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No doubt there are some who would read this series of posts and protest that I’m little more than a naïve U.S. citizen who was duped into becoming a mouth-piece for the Palestinian cause. People might claim that I only saw one side of the story, etc. But let me assure you that this was not the case.
This was no site-seeing tour. It was ten days of meetings with both Jewish and Palestinian citizens and government officials. One such group is simply known as ‘the Refuseniks’ – Israeli citizens who refused to serve in the military because of an unwillingness to contribute to the grievances and abuses occurring with regularity within the occupied territories. Their only agenda was peace and justice for all.
These were people who knew the landscape of abuse from the inside-out. They spoke of the unethical settlement-building, land-confiscation, wall-building, unwarranted arrests, torture, home demolitions and a host of other grievances occurring in the face of international law opposing them. These were people, some of whom had endured arrest and ill-treatment by their own government. And some of their stories are simply too heart-wrenching to tell. It’s easier to pretend that such things just don’t happen. But they do.
Perhaps the one thing that bothered me most were the number of Israelis who scoffed at the breaking of international law by reminding us that the U.S. often does not observe such law either. This argument seemed to be their ace-in-the-hole. “International law,” said one Jewish leader, “was nothing more, nothing less, than kangaroo court.” It was their way of forbidding we take the moral high ground or to argue from an ethics standpoint.
“What have we become as a nation,” I wonder? It’s a question that not only must be asked, but pressed.
Along the way we met many wonderful Jewish people. And we met many wonderful Palestinians. And both groups continuously stressed their desire for peace – a word we heard much more often than a call for ‘justice.’
Justice seeks to make amends, to set things right. Justice is a call for immediate action to overturn things that are wrong. And the entire issue of ethical wrongs is often the first casualty of any conflict. But make no mistake: Justice is the key issue in this dispute.
While it would be easy to succumb to despair, I had to remind myself that we did not travel to the Land to become discouraged, but to become prepared; prepared to speak, to write, to share what we had seen. And so that is what I have done and will continue to do.
I do not seek to speak against one side in favor of the other, but to speak against the diabolical false self that is of the ego and knows nothing of our true nature – our higher and divine nature. And it is THAT nature that screams out imploring, “What are we doing?” “What will we do next?” “When will we care?” And even more, “Can humankind exist when it is becoming so obvious that civilization is anything but civilized?”
6 comments to “Israel Pt. 8: Final Impressions”
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Thanks Tim for giving us here in the U.S. a better picture and a better understanding of what the “real” people of the area feel, see, and live every day.
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Tim, over the years I have been so blinded by what is truely happening. I can’t help but reflect on how many times over the years, as so called christians that we would never ever allow atrosities such as what happened when Hitler killed so many, But yet here we are again blinded to reality. What it proves to me is that many of us around the world really don’t want to believe that people could and are so cruel, and so wanting to believe that, we shut out the real truth.
It is past time that everyone, no matter what color, race, belief, begin to be treated with dignity and respect. I applaud you Tim for beginning the process in us, that we can truely see all flesh as precious. -
A similar story was told over the weekend on television. Isreal stealing land pusing Palestinians off their land out of homes. It is apartheid, it is illegal, it must stop.
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Zionism, on both sides of the Atlantic — is ugly.
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Thank you for such a passionate and balanced overview of so many of the issues and conditions relating to the Middle-east conflict. Some have cast their support of a particular viewpoint based upon half truths, mis-application of scripture/prophecy, and sensationalized, fear-eliciting “sound bites”…..perhaps missing the “Christ-heart” in it all which would call us out to “do justly, love kindness and mercy, and to humble yourself and walk humbly with your God”. Your posts drew me back to some passages in the book of Micah (among others) For us, prophecy (even though it may have been fulfilled in an earlier age) surely does have the benefit of warning as it reminds us how far we may have removed ourselves from the heart of God and how similar unwelcome outcomes may and often do manifest. The warnings of Micah yield a familiar voice: “Woe to those who devise iniquity and work out evil upon their beds! When the morning is light, they perform and practice it because it is in their power. They covet fields and seize them, and houses and take them away; they oppress and crush a man and his inheritance….[heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel] who abhor and reject justice and pervert all equity, who build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity…yet they lean on the Lord and say, Is not the Lord among us? No evil can come upon us”. Prophetic warnings of this nature always have current value! There have been times in our past, whether individually or collectively as religious institutions and as a nation, that we thought the same thing…no evil can come upon us–we’re invincible, unshakable because we go by the “name” of our Creator, w/o asking ourselves the more important question: “Do we manifest the image/lLove of our Creator”? The universal “laws”/precepts of creation remain—whatever we are sowing, we should expect to reap. Sobering!…yet also motivating in their potential for changing the current “reality” of our world. As much as there is potential for devastation, there is potential for hope and a new reality of being together on the earth. We’ve already been taught the way as Deuteronomy records: “But the word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your mind and in your heart, so that you can do it”….. “I call heaven and earth to witness this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, the blessings and the curses; therefore choose life”…And, we’ve already been shown the way.
Silence is not an option once one learns the horrors suffered by so many. Knowing the hope that still burns in those oppressed for so long should spur one to just action. What do we become if we do not learn and act from so much suffering and heart ache? I still find it hard to believe that there are those who can chalk all this pain, blood shed, death to ‘prophesy’ and elitism.
Thank you Tim for not remaining silent.