Wednesday, October 17

MCC Palestine Update #29

MCC Palestine Update #29

17 October 2001

This morning the Israeli minister of tourism, Rehavam Ze'evi, was shot dead in his room at the Hyatt Hotel in Jerusalem, within half a kilometer from MCC's office. Ze'evi was the leader of the Moledet party and an outspoken advocate of "transfer" of Palestinians from the occupied territories (i.e., ethnic cleansing). The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility, citing the attack as revenge for the assassination of the PFLP's leader Abu Ali Mustafa in August. 59 Palestinians have been killed as part of Israel's assassination campaign during the past year, among them 19 bystanders.

On Monday of this week we started getting calls in our office with news that several of the checkpoints and roadblocks throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip had been removed. We also received word that two of our West Bank staff members, after over one year of not having permits to enter Jerusalem, had finally been issued three-month permits. The assassination of Rehavam Ze'evi has meant a reversal of these small changes: all roadblocks are back in place.

Even if the roadblocks would again be removed, it is our worry that the changes would prove to be cosmetic and short-lived. Settlement expansion in the occupied territories continues, with the Israeli group Peace Now reporting that at least ten new settlements have been built since July.

Average Palestinians are deeply suspicious that this cease-fire will not be the desperately-needed first step in a series of steps towards a full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, but willinstead prove to be but a momentary break in the long history of Israeli expansion in the occupied territories. At MCC, our fervent prayer is for the shattering of destructive myths--the myth of security through violence; the myth of peace without truth and justice; and the myth of liberation through violence--and for the inbreaking of justice, peace, and truth in Palestine/Israel leading to reconciliation. These are lofty, perhaps naive, prayers, prayers which it feels quixotic to utter after thirty-four years of occupation and after the uprising of the past year: but they are prayers we must offer up.

Below are two pieces. The first, by journalist Amira Hass, raises a prophetic warning against the possibility of "transfer" (i.e., ethnic cleansing) of Palestinians from the occupied territories. Neither we nor Amira Hass wish to be alarmist on this score; however, over the past few months the once highly-improbably scenario of transfer has started to seem slightly more possible. The second piece narrates the story of Issa Zuf of Hares village in the West Bank, one of the thousands permanently disabled during the past year.


1. Keeping a Lid on the Transfer Genie
Amira Hass
Haaretz

War brings out the darkest thoughts and the deepest fears. It's impossible to guess now how the war on Afghanistan will develop and how it will affect our region and our country. Still,
because of the war, this is the time to clearly ask the following question: is Israeli society immune to an idea such as the transfer of the Palestinian population as a "solution" to the protracted conflict?

Are there enough restraints in the Israeli society to prevent such a twisted idea - which, after all, has a proponent within the Israeli cabinet - from evolving into an "emergency plan" that will take advantage of a propitious moment in a war without limits? Wars,
by their nature, release bottled-up genies.

Skepticism that Israel may try to expel the country's Arabs at the beginning of the twenty-first century is natural and encouraging. It shows that the majority of Jewish Israelis accept as an unequivocal fact that the Palestinians are natives of this land. The question is how much strength the majority of the Jewish Israelis have in the face of those Jews who want to change that fact. The experience of the past year in general and of the past month in particular suggests that deep cracks have appeared in the immunity of most Jewish Israelis to the attraction of military "solutions."

After a year of confrontation, the more vociferous sectors of the Jewish- Israeli public view the Palestinians as an integral part of the Islamic terror map.

During the Oslo years in general and in the past year in particular, the majority of the Jewish-Israeli public has disregarded the fact that it is an occupying power in every part of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It interprets the bloody clash as a war between two equal entities in terms of their political and international status, and, like its government, ignores the responsibility the State of Israel bears for the welfare and safety of the occupied population.

The transfer idea has a living progeny: the shunting of the Palestinian and the Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship into separate "pales of settlement," whose demarcation lines are continuously shrinking under expropriation orders issued "for the good of the public" - the Jewish public, that is. Discriminatory land laws and more than 50 years of deprivation have pushed the Palestinians who are Israeli citizens into enclaves of overcrowding, poverty, unemployment and want. On the other side of the 1967 Green Line, Area C (under Israeli administrative and security control) occupies 60 percent of the West Bank. It is depicted by the Israelis who control the area (settlers, the Civil Administration, soldiers) as "Israeli territory" which must be protected against a possible Palestinian "takeover." This is the clear-cut conclusion from the impotence of the authorities in the face of the piratical and official expansion of the settlements in Area C, and from what soldiers posted at roadblocks between Palestinian locales (and not between the West Bank and Israel) say. The soldiers explain that they are "protecting our territory, Israel's territory."

Bureaucratic pressure on a ruled population, combined with a process of separating it from the numerically and militarily dominant nation, reflects undercurrents that desire the disappearance of that population. In wartime, such bureaucratic pressure could evolve into military pressure.

The American response of a massive attack on an entire nation, in whose sovereign territory Osama bin Laden encamped, is automatically compared to what is perceived as an "insufficient" Israeli reaction to Palestinian terrorism. This is a constant pressure on the Israeli right-wing government by its natural electorate. Indeed, under the pressure of the expectation of a fierce
American reaction, the Israeli army, immediately after the September 11 attacks, escalated its activity in Jenin and Rafah, causing a large number of deaths among Palestinian civilians, without any discernible Israeli protest.

There is good reason to suppose that the American counterattack is in fact liable to create a convenient atmosphere for stepping up the military pressure on the Palestinians. If the war continues and expands, and if the Palestinians continue their terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, the "solutions" inherent in military pressure, including the expulsion "solution," could acquire even more advocates at both the military and civilian levels.

The information that the Jewish public receives about what is going on in the occupied territories is meager, limited and seeps into its consciousness slowly (that is, information not related to attacks on Jews). Even what is reported is serious enough (for example, dozens of Palestinian civilians who were killed by Israeli army gunfire in the first weeks of the intifada, even though they did not endanger soldiers); but the information does not generate a sufficiently powerful and swift Israeli mobilization to restrain the political and military levels. What has restrained Israeli operations is mainly external, not domestic, pressure. Yet even this external pressure is fading, and in a world that is preoccupied with a general war, the fear mounts that it will disappear altogether.

In the course of the Oslo years, the large major peace camp in Israel abandoned the concept of the importance of nonviolent resistance to the occupation. It lost touch with the Palestinian public (to instead form ties with the Palestinian leadership). In the year of the intifada, it broke off ties with the Palestinian leadership, with which it is angry. Will the dormant sensors of the Israeli peace camp awaken in time if the bottled- up Israeli genies are released?


2. ‘I still see the two faces of Israel’
Joseph Algazy
Haaretz, 15 October 2001

When soldiers entered his village, Issa Suf went out to warn the children to go into their houses, and was severely injured by an IDF bullet. Now he is paralyzed, but still retains some hope for the future.

SCENE OF THE SHOOTING: "I told the soldier who had kicked me that I couldn't get up," says Issa Suf. (Photo: Nir Kafri )

"Enough of the suffering and the blood that has been shed. I can measure this pain according to what has happened and is happening to me. I'm only a young man, and in one moment, because of one bullet, I became paralyzed in half my body, apparently for the rest of my life," says Issa Suf, a resident of the Palestinian village of Hares. Suf was shot next to his house five months ago, and now lies helpless in his bed.

Hares is a small Palestinian village that lies northwest of Ramallah, and southwest of Nablus, in a region that, fortunately or unfortunately for the 3,000 residents, is a very important strategic point. From Tel Hares ("the watchman's tel," in Arabic), one can get a good view of the Trans- Samaria highway, and below are large reservoirs of water, the feeder area of the Yarkon-Taninim aquifer. The area is rich in riverbeds, springs and wells. In recent years, the settlements have mainly used these water sources, which not by chance were established around them. These settlements include Ariel, Kiryat Netafim, Revava, Barkan, Yakir, Nofim, Kfar Tapuah, Yitzhar and others.

In Hares there are also vestiges dating back to the time of Byzantine rule in the area.

During the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 and the Six-Day War in 1967, thousands of the residents of Hares and other villages in the area moved to the east bank of the Jordan, and became refugees there. Before the present intifada, many of them used to come back to visit relatives during the summer months.

"Israel, mainly the settlers, has not relinquished the dream of uprooting us from here, but this time they won't succeed. We won't let any of the families leave the place, not even for Paradise," say the residents of Hares, after every incident and clash between themselves and the IDF and settlers in the area.

During this intifada, there have been three "shahids" (Islamic martyrs, as those who carry out suicide missions are called) in Hares. The bald spots in the lands around the village testify to the hundreds of trees, mainly olive trees, uprooted by IDF bulldozers as a result of stone-throwing, and of clashes with settlers and soldiers who enter the village and, in certain cases, shoot and throw grenades. The forced unemployment the roadblocks cause and the closures damage the residents' quality of life, and their daily routine has become completely disrupted.

Last Sunday, in the afternoon, soldiers piled large quantities of rocks and earth on the road at the entrance to the village; the next morning, they removed them.

"In the face of our stubbornness, I wouldn't be surprised if one day, when Israel discovers that they can't remove us from here by force, they will offer every family in Hares perhaps $100,000 if only they leave," estimated one of the residents.

PR for Israel

Issa Suf returned to his home in the village about a month ago. He was hospitalized in Amman after his injury from an IDF bullet four-and-a-half months ago. He lies in bed, his lower body paralyzed. In order to move, he uses a device hanging from the ceiling. He has to move his limbs often in bed, in order to prevent bedsores; occasionally, one of his relatives massages his entire body. Sometimes family members or friends sit him in a wheelchair and take him out to the back yard to take in some air. Because he is incontinent, at fixed intervals, he is transferred to the wheelchair and brought to the bathroom. He complains of strong pains in his lower limbs.

Issa Suf's house is near the homes of his parents and his brothers, in the western part of Hares. His father, Naif Suf, invested most of his life and strength in removing rocks and boulders from his land, on which he grows olives, dates, pomegranates and sabra cactuses, as well as other fruit. From his two wives, he has six daughters and nine sons. Some of his sons work outside the village.

Their neighbors describe them as a cohesive family, whose children are always willing to help others. The eldest son, Nawaf Suf (Abu Rabia), is the Palestinian representative on the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Liaison Committee in the Salfit region.

Issa, who completed a course in journalism, worked for a while at an advertising company in Nablus. After taking a sports course, he served for several years as a physical education teacher. He learned his fluent Hebrew during the days when he worked at the Shamir Salads warehouse at the settlement of Barkan.

Suf has no past record of arrests for security reasons. During the Gulf War, he said, he was caught during the curfew walking to buy milk for the children, was detained for 11 days in Tul Karm, and was fined NIS 500. During the present intifada, his main job was public relations and providing information for Israeli and foreign journalists. He also helped his brother, Nawaf, in coordinating visits of solidarity missions from Israel, which transferred deliveries of food and medicine to the Palestinian villages that are suffering from shortages because of the closures.

On the day before he was injured, Issa Suf had been the one who coordinated the transfer of a delivery of food from Israel to the villages of Marda and Kiri. The Israelis involved in bringing in food knew him well, and therefore, the day after he was injured, 400 people held a protest vigil in front of the Defense Ministry in the Kirya in Tel Aviv, and declared, "We are all Issa Suf!"

Grim recollections

Last week, Suf told of the circumstances of his injury.

"In Hares, there are many little children," he began. "During these dangerous days of shooting and tear gas, their parents have a hard time keeping them shut up inside the house. At the beginning of any incident with soldiers and settlers, the adults rush to bring the children home so they won't be hurt.

"That day, May 15, at about 10 a.m., when I was at the home of my brother, Raad, who works at a carpentry shop at the entrance to the village, he called me on his cell phone and told me that he had seen soldiers entering the village. He asked me to hurry and bring in all the little children who were outside their homes. I went out in order to bring home Raad's little son, Ahmed, who is
three years old, and also called aloud to the women to go outside and bring their children into the houses.

"From the place where I was standing, a few meters from the house, I heard volleys of shots, but I still didn't see who was shooting. Because of the shots, I shouted loudly at the children who were still outdoors, and told them to go home quickly, when suddenly I felt a bullet hit me from the side, in the right shoulder.

"I barely managed to walk two or three steps toward the door, and I collapsed on the path. Only then did I see that, from the direction of the path that goes down toward the house, two soldiers were approaching me, spraying volleys from their weapons in all directions. One of them was a redhead and the other was dark. The redhead approached me, and while I was still lying wounded on the floor, kicked me in the foot and said, `Get up! Get up!'

"I tried to get up, but I couldn't. I tried to move one of my feet with my hands, but I didn't succeed. I told the soldier who had kicked me that I couldn't get up. I also began to feel that I was having trouble breathing. The next day in the hospital, the doctors explained that the bullet which hit me penetrated a lung, and caused an internal hemorrhage that put pressure on the lungs.

"My younger brother, Abed, called me on the cell phone I was holding, and told me that he had received information that in our neighborhood someone had been injured, and he asked me to go and help the wounded man. I told my brother that the injured man he was telling me about was me, and asked him to find some vehicle to bring me to the hospital, since I couldn't move and was having trouble breathing.

"The redhead grabbed the cell phone, took out the battery, and threw the two parts on the floor. When the dark soldier noticed that people. including my father, Naif, and my mother, Tamam, were running to the place where I was lying, he threw stun grenades at them in order to prevent them from approaching me. Then I turned to the redheaded soldier and said to him in Hebrew, `Be humane, and leave, so that my family can approach me and help me.' Slowly my vision became blurred, too.

"My cousin, who is also called Abed Suf, came with a car, and despite the threats of the soldiers, came up to the place where I was lying, and with the help of others, put me into the car and took me to the neighboring village. From there, unconscious, I was taken by ambulance to the Rafidia Hospital in Nablus. The doctors told my family that the delay in bringing me to the hospital had greatly aggravated my condition. When I returned to consciousness, the doctors put a tube into my chest and drew out the blood that had collected there."

On the fifth day of his hospitalization in Nablus, his doctors discovered that the bullet that had penetrated Suf's body had disintegrated in the area between the eighth and the ninth vertebrae, and that they didn't have the equipment to treat him. They transferred him to the Al Ordon hospital in Amman. There, in a complicated operation, they removed parts of the bullet from his body, but not all of them in order to prevent damage to additional vital organs. From there he was transferred to the King Hussein Medical Center for physiotherapy. Now they are considering the possibility of sending him to a hospital abroad for further treatment.

Issa Suf, now 30 years old, is married and the father of an infant named Vard ("Flower"), who was a month-a-half old on the day his father was injured. Despite the harsh events and his injury, he has not lost hope that the bloodshed will end.

"From where I am," he said, pointing to his bed, "in the miserable situation in which I am living, I haven't stopped distinguishing between good and evil, between an occupier and a guest. I have not stopped seeing the two faces of Israel. Unfortunately, the good people in Israel - those who know how to distinguish between good and evil and between justice and injustice - are few, very few. The others, those who want everything for themselves and don't care if the other suffers and dies, are the great majority.

"Every time I think, like now, for example, that something good is about to come about, your [Prime Minister] Sharon comes and destroys it. I am convinced that the key to peace is in the
hands of the Israeli people. They are the only ones who can solve the problem."

Monday, October 1

MCC Palestine Update #28

MCC Palestine Update #28

Amidst talk of a potential cease-fire declaration, the road closures for Yom Kippur, and the one-year anniversary of the al-Aqsa Intifada, the work of MCC's Palestinian partners continues. The Center for Agricultural Services in Hebron this week initiated a program to support the production of "dibs" (a honey-like spread made out of grapes) in Hebron's Old City--the project will provide a badly needed additional source of income for nearly 50 families in an area often under curfew. The Badil Refugee Resource Center in Bethlehem, meanwhile, has begun to assemble a Hebrew-language packet with information on the legal basis of the right of Palestinian refugees to return and on practical modalities for return.

Below are three pieces. The first, by Palestinian academic Sari Nusseibeh, tries to lay out a way ahead for Palestinians and Israelis; his piece was published simultaneously in Palestinian and Israeli papers. The second is a worship reflection which MCC country representative Alain Epp Weaver will be offering at MCC's student conference in New York on forgiveness and politics. The final piece, by Haaretz journalist Amira Hass, considers what the press would look like if it reported everything that happened in the occupied territories.


1. What next?
Sari Nusseibeh
Haaretz, 24 September 2001

What can a levelheaded person among us (be he/she Jewish or Arab) see as a future prospect to the escalating bloody events in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? This is a question all of us (whether we be levelheaded or aspire to be so) must consider patiently and detachedly.

Surely no rational person on the Israeli side expects that this conflict can be resolved by removing the Palestinian people from historic Palestine. Similarly, no sane person on the Palestinian side expects to achieve the desired peace by means of removing the Jewish people from this land. Both peoples exist and, in all likelihood, will continue to do so. Therefore, the struggle between them will continue unless they put a stop to it.

Surely also, on the other hand, no sane person on the Israeli side expects Israel to be able to bring about security and stability by forcefully imposing a settlement on the Palestinian people. But equally and conversely, Israelis are unlikely to cave in and accept solutions forced upon them. Force, therefore, will not produce stability or relatively permanent security, if for no other
reason than because force is not a trait that is the permanent property of any one party over the other.

All of this means that when any levelheaded person looks ahead, all he or she can see is either a future full of confrontations and bloodshed, or the logical need for a peaceful, agreed-upon
solution.

Some might say: But we have tried the peace process and it has failed (with each side presenting reasons for this failure from its own point of view). They might continue by accusing the other
side of deliberately prolonging the confrontations, alleging that it never wanted peace in the first place and concluding that the theory that a peaceful solution to the conflict works is, therefore, not a valid theory, and that peace is not a realistic option.

It is true that the peace process has failed, but it must be asked: Did the theory or merely its implementation fail? Are we the only party that believes in peace? In my opinion, the fault does not lie in the theory: It lies in the form it took and the way in which it was implemented.

Why do I say that the fault does not lie in the theory? From an Israeli point of view, failing to reach a solution gradually places Israel in danger. Sooner or later, Israel will find itself
turning either into a racist state - like the apartheid regime that existed in South Africa -that is unable to bring security or peace to its citizens, or a binational that has lost its Jewishness. Both outcomes represent a strategic problem for Israel and require a preemptive measure to prevent them. Thus, strategically, Israel is in need of a solution.

On the Palestinian side, the dream of a national identity within a political entity can only be realized through the creation of a separate (or independent) national state. Allowing such a goal to slip away, or setting a goal beyond this, will simply push the Palestinians toward a demographic and strategic confrontation with Israelis, the best outcome of which, from their viewpoint, will produce a political framework in which Palestinian national identity will not be the predominant political identity of the state. Thus, a solution is a strategic requirement for the the Palestinians too.

Commonsense, therefore, says that a joint solution for both the Palestinian and Israeli problems - and not for one side alone - involves concluding a definitive peace between the two peoples. The theory that such a solution must be based on the establishment of two neighboring - but separate - states also remains sound for as long as such a solution is practicable, both geographically and demographically. In this context, it is important to point out that time does not stand still, waiting for the people to return to their senses.

But if, in theory, peace is a valid way out, why did we fail in its implementation? Is it because the other side does not believe in peace? Or is it because the other party to the conflict does not
behave sanely?

There are certainly a number of different reasons for its failure. But in my opinion, one can identify three fundamental obstacles to a solution. These obstacles, whether directly or indirectly, will also continue to prevent one. Therefore, if peace is to be attained, both peoples must confront these obstacles and take them into account. These obstacles can be described as fixed political positions or deeply-rooted psychological states of mind. The first is Palestinian; the second is Israeli; and the third is common to both.

The first obstacle, from the Palestinian perspective, is the emotionally- fixed delineation by the Palestinian people of the areas occupied in 1967 as the geographic/political space for the
establishment of a Palestinian state. As a result, attempts by Israel to reduce this space in one way or another (through procrastination, the confiscation of land, settlement activities, and the like) will surely lead the negotiations to failure.

The second obstacle, from the Israeli perspective, is the adamant rejection by Israel of the "principle of the right of return", or its refusal to accept waves of refugees to its land. Once again the clear conclusion is that the Palestinians' insistence that Israel allow these refugees to return to their original homes and lands will also lead to failure.

The third obstacle, which is common to both peoples, is Jerusalem. Neither side is ready to give up the city. This means that a solution, if one exists at all, must be designed in a manner in which both parties come to share the city through joint sovereignty. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton's suggestions in this regard, during the final days of his presidency, can serve as a basis for such a design.

If the first step in a peace process does not involve a concerted effort by both sides to face these issues head on, there will not be a final step in the process. Transitional political solutions (the
policy of stages, plans such as the Mitchell Report, the Tenet recommendations, and so on) will not lead to the sought-after peace.

In my view, the issues I have just pointed out are matters that all rational people among us realize deep down in themselves. They are neither strange nor new, but rather things that everyone already knows.

Can, therefore, the voice of reason, on both sides, be raised to deliver us from this tragic situation? Or will we leave our shared destiny to opportunists - those bent on wanton destruction - and others?

Professor Nusseibeh is the president of Al Quds University in Jerusalem. This piece is appearing simultaneously in Israeli and Palestinian newspapers.


2. Worship Reflection
Alain Epp Weaver
MCC UN Conference, New York, October 2001

Our reading this morning comes from Jeremiah, chapter 8:

You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord:
When people fall, do they not get up again?
If they go astray, do they not turn back?
Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding?
They have held fast to deceit, they have refused to return.
I have given heed and listened, but they do not speak honestly.
No one repents of wickedness, saying
“What have I done!”
All of them turn to their own course, like a horse plunging headlong into battle.

Why do we sit still?
Gather together,
let us go into the fortified cities and perish there;
for the LORD our God has doomed us to perish,and has given us poisoned water to drink,
because we have sinned against the LORD.
We look for peace, but find no good,
for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.

Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?
(Jer. 8:4-6, 14-15, 22)

“We look for peace, but find no good, for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.” It has indeed been a time of terror during the past month. Horror, terror, shock, revulsion, despair, anguish: we search the thesaurus for words to help us name our reaction to the attacks in the United States on September 11, but find words wanting.

Our stunned silence does not last long. Into this wordless vacuum quickly rushes anger, a visceral desire for revenge. We become like horses plunging headlong into battle. Coarser voices on talk shows urge bombing “them” back to the Stone Age, turning Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, whomever, into rubble. A minister of God’s Word, Franklin Graham, suggests on CNN that the use of weapons of mass destruction should not be ruled out. Subtler voices at the Pentagon, the State Department and in the punditocracy speak chillingly about the “necessary collateral damage” of any US military action, meaning the death of who knows how many civilians. Perhaps most disturbingly, we barely notice that the closing of the borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan means a cutting off food supplies to millions inside Afghanistan dependent on World Food Program supplies.

“We aren’t like the terrorists, we don’t kill innocent children,” said one New Yorker shortly after the World Trade Center crumbled. If only that were true. American wars, like all wars, have not been clean. Thousands of Iraqi children die each month as a result of U.S.-led sanctions on Iraq. Our attempts to distance ourselves from the evil perpetrated by those who planned and implemented the deadly terror of September 11; our President’s promise to “eradicate evil,” blind us to our involvement as a nation in institutions of injustice and violence which directly and indirectly spread death and destruction on a larger scale than in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, even if not always as dramatically.

We like to think of ourselves as progressive and civilized. But, warns Gregory Jones, it is “one of the ironies of ideologies of progress” that “the conviction that ‘we’ who are ‘progressive’ or ‘civilized’ have learned how to live without diminishing or destroying other people. Hence ‘we’ conclude that the solution to all problems is for others to become like ‘us,’ all the while masking the ways in which our own ‘progress’ is built on the backs of others as they are destroyed.”

“The prophets understood the events of their day with some subtlety,” Eastern Mennonite professor Ted Grimsrud preached the Sunday following the attacks of September 11. “They saw God’s finger in the very human (and very evil) acts of the Babylonians in attacking ancient Israel. They portrayed these events as having two levels of meaning-they were acts of
bloodthirsty aggression by human beings sold out to evil, but they were also expressions of God’s judgment against God’s people and their institutions for the injustice and violence of those people.” The words of the prophet Jeremiah are potentially offensive. Could God possibly the will the death of thousands of innocent people going about there daily chores? No-God did not desire their deaths. But God has given us, a sinful humanity, up to the consequences of our sinful, violent ways. If we sow violence, we not surprisingly reap it, too.

In reflections before the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, Jewish theologian, Marc Ellis warned that “the dichotomy of innocence and guilt, civilized and uncivilized, do not serve us well . . . they do not fulfill the demands of the Days of Awe and Repentance-to reflect anew, to turn away from injustice, to confess our sins as individuals, as a community and as a nation. We too are part of the cycle of violence that we condemn so easily when the burden is so dramatically placed on another people or nation.”

Is there no balm in Gilead? God asks rhetorically in Jeremiah’s prophecy. There is a balm for our burned flesh and souls, God is telling us, but sadly we do not avail ourselves of it. We would rather rub in the soothing ointment of revenge into our wounds. But we are not physicians who can heal ourselves, and our prescription of revenge does not ameliorate our condition, but worsens it. We delude ourselves-in fact, we commit idolatry-if we think that we can dispense “infinite justice.” God cries instead for us to accept the only balm that will heal us, the stinging ointment of forgiveness which demands that we recognize our own complicity with cycles of
violence and domination.

The coming days will undoubtedly be difficult. Demands for revenge will not grow silent. America will most likely not use this time for critical self-reflection. We must, therefore, recommit ourselves as Christians to the difficult, painful discipline of forgiveness, of allowing ourselves to be molded into communities which testify that there is indeed an alternative to the politics of violence and revenge, that there is indeed a balm in Gilead. May God give us grace, courage, and strength for the days ahead. Amen.


3. Just For One Week
Amira Hass
Haaretz, 26 September 2001

DAILY DIFFICULTIES: A soldier stopping Palestinian students and teachers on their way to school on Monday in the old city of Hebron, which was under curfew. (Photo: Reuters )

Suppose that for one week the entire Israeli media - radio, television and daily newspapers - would decide to report everything happening to the majority of the population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In other words, to the Palestinians.

Let us suppose that space is not an issue; in other words, that the newspapers would publish a special daily supplement - every day for one week - covering all the events of the previous day in the territories, not omitting of course reports about attacks on settlers and soldiers. On television and radio, several long talk shows would be replaced - for a week, just for a week - with items about the neighbor/occupied people/enemy living just five minutes away.

During that week, the Israeli media would report not only every mortar shell falling near a Jewish settlement, but also every Israeli shell hitting a Palestinian home as its eight children are preparing to go to school. IIt would tell the stories of the Jewish casualties, but also those of the Palestinian ones: Who was killed holding a gun after firing at the Ofer military camp from a post in Bitounia's cemetery, and who was killed by a tank shell while sitting in her home in Jenin. The Palestinian dead would also be given names, ages and biographies, and the television would broadcast pictures of their family and friends crying on each other's shoulders.

The media would show Palestinian schools with walls riddled by Israeli bullet holes and sandbags blocking the windows to protect the children studying in their classrooms. It would not content itself with dry reports about "exchanges of fire," but rather detail the topography and technology of these exchanges: A barricaded military post on a mountain top armed with a tank and machine guns, facing AK47 fire from the foot of the hill. The media would devote ample space, from a journalistic point of view, to Palestinian claims that no shots had been fired that day from a specific site shot at "in retaliation" by IDF soldiers, and then request a comment from the IDF spokesman's office.

The media would report the story of every peasant whose olive trees were uprooted and shredded by IDF bulldozers, or chopped down by unknown perpetrators in the middle of the night. It would describe the occurrences at every roadblock separating one village from the other, or separating a village from the nearby city: Patients laid out on stretchers moved from one ambulance to the other over dirt mounds, and children passing three roadblocks on their way
to school.

It would carry reports about tear gas and stun grenades fired by soldiers at pedestrians passing through the roadblocks, give details of those wounded and try to find out from the IDF spokesman why the grenades were used. It would also interview children questioning their parents why they did not go to the beach this year, or why they are not visiting their grandmother in Nablus this year, or why she cannot visit them.

This imaginary project is not designed to bring about a change of heart among Israelis, nor to convince them that they are not the attacked, the victims, the betrayed. These are feelings that are
difficult to root out. The aim of the project is first of all a basic journalistic aim: to try and report everything happening, and not only from the Israeli angle.

But the project also has a by-product with intelligence value, because without the full picture it is impossible to draw up a sensible policy. This project would force the Israeli public to pose
clearer questions to its leaders about the path for the future.

Information of this type is usually given to the Israeli public in doses that do not enable it to judge the situation clearly. Were the information presented almost in full, the public would be
exposed to the totality of the Israeli occupation of 3 million people, and realize the endurance and staying power of the Palestinian public, its determination and ability to live under inconceivable hardship.

Understanding the Palestinians' staying power should worry Israelis, far beyond the question of where the next terrorist will blow up. It might increase the number of those concluding that the
government is not doing enough to defeat the Palestinians and that it must switch to new tactics or intensify existing ones - perhaps by deporting thousands across the border? Perhaps bombing
inhabited buildings and open-air markets? Perhaps a really hermetic sealing of every Palestinian village and town? Perhaps barbed wire fences and armed guards around each such town?

Alternatively, some Israelis might be convinced by the Palestinians' stamina to listen more attentively to the basic Palestinian demands. To understand how deeply these are linked to their very existence, a fair, respectable existence. Not to fantasies, privileges, or luxuries.