Tag: West Bank

Bethlehem Pastor Proclaims a Prophetic Word to the Western Church

Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac is a professor at Bethlehem Bible College as well as the pastor at the bethlehem Lutheran Christmas church. Terry and I often  worship at this church whenever we are in the West Bank.

Pastor Isaac understands that now is the time for a prophetic word addressed to the western church. He declares hard truths powerfully.

He is a Christian leader speaking to his fellow believers in the western Church — a Church that largely approves of Israel’s current campaign of destruction against his people. How can this be?

Our only proper response is repentance.

Bethlehem Churches Live Out the Biblical Tradition of Lament in War Time

I am privileged to count both the Rev. Drs. Mitri Raheb and Munther Isaac among my friends. You will meet them in this video from Democracy Now.

Together with the other Christian leaders of Bethlehem, they are speaking prophetically to the rest of the world as public celebrations have been cancelled in Bethlehem this Christmas.

Oh, they are not neglecting the wonder of Jesus’ birth. But they are grappling with the contexual realities of remembering Jesus’ birth while also suffering brutal Israeli attacks in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Thus, they haver turned to the Old Testament tradition of lament, that is crying out to God in protest against both worldly injustice and his apparent absence.

The western Christian church has become immune to the biblical concept of collective, corporate lament. Even when we try to construct a lament service, we don’t really know how to be comfortable with it.

In part, this awkwardness is due to American isolationism, ignorance, and lack of empathy for others.

We fail to identify with our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ because many don’t realize that Palestinian Christians exist.

We ignore the news of literal genocide occurring in Gaza because we are generally disinterested in the rest of the world.

And when we go to visit Israel, we are more feverish about visiting Zionist synagogue services than we are about worshiping with Palestinian brothers and sisters.

The Palestinian church is showing us once again what biblical lament means as they endure a multitude of the cruelest war time injustices.

As Gaza is Flattened, Land Theft and Ethnic Cleansing Continues Apace in the West Bank

Never before has the Jewish settlement movement held as much power as they do today. Several of their leaders are members of the Israeli cabinet. They now call the shots in the West Bank, accelerating Jewish attacks against Palestinians, stealing their homes, destroying their crops and killing them with impunity.

The following video compilation offers a glimpse into this world of daily threats and violence:

Meet My Palestinian Family as They Gather Together Following the Attack on Their Homes

Our friend, Layla, is a journalist working for the online news magazine, Mondoweiss. She filmed some members of the Amira and Al Azzah families after the Israeli soldiers, who had physically attacked them all, had finally left with Munther laying in the back of their truck.

This is our extended family in the West Bank. I admire their fortitude and resilience. I wish I was with them right now.

 

The Case of My Friend, Anas, Is Brought Up on the Floor of the UK House of Commons

Anas’ illegal arrest and imprisonment is receiving international attention. Please continue to pray that he will be released and allowed to return home to his family. (For previous posts about Anas, see here and here.)

 

 

“What Would I Have Done?” We Now Know How to Answer that Question

What would I have done?

That’s the common question we usually ask ourselves when watching a movie like “Schindler’s List,” the academy award winning film about one man’s efforts to rescue Jews from Hilter’s gas chambers.

Schindler risked his life to save others. And he was not the only one.

Others such as the Dutch woman, Corrie Ten Boom, broke the law by hiding Jews inside their homes, risking their freedom while trying to rescue people like Anne Frank, who hid in her neighbor’s attic.

Even though the majority of German church pastors supported the Nazi regime, there was a small  minority of faithful ministers of the gospel who eventually lost their freedom because they would not remain silent in the face of Nazi criminality.

Books like Defying Hitler tell the stories of the many ways in which ordinary people in Nazi Germany said No, refusing to march with the majority who refused to speak up or to act out against the wanton atrocities unfolding around them.

Which, again, raises the question, What would I have done?

Would I have remained inactive and silent? Or would I have spoken up, protested, or used whatever means I had at my disposal to work against the genocide and save whomever I could?

Now we all know the answers to those questions. We don’t have to wait any longer.

We are living in a unique moment of history. For a real genocide, a horrendous program of ethnic cleansing is now occuring before our eyes.

Though the American/Western mainstream media gives it all scant attention, anyone with a wider bandwidth of human interest can watch the scandalous, ugly images of daily attrocities as they unfold in real time.

Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, The Electronic Intifada, The Gray Zone, and the Katie Halper Show (among others) are thankfully offering the news coverage that corporate America does not want us to see.

And that news is shockingly repetitious. For what Israel is now doing in Gaza and the West Bank “is a textbook case of genocide.” Those are not my words but the words of Craig Mokhiber, formerly the Director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights.

Mr. Mokhiber is the former director because he recently resigned from his position at the United Nations over its efforts to censor his reports on Israel’s attrocities in Gaza.

As a result, Mokhiber ranks among the heroes with Mr. Schindler and Corrie Ten Boom for doing what he could to speak out, protest, and even to hinder the genocide unfolding before our eyes.

He has shown us how he answers the question, “What would I have done?”

It is all too easy to cast ourselves as heroes in our own imaginations, especially when we have no contemporary circumstances to offer us an immediate heroic option.

So, I always imagine myself the hero. But today I do not need to imagine anything. I can face the evidence squarely by looking at my actions today.

What am I doing today to protest, to act, to work against the textbook case of genocide now being written in the pages of modern history with Palestinian blood?

This is the answer for both you and me.

If I am doing nothing to defend Palestinian life today, then that’s what I would have done to defend Anne Frank — nothing.

If I am doing nothing to protest the genocide now occurring in Gaza, then I would have remained silent as I inhaled the stench of Auschwitz.

We can all go to bed tonight knowing that we have answered the perpetually troubling moral question: What would I have done?

Can you still sleep well?

Update on My Friend, Anas, Who is Now Part of Israel’s Invisible Hostage Exchange

Not long ago I wrote about my young Palestinian friend, Anas, who had been arrested by the Israeli army.

A few days ago, Anas’ wife and family received news from the local, West Bank military authority telling them about his situation.

Anas was being held in an Israeli prison under the conditions called “administrative detention.” That is, he was not charged with any crime. There are no plans for a trial date. He was simply being held for six months in a military prison.

(There is no “civil jurisdiction” for Palestinians in the West Bank because they live under military occupation. Military rule is all they know.)

At the end of that six month period, Anas may be imprisoned for another six months — again without any criminal charges, trial, or recourse to a defense attorney.

But then, as a friend of mine who is a Palestinian defense attorney once said, “Without charges, evidence, or a trial date, there is nothing for a defense attorney to do within the military prison system.”

This unjust process of administrative detention may be repeated indefinitely.

During its recent ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, Israel released a number of Palestinian prisoners, mainly women and children, in exchange for Israeli hostages.

These were the visible prisoner swaps shown to us in public.

Anas is now a part of the other invisible prisoner swap taking place in the West Bank, often under the cover of darkness.

For every Palestinian prisoner released in a publicized, photographed hostage exchange, Israel is busy kidnapping and detaining many more Palestinian hostages whose stories will never be told on CNN or MSNBC.

Israel is busy ensuring that none of its dark, cold prison cells will remain empty.

This new generation of prisoners, like Anas, are also hostages; additional bargaining chips held indefinitely in brutal military prison conditions for whatever inhumane games Israel decides to play with their lives in the months to come.

If you are a praying person, please pray for my friend Anas, as well as the many other Palestinian hostages now held in Israeli prisons whose only crime is being Palestinian.

Israeli Soldiers Shoot and Kill Two Children in Jenin

Jenin is a city with a large refugee camp located in the northern part of the West Bank. Watch the video and note the way “the most moral army in the world” treats Palestinian children.

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh6eJHBkVEk”

If the embedded link in blocked, then copy the address without the quotation marks and watch on your computer.

What it’s like to live in the occupied West Bank amid Gaza war

Here is a brief (30 minute) documentary explaining what it is happening now in the West Bank as tensions flare during the Gaza war.

I feel that this information is especially important for American audiences as I find Christian news networks devoting more and more of their resources to spreading right-wing, Israeli propaganda.

CBN is especially guilty of this. I have recently watched several stories on their network accusing Palestinians in the West Bank of harrassing, attacking and terrorizing Jewish settlers.

Anyone who has lived in this area will recognize the absurdity of such claims. It is noteworthy that the so-called Christian journalists telling these stories never produce any evidence to substantiate their claims — no recordings, no films, no interviews — only bald assertions.

This documentary provides everything needed to arrive at an informed judgment about what it means for Palestinians to live under Israeli occupation, and who is attacking who in the West Bank.

The video is age restricted, so I cannot embed it into this post. Instead, copy the web address below (minus the quotation marks) into your web browser. It will take you to YouTube where you can watch it directly on your computer or phone.

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk8jRFu3HRg”