-- I was interviewed by Al-Jazeera back on June 6. The occasion for this was that a crew from Al-Jazeera is doing a short profile on Marwan Farajeh, the Village Coordinator of Holy Land Trust. A group of the PSE participants went along with Marwan and the camera crew to the Wall around Bethlehem to write some messages about justice and peace. Say what you want about being used or brainwashed by the Arabs, but this is an activity which many of us would have or already have engaged in on our own, and the opportunity to share our viewpoints on the situation in the West Bank with an international television audience was something that is not only very cool but exactly the type of exposure we are looking for (and more than we could ever have hoped for!) in sharing our messages about the realities of the conflict. The interview was short, and I was asked basically just about my feelings about Israel building the [Apartheid] Wall. (Whatever clips they decide to air will only be on Al-Jazeera and not on Al-Jazeera International, so they will be dubbed in Arabic and there will likely not be a chance to get to see this piece, unfortunately.)
-- A short while after I arrived this summer, I met the conductor of the Bethlehem Bible College Choir who is friends with some of my friends from work last year. Ironically, I had seen him before when the choir visited Bluffton a few years ago and performed in Chapel. One of my other international friends here, a young Scottish lass, mentioned to me that she had been practicing with the choir, which I thought sounded really cool, so I joined as well. I practiced for about a month with them, and as a result I got to perform in two concerts with them. We performed in the Bethlehem Peace Center and at the Bethlehem Bible College graduation ceremony jointly with the Lee University Symphonic Band which was here for a tour. (A very odd mix of people and ideologies to be sure.) This was a very different and new experience compared with my years of Western choral music, but it was a great opportunity, and I had a lot of fun doing it.
I guess that’s all the updating I’ll do for now since this blog is going to get way too long.
It’s actually been 25 days since I wrote a new blog. I have posted some since then with the press releases I write for the HLT website, and I have added some new photos, but all in all, this has been neglected some because I have been very busy. In fact, I just worked for 20 straight days, and today is my day off. Despite the fact that I have today off, I’ve been doing work because when e-mails and calls come in that are labeled “URGENT,” despite my tiredness, I am not going to ignore them. I’ll admit that I am tired, but it’s only because of the volume of work I have been doing (probably coupled with the heat)—not because of the nature of what I am doing. In fact, this summer has been absolutely wonderful in the sense of finding a niche with something that I absolutely love doing. I don’t mind the long days spent with participants because I enjoy the work so much—organizing things, educating people, and building relationships.
Though I know what I am doing is good, it is difficult sometimes to feel like it is really providing any hope at all in the midst of the very dark situation I keep on realizing that this place is in. Part of my job is to set up and accompany participants on many meetings during which we hear of so many saddening threats and mistreatments of people’s basic rights and ways that Israel continually erects obstacle after obstacle to peace. Sometimes it is difficult to see that any hope is really coming out of my being here, and as you can imagine, that takes its toll on my energy as well—feeling hopeless and useless.
Thankfully, in recent days, two separate things took place, which helped abate some of this negativity. The first of these was our first group meeting with the joint Sessions 1 and 2. Part of the purpose of the group meeting is to do debriefing, where we talk about what we have recently heard/experienced that has made a significant impact. This group meeting took place after a whirlwind first weekend for the new participants—as soon as they got here, we took them to Nablus and Ramallah for a number of really powerful meetings and tours which brought the current situation of the West Bank into a stark reality, and it was obvious that it really hit some of them hard. While participants shared in the meeting, over and over again, they expressed how difficult listening to all of the information over the weekend had been for them, and they told of the feeling of hope draining out of them—a feeling with which I am well acquainted. It may seem odd that this experience of listening to others describe their feelings of hopelessness inspires hope in me. The matter of the fact though, is that listening to these participants gave me a lot of hope because: for one, it affirmed that my work truly is making a difference—it made a clear impact on them, giving them much information and evoking an emotional response to the plight they witnessed in just their first weekend on the ground in Palestine; and also, I was encouraged with hope because I felt the wonderful feeling of gaining support since I now have 20 new friends who are grieving with me. Because of my affinity for pithy quotes, I just must insert two (or three or four) from Gandhi here that apply very well: “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” I know that honestly am not making a huge difference here, but I also know that I am making a difference, and that may be all that I can ask of myself in this infamously huge and complicated conflict. Furthermore, Gandhi said that, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” (I ironically just found a t-shirt in Jerusalem with this printed on it.) Indeed, it is better for me to be here, working incredibly hard to make the insignificant impact that I can than it would be for me to be elsewhere, waiting for others to solve the problems. (Gandhi also said, “Hands that help are holier than lips that pray.”)
The second event which inspired hope in me occurred during one of our recent meetings with a political organization when something the speaker said struck me: Palestinians are still resisting. This was an incredibly welcome statement at the end of a long presentation about how difficult the situation is in the West Bank. This statement evokes a lot of hope in me because if there is continued resistance even now, in the face of so many obstacles and after 42 years (or 61 depending how you look at it) of Occupation, there is hope that resistance will continue. It boggles my mind to see how Palestinians have continued nonviolent acts of resistance despite this long history and ongoing struggle—there have been moments of brief “victories” like the First Intifada, but they are still entrenched in a long and arduous battle. It inspires me with much hope to realize that even as I am feeling beaten down by the conflict here, many Palestinians—who face the difficulties of Occupation much more fully than I—are still strong in their resolve to resist until justice is achieved. I will just end with one final Gandhi quote that encapsulates this discussion perfectly: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it—always.”
--------------------------
As I was about to publish this, I had just one final, very hopeful, afterthought (which may seem odd to come as an afterthought and not as a forethought). God is not on Israel’s side; God is on the side of the oppressed. And “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8.31b). If you want more of an explanation, please let me begin to explain by watching:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83P6MD35w84 & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PvRRWlL3vU&feature=response_watch
יְהוָה, צַדִּיק יִבְחָן: וְרָשָׁע, וְאֹהֵב חָמָס--שָׂנְאָה נַפְשׁוֹ
The LORD tries the righteous, but the wicked and him who loves violence, His soul hates.
Psalm 11.5
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment