Bethlehem Diary 9: Challenged by Courage

Day 7: Courage

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.
Frederick Buechner

The conference is drawing to close. As it does I note the courage that I have seen here among Palestinian Christians, Christians of different traditions and people of other faiths and none. The pain caused by the occupation is visible in every presentation and conversation. It cannot be dismissed. It cannot be diminished. The pain too of the Jewish people in the history of the world and the hearts of Jewish people today is tangible and intense. Each human story is pierced with the memory of what has been and with the reality of what is today.

The Christian affirmation of one church, one faith, one baptism, transcends all of this. Bound together with painful memories and conflicting narratives the church is one despite it all. That understanding of the church, that vocation laid upon us to live as one, is a vision to reach for. Today in Israel Palestine Christian people are embodying the vision in how they live their lives. They are constructing contextual theologies to help them embrace the vision and they are making real choices to show that they are committed to the vision.

All of this against the pull of history and experience. That pull is very strong. Palestinians make no bones of the fact that the occupation is still the key aspect of the conflict for them. They have not let go of that. But they attempt to address that from a different place, a place which takes account of the real, human pain of their brothers and sisters in the Jewish community. I have heard too a story that I have not often heard in evangelical circles. It is the story of human beings, all human beings, and their woundedness and oneness. It is a story of the search for healing for every single human being. It is a story of being bonded together as human beings no matter what culture, faith or ethnicity. This is courage. It is courage to know that key political issues remain and to aim at a new, more human place in which the suffering of others, the political concerns of others, the basic human needs of others is addressed in a larger narrative of which one community’s narrative is only a part.

I salute the courage that has been shown this week. I salute the courage of people who risk the all-encompassing narrative of the wider human story. I salute them for choosing something that inspires me to that greater vision of a humanity free from the desperate results of conflict and the excuses it gives us for hurting each other. I salute the church for publicly struggling its way through these issues in the face of a wider Christian community which is often quick to judge and slow to learn.

Some of this is hard to hear. It is hard to go back to ones own community, whether that be loyalist or republican, Irish or British, victim or victimiser, bystander or activist, and say that yes we have our narrative but there is a bigger narrative of which ours is only a part. In NI we see just how difficult that is. Caught in the bonds of conflict we have not been able to embrace the possibility of a bigger narrative. Our pain is great. Our woundedness is deep. But we too are courageous people and we will, with our courage in our hands, find a way to see a larger human story of suffering because we are divided. We will catch a vision for our whole human community. Perhaps we already know that the way we are going is not getting us anywhere. At some point we stop, look around and say that this is not good enough. It is not good enough for our healing and it is not good enough for our children and our children’s children. Our courage is within us. Many take their courage in their hands when they step out into the world every morning with the pain inflicted on them in the past heavy on mind, body and soul. But there is more courage called for if we are to succeed in making a new narrative together, a more spacious and liberating narrative for us all. Dr Haass can’t do it. Professor O’Sullivan can’t do it. Not even our political leaders can do it. At least not without the rest of us.

We were asked this morning what it would be like if Jews were to look at Palestinians and begin to serve the needs of the least of them in real and practical ways.

We were asked this morning what it would be like if Palestinians were to look at Jews and begin to serve the needs of the least of them in real and practical ways.

Conflicts, troubles, disputes, only change when human relationships change.

What would it be like if we were to look at one another, across our barriers and divides in NI, and begin to serve the needs of the least among us, the most needy among us, who are on the other side?

What would it be like if the churches together were to draw on existing contextual theologies and make resolution of our separation a priority? What would it be like for the churches together to speak of dignity and freedom and to serve old enemies before doing anything else in our broken community? What would it be like for our churches to find new courage, not walking away from political concerns but driven by a vision for a society in which human stories make the difference and ground the church in the real world?

“We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.”
― Maya Angelou

Bethlehem Diary 8: A story from Egypt

Day 5 part 2: Egypt

One of the most moving inputs of the week has been from Bishop Angaeolos of the Coptic Church. He spoke of Christianity’s story in Egypt. Christianity was strong in Egypt for 2000, Egypt provided a place of refuge for the holy family and many Christians have experienced martyrdom there. 90% of the Coptic Church members live in Egypt and they refuse to call the other 10% the diaspora because they will one day come home.

The uprising in Egypt began not as an Islamic Christian dispute but out of a concern for the economic and social disaster that Egyptians were experiencing. However, there were some incidents between Islamists and Christians. In 2013 attacks were carried out on Christian church and institutions but there was no retaliation because Egyptian Christians have ‘love your enemy’ firmly embedded into their tradition and lifestyle. They took strength from their knowledge of Christian teaching and heritage and their understanding of sacrifice.

The Bishop acknowledged the experiences of injustice and pain felt by so many and the impacts on ordinary human lives.

The response for him, in his own words:

Persecution has led me to be a greater activist for human rights and civil liberties.

It struck me how the language of human rights has been missing from the discussions. Perhaps this is because of the general difficulties church members have with the language which implies an individualism, for some in the NI context at least, which is unhelpful and seems to give people an opportunity to be ‘at’ one another. This debased view of human rights and what it means is both sad and unhelpful. Perhaps it is because the language of human rights feels too political to evangelicals and they prefer what seems to be them to be more acceptable, softer, Biblical language.

Over the week I have been reminded that all theology is politics. Whether we acknowledge it or not and whether or not we try to take up a stance that we call biblical and inclusive we fool ourselves when we do not accept the political nature of our theologies. That is true not least in the theological discussion that has been sometimes above the radar and sometimes below it all week – the challenge to the United States but also the other Western Christians to see what the real lives of Palestinians are like and to understand how their theologies, our theologies, support government policies that do nothing to alleviate the experience of Palestinians and the human rights abuses they face.

Is there anything that will lead us to be greater activists for human rights and civil liberties which belong to the whole human family?

Bethlehem Diary 7: Hearing some hard questions

Day 5 part 1: Hard questions

Oded Shoshani, a messianic Jew, asked some hard questions of the audience today.

What if Palestinians had accepted 1948?
What if the Arab nations had not declared war and ethnic cleansing on Jewish people?
What if Palestinian suicide bombers were not sent out to kill 1200 people and injure thousands between 2000-2005?

He acknowledged the very real Palestinian suffering but the questions were well put.

The 1948 Arab Israeli war resulted in an agreement about partition based on the proposals of UN Resolution 181. Approximately 700 000 Palestinians and 10 000 Jews were displaced by these arrangements. Israeli casualties numbered about 6000, 2000 of them civilians. Palestinian casualty numbers are disputed but could be as high as 3000 with a further 4000 from other Arab nations.

In the 1967 Arab Israeli war Israel defeated Syria, Egypt and Jordan to occupy the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

The 2000-2005 suicide bombings were carried out by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fathah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Israel argues that the wall was built to secure against suicide bombings but Palestinians would dispute this arguing that, while there are still some incursions, the bombings would largely have ceased. They also argue that if the wall were to separate Jew from Palestinian then it would not separate Palestinians from other Palestinians as it now does.

The history is complex and without more research it is difficult to judge the truth of any of these claims. What cannot be disputed is that there is suffering today and that Palestinians and Jews have both been aggressors in the past. It is a credit to all the speakers at the Christ at the Checkpoint conference that time and again they have said they do not support violence from any quarter. It also cannot be disputed that Palestinians who live outside the line are dependent on Israelis for permits to travel, including to access their own land, and this creates a dependency on Israel.

The longer history of the Jewish people tells of their suffering and fear, not least in the Shoah but on many other occasions throughout history.

Hard questions are being asked all around. Theological questions. Questions about history and questions about politics. But most basic of all is the question about humanity and what it means to be human in such a situation. I have wondered if there is a hierarchy of needs which have to be identified and responded to. The larger political questions can immobilise action at the individual human-need level so that people’s lives remain impaired and restricted. These larger questions have to be addressed but there is a hard question about the every day realities that people live with – inadequate drinking water, sanitation, education, freedom of movement, health care, and accommodation. If these issues are not faced then the broader political crisis will only deepen as people become more angry, frustrated and dehumanized. The international community of the church must surely have something to say about these human questions and, like others whom I have listened to this week, call for non-violence responses, international interventions and a new narrative of humanity between broken and wounded people. Calling for these things is not enough though. Actions in the right places whether that be among the powerful decision-makers or the people on the ground also have to be taken.

There is, of course, a counter set of hard questions. What if Jews had decided they didn’t need the land to themselves but could share it with Palestinians? What if the international community had considered sticking with dialogue rather than opting for partition? What if Christians across the world had been more aware of human circumstance rather than esoteric theological debate? Would facing these hard questions have made a difference?

Bethlehem 6: Bridging narratives

Day 4: Pain and separation

The brokenness of division is evident all around us in Bethlehem. It is visible too in the stories we hear, whether they be theological, historical or present. Daniel Juster spoke of the narratives we create out of our pain and how these narratives ultimately become self-justifying. He spoke of Jewish and Palestinian history, of Shoah and Nakba, and asked how these painful histories can be reconciled.

How do we come through all of this painful separation in a redemptive way? In a way that makes things better and heals?

As the church we are broken too. I have come to understand that there is politics at play in the theologies being engaged here in Bethlehem. A suffering people cry out to powerful America to examine the relationship with Israel Palestine and the theologies that underpin political opinion in the USA. It is a call for justice in the here and now. It is call to move hearts away from things too spiritual, to focussed on the end time when God will make everything right, and focus on things that are raw and real.

There is a need for another narrative to become part of the discussion, a bridging narrative. This other narrative cannot take away from existing painful, authentic narratives. But without another narrative then there will be no healing, at least not across the board. The pain of one cannot triumph over the pain of another nor justify inflicting that pain if the human community is to unite in a vision for the achievement of human potential.

The International community has come in for some criticism. Not unexpected. But I wonder about the International Church community. It is easy for us to be critical of others when, in fact, we ourselves fail to be the international force for justice and human freedom that we could be. We could be part of mining and articulating another narrative – if we were to fixate less on our differences and divisions. Our differences are, of course, important. But are they more important than the life of a child in danger or a person imprisoned unjustly or a people living in indignity?

Painful narratives expose in us a hopelessness and fear that what happened to us will happen again and that we will never receive what we need for our healing. The result is a sense of scarcity and anxiety. I am grateful to Ruth Padilla for the reminder of the power of narratives of scarcity and anxiety. These narratives suggest to us that there will not be enough justice for us all. There will not be enough healing for us all. We become anxious to hold on to what we have and get more for ourselves while ignoring or overlooking the narrative of pain from the other side.

How is it possible to move from the narrative of scarcity and anxiety when we are in pain, pain that stretches back into history and makes us all the more fearful?

For the church, it is possible from within the new identity that we share as the one people of God. But we hinder ourselves every time we resist this oneness. As a member of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland I reflect, all over again, on our losses in withdrawing from so many inter-church bodies and relationships and the lack of knowledge across the denomination about the relationships we do have.

For the human community, it is only possible when there is recognition of each other’s pain. It is possible when the common will for healing and for ‘never again this pain’ takes over from a narrative that suggests the other must fix my pain and pay for it in the process. The language of human rights is helpful for the human community. Article 1 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights sets out what human dignity is all about:

Definition: Human Dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected.

Legal Explanations: The dignity of the human person is not only a fundamental right in itself but constitutes the real basis of fundamental rights. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrined this principle in its preamble: Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

Is there any better place to begin than with human dignity?

The challenge, of course, is in those times when we believe ‘they’ have abdicated on their own dignity by their behaviour. In that we face the challenge of re-dignifying ‘them’ by our behaviour as we hope they would re-dignify us, our community, our people, our nation, when we fall into the grip of inhuman behaviour.

The strange truth is that when we allow our painful and separating narratives to meet in the place where another narrative creates room, we find that there is more than enough justice to go around and that our anxiety is lifted. That is because we find ourselves part of the whole human family and the resources of that family are far deeper, broader and more inclusive than we can imagine.

You don’t think your way into a new kind of living.
You live your way into a new kind of thinking.
Henri J.M. Nouwen

Bethlehem Diary 5: Uncovering false narratives in an interconnected world

Day 3 part 3: False narratives

One of the interfaces addressed at the conference is that between Christians and Muslims. The reflections have been thoughtful and mature. Instead of the knee-jerk reaction to to Islam we have been challenged to face up to the false narratives that persist both within and outside the Christian community. For example, the false narrative that all Islamic States are the same. They are not. There has been persecution of Christians in Islamic States yes, in others it has moved between tolerance and intolerance, and in others Christians, along with others, have been protected.

The Al-Azhar Bill of Fundamental Freedoms, for example, upholds Freedom of Religious Belief. The world may not have noticed the significance of this document drawn up by a coalition of Sunni leaders and representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood but the Egyptian press did. We are the best guarantors of one another’s freedoms in a world of diversity and difference. Thanks to Joseph Cumming* for bringing this to our attention.

The general challenge to misinformation reveals something to us about our own human story. The painful stories of our lives are such that, at times, we tell ourselves something about others in order to keep ourselves together. In the longer term this becomes a false narrative which dehumanises others and restricts their freedom. Cherishing freedom ourselves, we inflict limits on others and rather than being guarantors of one another’s human dignity we become anti-human.

Colin Chapman* presented what he called a realistic, as opposed to a pessimistic, view of relationships between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East. He emphasised the need to ask the right questions, to drill down into who others are and where they are coming from. With a simplicity that concealed the complexity of the issues Chapman skilfully challenged us to think about dialogue with Muslims and about the role of Christianity in the politics of the Middle East. He challenges those of us from Western Europe and North America to look homeward and examine foreign policy there and to look to the United Nations too. Our Christian responses in the place where we are and in light of the world in which we live influence relationships in the Middle East.

What happens in the East is not separate from what happens in the West. We are all interconnected.

These two themes, addressing false narratives and the interconnectedness of the world, challenge me. How aware am I of the interconnectedness of the world or of events in other places? Foreign policy matters, how our government or the Irish government plan to engage with the world matters. It is the task of the church to challenge and expose false narratives whether they be at home or abroad and not because we want to win something but because we believe that we belong together, all of humanity, all of God’s creation. The false narrative for the church is that in doing this we will be the better for it. We may not be. That is simply the truth. We have to do what is right in a world which is often willing to sacrifice the human dignity of others in the hope of dignifying themselves. From the perspective of the church, we are dignified by the grace of God and not by anything we do for ourselves. But it remains our calling to speak to and uphold the human dignity of all others. That too is an act of grace.

Joseph Cumming is Pastor of the International Church at Yale University, He works with Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders and scholars around the world to promote mutual understanding and reconciliation among the Abrahamic faith communities.
Colin Chapman has lived in the Middle East for 18 years, ministering and teaching, including teaching Islamic Studies at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, Lebanon.

Bethlehem Diary 4: East Jerusalem in the divided City

Day 3 part 2: Seeing the Palestinian story

I grew up with PLO painted on the bridge below my house along with IRA and IRSP. I associated it with terrorism and I had forgotten about it until yesterday. We were on a bus on our way to East Jerusalem. Our journey had been delayed by a riot in the street, a response to killings on the Gaza Strip. I had sat in the bus watching children break breeze blocks for ammunition and it was familiar, too familiar. Palestinians are not using violence as they did in the past but their painful history and present reality remains a challenge to us all.

Our guide was Israeli and had angles into the Palestinian story that were both refreshing and enlightening. I had heard stories about inadequate water supplies, land grabbing and the dividing wall in Jerusalem. It is one thing to hear stories, it is another to see the reality. Palestinian areas in Jerusalem are not zoned for redevelopment so when houses become overcrowded, and we’re talking 40 people in a 3 bedroomed house, there is no chance of a place to go. If an extension is added it will have to be demolished because there is no permission for it. Palestinians can’t leave the area for more than three years or they lose their standing and can’t return. That impacts on education, already impacted by the inadequate number of school places. Because of the development issues there is inadequate provision of water supply and sewage arrangements. Bins are not emptied often enough and the area is full of rubbish. As we drove from the Israeli part into the Palestinian part the footpaths disappeared. The walls, constructed as part of an international agreement, were built in such a way as to creep into Palestinian land. Some of them cut through communities, some cut off homes from the land around them, some mean it is almost impossible to cross the city to work and so unemployment levels are high. Citizenship is at issue for some Palestinians too so they have no passport for travel. I could go on but suffice to say there is something not right with all of this.

This experience is, for me, read back against one of the questions that has been raised a number of times at the Christ at the Checkpoint conference – can Christianity survive in Palestine? There is a concern for the future of the Palestinian church. I do not live here and do not understand all the ins and outs of this question. It seems to me, though, that the survival of the church is a matter for God. What is a matter for us is whether or not we are living faithfully and well as the people of God, with justice and peace and mercy and forgiveness in our hearts. It seems to me that these are the important things with which Christian people should concern themselves, not survival.

That does not mean that the Palestinian experience should be discounted, Quite the contrary. When we see injustice, dehumanising activity, inadequate provision for basic human needs and human rights impinged on or denied then we, as the church, have a responsibility to act without delay. The action is not because we fear for our future but because it is the right thing to do. Action is about justice flowing down like rivers from the mountains, about putting relationships right and upholding the dignity of the whole human family. There will always be politics involved. We just have to face that because doing the right thing is more important than causing political ripples.

I look forward to the visit to Hebron.

Bethlehem Diary 3: The problem of clashing narratives

Day 3 part 1: Narrative theme

The themes emerging about Israeli Palestinian conflict resonate with those of our Troubles in NI. ‘Narrative’ is one of those themes. Not everyone in NI likes the idea of ‘narrative’. For me it means the story we tell ourselves, sometimes about ourselves and sometimes about others, and that story helps to make us who we are. Salim Munayer provided some thinking about the function of narratives. They provide personal and collective identity, they give legitimacy to a community’s self-understanding and behaviour and they are selective about truth, choosing aspects of history that support identity.

When narratives clash, with a consequent clash of identities, each is adopting narrative to support their own truth and portray it as the truth. This a zero sum game. Narratives are thus employed to motivate and recruit, sustaining separated communities and resisting new information.

Munayer suggested four responses to move to a deeper and more shared truth:

Listen to each other’s narratives.
Recognise each other’s narratives.
Identify the weaknesses in our own narrative.
Critically assess our own narrative.

What I liked about this is that it focusses on ourselves. In the end of the day we may hope that others will change but the only person we have any real influence over is ourselves.

I was reminded of Vamik Volkan’s thinking about chosen glories and chosen traumas. Volkan argues that communities choose stories, some of glory and some of trauma, to sustain them over and against others. The difficulty is that these glories and traumas collide, each excluding the other. But traumas in particular have another quality to them. Munayer spoke of how our wounds become part of our identity and we embrace victimisation as a means of constructing and sustaining ourselves. While it is the case that wounds are inflicted by different events, the chosen traumas that are remembered and taken into ourselves, it is also true that the results of those traumas, the wounding, is no different for one side or the other. The glorious and traumatic events we choose to remember influence how we deal, or don’t deal, with our neighbours. The shared experience of woundedness provides a different opportunity for how we deal with and understand each other.

All of this presents us with a problem. If we are speak our narrative to those whom we want to hear it and if we listen to the narrative of others then a process of deconstruction begins. We leave our identity open to that of the other and it can feel very uncertain. It can feel like the familiar is slipping away and we wonder how we will survive it because we have become so tied up with the identity we have owned for so long. We wonder who we are and we wonder how we can survive it.

When it comes to who we are I have found it helpful to hold on to the belief that we are always more than we ever think we are at any one time. The New Testament writer speaks about putting off the old and putting on the new. There is always a new us up ahead. That new ‘me’ is more than I can yet describe but if I am willing to subject myself to the journey of deconstructing and reconstructing identity in light of new understanding and information then there is something new at the end of it. More than I can imagine.

When it comes to how we survive this process the best that I can say is that we can’t do this alone, In the process of resolving conflict and difference each party to the conflict needs the other to make the same journey. We need to draw on the shared woundedness and allow it to become part of us for the sake of the other. We are travelling people, people under reconstruction. We need each other – friends need each other, enemies need each other, divided communities need each other. Without each other the process of reconstruction becomes well nigh impossible.

So there is new light for me on the gospel teaching about loving enemies and praying for those who persecute us. This is not just a command to be fulfilled nor only a lifestyle to aspire to. This is about the necessity for survival as people who share the world. We have a choice to either carve the world up so that we don’t encounter each other or to live in the enrichment of meeting and getting to know one another, together living through the deconstruction and the reconstruction so that something new and not yet seen comes to pass. And isn’ that what faith is all about – believing in things not yet seen?

* Salim Munayer is a member of faculty at Bethlehem Bible College, founder of Musalaha Reconciliation Ministries for Israel and Palestine and writer on subjects such as Palestinian identity and Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Bethlehem Diary 2: From suspicion to partnership for peace

Day 2: Suspicion sets in

Day 2 provided a pre-conference opportunity to listen to a lecture setting out a Palestinian perspective on history and experience. The welcome was warm and the lecture was delivered with clarity and good humour. The stories told invoked a certain understanding of the world which drew from me a feeling of suspicion. Whether this is a good or a bad thing remains to be seen. The experience took me back to my attendances at the West Belfast Festival. There, as an Ulster Prod, I found myself sitting in a story which I did not share. But it was always, and it is still so, a story that elicited the sympathy of the world. In that sense the Festival has always had a seductive character to it. I contrast it to my experience among loyalists and unionists when the talk is often more desolate. The contrast is between optimism and despair, between a sense of people being on the same page or people being divided as to the way forward. So in Bethlehem I was glad of the difficult person in the audience who challenged the speaker and took him to task. That person was treated with the greatest respect but I still wondered if that came from a deep sense of the Palestinian perspective being the right perspective.
All of that said there are things happening here, and I write as a learning outsider, which are quite staggering in their capacity to diminish human beings – the loss of land and the building of walls inside the agreed line thus depriving Palestinians of land they were supposed to have, the checkpoints that treat people inhumanely at times, the number of people leaving Palestinian communities to go somewhere where there is greater opportunity, the delays in issuing permits which leave Palestinians uncertain about travel and so much more. I am reminded that unless people can look into each other’s human experience and see it for how it is experienced then there is little chance of embedded peace sustained into the future.
The history is bloody and filled with loss. Whether it be the 1948 catastrophe, the 1967 six-day war, the first or second Intifada, or the 2009 Gaza War or Massacre, there is little to be proud of, it seems to me. I am reminded again that there are no glories in violence. In Northern Ireland we sometimes speak of the rewards for violence and how abhorrent they are, even if they are made in order to achieve peace. But even with that there are no glories in violence. There may be moments that are used to craft a story of identity and success that communicates the lie that these glorious moments give glory to violence. Years on the continuing loss, injury, psychological suffering, community breakdown and dehumanising behaviour speak loudly in voices that tell us there are no glories in violence. Yet we can continue to believe the lie. Hence I have become suspicious of any history or any telling of history which is not significantly critical of violence as a means to achieve an end or of any telling of history that entices outsiders onto one side or the other. And that is not to deny the facts that go with those histories, they have to be respected along with the human stories.
Vera Baboun, the first woman to hold the office of Mayor of Bethlehem, spoke proudly and well about peace. Peace, peace, peace. All that we do has to be about peace. Tell the world Israel has a partner for making peace. Here she took the words of Rabin who, at the signing of the negotiations surrounding the Oslo Accords, said that there was no partner for making peace. Baboun speaks out to grasp the opportunity for making a new history. She invites a response to the call.
Baboun’s call is a reminder that none of us can make peace on our own. Peace is made with enemies and perhaps that is why I am uncomfortable with one history being told. Unless the enemy is present and willing to make peace, unless we are present as an enemy in other stories and willing to make peace there, then peace is not possible. Peace is always made when enemies are willing to partner one another and disrupt one another’s suspicions.

Bethlehem Diary 1: Remembering the past isn’t enough to break down division

Day 1: Arrival in Tel Aviv

I was wondering what it would be like. It’s about 20 years since I was here. I remember the long drive from Tel Aviv airport all those years ago. Alongside the road there were relics of the Yom Kippur War – rusting tanks and the like. There to remind people of what war can do to people and to encourage a new peace, if I remember correctly, these relics stood out against the softer landscape of Israel. But not today. Today the drive from Tel Aviv, through Jerusalem and on to Bethlehem is contoured by walls. Crafted, architectured walls to keep the right people in the right place and the wrong people in the right place.
I found it staggering. I know walls, of course. You can’t live in Belfast and not know walls. But these walls cut through communities, cut through peoples lives, influence and dominate lives in a way that I haven’t seen before. It occurred to me, as I listened to the taxi driver, that when we attempt to ghettoize others we are ghettoising our own spirits too. Hemming people in, putting them where we know they will be, keeping them apart, puts them in a place from which we fear them. We fear the possibility of a day when they will burst from their ghettos and make us pay for what we have done. So the natural instinct has to be to further ghettoize them so they will not be a danger to us. Minds and spirits become cut off from each other and the human family is, both literally and emotionally, divided.
The rusting vehicles beside the road didn’t do their job. They were to serve as a reminder of what human beings can do each other. It was not enough. It is a stark warning. Unless something is done to remake relationships after violence then there will be return. Reminders of what is past are not enough to stem the bleed into inhumanity in the future. There has to be something else to resist the human tendency to protect self by dominating, oppressing or victimising others. The work is deep and slow but essential.
The Biblical teaching about Christ as the well-breaker screams into play. Here is a message about peace between peoples but also of peace for all people, whether they be believers of not. It is not enough for Christian people to stand with each other. Christian people, sharing the ministry of Jesus Christ, have everyone in view.

Christ has made peace between Jews and Gentiles, and he has united us by breaking down the wall of hatred that separated us. Christ gave his own body 15 to destroy the Law of Moses with all its rules and commands. He even brought Jews and Gentiles together as though we were only one person, when he united us in peace. 16 On the cross Christ did away with our hatred for each other. He also made peace between us and God by uniting Jews and Gentiles in one body. 17 Christ came and preached peace to you Gentiles, who were far from God, and peace to us Jews, who were near God. 18 And because of Christ, all of us can come to the Father by the same Spirit. Ephesians 2 14-18

While Christians may and should view themselves as one in Christ we also face the calling to preach peace to all, and that means living peace with and for all. Walls separate and build up hatred. They destroy human community and undignify both the builder and the enclosed. The dynamics of human relationships have to be considered within the political arrangements we make, supposedly to sustain us. If they are not then the walls which divide become the walls by which we pressure cooker difference to the point of explosion.
I missed those rusty tanks by the road. They had so much to say about remembering how not to be with each other. The walls, beautifully architectured and all as they are, spoke of hopelessness and separation and the affront to human dignity on both sides. As I write there is trouble in the street outside the hotel – tear gas, soldiers in a stand off, young men throwing stones, loud music to raise the temperature. The walls aren’t doing the job. Human dignity, persisting in the quality of human relationships, needs to take centre stage.

Disorientated and looking for direction: the impact of the news about OTR arrangements

In his work on the Psalms Walter Brueggemann writes of three kinds of Psalm: Psalms of orientation, disorientation and reorientation. Psalm 22 is one of those expressing disorientation:

I have no more strength  than a few drops of water. All my bones are out of joint;  my heart is like melted wax.
My strength has dried up  like a broken clay pot,  and my tongue sticks  to the roof of my mouth.  You, God, have left me  to die in the dirt. Psalm 22 vv14-15

I imagine that this is how many feel with the ongoing news about the arrangements regarding ‘on the runs.’ The sad fact is that there has been a long history to this beginning maybe as early as 1995 and continuing onwards at least from 2000 when news reports appeared. Somehow the public debate missed it. The 2005 Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill brought the debate to light and perhaps the rejection of the Bill put it from our minds. No one asked what would happen with the OTRs when the Bill was rejected. No one followed up on the news reports. No one picked up on the paragraphs in the report of the Consultative Group on Dealing with the Past. There are many questions, human questions, leadership questions, legal questions and many more.
This doesn’t feel clean. Truth be told there have been a lot of things both coming up to and after the Belfast Good Friday Agreement that haven’t felt clean but for many of us the price for peace was worth paying. At this juncture, though, things feel less clean than they did before because we wonder what else was going on. Peter Hain has spoken about the deals that were done with the DUP which others didn’t like. He mentioned the appointment of a victims representative. I want to know – were there more and what were they? How many side deals were done, with whom were they done and why were they done?
There are victims and survivors who are reeling from the news and well they might be. Over the last months politicians, and others too, have spoken of their centrality in dealing with the past. They have been invited, time and again, to bring forward what they want to see done and they have risen to the challenge. No one thought to outline the limits to what is possible whether it be in regard to truth or justice. No one thought to say to them that they were listening as best they could but before even they started into responding there were restrictions because of what has already transpired in dealing with the past. No wonder they are reeling. No wonder they are angry and hurt, many of them immobilised by what has happened. As a society we at least owe them an expression of deep remorse for our sins of omission for we omitted to tell them that deals had already been done without their knowledge.
I wonder to myself what the politicians were doing. In particular I wonder what the Unionist politicians were doing. Many across middle Unionism believe that it is time to stop delving into the past. Given the OTR arrangements and the Weston Park discussions would it not have been wise to bag this and to ask for more? To ask for the lifting of the weight of potential prosecutions from police and soldiers too? To ask that Inquiries be restricted and that an equitable release from the past be given across the board? It would have been short of what many want but it might at least have been more fair and we might not be where we are today.
I wonder to myself what the OTRs are feeling and what their families are feeling. The act of mercy they received must feel in danger and families who were separated from their loved ones are probably in crisis too, reliving the agonies of the years apart. I know some of the OTRs. I have heard one speak out against dissident activity, calling for a stable peace. I have watched another work tirelessly for peace. That is something.
I wonder what of truth now. Where will it come from and where does it sit? Are there limits to truth that we need to speak of in the legal sense and are there limits we need to speak of in the human sense? I have wondered this a lot over the last few weeks since an event I attended when I heard a former IRA volunteer speak of his recognition of the loss of human life in a bombing in which he was involved. But he was clear that he believed in what he did while at the same time recognising the loss. If that is the truth we are going to get and all the truth we are going to get, do we really want it?
I wonder to myself about justice. These letters the OTRs received didn’t give them immunity but told them they were not being pursued due to lack of evidence. What chance is there of new evidence across the many open cases that remain? And if that is seriously limited then how do we say that, how do we tell it to those who are holding out for justice?
I wonder to myself about the heated debates regarding limited immunity. I wonder if there is a real recognition of the existing immunity arrangements that are already in place. I wonder if we realise that we have already accepted limited immunity.
I wonder if it is possible to sit down and honestly scope out the landscape of what has been done about the past, dirty and all as it might be, so that we can clean up our act for going forward. I don’t believe it is possible to clean up a dirty war with moral purity. But I do believe that we should aim to raise the bar with every action so that we reach a more healthy and honest and upright society in which relationships can be real and trusting. We won’t do that without recognising what we have allowed to pass in the process of making peace, things we wouldn’t normally allow to pass.
I can understand how this got missed. I have found myself in difficult times turning my head and saying – do what you have to do, just do it quickly. Perhaps that’s something of what happened. If it is then we need to say it because there are lives that are like broken clay pots. There is a stink to what has happened. It’s time for us to face our disgust at what’s been done, and perhaps disgust at ourselves too for being complicit. Lives can’t be rebuilt without it.
There is cross that moves around the local churches in my area. It is called the Cavehill Cross. It is made from the broken wood left after the bombing of the Cavehill shops on Bloody Friday, 21st June 1972. Twenty six bombs exploded in the space of eighty minutes killing 11 people and injuring 130. At the Cavehill shops 14-year-old Stephen Parker was killed. His father, a local minister, wanted the cross made and moved around the churches to remember Stephen and to remember what we have done to each other. The cross represents the pain of so many from across the community, ordinary people, some with good intent and some intent on taking the lives of others. Their families are left bearing the cost of the troubles. Violence corrupts and drives us to dehumanise each other so that we are all brutalised. Violence takes on its own life and takes us over to the degree that we lose touch with the real humanity by which we live well together, in respect and with tolerance and hope. Violence has far reaching impacts and we should object to it:

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. Mahatma Gandhi

There are those who are suffering more than most tonight. They know that the evil violence does is permanent. They are suffering with the memory of a blast, a shot, an injury, a loss. We cannot make it right for them. We cannot give them back lost loved ones, lost limbs or lost hopes and dreams. We cannot even give them all that they are asking for. But we can do better. Making sure we attend to the way in which we do business so that we make relationships across the community to ensure that what happened in the past will never happen again is a starting point. We should address all our energy to that.
If only it were different. But it isn’t. In the brokenness of many lives this time is savage and disordered. In every disorientation there is the opportunity for reorientation, painful and difficult as that may be. At the very least this should be a time to look together for that reorientation of principle and substance that make the difference and cleans up the stink, raising the bar once and for all.

Do you want to live  and enjoy a long life?

Then don’t say cruel things  and don’t tell lies.

Do good instead of evil  and try to live at peace. Psalm 34 vv12-14

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Monthly Archives: March 2014