November/December 2001

Unholy Holy Land

by Greg Albrecht

Jerusalem-

His mother survived several concentration camps. Is this Jerusalem resident worried about living with daily threats of terrorism? "Yes, worried and concerned," he said, "but we are not afraid. The Arabs can wound us, but we will never allow another Holocaust to happen." In a clear reference to the fact that Israel has nuclear capabilities, this retired military official then added, "If by some chance the Arabs were ever able to invade Israel, this time we would not become slaves. We would take them down with us."

Jerusalem. There is no other place on earth where so much has happened for so long, where passion and emotion run so deep. Jerusalem has long been idealized as a city of peace, but history as well as current events force us to conclude that Jerusalem is a place of bloodshed and war. Military and police activity is highly visible here and everywhere throughout Israel, with indiscriminate questioning of suspicious individuals and searching of vehicles. Protests of "racial-profiling" would almost certainly result in North America if such broad powers were given to the military and the police, for it appears that those who look like Palestinians are almost automatically assumed to be potential terrorist threats.

Israel continues to strike Palestinian targets considered threats to its security. Shrugging off international condemnation for such military actions, Israel maintains that it is acting in self defense. While Israelis reserve the right to take unilateral military actions, and Palestinians feel terrorism is justified, both sides seem to be resigned to escalating violence -- perhaps even war.

During my brief visit here in Jerusalem, Israeli forces launched a pre-emptive rocket strike, killing six high-ranking Hamas officials in the West Bank -- also killing two children. More than 100,000 Palestinians demonstrated at the funerals the next day, vowing further terrorist attacks in revenge.

The end of September marked the first anniversary of the current intifada, originally sparked in September 2000, by violent demonstrations by outraged Muslims when the then opposition leader and now Prime Minister Sharon of Israel led a contingent of police onto the Israeli-controlled, but Muslim administered, Temple Mount. Having been called the intifada, and the uprising, this conflict has recently been upgraded to a low-level war, with the evidence supporting such a designation including the fact that tourism has now fallen off by 80 percent.

This September also marked the strengthening of Israeli resolve as the grim reality of terrorism in New York City and Washington D.C. solidified Israel's public opinion about suicide bombings. For their part, Palestinians at large initially celebrated the news of the horrific carnage resulting from the act of war against the United States. But Palestinians quickly came to see what Yasser Arafat saw immediately -- the Palestinian cause was seriously, perhaps mortally, impaired as the tragedy in the United States unfolded.

The Temple Mount, sacred to followers of Judaism and Islam, is a flashpoint in the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The gold-crowned Dome of the Rock, or the al-Haram al-Sharif, is the third holiest shrine in Islam, built upon the ruins of the two Jewish temples. The day I arrived in Jerusalem an outlawed Jewish extremist group tried to break into the Temple Mount to lay a symbolic cornerstone for a third Jewish temple, provoking Palestinian Muslims to stone those who gathered to worship at the Wailing Wall, at the perimeter of the Temple Mount.

The new nation of Israel regained Jerusalem in the name of the Jews over 50 years ago. Thirty-five years ago Israel took control of all Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious sites in Jerusalem.

Jews remember that King David captured the city from the Jebusites over 3,000 years ago, claiming it as the capital of the new kingdom of Israel. Christians affirm that Jerusalem was the city in which the Son of God, Jesus Christ, gave his blood as an atonement for the sins of mankind. Muslims believe that the Prophet Mohammed ascended to his place in heaven from Jerusalem.

Walking the streets of Old Jerusalem today, one cannot help but notice that three holy sites are located within a few hundred yards of each other. The place believed to be the empty tomb that could not contain the resurrected body of Jesus Christ, the shrine marking the place Mohammed started his journey to heaven and the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple all are crowded together in close proximity.

"The Land is Full of Bloodshed"

Religious fervor and nationalism hang heavy in the Jerusalem air, like smog in Los Angeles or fog in London. A growing sense of ambivalence is another palpable emotion that pervades this city. Many Israelis seem almost resigned to a kind of death wish, an ominous feeling that the Israelis and the Palestinians are inevitably going to escalate the current round of violence and bloodshed that started in September 2000. No solution seems to be in sight, only continuing distrust, hatred, terrorism and firefights. Conventional wisdom holds that the worst is yet to come, and that it must get worse before things can get better.

Israelis are getting used to living with violence and are becoming apathetic about any hope of peace. Many believe the idea of peaceful co-existence with the Palestinians was just a pipe dream, a desert mirage from the beginning.

For the past two thousand years the Jews have been on the run, oppressed, persecuted and dispossessed. But within a few decades after the Holocaust, preoccupation with victim-hood gave way to a vibrant nation fueled by a robust economy, protected by a strong and successful military. Jewish fear gave way to confidence, courage and even swagger -- and it seems that trust in God has been transferred to trust in the Israeli military.

The formation of the state of Israel followed closely on the heels of the atrocities of the Holocaust, driving the pioneers of this land (many of whom were liberated from Hitler's death camps) to say "never again." When Israel became a nation in 1948, Jews everywhere were absolutely convinced that there would be no safe haven anywhere in the world apart from a self-governed state. But few new immigrants -- or second and third generation Israelis -- have the same vision or passion that led their parents and grandparents to help bring about a fulfillment of Isaiah 35:1: "The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom."

For their part, the Palestinians almost seem to relish the role of the underdog, gaining the advantages that come with such a status. The Palestinians have passion, zeal, ardor and perhaps even fanaticism, not unlike the Jews who pioneered the state of Israel over 50 years ago.

The Palestinians under Yasser Arafat are overwhelmed by the vastly superior Israeli army, and revel in the irony that Arabs can take a page out of the Hebrew Bible, depicting themselves as David, the great king of Israel who himself was no match for the giant Goliath. Turning the tables on the Israelis in this way is more than a public relations spin. It gives heart and soul to the people who struggle against the Goliath-like military strength of the Israelis.

Palestinian Dreams

This is my fifth trip to the Middle East -- on several earlier trips I traveled to the West Bank, visiting

Jordan and, on one occasion, a Palestinian refugee camp. During that visit a Palestinian man about my age, whom I had never seen before and have not seen since, invited me, a total stranger, into his humble dwelling. I was hosted in grand style amidst the abject poverty and hopelessness of the camp.

I asked my Palestinian host where he was from. He told me that he was from a village that was then, and still remains under Israeli control, and although he had never been there, he was convinced that one day he would go "home."

His eyes grew wistful as he "remembered" the home his parents had described to him, a home that no doubt had grown larger than reality over the years. He gave specific descriptions of the home that he had never seen -- of olive trees and a grove of orange trees -- as we sat sipping sweet coffee only a few feet from an open sewer that ran down the streets of the camp.

This dream of land remains the hope of many Palestinians. It is the same vision that Palestinians I have talked with in today's Israel have. This hope is the passion that Palestinian leaders try to incite into full flame in an effort to force the Israelis to give them back more and more of the bloodstained real estate.

With each new escalation in this current conflict, Yasser Arafat renews his call for an international peacekeeping force, trying to play the Middle Eastern version of the race-card. And, in what seemed to be a response, a major United

Nations conference in Durban, South Africa met in early September, accusing the democracy of Israel of "a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity." The conference neglected to address human rights abuses in Islamic theocracies.

Radical Muslims do not believe in peace with those whom they define as infidels. The only possible reaction to infidels is jihad, or holy war. Israeli journalists have picked up on this perspective, noting that Palestinian leaders like

Yasser Arafat regularly speak of peace and of the peace process when speaking to international audiences in English, while neglecting to mention peace when speaking in Arabic to the Palestinians and Arab peoples.

The Israeli Institute for Peace Education claims that it has carefully scrutinized broadcasts of the Palestinian Authority, both on radio and television. The Institute reviews all documents it can, including Palestinian newspapers, but asserts that no words of peace are printed or broadcast in Arabic. In English yes, but not in Arabic.

Peace, if one believes such reports, would not seem to be what Palestinians leaders want their own people to hear. They want only talk of victory. They want to communicate visions of a strike against Goliath with a smooth stone in the forehead, followed by a beheading of the Jewish giant that, from their perspective, has oppressed them.

Palestinians spin their role in this conflict as that of the victim -- pointing out that while the Jews were victims of one holocaust, that does not justify them perpetrating another. Ironically, while some Arabs point out that one holocaust does not justify another, it seems that the subject of the historical Holocaust has engendered two camps in the Arab world.

One viewpoint, including official newspapers and publications of the Palestinian Authority, argues that the Holocaust never happened, -- that it was invented by the Zionist propaganda machine. The other camp acknowledges that the Holocaust did happen and is grateful to Hitler for his "contributions."

The United Nations conference in Durban, held just one week before the catastrophic destruction in the United States inflicted by hijacked American commercial airliners, also attempted to minimize, trivialize and revise the historic Holocaust. Following the lead of Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization, Durban proposed that all references to the Holocaust be immediately followed by the phrase, "and the ethnic cleansing of the Arab population in historic Palestine." Not only was this a blatant attempt to revise history, it sought to place the Israeli-

Palestinian difficulties on a par with the atrocities committed by the Serbs, primarily against Muslims. Playing fast and loose with the facts of history will not bring solutions, nor will it bring justice.

Palestinians argue that the current crisis is fueled by the ever-expanding Jewish settlements into territory once considered as virtually exclusive Palestinian communities. Palestinians would simply ask that Jewish building and settlement "not be in our neighborhood." NIMBY is a readily understood acronym for North Americans, who employ the Not-In-My-Backyard argument against all kinds of change in their own neighborhoods. Accordingly, the Palestinians demand a total freeze by Israel of continuing settlements that encroach upon what they consider to be Palestinian communities.

"An Eye for an Eye"

Sadly, both sides seem drawn by self-fulfilling prophesies. As I asked Israelis and Palestinians about the prospects of peace

I often received the same stereotypical response. From Israelis, "You can't make peace with the Arabs." From Palestinians, "You can't make peace with the Jews."

The underlying strategy for achieving peace, or perhaps for defining it, was noted by a political cartoonist who depicted Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon appearing on a game show. Each was asked to spell the word peace. Arafat chose the spelling t-e-r-r-o-r-i-s-m while Sharon responded with o-c-c-u-p-a-t-i-o-n.

Peace becomes more distant as each month goes by, as each escalation invites deeper entrenchment. Both sides know that they are locked into a vicious circle of growing violence.

Both sides are going back to what they both know how to do -- to shed the blood of the other side. Revenge -- the desire to see the other side suffer -- intensifies each day, each week and each month during this current cycle of carnage. Both sides are keeping score, with the grim justice of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth driving action and reaction.

It is important for North American Christians to realize that there are two sides to this issue. We naturally gravitate to the Israeli position, for our own heritage is that our spiritual foundation is based upon the Hebrew Bible, and we share the Judeo-Christian culture and history.

But it is simplistic and naive to adopt a posture that justifies all Israeli positions and condemns all Palestinian perspectives. The plain truth is not that simple.

Many North Americans understand the current conflict in Israel through the camera lens of the media -- two widely publicized photographs come to mind. The first photograph is of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who was shot by

Israeli soldiers. Conclusion? The Israelis are brutal tyrants. The second photograph is of jubilant Palestinians who had just beaten an Israeli to death after he was thrown from a second floor police station window. Conclusion? The Palestinians are savage animals.

A Christian Perspective

Christians often forget that the New Testament teaches that there is no favored nation in God's eyes (Romans 10:12) but that we are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). Christians often do not know about the almost 200,000 forgotten Palestinian Christians, most of whom have been forced to flee to Israeli controlled territory during this latest violence, because Muslim Palestinians perceive that Christians are more sympathetic to the Israeli position.

Therefore, to be a Palestinian Christian is to have no apparent support -- not from Israeli Jews, not from Palestinian Muslims and not from many pro-Israeli Christians.

This conflict has now escalated to more than a nationalistic quarrel about land, pitting the Palestinian Authority vs. the state of Israel, but has now grown to be a religious war pitting Islam vs. Judaism.

News from Jerusalem will continue to dominate newspapers, magazines and newscasts. Jerusalem commands our interest, whether because of secular politics or because of religious ideology.

Jews and Christians alike view the book of Psalms as sacred Scripture, and often, when talk of

Jerusalem's fate is discussed, Psalm 122:6 is quoted, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem."

The Bible also speaks of the bodily return of Jesus Christ, and that the first place his feet will stand is the Mount of Olives, overlooking the old city of Jerusalem (Zechariah 14:4; Acts 1:11-12).

But if there is to be peace "in our time," the Palestinian and Arab side will need to find leaders like King Abdullah and King Hussein of Jordan, and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt. The Israelis will need leaders like David Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak

Rabin or Simon Peres. Will Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon be up to this challenge? Will it take heavy international pressure or even an international peacekeeping military force to bring a halt to the bloodshed? Time will tell. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. 

It's a Family Feud My name is Abram. I lived over 4,000 years ago. But, you know, in my homeland, the Middle East you call it, the year 2001 is coming to an end and it seems we're still fighting the same old battles. Especially in Canaan -- one of my son's relatives calls it Palestine, the other son's descendants call it Israel. It all started with my family. My wife, Sarai, could not have a child. For a woman not to be able to have a child was to be a failure in life. We had lived in Canaan for ten years, but still no child. Sarai was embarrassed, humiliated. We talked about the two options available to us in our culture. We could adopt, in which case neither of us would be a birth parent. Or, Sarai suggested I could impregnate one of her slave girls, and we could adopt this child, and then at least one of us would be a natural parent. This was perfectly acceptable, one of the Laws of Hammurapi. Sarai chose an Egyptian slave girl named Hagar, to give birth to the child we would then adopt. You can read this story in the Bible, Genesis chapter 16. At that time Hagar and Sarai got along well. But when Hagar became pregnant, she changed -- Hagar was no longer the same person. As Hagar's belly got larger so did her ideas about her status in our home. The growth of her body made matters worse, because now she was a daily reminder of something that Sarai felt she could never be. Every day Sarai saw that Hagar was going to be the mother of my child. Sarai told me that it was all my fault. And maybe it was. Maybe I should have never gone along with such an idea to begin with. But I did. And now, Sarai felt more humiliated than ever, and wanted me get rid of Hagar. I told Sarai that Hagar was her slave girl, and that she could do whatever she wanted to with her. Sarai eventually became so abusive of Hagar that Hagar ran away. She was on her way home to Egypt when God sent an angel to her. The angel told Hagar that she would give birth to a son, who would be named Ishmael (meaning, "God hears"). The angel told Hagar to come home to have her baby. Hagar was encouraged. God saw her need and answered her prayer for help. She came back home. Hagar could not have known that a little over 2,000 years later God would come to this earth in the flesh, and that he would begin his human life as Jesus in the womb of another young unmarried woman, Mary. Ishmael was born when I was 86 years old. Sarai kept her distance. She didn't want to adopt Ishmael, she wanted Ishmael to be the son of the slave girl -- and me. When Ishmael was 13 God appeared to me. He told me about a covenant he would make with the nations that would come from me. He changed my name from Abram to Abraham, and Sarai's name to Sarah. He told me that he would give the land of Canaan to my descendants. God also told me that Sarah and I would have a son, and that we should name him Isaac. I fell on my face laughing. If somehow Sarah got pregnant, after all these years, I would be 100 when Isaac was born! God also told me that Ishmael would become a great nation, but the covenant God made with me would pass to Isaac, not to Ishmael. Not long after that God came to visit us, with two angels. I invited the Lord to eat with us, and after dinner God told me that Sarah would have a son. Sarah was in the tent, listening, and when she heard this she also laughed -- but not out loud. After all, Sarah was well past her child-bearing age, and she was still hurt from being barren for all the years of our marriage. Even though the Lord did not see her reaction, he knew her response. I have never forgotten God's answer to Sarah's sarcasm and lack of belief, "Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son." God always does what he promises -- always has, always will. Sarah became pregnant, and when she became a mother, we named our son Isaac. But Sarah's uneasy truce with Hagar did not last. Jealousies still existed, until finally Sarah demanded that I get rid of Hagar and Ishmael. Once again Hagar had to leave home -- the first time she left as an unmarried pregnant mother, this time as an unmarried mother, a single parent as you call them. But God again protected her, and spoke to her, comforting her. He told Hagar that Ishmael would become a great nation. Hagar was able to raise the boy, and when the time was right, find him a bride from Egypt. Ishmael left our home before Isaac was old enough to know his brother. But the anger and bitterness between Hagar and Sarah has continued, every generation, for the last 4,000 years. Endless bloodshed -- with the three great monotheistic religions (Christians, Jews and Moslems) of the world all claiming me as their ancestor. But the most painful story is the continuing heartache between the Jews of Isaac and the Arabs of Ishmael. Some of them are back together again here in Canaan, trying to live under one tent, just like Isaac and Ishmael did for a little while. The Jews call it Israel, the Arabs call it Palestine. Whatever this land is called, it grieves me that its stones are stained with the blood of my family.

Israel's Water - The Real Battleground? Water, not land, may be a major factor in future Middle Eastern trouble. The water supply of Israel depends upon the Sea of Galilee, along with a coastal aquifer that is so depleted that there are concerns about salt water from the Mediterranean Sea polluting it. Israel's population of Jews and Arabs is now more than 6,000,000 people, and it continues to grow. More than 2,000,000 more people live in what are called the territories, under the Palestinian Authority. Land has been the cause of hostilities, but ironically, compared to the water supply, there is plenty of land for everyone. Israel is not only concerned with giving up land gained in earlier conflicts, but Israel is concerned that some of the land, such as the Golan Heights, form the watershed that makes its way into the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee, or Lake Kinneret, is at its lowest point in recorded history. In some places the water has receded 300 yards from the shoreline, leaving docks, lifeguard stations and beaches far from the water's edge. The Sea of Galilee provides 27 percent of Israel's annual water supply. Israel's worst drought in 100 years, combined with unchecked urban water consumption, is an untold story, dwarfed by front page news accounts of bloodshed and violence. Israel's water commissioner Shiman Tal said recently, "Our water reservoirs are really empty. We have never been in such a situation." Potential solutions include the idea of shipping water by tanker, or even by an underwater pipeline, from Turkey. But costs may be prohibitive for either shipping water or an underwater pipeline, proposed because an overland pipeline from Turkey could not be constructed without going through Syria. Another possible remedy for this water crisis involves costly water desalination plants to convert the salt water of the Mediterranean. Some Israelis call for heavy reductions in the water made available to agriculture. But agriculture is very much a part of the national identity of Israel, having its roots in the kibbutz movement that played such an important role in the beginnings of the modern nation of Israel.

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