Impressions (The Christian Century magazine)
May 20, 2008
Carter's Middle East mission
by James M. Wall
An editorial in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz (April 15) sharply criticized Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert for Israel's "boycott" of Jimmy Carter during the former president's recent trip to the Middle East. Olmert refused to meet with Carter; Israeli security personnel were not available to assist Carter's Secret Service detail. Editors of Ha'aretz wrote, "The boycott will not be remembered as a glorious moment in this government's history."
From the moment he took office as president in 1977, Carter was determined to achieve peace between Israel and Egypt. Working "incessantly toward that goal," Carter concluded the 1979 peace agreement for which, Ha'aretz concludes, he deserves "the respect reserved for royalty for the rest of his life."
Such high praise rarely appears in U.S. media. Most Americans have forgotten, if they ever knew, that 30 years ago, in a peace agreement with Egypt, Israel agreed to full autonomy for the occupied territories, and also agreed not to permit Jewish settlements there. These promises have been forgotten by Israel, which continues to build and expand settlements in the West Bank.
But Carter hasn't forgotten, and his memory may be a factor in the hostility toward him—a man who remembers prods the conscience of those who want to forget.
Israel is deeply indebted to Carter for its peace accord with Egypt. Not only did the agreement remove a major threat to Israel's security, but it also started the flow of billions of U.S. tax dollars into the Israeli economy, a subsidy now militantly defended annually by Israel's supporters in the U.S. Congress.
But this is also the man who wrote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid and whose references to apartheid and critical view of Israeli policies have outraged many. Reflecting on the controversy evoked by the book, the Ha'aretz editorial states:
Israel is not ready for such comparisons, even though the situation begs it. It is doubtful whether it is possible to complain when an outside observer, especially a former U.S. president who is well versed in international affairs, sees in the system of separate roads for Jews and Arabs, the lack of freedom of movement, Israel's control over Palestinian lands and their confiscation, and especially the continued settlement activity, which contravenes all promises Israel made and signed, a matter that cannot be accepted.
Jewish journalist Tony Karon, who lived with apartheid in South Africa before moving to New York, writes on his blog, Rootless Cosmopolitan, that Carter may have been "tempting fate" by meeting with Hamas. After all, says Karon,
his entirely appropriate evocation of apartheid in reference to the regime Israel has created on the West Bank earned him the label "Holocaust-denier" from the more demented end of the American Zionist spectrum. But Carter . . . [is] making the rather straightforward adult argument that has eluded so much of the U.S. political mainstream that the only way to achieve peace is to talk to all of those whose consent it requires.
Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar wrote in the Washington Post: "President Jimmy Carter's sensible plan to visit the Hamas leadership this week brings honesty and pragmatism to the Middle East while underscoring the fact that American policy has reached its dead end."
In the same issue, however, the Post repudiated its guest columnist, saying that the article by al-Zahar "drips with hatred for Israel, and with praise for former president Jimmy Carter."
Carter maintains that Hamas is worthy to be included in peace talks not because its leaders are paragons of virtue, but for the obvious reason that there can be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians that does not include all of the involved political parties. It is that reality that led Ha'aretz to conclude that "Carter's method, which says that it is necessary to talk with every one, has still not proven to be any less successful than the method that calls for boycotts and air strikes. In terms of results, at the end of the day, Carter beats out any of those who ostracize him."
James M. Wall is senior contributing editor at the Century.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Christian Leaders' Declaration on the 60th Anniversary of Israel's Declaration of Independence
The Declaration
We, the undersigned, church leaders and representatives of our different denominations and organisations, join together on the 60th anniversary of the Israeli state to offer a contribution to that which makes for peace.
We recognise that today, millions of Israelis and Jews around the world will joyfully mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel (Yom Ha'atzmaut). For many, this landmark powerfully symbolises the Jewish people’s ability to defy the power of hatred so destructively embodied in the Nazi Holocaust. Additionally, it is an opportunity to celebrate the wealth of cultural, economic and scientific achievements of Israeli society, in all its vitality and diversity.
We also recognise that this same day, millions of Palestinians living inside Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and the worldwide diaspora, will mourn 60 years since over 700,000 of them were uprooted from their homes and forbidden from returning, while more than 400 villages were destroyed (al-Nakba). For them, this day is not just about the remembrance of a past catastrophic dispossession, dispersal, and loss; it is also a reminder that their struggle for self-determination and restitution is ongoing.
To hold both of these responses together in balanced tension is not easy. But it is vital if a peaceful way forward is to be forged, and is central to the Biblical call to “seek peace and pursue it” (Ps. 34:14). We acknowledge with sorrow that for the last 60 years, while extending empathy and support to the Israeli narrative of independence and struggle, many of us in the church worldwide have denied the same solidarity to the Palestinians, deaf to their cries of pain and distress.
To acknowledge and respect these dual histories is not, by itself, sufficient, but does offer a paradigm for building a peaceful future. Many lives have been lost, and there has been much suffering. The weak are exploited by the strong, while fear and bitterness stunt the imagination and cripple the capacity for forgiveness.
We therefore urge all those working for peace and justice in Israel/Palestine to consider that any lasting solution must be built on the foundation of justice, which is rooted in the very character of God. After all, it is justice that “will produce lasting peace and security” (Isaiah 32:17). Let us commit ourselves in prophetic word and practical deed to a courageous settlement whose details will honour both peoples’ shared love for the land, and protect the individual and collective rights of Jews and Palestinians in the Holy Land.
“Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid” (Micah 4:4)
What they are saying...
“A just peace between Israelis and Palestinians is both vital and possible. So is global solidarity to that end. This declaration joins human and Christian compassion for two wounded people's with the political passion to see right prevail. It is timely and essential.” Simon Barrow, Co-director of Ekklesia
“The Lord our God has always valued love and justice more than land and prosperity. ‘But I will be merciful only if you stop your evil thoughts and deeds and start treating each other with justice; only if you stop exploiting foreigners, orphans, and widows…’ As His people, we must agree with Him and stand for justice for all in the Middle East.” Lynn Green, International Chairman of YWAM
“A necessary and timely reminder that for 60 years Israel's ‘celebration’ of statehood has come at a high price for millions of refugees and occupied residents of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel's ‘60th anniversary’ could become a moment for profound introspection and self-examination for a state that wishes to be known for democracy and justice in the Middle East. It is not without reason that Palestinians call 1948 – Israel’s birth – the ‘catastrophe.’” Gary Burge
Background to the Declaration
As Israel marks its 60th anniversary this May, for Israelis and Palestinians the conflict and the suffering continues. We believe that this landmark is an important opportunity for Christian leaders around the world to add their voices to a special call for a justice-based peace.
The statement acknowledges the pain of both peoples – and the rights of both peoples to security and dignity. Grounded in biblical truth and supported by pastors, professors, heads of organizations and editors across denominational, national and political lines, this historic statement will be a prophetic cry and a powerful witness.
On May 8, Israeli Independence Day, the joint statement and a full list of signatories will be published on this blog and sent to the national press in the US and UK. To add your name to the list of signatories, or to get a copy of the statement as a Word document, email Philip or Ben at the address below.
Spread the word - the more people who get behind this call for justice and peace, the more powerful an impact it will be able to make.
Blessings and peace.
Ben White & Philip Rizk, 18 March 2008
www.justpeace60@gmail.com
We, the undersigned, church leaders and representatives of our different denominations and organisations, join together on the 60th anniversary of the Israeli state to offer a contribution to that which makes for peace.
We recognise that today, millions of Israelis and Jews around the world will joyfully mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel (Yom Ha'atzmaut). For many, this landmark powerfully symbolises the Jewish people’s ability to defy the power of hatred so destructively embodied in the Nazi Holocaust. Additionally, it is an opportunity to celebrate the wealth of cultural, economic and scientific achievements of Israeli society, in all its vitality and diversity.
We also recognise that this same day, millions of Palestinians living inside Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and the worldwide diaspora, will mourn 60 years since over 700,000 of them were uprooted from their homes and forbidden from returning, while more than 400 villages were destroyed (al-Nakba). For them, this day is not just about the remembrance of a past catastrophic dispossession, dispersal, and loss; it is also a reminder that their struggle for self-determination and restitution is ongoing.
To hold both of these responses together in balanced tension is not easy. But it is vital if a peaceful way forward is to be forged, and is central to the Biblical call to “seek peace and pursue it” (Ps. 34:14). We acknowledge with sorrow that for the last 60 years, while extending empathy and support to the Israeli narrative of independence and struggle, many of us in the church worldwide have denied the same solidarity to the Palestinians, deaf to their cries of pain and distress.
To acknowledge and respect these dual histories is not, by itself, sufficient, but does offer a paradigm for building a peaceful future. Many lives have been lost, and there has been much suffering. The weak are exploited by the strong, while fear and bitterness stunt the imagination and cripple the capacity for forgiveness.
We therefore urge all those working for peace and justice in Israel/Palestine to consider that any lasting solution must be built on the foundation of justice, which is rooted in the very character of God. After all, it is justice that “will produce lasting peace and security” (Isaiah 32:17). Let us commit ourselves in prophetic word and practical deed to a courageous settlement whose details will honour both peoples’ shared love for the land, and protect the individual and collective rights of Jews and Palestinians in the Holy Land.
“Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid” (Micah 4:4)
What they are saying...
“A just peace between Israelis and Palestinians is both vital and possible. So is global solidarity to that end. This declaration joins human and Christian compassion for two wounded people's with the political passion to see right prevail. It is timely and essential.” Simon Barrow, Co-director of Ekklesia
“The Lord our God has always valued love and justice more than land and prosperity. ‘But I will be merciful only if you stop your evil thoughts and deeds and start treating each other with justice; only if you stop exploiting foreigners, orphans, and widows…’ As His people, we must agree with Him and stand for justice for all in the Middle East.” Lynn Green, International Chairman of YWAM
“A necessary and timely reminder that for 60 years Israel's ‘celebration’ of statehood has come at a high price for millions of refugees and occupied residents of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel's ‘60th anniversary’ could become a moment for profound introspection and self-examination for a state that wishes to be known for democracy and justice in the Middle East. It is not without reason that Palestinians call 1948 – Israel’s birth – the ‘catastrophe.’” Gary Burge
Background to the Declaration
As Israel marks its 60th anniversary this May, for Israelis and Palestinians the conflict and the suffering continues. We believe that this landmark is an important opportunity for Christian leaders around the world to add their voices to a special call for a justice-based peace.
The statement acknowledges the pain of both peoples – and the rights of both peoples to security and dignity. Grounded in biblical truth and supported by pastors, professors, heads of organizations and editors across denominational, national and political lines, this historic statement will be a prophetic cry and a powerful witness.
On May 8, Israeli Independence Day, the joint statement and a full list of signatories will be published on this blog and sent to the national press in the US and UK. To add your name to the list of signatories, or to get a copy of the statement as a Word document, email Philip or Ben at the address below.
Spread the word - the more people who get behind this call for justice and peace, the more powerful an impact it will be able to make.
Blessings and peace.
Ben White & Philip Rizk, 18 March 2008
www.justpeace60@gmail.com
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Jimmy Carter Speaks Out
A human rights crime
The world must stop standing idle while the people of Gaza are treated with such cruelty
Jimmy Carter
The Guardian
Thursday May 8 2008
The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world. An entire population is being brutally punished.
This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006. The election was unanimously judged to be honest and fair by all international observers.
Israel and the US refused to accept the right of Palestinians to form a unity government with Hamas and Fatah and now, after internal strife, Hamas alone controls Gaza. Forty-one of the 43 victorious Hamas candidates who lived in the West Bank have been imprisoned by Israel, plus an additional 10 who assumed positions in the short-lived coalition cabinet.
Regardless of one's choice in the partisan struggle between Fatah and Hamas within occupied Palestine, we must remember that economic sanctions and restrictions on the supply of water, food, electricity and fuel are causing extreme hardship among the innocent people in Gaza, about one million of whom are refugees.
Israeli bombs and missiles periodically strike the area, causing high casualties among both militants and innocent women and children. Prior to the highly publicised killing of a woman and her four children last week, this pattern had been illustrated by a report from B'Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights organisation, which stated that 106 Palestinians were killed between February 27 and March 3. Fifty-four of them were civilians, and 25 were under 18 years of age.
On a recent trip through the Middle East, I attempted to gain a better understanding of the crisis. One of my visits was to Sderot, a community of about 20,000 in southern Israel that is frequently struck by rockets fired from nearby Gaza. I condemned these attacks as abominable acts of terrorism, since most of the 13 victims during the past seven years have been non-combatants.
Subsequently, I met with leaders of Hamas - a delegation from Gaza and the top officials in Damascus. I made the same condemnation to them, and urged that they declare a unilateral ceasefire or orchestrate with Israel a mutual agreement to terminate all military action in and around Gaza for an extended period.
They responded that such action by them in the past had not been reciprocated, and they reminded me that Hamas had previously insisted on a ceasefire throughout Palestine, including Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel had refused. Hamas then made a public proposal of a mutual ceasefire restricted to Gaza, which the Israelis also rejected.
There are fervent arguments heard on both sides concerning blame for a lack of peace in the Holy Land. Israel has occupied and colonised the Palestinian West Bank, which is approximately a quarter the size of the nation of Israel as recognised by the international community. Some Israeli religious factions claim a right to the land on both sides of the Jordan river, others that their 205 settlements of some 500,000 people are necessary for "security".
All Arab nations have agreed to recognise Israel fully if it will comply with key United Nations resolutions. Hamas has agreed to accept any negotiated peace settlement between the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, provided it is approved in a referendum of the Palestinian people.
This holds promise of progress, but despite the brief fanfare and positive statements at the peace conference last November in Annapolis, the process has gone backwards. Nine thousand new Israeli housing units have been announced in Palestine; the number of roadblocks within the West Bank has increased; and the stranglehold on Gaza has been tightened.
It is one thing for other leaders to defer to the US in the crucial peace negotiations, but the world must not stand idle while innocent people are treated cruelly. It is time for strong voices in Europe, the US, Israel and elsewhere to speak out and condemn the human rights tragedy that has befallen the Palestinian people.
· Jimmy Carter, a former president of the United States, is founder of The Carter Center project-syndicate.org
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/08/israelandthepalestinians
The world must stop standing idle while the people of Gaza are treated with such cruelty
Jimmy Carter
The Guardian
Thursday May 8 2008
The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world. An entire population is being brutally punished.
This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006. The election was unanimously judged to be honest and fair by all international observers.
Israel and the US refused to accept the right of Palestinians to form a unity government with Hamas and Fatah and now, after internal strife, Hamas alone controls Gaza. Forty-one of the 43 victorious Hamas candidates who lived in the West Bank have been imprisoned by Israel, plus an additional 10 who assumed positions in the short-lived coalition cabinet.
Regardless of one's choice in the partisan struggle between Fatah and Hamas within occupied Palestine, we must remember that economic sanctions and restrictions on the supply of water, food, electricity and fuel are causing extreme hardship among the innocent people in Gaza, about one million of whom are refugees.
Israeli bombs and missiles periodically strike the area, causing high casualties among both militants and innocent women and children. Prior to the highly publicised killing of a woman and her four children last week, this pattern had been illustrated by a report from B'Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights organisation, which stated that 106 Palestinians were killed between February 27 and March 3. Fifty-four of them were civilians, and 25 were under 18 years of age.
On a recent trip through the Middle East, I attempted to gain a better understanding of the crisis. One of my visits was to Sderot, a community of about 20,000 in southern Israel that is frequently struck by rockets fired from nearby Gaza. I condemned these attacks as abominable acts of terrorism, since most of the 13 victims during the past seven years have been non-combatants.
Subsequently, I met with leaders of Hamas - a delegation from Gaza and the top officials in Damascus. I made the same condemnation to them, and urged that they declare a unilateral ceasefire or orchestrate with Israel a mutual agreement to terminate all military action in and around Gaza for an extended period.
They responded that such action by them in the past had not been reciprocated, and they reminded me that Hamas had previously insisted on a ceasefire throughout Palestine, including Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel had refused. Hamas then made a public proposal of a mutual ceasefire restricted to Gaza, which the Israelis also rejected.
There are fervent arguments heard on both sides concerning blame for a lack of peace in the Holy Land. Israel has occupied and colonised the Palestinian West Bank, which is approximately a quarter the size of the nation of Israel as recognised by the international community. Some Israeli religious factions claim a right to the land on both sides of the Jordan river, others that their 205 settlements of some 500,000 people are necessary for "security".
All Arab nations have agreed to recognise Israel fully if it will comply with key United Nations resolutions. Hamas has agreed to accept any negotiated peace settlement between the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, provided it is approved in a referendum of the Palestinian people.
This holds promise of progress, but despite the brief fanfare and positive statements at the peace conference last November in Annapolis, the process has gone backwards. Nine thousand new Israeli housing units have been announced in Palestine; the number of roadblocks within the West Bank has increased; and the stranglehold on Gaza has been tightened.
It is one thing for other leaders to defer to the US in the crucial peace negotiations, but the world must not stand idle while innocent people are treated cruelly. It is time for strong voices in Europe, the US, Israel and elsewhere to speak out and condemn the human rights tragedy that has befallen the Palestinian people.
· Jimmy Carter, a former president of the United States, is founder of The Carter Center project-syndicate.org
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/08/israelandthepalestinians
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Behind the Violence, the "Real" History
One home, two histories
The past of one property in Jerusalem symbolises today's divisions between Palestinians and Israelis
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
The Guardian
Tuesday May 6 2008
The two-storey house is built from hefty blocks of golden stone. Tall palm trees tower over the front garden, giving shade from the burning summer sun. There is a green, metal double gate, guarded on each side by stone pillars adorned with handsome metal lanterns. It is known as the Hallak house and it sits in a smart district of west Jerusalem known as Talbieh.
This is a house of competing histories: a story of flight and dispossession and a story of immigration and achievement; the unresolved tragedy of the Palestinian refugee crisis and the remarkable rise of the Israeli state built on the ruins of the second world war.
On Thursday, Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary with speeches, military parades, exhibitions and sports competitions. The true story of the rival legacies of what happened in 1948 lies in the history of buildings such as the Hallak house and in the lives of people such as Wilhelmine Baramki and Reuven Tsur, a Palestinian and an Israeli, born within two years of each other, whose families have both called this house their home.
In 1948, Baramki was 13 years old, a child in a respectable Christian Palestinian family from Jerusalem. In the early 1930s the family built the house, and named it after her grandfather Hanna Hallak. As today, it was divided into apartments. Her grandparents lived downstairs to the right and at least three uncles and two aunts lived in the other apartments. Other rooms were rented out to tenants.
Baramki, now 73, lived with her parents a few minutes away in another Christian Palestinian district of the city, Baqa, but she has memories of summers spent idly with her grandmother Farideh and her uncles and aunts in Hallak house.
"There were fruit trees, a nice apple tree. There was a swing where we used to play. There was an open veranda where we used to sit with all flowers around," she said. "Those memories were something for us. On Palm Sunday they used to pick all the nice flowers they had to make our palms. We used to love going there."
Then came the brewing conflict in the months after the UN's failed attempt to partition British Mandate Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. One spring day, Jewish officials drove through Talbieh with a loudspeaker instructing the Palestinians to leave their homes immediately - there had been a shooting nearby.
Baramki's widowed grandmother and her uncles and aunts grabbed a bag and left quickly, seeking refuge in the family's other home in Baqa. They briefly returned but the shootings and bombings continued. Once they were shot at on a bus.
"Every night there were bombings, every day it was almost the same. My father told my mother: 'We can't keep going. We'll be shot one day,'" she said. They left to stay with another aunt who lived in the Old City, in east Jerusalem. "Just for a few days we thought."
The war raged on and eventually they took refuge from the fighting by crossing into Lebanon. Before they left, her mother went back to the house in Baqa and with a maid she washed and ironed the laundry and tidied it away for their return. They locked the doors, carefully marking which key fitted which lock. It was the last time the family houses were theirs.
In Lebanon they rented a house in the mountains and as the war escalated, weeks turned into months. A year and a half later they finally returned to Jerusalem, at least to the Jordanian-held east of the city. The west, including both Talbieh and Baqa, was cut off by a ceasefire line and was in the hands of the nascent Israeli state.
They were forbidden to enter. The Israeli state deemed them "absentee" property owners and their houses, like the houses of nearly all the other 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced out in 1948, were given to Jewish Israeli families, often to newly arrived immigrants, survivors of the horror of the camps in Europe.
And so it remained until 1967. On June 4 that year, Wilhelmine Khoury, as she was then, married another Christian Palestinian, George Baramki, the son of a well-known architect who had also lost properties and land in Jerusalem, Jaffa and elsewhere in 1948.
The following morning, June 5, the couple were sitting aboard a plane on the runway at Amman airport in Jordan waiting to head off on honeymoon. They chose a bad day. Before dawn Israel's air force launched a devastating pre-emptive strike on Egypt, the start of the Six Day War that was to reshape the Middle East. The pilot ordered the passengers off the plane and out of the airport and the Baramkis left their luggage and raced home.
Despite the fighting, they stayed on in east Jerusalem desperate not to lose another property to another war. Israel was quickly victorious, fatefully beginning the occupation that continues today of Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. In Jerusalem, Israel seized and later annexed the east.
That meant two things to the Baramkis: they could now, for the first time, go back to visit their family homes from 1948, including Hallak house. It also left them refugees in their own city, for they had no right to claim back what was lost. "We always had hope, but nothing doing," she said. "Now we are present-absent. We are present here to pay taxes and everything, but absent to get back our property. This is the rule that they have," she said.
They still occasionally drive over to the west and look at their former homes. "It was difficult the first time," said Wilhelmine. "Then you get used to it. But it doesn't mean we have forgotten our claim to our houses and our land, too."
Ghetto
The second half of the story of the house began 75 years ago and 1,200 miles away. Reuven Tsur grew up in a Hungarian-speaking Jewish family in what was then Transylvania and is today the Romanian city of Oradea. During the war, the family managed to escape the ghetto into which they had been corralled and they fled eventually to Budapest after his father, a prominent and successful baker, had survived 16 months in one labour camp and a brief arrest by the Gestapo.
His parents had for years been planning to emigrate, with their hearts set on Australia. Eventually, and in large part down to the cajoling of their son Reuven, they flew to Haifa, new immigrants to a new Israel.
"We saw Haifa at night. We saw the lights," said Tsur. "We were driving through the empty streets of Haifa and my father saw the signs on the closed shops and the signs were in Hebrew. For my father Hebrew was associated with the synagogue and he told my mother: 'Look how many synagogues.'"
The family were taken to a camp for newly arrived immigrants and soon Tsur, who was just 16, was sent to a kibbutz, an ambition he'd harboured for years.
His father set up a bakery and Tsur went to study English and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He became a teacher in the city and eventually a professor of Hebrew literature at Tel Aviv University, where he was a leader in the field of cognitive poetics.
In 1957 he married Ilana, who was born near Tel Aviv. The couple began to look for a house, somewhere with large rooms where Ilana could run her physical education classes. One day an agent showed them a small apartment on the ground floor of a large and impressive Arab house in a street now called Hovevei Zion (the Lovers of Zion). It was the Hallak house.
"I only saw the palm trees from the outside and I said: 'This must be a mistake. It couldn't be that beautiful,'" said Tsur. "It was empty and nobody wanted it."
They got a good deal, buying the apartment for 12,000 Israeli lirot, worth the approximate equivalent of £25,000 today, from two Jewish landlords. The three-room apartment they had bought was part of the larger flat in which Baramki's grandparents had been living a decade earlier.
The Tsurs admit that they didn't think of its former occupants. Their neighbours were other Jewish immigrants from Europe and the Arab world who had poured into the new, fast-growing state of Israel. The Palestinians were long gone.
Then came the 1967 war, and Israel's capture of east Jerusalem. "Sure enough after a few weeks comes a very prominent gentlemen wearing an English suit and he said: 'OK, my parents lived here and I would like to see the apartment,'" said Ilana. The gentleman was almost certainly Wilhelmine's late uncle, Victor Khoury. Ilana showed him around, answering his questions about how much they had paid for the flat and what had happened to the grapefruit tree in the back garden.
"Emotionally I felt awkward. I had no time, I was working at that moment and I couldn't say I was very nice," she said. After the visit, she had the front door lock changed but she has to this day kept the original key still attached to her key ring. There were more visits from the Khoury family in the months and years ahead, all well-mannered and the two families, Israeli and Palestinian, sat and drank tea in the house they both called home.
When the Baramkis and the Tsurs talk of the future they share a striking pessimism about the prospects of peace. The Tsurs argue, like many Israelis, that the Palestinians would not stick to any peace agreement that is made. The Baramkis argue, like many Palestinians, that Israel is more interested in colonising the land with settlements than in striking a genuine peace deal.
The Tsurs say they would give up their apartment in Hallak house if it truly meant peace would come and if they were given a comparable apartment in return, an offer rarely heard in today's Israel and perhaps shaped by their own so far fruitless attempts to claim compensation from the Romanian government for Tsur's family house in Oradea, which was confiscated by the Communist regime. They strongly believe that financial compensation alone is enough and that allowing the Palestinians who lost their homes in 1948 to reclaim them is unacceptable.
"There seems to be a big difference between them and us because we don't want to go back and we don't want to have anything of it," said Reuven. "We want to disconnect and they don't want to disconnect."
And on the other side of the city, the feeling is completely the reverse. "It's our land," said Wilhelmine. "We have a right to come back to our home."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/06/israelandthepalestinians2
The past of one property in Jerusalem symbolises today's divisions between Palestinians and Israelis
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
The Guardian
Tuesday May 6 2008
The two-storey house is built from hefty blocks of golden stone. Tall palm trees tower over the front garden, giving shade from the burning summer sun. There is a green, metal double gate, guarded on each side by stone pillars adorned with handsome metal lanterns. It is known as the Hallak house and it sits in a smart district of west Jerusalem known as Talbieh.
This is a house of competing histories: a story of flight and dispossession and a story of immigration and achievement; the unresolved tragedy of the Palestinian refugee crisis and the remarkable rise of the Israeli state built on the ruins of the second world war.
On Thursday, Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary with speeches, military parades, exhibitions and sports competitions. The true story of the rival legacies of what happened in 1948 lies in the history of buildings such as the Hallak house and in the lives of people such as Wilhelmine Baramki and Reuven Tsur, a Palestinian and an Israeli, born within two years of each other, whose families have both called this house their home.
In 1948, Baramki was 13 years old, a child in a respectable Christian Palestinian family from Jerusalem. In the early 1930s the family built the house, and named it after her grandfather Hanna Hallak. As today, it was divided into apartments. Her grandparents lived downstairs to the right and at least three uncles and two aunts lived in the other apartments. Other rooms were rented out to tenants.
Baramki, now 73, lived with her parents a few minutes away in another Christian Palestinian district of the city, Baqa, but she has memories of summers spent idly with her grandmother Farideh and her uncles and aunts in Hallak house.
"There were fruit trees, a nice apple tree. There was a swing where we used to play. There was an open veranda where we used to sit with all flowers around," she said. "Those memories were something for us. On Palm Sunday they used to pick all the nice flowers they had to make our palms. We used to love going there."
Then came the brewing conflict in the months after the UN's failed attempt to partition British Mandate Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. One spring day, Jewish officials drove through Talbieh with a loudspeaker instructing the Palestinians to leave their homes immediately - there had been a shooting nearby.
Baramki's widowed grandmother and her uncles and aunts grabbed a bag and left quickly, seeking refuge in the family's other home in Baqa. They briefly returned but the shootings and bombings continued. Once they were shot at on a bus.
"Every night there were bombings, every day it was almost the same. My father told my mother: 'We can't keep going. We'll be shot one day,'" she said. They left to stay with another aunt who lived in the Old City, in east Jerusalem. "Just for a few days we thought."
The war raged on and eventually they took refuge from the fighting by crossing into Lebanon. Before they left, her mother went back to the house in Baqa and with a maid she washed and ironed the laundry and tidied it away for their return. They locked the doors, carefully marking which key fitted which lock. It was the last time the family houses were theirs.
In Lebanon they rented a house in the mountains and as the war escalated, weeks turned into months. A year and a half later they finally returned to Jerusalem, at least to the Jordanian-held east of the city. The west, including both Talbieh and Baqa, was cut off by a ceasefire line and was in the hands of the nascent Israeli state.
They were forbidden to enter. The Israeli state deemed them "absentee" property owners and their houses, like the houses of nearly all the other 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced out in 1948, were given to Jewish Israeli families, often to newly arrived immigrants, survivors of the horror of the camps in Europe.
And so it remained until 1967. On June 4 that year, Wilhelmine Khoury, as she was then, married another Christian Palestinian, George Baramki, the son of a well-known architect who had also lost properties and land in Jerusalem, Jaffa and elsewhere in 1948.
The following morning, June 5, the couple were sitting aboard a plane on the runway at Amman airport in Jordan waiting to head off on honeymoon. They chose a bad day. Before dawn Israel's air force launched a devastating pre-emptive strike on Egypt, the start of the Six Day War that was to reshape the Middle East. The pilot ordered the passengers off the plane and out of the airport and the Baramkis left their luggage and raced home.
Despite the fighting, they stayed on in east Jerusalem desperate not to lose another property to another war. Israel was quickly victorious, fatefully beginning the occupation that continues today of Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. In Jerusalem, Israel seized and later annexed the east.
That meant two things to the Baramkis: they could now, for the first time, go back to visit their family homes from 1948, including Hallak house. It also left them refugees in their own city, for they had no right to claim back what was lost. "We always had hope, but nothing doing," she said. "Now we are present-absent. We are present here to pay taxes and everything, but absent to get back our property. This is the rule that they have," she said.
They still occasionally drive over to the west and look at their former homes. "It was difficult the first time," said Wilhelmine. "Then you get used to it. But it doesn't mean we have forgotten our claim to our houses and our land, too."
Ghetto
The second half of the story of the house began 75 years ago and 1,200 miles away. Reuven Tsur grew up in a Hungarian-speaking Jewish family in what was then Transylvania and is today the Romanian city of Oradea. During the war, the family managed to escape the ghetto into which they had been corralled and they fled eventually to Budapest after his father, a prominent and successful baker, had survived 16 months in one labour camp and a brief arrest by the Gestapo.
His parents had for years been planning to emigrate, with their hearts set on Australia. Eventually, and in large part down to the cajoling of their son Reuven, they flew to Haifa, new immigrants to a new Israel.
"We saw Haifa at night. We saw the lights," said Tsur. "We were driving through the empty streets of Haifa and my father saw the signs on the closed shops and the signs were in Hebrew. For my father Hebrew was associated with the synagogue and he told my mother: 'Look how many synagogues.'"
The family were taken to a camp for newly arrived immigrants and soon Tsur, who was just 16, was sent to a kibbutz, an ambition he'd harboured for years.
His father set up a bakery and Tsur went to study English and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He became a teacher in the city and eventually a professor of Hebrew literature at Tel Aviv University, where he was a leader in the field of cognitive poetics.
In 1957 he married Ilana, who was born near Tel Aviv. The couple began to look for a house, somewhere with large rooms where Ilana could run her physical education classes. One day an agent showed them a small apartment on the ground floor of a large and impressive Arab house in a street now called Hovevei Zion (the Lovers of Zion). It was the Hallak house.
"I only saw the palm trees from the outside and I said: 'This must be a mistake. It couldn't be that beautiful,'" said Tsur. "It was empty and nobody wanted it."
They got a good deal, buying the apartment for 12,000 Israeli lirot, worth the approximate equivalent of £25,000 today, from two Jewish landlords. The three-room apartment they had bought was part of the larger flat in which Baramki's grandparents had been living a decade earlier.
The Tsurs admit that they didn't think of its former occupants. Their neighbours were other Jewish immigrants from Europe and the Arab world who had poured into the new, fast-growing state of Israel. The Palestinians were long gone.
Then came the 1967 war, and Israel's capture of east Jerusalem. "Sure enough after a few weeks comes a very prominent gentlemen wearing an English suit and he said: 'OK, my parents lived here and I would like to see the apartment,'" said Ilana. The gentleman was almost certainly Wilhelmine's late uncle, Victor Khoury. Ilana showed him around, answering his questions about how much they had paid for the flat and what had happened to the grapefruit tree in the back garden.
"Emotionally I felt awkward. I had no time, I was working at that moment and I couldn't say I was very nice," she said. After the visit, she had the front door lock changed but she has to this day kept the original key still attached to her key ring. There were more visits from the Khoury family in the months and years ahead, all well-mannered and the two families, Israeli and Palestinian, sat and drank tea in the house they both called home.
When the Baramkis and the Tsurs talk of the future they share a striking pessimism about the prospects of peace. The Tsurs argue, like many Israelis, that the Palestinians would not stick to any peace agreement that is made. The Baramkis argue, like many Palestinians, that Israel is more interested in colonising the land with settlements than in striking a genuine peace deal.
The Tsurs say they would give up their apartment in Hallak house if it truly meant peace would come and if they were given a comparable apartment in return, an offer rarely heard in today's Israel and perhaps shaped by their own so far fruitless attempts to claim compensation from the Romanian government for Tsur's family house in Oradea, which was confiscated by the Communist regime. They strongly believe that financial compensation alone is enough and that allowing the Palestinians who lost their homes in 1948 to reclaim them is unacceptable.
"There seems to be a big difference between them and us because we don't want to go back and we don't want to have anything of it," said Reuven. "We want to disconnect and they don't want to disconnect."
And on the other side of the city, the feeling is completely the reverse. "It's our land," said Wilhelmine. "We have a right to come back to our home."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/06/israelandthepalestinians2
Friday, May 2, 2008
An Accurate Overview and Bracing Challenge
Rosner's Guest: Ziad Asali
By Shmuel Rosner
In Haaretz (Israel), Interview
May 2, 2008
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerGuest.jhtml?itemNo=978686
Ziad J. Asali, M.D., is the president and founder of the American Task Force on Palestine, a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, D.C.
Asali is a long-time activist on Middle East issues. He has been a member of the Chairman's Council of American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) since 1982, and has served as ADC's president from 2001-2003. He served as president of the Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG) from 1993-1995, and was Chairman of the American Committee on Jerusalem (ACJ), which he co-founded, from 1995-2003.
Dr. Asali was born in Jerusalem, where he completed his elementary and secondary education. He received an M.D. from the American University of Beirut (AUB) Medical School in 1967. He completed his residency in Salt Lake City, Utah, and then practiced medicine in Jerusalem before returning to the US in 1973. (More bio here).
We will discuss the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Readers may submit questions to rosnersdomain@haaretz.co.il.
Dear Ziad,
In a couple of days Israel will celebrate its 60th Independence, and this is an opportunity for me to ask not a specific question, but for a more general expression of your thoughts at this time. What would you say to the celebrating Israelis had you have a chance to speak to them as a group?
Thank you for this dialogue,
Shmuel
Peace is not easy. Achieving it requires summoning the deepest forms of courage. It means examining one's darkest prejudices that dehumanize and demonize the other. The quest for mutual recognition of humanity and dignity is an arduous task.
The question facing both Israelis and Palestinians is, do they prefer to cling to the pain of past injuries and the suffering of their forefathers, or will they determine to move forward and build a better future for their children?
While there have been all too many shrill voices lamenting the grievances of decades and centuries between Israel and the Palestinians, there is a harmony that strums through us all. When we fight for peace, we fight not against each other, but together and for all of us. This means accepting that there are like-minded people on the other side, and identifying, making common cause, and building peace with them.
Israelis and Palestinians live in the same land with divergent national narratives, and both want and need sovereignty and self-determination. The only means to reach a reasonable accommodation is to have two states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace. No other solution has any serious prospect of ending the conflict and creating a modus vivendi between the parties. The two-state solution for all its faults is the only way out of the cycle of violence and hatred that has plagued Israel and the Palestinians since 1948.
This idea enjoys the support of solid majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians, and of the international community. In many ways we have never been closer to realizing this all-important goal. And yet, as I write, the only realistic hope for the future is in serious jeopardy due to the actions of extremists, driven by nationalist fantasies or religious zealotry, among both Israelis and Palestinians.
Extremists on both sides feel that time is on their side. Some Israelis delude themselves that Palestinians over time will become exhausted or new generations will forget their national identity. They believe they will win complete control of the entire area between the river and the sea. Meanwhile, some radical Palestinians are under the illusion that Israel is an artificial foreign imposition akin to the Crusader states that cannot last and will eventually collapse. They too believe that time is their greatest weapon, and that the best strategy therefore is to never compromise.
We cannot afford to sacrifice generation upon generation in order to test the validity of these competing metaphysical visions and certainties about the trajectory of history.
These dangerous delusions are most damagingly expressed in the expansion of Israeli settlements and by the use of terror by Palestinian extremist groups. Settlements threaten a peace based on two states by strengthening rather than loosening Israel's grip on the occupied territories and greatly complicating the process of creating a Palestinian state. They also profoundly erode Palestinian confidence that Israel is interested in allowing a viable, contiguous state of Palestine to be born. Similarly, the use of terror by Palestinian extremist groups makes Israelis question whether Palestinians would ever accept Israel and agree to live with it in peace and security.
It is up to both peoples to decide whether they will allow themselves to be driven by extremist agendas, or to pursue what is plainly in their national interests. Their past trespasses against each other, both real and imagined, have to give way to the recognition that Israelis and Palestinians clearly now need exactly the same thing: an end of conflict based on two states.
I do not believe that the conflict should be seen any longer as pitting Israelis against Palestinians, but must be re-conceptualized as a struggle between those who are committed to ending the conflict based on two states against those on both sides who persist in clinging to hostility. Those who are prepared to recognize each other's dignity and self determination in two sovereign states share a common purpose, and have more in common with each other than with their compatriots who are bent on conflict for generations to come.
At 60, Israel is a technologically and politically sophisticated state with a diverse population and a vibrant economy. Israelis deserve a peaceful country with security and economic progress. Palestinians deserve no less.
Entered by "Friends of Palestinians and Israelis"
By Shmuel Rosner
In Haaretz (Israel), Interview
May 2, 2008
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerGuest.jhtml?itemNo=978686
Ziad J. Asali, M.D., is the president and founder of the American Task Force on Palestine, a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, D.C.
Asali is a long-time activist on Middle East issues. He has been a member of the Chairman's Council of American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) since 1982, and has served as ADC's president from 2001-2003. He served as president of the Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG) from 1993-1995, and was Chairman of the American Committee on Jerusalem (ACJ), which he co-founded, from 1995-2003.
Dr. Asali was born in Jerusalem, where he completed his elementary and secondary education. He received an M.D. from the American University of Beirut (AUB) Medical School in 1967. He completed his residency in Salt Lake City, Utah, and then practiced medicine in Jerusalem before returning to the US in 1973. (More bio here).
We will discuss the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Readers may submit questions to rosnersdomain@haaretz.co.il.
Dear Ziad,
In a couple of days Israel will celebrate its 60th Independence, and this is an opportunity for me to ask not a specific question, but for a more general expression of your thoughts at this time. What would you say to the celebrating Israelis had you have a chance to speak to them as a group?
Thank you for this dialogue,
Shmuel
Peace is not easy. Achieving it requires summoning the deepest forms of courage. It means examining one's darkest prejudices that dehumanize and demonize the other. The quest for mutual recognition of humanity and dignity is an arduous task.
The question facing both Israelis and Palestinians is, do they prefer to cling to the pain of past injuries and the suffering of their forefathers, or will they determine to move forward and build a better future for their children?
While there have been all too many shrill voices lamenting the grievances of decades and centuries between Israel and the Palestinians, there is a harmony that strums through us all. When we fight for peace, we fight not against each other, but together and for all of us. This means accepting that there are like-minded people on the other side, and identifying, making common cause, and building peace with them.
Israelis and Palestinians live in the same land with divergent national narratives, and both want and need sovereignty and self-determination. The only means to reach a reasonable accommodation is to have two states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace. No other solution has any serious prospect of ending the conflict and creating a modus vivendi between the parties. The two-state solution for all its faults is the only way out of the cycle of violence and hatred that has plagued Israel and the Palestinians since 1948.
This idea enjoys the support of solid majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians, and of the international community. In many ways we have never been closer to realizing this all-important goal. And yet, as I write, the only realistic hope for the future is in serious jeopardy due to the actions of extremists, driven by nationalist fantasies or religious zealotry, among both Israelis and Palestinians.
Extremists on both sides feel that time is on their side. Some Israelis delude themselves that Palestinians over time will become exhausted or new generations will forget their national identity. They believe they will win complete control of the entire area between the river and the sea. Meanwhile, some radical Palestinians are under the illusion that Israel is an artificial foreign imposition akin to the Crusader states that cannot last and will eventually collapse. They too believe that time is their greatest weapon, and that the best strategy therefore is to never compromise.
We cannot afford to sacrifice generation upon generation in order to test the validity of these competing metaphysical visions and certainties about the trajectory of history.
These dangerous delusions are most damagingly expressed in the expansion of Israeli settlements and by the use of terror by Palestinian extremist groups. Settlements threaten a peace based on two states by strengthening rather than loosening Israel's grip on the occupied territories and greatly complicating the process of creating a Palestinian state. They also profoundly erode Palestinian confidence that Israel is interested in allowing a viable, contiguous state of Palestine to be born. Similarly, the use of terror by Palestinian extremist groups makes Israelis question whether Palestinians would ever accept Israel and agree to live with it in peace and security.
It is up to both peoples to decide whether they will allow themselves to be driven by extremist agendas, or to pursue what is plainly in their national interests. Their past trespasses against each other, both real and imagined, have to give way to the recognition that Israelis and Palestinians clearly now need exactly the same thing: an end of conflict based on two states.
I do not believe that the conflict should be seen any longer as pitting Israelis against Palestinians, but must be re-conceptualized as a struggle between those who are committed to ending the conflict based on two states against those on both sides who persist in clinging to hostility. Those who are prepared to recognize each other's dignity and self determination in two sovereign states share a common purpose, and have more in common with each other than with their compatriots who are bent on conflict for generations to come.
At 60, Israel is a technologically and politically sophisticated state with a diverse population and a vibrant economy. Israelis deserve a peaceful country with security and economic progress. Palestinians deserve no less.
Entered by "Friends of Palestinians and Israelis"
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Get in the Game
ATFP hosts book event featuring Aaron David Miller
(American Task Force on Palestine)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (April 25, 2008)
Contact: Hussein Ibish
Phone: 202-887-0177
On Friday, April 19, the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) hosted a discussion with veteran US peace negotiator Aaron David Miller about his new book “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace” (2008, Bantam Books). Miller served as an adviser to six secretaries of state and is now public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Miller told the audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not only a vital US national security interest but is more important now than at any time since the late 1940s. He was not optimistic about the likelihood of any agreements in the immediate future, but said that efforts to build on the resumption of talks at Annapolis last fall were essential. In both his book and his remarks, Miller urged the United States government to “make the issue a top and ongoing priority.”
Miller recounted his experiences in the quest for Middle East peace, focusing in particular on the failed Camp David summit in the summer of 2000. He said that all parties shared the blame for the failure, but that the United States, as host, had a special responsibility to ensure that it succeeded. He reiterated his long-standing criticism that the United States acted more as Israel’s advocate then as an honest broker, but also criticized errors made by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasir Arafat. In an overview of the character of the past two US administrations, Miller told the audience that President Bill Clinton was “all tactics but no strategy” while President George W. Bush has been “all strategy but no tactics.”
Miller said that pro-Israel pressure groups were exceptionally effective and well organized, including many highly motivated Christian evangelicals, but that a determined president could overcome efforts to block US policies that moved both sides towards a successful peace agreement. He also urged the Arab-American community to stop simply complaining about US policies but to engage with the political system and “get in the game.”
(American Task Force on Palestine)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (April 25, 2008)
Contact: Hussein Ibish
Phone: 202-887-0177
On Friday, April 19, the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) hosted a discussion with veteran US peace negotiator Aaron David Miller about his new book “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace” (2008, Bantam Books). Miller served as an adviser to six secretaries of state and is now public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Miller told the audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not only a vital US national security interest but is more important now than at any time since the late 1940s. He was not optimistic about the likelihood of any agreements in the immediate future, but said that efforts to build on the resumption of talks at Annapolis last fall were essential. In both his book and his remarks, Miller urged the United States government to “make the issue a top and ongoing priority.”
Miller recounted his experiences in the quest for Middle East peace, focusing in particular on the failed Camp David summit in the summer of 2000. He said that all parties shared the blame for the failure, but that the United States, as host, had a special responsibility to ensure that it succeeded. He reiterated his long-standing criticism that the United States acted more as Israel’s advocate then as an honest broker, but also criticized errors made by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasir Arafat. In an overview of the character of the past two US administrations, Miller told the audience that President Bill Clinton was “all tactics but no strategy” while President George W. Bush has been “all strategy but no tactics.”
Miller said that pro-Israel pressure groups were exceptionally effective and well organized, including many highly motivated Christian evangelicals, but that a determined president could overcome efforts to block US policies that moved both sides towards a successful peace agreement. He also urged the Arab-American community to stop simply complaining about US policies but to engage with the political system and “get in the game.”
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Do We "See" Lazarus?
April 21, 2008 (Marlin Vis Journal)
"They do not listen ..."
Jesus told a parable about a rich man and a poor man. The poor man’s name was Lazarus. The rich man is not named. But it is important to note that the poor man carries the same name as the man that Jesus raised from the dead – Lazarus.
Skipping the details of the story, which I hate to do because in this case the devil is in the details, both Lazarus and the rich man die. We too will one day die and so this story soon becomes our story. The rich man ends up in what sounds an awfully lot like hell, and the poor man winds up in the bosom of Abraham, himself a rich man. So we know that this story of Jesus is not primarily about rich and poor, but rather about something deeper, something that seems to be troubling Jesus, something about all people and especially something about his people, the Jewish people, those to whom Torah has been given, the people to whom Jesus has come.
The rich man wants the poor man to serve him, to give him a taste of water, life-giving water, one of humankind’s basic human rights. In this story, it is Abraham who speaks for God. It is Abraham who delivers the bad news to the rich man. No, Abraham tells him, Lazarus will not be serving you. No one will be serving you again. You had your times of being served, now it is Lazarus’ turn to be served, and I, Abraham, your father and his father, will do the serving. And then Abraham delivers the worst of all possible bad news - after death there will be no reversal of fortunes. But in this worst of all possible bad news is hidden the best of all possible good news: The time to repent is in life before death, not later, because then, in life before death, repentance is possible. In other words, you and I can change.
The rich man accepts this as his lot in life after death and now turns his attention to those whom he loves and who are still in the land of the living before dying – his five brothers. The rich man begs Father Abraham to send to his brothers poor Lazarus, whom he still does not see as his brother as well. Let Lazarus come from the dead as an eyewitness to tell them what is coming to them if they do not turn around and live differently than the way they are now living. We can only surmise that by this the rich man means that they should be more generous, more about giving than taking, more about helping than being helped. It seems that they are have seconds and thirds while some, like Lazaras, have not been through the buffet line even once.
But Abraham slams the door in his face, just as the rich man daily had done to Lazaras as Lazaras lay begging for crumbs by the rich man’s gate. “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31). If the living word cannot convict them of the need to be servants than even an eyewitness to the consequences of greed will not change their minds and hearts is the gist of it, I think.
It seems to me that Jesus is making sad commentary about we who live in the land of living before dying. We are so easily caught up in getting all we can for ourselves and our families, that we are unable to listen to the living word of God, or to those who would give an eyewitness account of the sufferings of so many who are so far behind that they can never catch up without our help. We believe the truths that best suit our own situation and refuse to listen to any witness, whether it be the still living word of God, or any other that might challenge those convenient truths, even when those witnesses tell us what they have seen with there own eyes.
“Marlin, why is it that almost everyone who lives in Israel/Palestine for a good length of time comes back with a very different story than the one we hear from our media sources here in the States?”
I have a different set of questions. Questions that go deeper, I think. Questions that I think help us go to the heart of the matter that was troubling Jesus when he told the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. Why was the Rich Man blind to the sufferings of Lazarus when Lazarus lay right before his eyes? Why are we blind? Think of how many times Jesus used this analogy to describe the people of his day, especially those who were rich and prosperous. Blind guides, he called them.
Let me get painfully specific. Why is it so few believe the eyewitness accounts of people like Sally and me? Why do so many label us as anti-this or anti-that, instead of listening for what we are for, which is peace and reconciliation in this region and around the world?
Why is it that so many do not believe us when we say that what we want more than anything else is for Jewish people to have a safe and secure place where they can recover from the abuses piled upon them over the centuries?
Why is it that we cannot want and work for the same kind of safe and secure place for Palestinians, especially Palestinian Christians who are slowly being choked out of the place they have called home for generations?
Why is it that we are so afraid of the truth about Israel and her oppression of the Palestinian people, and our complicity in what is happening here?
And why can we not see that this oppression is as bad for the Jewish people living here as it is for the Palestinian people living here?
Why are we so easily led to believe that the problems here are caused by only one group of people?
Why can we not see victims on all sides of this ongoing conflict?
Why is it that even some who come and see for themselves the suffering of the Palestinian people, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, cannot bring themselves to believe that the cause of their suffering is not entirely, or even primarily, the result of their own behavior?
And then let me leave you with two more questions, please.
Why is it that so many of us in the evangelical community refuse to see that these matters of injustice deeply bother God?
Is it because if we acknowledged this basic biblical truth, then we would have to be bothered as well, then we would be forced to ask questions of ourselves, our leaders, and our Bible that we would rather not have answered?
And Jesus said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15).
"They do not listen ..."
Jesus told a parable about a rich man and a poor man. The poor man’s name was Lazarus. The rich man is not named. But it is important to note that the poor man carries the same name as the man that Jesus raised from the dead – Lazarus.
Skipping the details of the story, which I hate to do because in this case the devil is in the details, both Lazarus and the rich man die. We too will one day die and so this story soon becomes our story. The rich man ends up in what sounds an awfully lot like hell, and the poor man winds up in the bosom of Abraham, himself a rich man. So we know that this story of Jesus is not primarily about rich and poor, but rather about something deeper, something that seems to be troubling Jesus, something about all people and especially something about his people, the Jewish people, those to whom Torah has been given, the people to whom Jesus has come.
The rich man wants the poor man to serve him, to give him a taste of water, life-giving water, one of humankind’s basic human rights. In this story, it is Abraham who speaks for God. It is Abraham who delivers the bad news to the rich man. No, Abraham tells him, Lazarus will not be serving you. No one will be serving you again. You had your times of being served, now it is Lazarus’ turn to be served, and I, Abraham, your father and his father, will do the serving. And then Abraham delivers the worst of all possible bad news - after death there will be no reversal of fortunes. But in this worst of all possible bad news is hidden the best of all possible good news: The time to repent is in life before death, not later, because then, in life before death, repentance is possible. In other words, you and I can change.
The rich man accepts this as his lot in life after death and now turns his attention to those whom he loves and who are still in the land of the living before dying – his five brothers. The rich man begs Father Abraham to send to his brothers poor Lazarus, whom he still does not see as his brother as well. Let Lazarus come from the dead as an eyewitness to tell them what is coming to them if they do not turn around and live differently than the way they are now living. We can only surmise that by this the rich man means that they should be more generous, more about giving than taking, more about helping than being helped. It seems that they are have seconds and thirds while some, like Lazaras, have not been through the buffet line even once.
But Abraham slams the door in his face, just as the rich man daily had done to Lazaras as Lazaras lay begging for crumbs by the rich man’s gate. “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31). If the living word cannot convict them of the need to be servants than even an eyewitness to the consequences of greed will not change their minds and hearts is the gist of it, I think.
It seems to me that Jesus is making sad commentary about we who live in the land of living before dying. We are so easily caught up in getting all we can for ourselves and our families, that we are unable to listen to the living word of God, or to those who would give an eyewitness account of the sufferings of so many who are so far behind that they can never catch up without our help. We believe the truths that best suit our own situation and refuse to listen to any witness, whether it be the still living word of God, or any other that might challenge those convenient truths, even when those witnesses tell us what they have seen with there own eyes.
“Marlin, why is it that almost everyone who lives in Israel/Palestine for a good length of time comes back with a very different story than the one we hear from our media sources here in the States?”
I have a different set of questions. Questions that go deeper, I think. Questions that I think help us go to the heart of the matter that was troubling Jesus when he told the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. Why was the Rich Man blind to the sufferings of Lazarus when Lazarus lay right before his eyes? Why are we blind? Think of how many times Jesus used this analogy to describe the people of his day, especially those who were rich and prosperous. Blind guides, he called them.
Let me get painfully specific. Why is it so few believe the eyewitness accounts of people like Sally and me? Why do so many label us as anti-this or anti-that, instead of listening for what we are for, which is peace and reconciliation in this region and around the world?
Why is it that so many do not believe us when we say that what we want more than anything else is for Jewish people to have a safe and secure place where they can recover from the abuses piled upon them over the centuries?
Why is it that we cannot want and work for the same kind of safe and secure place for Palestinians, especially Palestinian Christians who are slowly being choked out of the place they have called home for generations?
Why is it that we are so afraid of the truth about Israel and her oppression of the Palestinian people, and our complicity in what is happening here?
And why can we not see that this oppression is as bad for the Jewish people living here as it is for the Palestinian people living here?
Why are we so easily led to believe that the problems here are caused by only one group of people?
Why can we not see victims on all sides of this ongoing conflict?
Why is it that even some who come and see for themselves the suffering of the Palestinian people, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, cannot bring themselves to believe that the cause of their suffering is not entirely, or even primarily, the result of their own behavior?
And then let me leave you with two more questions, please.
Why is it that so many of us in the evangelical community refuse to see that these matters of injustice deeply bother God?
Is it because if we acknowledged this basic biblical truth, then we would have to be bothered as well, then we would be forced to ask questions of ourselves, our leaders, and our Bible that we would rather not have answered?
And Jesus said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15).
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