially Bethlehem, so thought of having a Christian mayor as part
of a measure to prevent the Christians from not having a voice. Perhaps Arafat also hoped that this would
bring him some goodwill in the so-called Christian West. Perhaps he simply recognized its sacredness to
Christians.
We were supposed to have an
audience with the mayor but she was ill so we met her deputy & assistant
who proudly showed us the video they had already prepared to advertise
Bethlehem for Christmas this year – don’t forget, this was in May! They also
told us that, besides their difficulties with things like accessing their land,
maintaining an adequate water supply, they also have money problems. When we
were there, the municipal employees had not been paid for months because the
Israeli government withheld money transfers. In part, they do this because they
can’t believe that it isn’t going to fund terrorists.
[Slide 10 – Bethlehem Mcpl. Offcs. – In and Out]
6. Indeed,
next to Jerusalem, Bethlehem is the second -most important and, should we say
popular, Christian center in The Holy Land. Interestingly, the Palestinian
government offices and the
famous Church of the Nativity are
basically at opposite ends of the same parking lot.
[Slide 11 – Church of the Nativity]
This church is built on
the foundation established in the fourth century. The crane here is because
there is an extensive renovation going on, to the tune of $20 million, funded
by the Italian government
http://www.pravmir.com .
You can see the small door
in the background. This door, called the Door of Humility, was made by the
crusaders to prevent Muslim attackers from entering the sacred site with their
horses. Even their head had to bow down to get in.
V.
But there are
some troubling things about Bethlehem today.
a.
Not that many years ago, 2005 to be precise, the
Israeli government basically took over the whole city. The worst part was that
the Church of the Nativity and associated buildings
were kept under siege for some 40 days, just before Easter.
Indeed, the Israeli Defense Force even "invaded" the sacred spaces
and discharged ammunition within the compound, causing damage. The siege itself
was so bad that those monks living within the zone and citizens of Bethlehem
who had gone there for refuge, were forced to eat the leaves of the lemon trees
from their compound when they ran out of food. You can read a very personal
account about this tragic time in a book we have in our own church library
called The Siege of Bethlehem, by
Mitri Reheb, the Lutheran pastor who got caught up in this.
b. Secondly,
Bethlehem is surrounded by three large UN refugee
camps. These were started after the formation of the Israeli state in 1948.
[Slide 13 – Beit Jala view of Israel]
They were ostensibly to provide a
temporary place for the Palestinians who became refugees at the time because of
the actions of the Zionist Jews. The thinking at the time was that, once things
settled down, the Palestinians would be able to return to their home. Of
course, that was never the intention of the Zionists. However, the Palestinians
are not giving up that hope, and for this reason, and also for economic and
political reasons and limitations, there are many of them still in these camps
today. They still carry too the keys to their homes. Of course, they are no
longer living in tents, but practically, you could say, tenement prison cities,
as you can see from this picture.
This is a view of Israel as seen
from behind the wall – and its checkpoint as you see on the left – from one of
these refugee camps. The settlements are generally built on hilltops for
reasons of both security and land use – the good farming is done in the valleys
and lower hillsides. Note the water tanks on the roofs of the Palestinian
buildings in the foreground. They all have these because, as some of you will
know, Israel rations water to Palestine and they never know when it might be
cut off. The settlements use water for things like swimming pools and watering
lawns whereas the Palestinians don’t even have enough often to drink or wash
with.
c.
The third thing has to do with something that I
believe you have all heard of, and that is the wall in this slide. As you know,
Israel has been building this to separate itself from
Palestine, they would say for
security reasons. Bethlehem is most unfortunate in that it is one of the areas most broken up by these walls.
You see, it is not just one linear wall. It has many tentacles, loops
[Slide 14 – The wall - map]
and circles, spreading into
Palestinian territory that purposely break it up so they cannot even
communicate with one another, visit family, and even look after their own
agricultural land. Israel has a law that land not farmed for 3 years is no
longer agricultural land. This is just a cynical way for Israel to expropriate
land for settlements and their agricultural needs.
d.
The fourth point is that, along with the wall,
and sometimes even where there isn't a wall, there are checkpoints. Some of
these are permanent, like the towers in this slide, with
armed guards in them, just as you
see in pictures at the corners of prison walls. Others are simply points along
roadways guarded by the Israeli Defense Force. They are ostensibly for the
protection of Israel. However, in reality, they are more about disrupting
Palestinian life in just one more way. You never know when or where they will
pop up and for how long. You can see what an inconvenience that will be for any
kind of movement, whether to work or to visit relatives. You have probably all
heard stories about where Palestinians on their way to medical care have been
held up so long, they died as a result.
VI.
But there is still hope in Bethlehem:
1. It
is the home of Bethlehem Bible College, which we as Mennonites are involved
with in terms of both staff and volunteers. It is an educational institution
where, among other things, the
students are taught about
reconciliation, nonviolence and restorative justice. Of course, you know your
former pastor, Palmer Becker, among other Mennonites, has taught courses there.
Again, MCC places volunteers there too. We did not visit it this year but we
hope to in 2017.
2. You
see, this is something that the media, particularly that from Israel, would not
have you realize, and that is that many Palestinians have long given up
violence as a way of getting out of
there document. Indeed, many of
the Christians in Palestine have never abandoned their understandings of the
nonviolent teachings of Jesus from the New Testament. After all, they trace
their beginnings as a church to the beginning in the New Testament, and we know
the Early Church was nonviolent until the Roman Empire decide to become
officially Christian after AD 313. You can get again a good personal
understanding of this from another wonderful and moving autobiographical book
in our church library by Elias Chacoury, a Palestinian Anglican priest from
Palestine, called Blood Brothers.
3. The
nonviolent path was even adopted by the government at one point, I believe with
the acceptance of the Oslo Accords over 20 years ago. Certainly, there are
extremists who still follow
the violent pathway, especially
followers of the Hamas party which figures mostly in the so-called Gaza Strip,
whereas the ruling Fatah party is more prominent in the West Bank. Of course,
and the Christians especially recognize this, these actions do not help the
cause of the rest of the people, as their actions are always another excuse for
the Israeli government to take it out on a wide swath of people in many forms
of extreme reaction. On average, in these retaliations Israel kills or
imprisons 10 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, for every 1 Israeli
wounded or killed.
Remember Herod killing the
innocent children, just because they might be Jesus? Israel is still doing that
to the Palestinians, just in case they might be the culprit of a crime that
can’t be solved. Sure, they are not going out and directly massacring them.
Some are killed in interactions between the soldiers, who are everywhere, and
the Palestinians, but more die indirectly because of the measures Israel takes
against Palestine. Israel is probably
second only to the US in the number of people in its jails, over 80% being
Palestinian. This is illegal by International Law, but Israel gets away with it
because of the support of the US, which too many Christians blindly support,
just because it’s Israel.
4. There
is a university here, Bethlehem University. One of its professors helped us out
on a tour one day and then took us back to show us his digs at the University.
He is a prodigious writer on
everything from the natural history
of the area to politics and human rights, both in a blog and in a very
interesting and informative newsletter he sends out, sometimes more than once a
week. His name is
Mazin Qumsiyeh, and he describes himself in his address as ‘A Bedouin in cyberspace, a villager
at home.’ Formally, he is the Professor
and (volunteer) Director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History which we
visited, and the Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability at the Bethlehem
University, which he refers to, again on his address, as in Occupied Palestine.
His newsletters, http://lists.qumsiyeh.org/listinfo/humanrights, refer the reader to
two websites: http://qumsiyeh.org, and http://palestinenature.orghttp://palestinenature.org.
5. He is
a prime example of the high level of education that many Palestinians have,
including especially their women. We heard talks by several of them when we
were there – all Christian.
Indeed, there are institutes of higher
education in each of their governates. According to Wikipedia, The West Bank and Gaza
together have 14 universities, an open university for distance learning, 18
university colleges and 20 community colleges.
[Slide 15 – With Salah in Winkler]
6.
There is a program in the Beit
Jala Refugee camp called Lajee, Lajee, for children and youth. It is supported by MCC and many other internationals
because of its promotion of peace. There is a
Facebook page for this. I had the privilege
of being in the same class as its Program Manager, Salah Ajarma, at the
Canadian School of Peacebuilding at Canadian Mennonite University some 6 years
ago. We enjoyed together a trip to my ancestral homelands in Southern Manitoba
and he was so impressed that we could drive 75 miles without seeing any
soldiers and without being stopped. We were also fortunate to have a brief
visit with him in Bethlehem this spring, but our tour schedule prevented us
from going to that camp.
7. The
Christian church is still active there.
[Slide 15 – Lutheran Church]
So, as long as we believe Christ rules on
earth as the kingly descendant of King David and the kingdom of Heaven is here,
there is hope. One of the main messages we are left with from Palestine is
this: “Don’t forget us.” Not all Palestinians are Muslim terrorists as Israel
would have you believe. Nor is there much if any current persecution of
Christians in Palestine by Muslims as others would have you believe. The plea
we can hear from Palestine if we can hear it over the din of the US, other
Western, including Canada, and Israeli media is this: “We are your Christian brothers
and sisters. We have kept the faith alive here since the time of Jesus. Help us
in our struggle to continue to be the faithful in the land.”
******
Lorne Brandt
2016 12 11
