But I find myself more and more drawn to learning about the contemporary people and situation in Israel and Palestine. It is a drama and a complex history that is only a little older than I am (the modern state of Israel was founded in 1948; I was born in 1956, when it was only 5 1/2 years old). I can remember vaguely the 1967 war being in the news when I was 11, and more fully things like the Camp David accords. I've been aware of the struggle.
And I can see issues on both sides of the issue. I've been to Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Bergen-Belsen, Flossenburg, the Jewish quarter in Prague and other sites, memorials and museums dedicated to the holocaust. I get that throughout history trauma has been perpetrated again and again on the Jewish people. I believe that antisemitism is a huge and horrible sin for which Christians have been absolutely guilty throughout history. I believe that the Jewish people deserve a homeland in their ancestral area.
BUT, I also think that great trauma has been perpetrated upon the Palestinian people, who also have a right to a homeland, and a right to live in a way that allows them to have control over their lives, their lands, their home, and to govern themselves in some way. I see something that looks and feels like oppression of the Palestinian people.
I feel that both narratives have stories to tell, and both should be respected and attended to.
I'm not a political science person. I don't know the civic and governmental realities and I can't even speculate on how to solve what looks like an amazingly difficult puzzle. But I think it needs to be a solution where both sides have something that looks like freedom, where both sides embrace a commitment to resist violence and where both sides experience security and safety. I don't have any idea what that looks like, but I am dismayed by some of my own government's investment, not limited to the current administration, which feels like a thumb on the scale where that is not appropriate.
In the meantime, I am working on educating myself. I am reading books like Hanan Ashrawi's This Side of Peace, Sandy Tolan's The Lemon Tree; I am reading the background information to the United Church of Christ's recent resolutions on the Israel-Palestine situation. If you have a suggestion, please feel free to comment and let me know about it.
And I've started calling what I used to call the West Bank Palestine. It is, as Rick Steves points out, what they call themselves, and I respect that. And it is an ancient name. True, I may not use that word when going through immigration in the Tel Aviv airport. And I am making sure that my itinerary includes Palestine and includes Arab (both Christian and Muslim) guides, dining and accommodations.
Rich Steves points out in his new documentary that visitors like me to this area have an opportunity that people who live there don't, thanks to the wall. We can go and hear the stories of the Israelis and the Palestinians. We can move through the border more easily (as long as there are no incidents in the area) and we can talk to people. I very much hope to take advantage of that, and to learn something about what is one of the most difficult and most destructive running conflicts in our world today.
