A thought or two on the media coverage of the latest violence between Israel and Palestine

What a mess. In Hebrew: בלגן. In Arabic (had to look this one up): فوضى. I've expressed my feelings about the reasons for this kind of violence, the pervasive problems and how they might be addressed--I've said it in this blog, or to you publicly, or spoken with you privately. I don't need to repeat any of that, but I do feel like I need to comment on the only way most of us hear about these things, namely, three American news organizations. They typically do a very poor job covering these sorts of things, either because they have a strong bias (there's plenty to go around when it comes to Israel/Palestine), or because reporters simply seem ignorant about what they are reporting on--they take details that their sources collect and add hype words to make things more dramatic, more offensive, or more palatable. Barns become "bunkers" and 15-year-old boys become "militants." Here are a couple stories from this week that I think are pretty significant which I have not seen reported by the big three American news channels:
Five Egyptian Police Killed in Israel Border Clash
81 House Members Enjoy All Expenses Paid Hiatus in Israel

So, what to do? My suggestion, which may require a bit more work and may cause you to be a little more confused, will at least make you better informed. For your news on this stuff, go elsewhere. Here are four (relatively) reputable news outlets, two Israeli (1) (2), one Palestinian, and one more generally Arab. You will be better informed about the events and, by observing how the same stories are treated differently between the sources, see nuances of the opinions and biases of each, perhaps your own.

Summer Time in Israel, Archaeology Fun, and Not Quite Arrested!

My summer program finished at the beginning of the month, but I've been so tired since I've been back that it's been hard to write much of anything. I certainly have some interesting stories from the program though. Overall it was a very satisfying experience, and I did indeed get to see so much of the country I hadn't when last I lived there. In addition to the main course on Jewish-Christian encounters and the Mishnaic Hebrew course I was pleasantly surprised to find the archaeology portion more in depth than I expected. It was led by one of the head archaeologists at Sepphoris, a very important archaeological site that many people miss when they visit Israel (seriously go).

Just a couple examples of the incredible mosaics at Sepphoris.
We saw nearly all of the ancient churches and synagogues in the Galilee whether they were open to the public or not (lots of fascinating epigraphy). We also got to dig at Khirbeit Wadi Hamam, a relatively new site just north of Tiberius where they’ve found a 2nd century synagogue. I happened to make “the discovery of the season” when I found a piece of a Corinthian capital from said synagogue! Most interestingly, the fact that it is rather homely suggests it was locally produced.

I made sure to have a few adventures. I took a small group to Palestine to show them the sites there and let them be exposed to a bit of the situation the Palestinians are in. While there, we visiting the Herodian, one of King Herod's palaces, where he was buried and later where rebels fighting against the Romans hid out. I went around to the back side of the site and spelunked around in the ancient caves where the rebels lived. Many of them were only a few feet high from floor to ceiling and were pretty steep and slick because they had not been fully excavated. I felt very claustrophobic and I'm sure it was pretty dangerous, but when I emerged covered in that ancient dust back on the tourist side of the cave I felt very accomplished in my little adventure.

Looking rather pale on the tourist side of the Herodian
The other big adventure was at Tel Dan in the far north of Israel, a First Temple era ruin. When the group I was with arrived, the gates were locked and the park was closed. We had driven pretty far to get there so I had the bright idea to jump the ten foot fence. As soon as I landed on the other side, a park ranger emerged from a nearby bush and confronted me, and he showed me that he had taken photos of me climbing over the fence. His English wasn't terrific, and my Hebrew is horrible, but he promptly got on his walky talky and said "police" a few times to whoever was on the other end. Needless to say, I was not looking forward to an encounter with Israeli police. He asked for me to hand over my passport, and I did my best to avoid doing so. Of course by this point I was trying to appear as naive as possible about the rules and as much of an expert about Tel Dan as I could to win him over and not end up arrested (which would not have been a pleasant situation for my three traveling companions either). Well, as it turns out, my finagling had already paid off by the time he asked for my passport. He wasn't asking for it for the police, he was asking for it as collateral so that I could go run around the park! After I realized this is what he meant, I brought the three others in with me. The ranger saw that all of us were innocuous foreigners and said we could come in for a quick look around. After we were in the gate, I asked him enthusiastically in Hebrew where a few things I wanted to see were. As it turns out, Tel Dan is pretty spread out, so he invited us to ride in his 4x4 for a private tour of the site. For the next half hour or so he drove us around the park showing us all the archaeological goodness. All in all, a pretty different outcome than I was expecting.

Sitting on the kings throne at the gate to Tel Dan doing the gesture of judgement

Oh, also, there were a lot of mine fields in the Golan Heights area, fun! Only slightly tempting to blithely jump out into them.

A Year in Review

Almost exactly one year ago I left Israel and Palestine in order to begin my master's degree. When people asked me if I would ever return, I would always reply, "I hope, at least someday." Today, certainly sooner than I expected, I find myself in Israel once again. Returning here once more has brought me to reflect on my where I've come this past year. So much has changed in this short time, and the surprises and twists have not slowed down. The general progress in my life which seems unremarkable as I busy myself in undertaking these various tasks and goals takes on a new light when I remind myself where I was just one year ago today. On the academic side of things, since I last left Israel, I've completed half of a master's degree at Harvard, finished two years worth of biblical Hebrew, published my first scholarly works (along with a volume of papers I never thought feasible to produce in this short time), and earned the award which provided me the funding to come here to Israel once again. I have come a long way it seems. My personal life has been equally eventful, though most of these changes I wish not to recount here. I have coped with the reality of returning to an environment largely numb to the issues of peace in the Middle East and its immediate relevance to our society. Because of my past experiences here I have had to face more challenges reintegrating into American life, the social world, and especially the Academy. I also survived a Boston winter, certainly that’s worth something.

Spiritually I am a work in progress, as always, and I take it as a good sign. The pressing fear of detachment from the things I study and what I practice as my faith has not diminished. I’ve been feeling as though I have less and less in common with the people that fill the pews on Sunday. I know the reason for most of this feeling is because I’ve been so privileged to have the education I have had, but I know that this doesn’t account for everything. During my recent visit with family and friends in California I was able to visit Foothill Community Church, where a great deal of my spiritual formation and ministry training took place. All of my friends there were familiar and I felt at home, but to think that just a few years ago I was the youth ministry intern, and even more recently as one of their missionaries, it feels like a lifetime ago. To put a positive spin on it, my service to the Church has been transforming as quickly as I have, but not diminished. I did come all the way to Israel after all. And I’m here to understand, if only a little better, the relationship between Jews and Christians in Antiquity, something I believe is crucial for interfaith dialogue today.

Going back to Israel

I was granted a very generous fellowship from the Harvard Center for Jewish studies through the Anne B. Malloy Memorial Fund to return to Israel this summer to do some exciting research!  I will be attending a program at Tel Aviv University entitled “Jewish-Christian Encounters in the First Centuries CE,” a topic which has been the focus of much of my studies here at Harvard.

The focal course will compare early Jewish and Christian literature in how they approach certain topics like gender, ethnicity, and the Bible, and also how these literatures interacted with one another. We’ll also be visiting locations in the Galilee and Jerusalem and various archeological digs. One of my few regrets about my previous time in Israel was that I didn’t do enough of this kind of travel because I had no time to. The program also includes an advanced course in Hebrew during the early-Rabbinic period which will flesh out my Biblical Hebrew skills. I hadn’t taken any Hebrew before I started here at Harvard, and this course will make five full semesters before I start the second year of my Master’s! I’ve come a long way since then. There will also a lecture serious, on “Talmud and Theology,” which will discuss the Talmud’s relationship to modern Jewish thought and practice, and provide me with the practical context for better understanding modern Jewish theology. I’ve dug myself into the beliefs of the ancient world so much it will be helpful to engage in the modern world a bit.

Being at Tel Aviv University will also place me just a short distance from the Wolfson Medical Center, the main hospital I worked in during my first sojourn in Israel in 2009. Hopefully this summer study will allow me to pay a visit or two.

I’m still finishing up my papers for my spring semester here at Harvard, which has kept me from writing much here, but I hope I will be able to follow up with plenty of updates during this summer program.

Living in Jerusalem - Living in Bethlehem

Living on both sides of the wall, in Israel as well as Palestine, is a crucial part of gaining understanding about the differences and dynamics between them. I’ve spent nearly equal times living on each side and, like two sides of a coin, even a detailed portrait of one side still means you’re missing half the picture. The additional context one provides to the other is illuminating to several aspects of the situation, both in obvious ways and equally important nuances.

There’s no way to fully grasp these differences apart from doing it yourself, but I’ll do my best to shed some light on one thing from my own perspective, which I think is both interesting and important to know. The first thing that springs to mind are the different manifestations of the military tension between the two sides of the wall. On the Israeli side, the military action, the police barricades, the violence between Jews and Arabs, and religious Jews and secular Jews for that matter, is very much in your face. The tension in Jerusalem is constant, it’s active, it’s visible, it’s recounted in the international media, and sits constantly like a weight on the chest of the city for all to see. Every mall and McDonald's has armed security, every corridor of the Old City has soldiers posted in it during daylight, and it’s not uncommon for the police to literally divide the city in two during times of high tension and holy days, with blimps mounted with cameras monitoring everything from above.

Five miles away as the crow flies however, it is a different story. Once you are in Palestine and far enough away that you no longer see the wall, the area where the protests normally take place, or the Israeli military, the feeling of tension begins to change, and the further from the wall you get, the greater sense it takes on. The ambiance the tension produces on the Palestinian side is characterized by its passivity, its presence is constant, but crafted and groomed in such a way that at a superficial level it’s easily overlooked by visitors and outsiders. The populations of the Palestinian cities are not integrated with Jews, and merely walking down the street with the unabashed Arab life going on, not seeing any Jews walking the same streets, it’s almost as though a weight is lifted. The tensions can be forgotten, at least for periods of time. Contrary to media portrayals, there is a greater sense of safety in Palestine, particularly where there is no Israeli presence, the air is not thick with tension on every street corner, there is no armed security at every restaurant and no one fears violence from their neighbors. Living in Paidia housing, overlooking a beautiful yellow green wadi lined with homes, there is the same sense of peace as a house in the country in the US. Working at the Paidia center, working with my hands, sharing tea with our neighbors, talking about the weather and exchanging ideas about how best to plant our fruit trees…watching a shepherd pass by with his flock, one escapes to a simpler time, a slower pace of life, before these tensions existed. You are able to forget that just out of sight there is a tremendous barricade and a mechanized army with the latest military technology to defend against the very same people these harmless shepherds and farmers belong to. It’s only the occasional evanescent fighter jet on a training sortie high overhead, with its low deep rumble and the flash of its flares that there is a visible symbol of the occupation.

While in Jerusalem it would be fair to say that the oppression of Palestinians is identifiable by what is done to them and taken from them, in the West Bank it is marked by what is not done for them or given to them. Having lived in both, simply being able to compare the availability of different things is key. As I mentioned in a previous blog, water is an obvious example. It’s no coincidence Israelis have water when Palestinians do not. The water does not run out for those in Jerusalem, and despite it coming from the very same sources, the water runs out regularly for Palestinians. The same issue persists in nearly every area of infrastructure throughout the West Bank. Medicines and medical treatment are another problem since the building of the wall. There are simply just a lot of medications and medical treatments that cannot be had in Palestine. Meanwhile in Jerusalem, any treatment or medicine you could expect to find in the best European country is there. You could die in Bethlehem because you are not allowed to go to a hospital just a couple miles away in Jerusalem where a life saving treatment or medication is available, but you would never know unless you yourself experienced a medical emergency where you could not get treatment, or know of someone with this experience. There is of course the greater problem of travel. Hundreds if not thousands of families have not been able to see each other since the building of the wall because they are either not allowed to cross, or would not be allowed back if they did. These, and numerous other issues which do not reach the high level of publicity like the clashes of violence, form the constant but largely subdermal tension that persists in the daily life in the West Bank.

I feel the less flagrant nature of oppression in the West Bank make the more blatant manifestations of persecution so potent. The Jews throwing their trash from above on Palestinians in Hebron, and of course the wall itself. In this way, the wall is both curse and blessing as it provides a physical manifestation for the otherwise less flagrantly visible abuses in Palestine that are so easily overlooked by those who do not or would not care to see them. No poetic metaphor could do equal justice to convey the gravity of the problem than actually erecting an eight meter wall covered in razorwire wall that literally divides families, imprisons communities, and exiles, dehumanizes, and humiliates an entire people group. It’s undeniable existence demands acknowledgement of the otherwise silent systemic issues for which the wall serves as a much needed exclamation point.

Basic Info about Shevet and What I Will Be Doing There

shevet.org

Shevet Achim is a Christian organization founded in 1994 and is based in the oldest children’s hospital in the Middle East. Shevet Achim (“Brothers Together” if you have trouble with Hebrew) is taken from the Hebrew of Psalm 133, “How good and how pleasant for brothers to dwell together in unity...for there the LORD commanded the blessing—life forevermore.” To live this out we seek to "go and do likewise" as the Good Samaritan, who crossed lines of division to show that an enemy is in fact a neighbor also loved by God. About one in 200 children are born with congenital heart defects and in recent decades surgical advances have been made which make most of these problems completely fixable. However few places in the Middle East have access to the specialized centers which can perform open heart surgery. With liaisons across the Middle East Shevet Achim seeks out children in the region who need life-saving heart surgery, regardless of their background, and brings them to the advanced medical centers of Israel. Places such as the Gaza Strip, Iraq, and the West Bank which are unstable do not have access to the same medical aid that the Western World takes for granted and without the aid of Shevet Achim and treatment available in Israel they will certainly die. Once in Israel, Israeli doctors and hospitals are willing to rescue these children, and in most cases bear a majority of the expense themselves. Shevet Achim’s role is to find the children, transport them to Israel, and raise financial support as needed. In one of the most hostile regions of the world a Christian organization is working with Jewish doctors to help save the lives of Muslim children, supported by donations from around the world.

While what each worker does at Shevet Achim is always contingent on what the needs are at that period of time, this is my present understanding of what I personally will be doing. I will be one of a couple people that lives on site with the children and families at Shevet Achim who are available 24 hours a day for whatever needs they may have. This can take the form of administering medications, driving kids to and from the hospital, comforting family members during these difficult times, assisting with transporting people to and from the borders of Gaza, the West Bank and Iraq, updating the blogs of the children daily, and certainly many more tasks. For what this ministry does, this role is absolutely key and bears a great deal of responsibility. This position will certainly give me many opportunities to exercise my gifts and strengths, the very same that you my community have been nurturing in me. I am so incredibly excited to be able to jump right in to the heart of what this ministry is about!