Religion and Politics in the Holy Land

Another unbelievably full day. We started our day walking through the Old City of Jerusalem. Behind the ancient walls lies an ancient city, divided into four quarters – Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Armenian. We passed the Israeli guards as we entered through Herod’s gate and made our way through the Muslim quarter. The houses are small and inconspicuous from the outside – indeed, it is often hard to realize that you are standing in front of someone’s home. We saw Muslim homes decorated for those who had returned from the Haj. Of course, this is a typical Middle Eastern city and it is a major tourist attraction so the market is HUGE throughout the Old City. Stalls selling everything imaginable, from dollar store trinkets to textiles, wood carved religious items and electronic games and CDs, underwear and exotic Muslim dresses and headscarves, fruit, vegetables, spices, sweets, baked goods, ecclesiastical accoutrements, Jewish prayer shawls and kippahs, fez’, oriental carpets, prayer rugs and plastic souvenirs. You name it they’ve got it somewhere in the marketplace. I couldn’t help but think about the description of Woman Wisdom in Proverbs who is described as standing on the corner in the marketplace calling out to passersby, calling them to come to her, to come to wisdom. This place gives new meaning to what it means to be in the marketplace. Vendors hawk their wares loudly, young children careen around the crowds somehow managing not to knock anyone over.

We walked to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the church that houses, according to Catholic and Orthodox Christian legend the place where Jesus was crucified and the tomb in which he was laid. We first passed through an Ethiopian Orthodox chapel that is immediately next to Holy Sepulcher. As we were making our way to that church, we could hear a group singing hymns behind us, and shortly an African American church group who were clearly making a pilgrimage appeared, with a woman carrying a cross leading the way as the others followed behind singing, “He went to Calvary for me”. They stopped and their leader read from the passion story and then they moved on again. The walk to Holy Sepulcher goes along the Via Dolorosa where pilgrims come to walk the way of the cross and this group was clearly doing that.

We didn’t have time then to go inside the church, although I went back later with some others from the group and we did go inside. It is an amazing old church, with many small chapels, each maintained by a different sect of Orthodox Christians. The sepulcher itself is right in the middle of the church, very ornately adorned, and pilgrims are allowed in 5 at a time to pray at the place where Jesus was buried. It was wonderful to be in this historic place of Christian pilgrimage, although I was not as moved by it as I was when I visited Rome some years ago and saw the catacombs and St. Peter’s basilica. I think because I am too aware that so much of the story of Holy Sepulcher is legend.

After we left there we went to the Wailing Wall. That did move me almost to tears. To stand next to that wall, the last remaining piece of the Temple that was destroyed in 70 AD had a profound influence on me. Watching the Jews as prayer at that holy place was also very moving. Despite the enormous crowds, it was quiet and reverent at the wall. I had to go to the women’s side, which is smaller than the men’s side, but I was moved to see the women praying at the wall, placing their prayers in the cracks, bringing their children to kiss the wall. I went to the wall, prayed one of the psalms “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, they shall prosper that love thee”, touched the wall and felt strongly the presence of the holy in that place.

After that we had a brief lunch, and then went down a narrow street in the Muslim quarter where we met with Ali Jiddeh, a famous, Afro-Palestinian activist whose story was spellbinding. We entered his home, crowding into his very small living room. I was aware of how very small the homes are in the Old City, where families live in quarters a fraction of the size of what most Americans consider adequate. While Ali was talking to us, his youngest child was darting through the room and Dad ultimately dispatched him and his twelve year old brother out the front door. Ali Jiddeh is a Palestinian of African descent. He is now an older man, but in his youth, at the age of 18, he set off a bomb in Israel in protest against the Israelis and spent 17 years in jail. He has five children and now works for Palestinian freedom and is a leader in the small Afro-Palestinian community. He spoke of the double racism that these black Palestinians face under Israeli occupation. In explaining why he set off the bomb, he said simply that he had suffered years of being robbed of his individual dignity, being treated badly by Israelis as an individual man of African descent, but also because he felt strongly that his people, his heritage was being denied dignity by the Israelis and he wanted to fight back. He admitted that he would not resort to such tactics now, because now he has children, and becoming a father made him unwilling to commit acts of violence because he would not want to take the chance of harming anyone’s child. He pulled no punches whatsoever when speaking about our American government, calling Bush an idiot, Cheney a madman and Condoleeza Rice a “coconut” who is useless! He expressed astonishment and disgust that the American people would even have elected Bush and commented that he couldn’t understand how we could tolerate such an idiot for a president. He noted that under the Bush administration, respect for the United States has plummeted all over the world, and among Arabs hatred for the United States has increased exponentially.

After we left Ali Jiddeh’s home, we took our van to the United Nations OCHA office here in Jerusalem. This is the branch of the United Nations that works on humanitarian issues related to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. We had a briefing by a woman who is now an Israeli citizen, but who is originally from New York. She is a well known lawyer, who some years ago won a landmark human rights case against the Israeli government regarding their torture of certain prisoners. The briefing was an amazing explanation of the extent of the structural oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli government. OCHA documents all checkpoints, all obstacles to movement within the occupied territories, they monitor all settlements and the continued building thereof. She gave us extensive briefing packets as well as DVDs detailing the effects of the structural barriers that are all over the occupied territories and the humanitarian issues that arise as a result of those Israeli policies. The briefing was remarkable in its detail and specificity, and we were lucky to walk away with briefing packets containing a wealth of detailed information that the UN has accumulated on the ground here. One of our delegation has been video taping all our sessions, but our presenter asked her to turn off the camera, stating that this briefing was “off the record.” We realized that she was giving us the same information she gives high level government and United Nations officials about what is really going on here.

After that meeting we had “free time” and four of us returned to the Old City to spend more time. This was when we made the time to visit Holy Sepulcher. I also managed a little shopping in the marketplace, getting the opportunity to bargain long and hard with a vendor for a mezuzah which reminded me how much I hate bargaining!!

This evening we engaged in dialogue with 5 students at the Hebrew University here in Jerusalem. They were all young Israelis, in their mid 20s with varying opinions about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It was fascinating to have a chance to challenge some of them about Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza and to ask them what they think might work as a solution. All but one of them stated that they wanted to see a two state solution, one said he’d like a one state/binational state solution, but realizes that it simply will not happen because the level of trust required to make it work isn’t there. It was interesting to hear these young Israelis spouting the version of history that justifies Israel’s violence against Palestinians. One young woman said she would not support a binational state because she would never feel safe as a Jew in a country governed by Palestinians. The numbers work against Jews if the two states were to combine and this young woman wants nothing to do with a state not run by Jews. It’s all she’s ever known, of course, but she has heard a lot about the holocaust and integrated that narrative of “Jews need a safe place, their own country in order to live their lives freely and fully.”

What do I take away from today? Two different narratives – Israeli and Palestinian. A great deal of emotion going along with those narratives. The Israeli government’s actions towards Palestinians bears remarkable resemblance to the human rights abuses of which our own government has been guilty. The American involvement in the situation on the ground here is more critical to the success of the Israeli government than we are allowed to believe. This entire conflict is complex, nuanced and multifaceted. More tomorrow. I’m exhausted at this point – not completely over jet lag yet!