I am sitting in the middle of the wilderness and most of the days I am sincerely happy that the whole world is willing to come to me. I clearly have nothing to do with this fame since my brother-in-law, Nadim Khoury, worked extraordinarily hard since the early 90's to make one of the best products that exist in Palestine. People from all of the world want to come and see how we make this great micro brewed beer, the only micro brew beer in the whole Middle East, Taybeh Beer.
Most times I am thinking we are absolutely crazy to stay in the highest mountain region of Palestine especially when we have all of the illegal Israeli settlements closing in on Taybeh and preparing a greater Israel. Sometimes, no electricity and other times, no running water and once in a while a few army invasions. But, there is something amazing happening here in Biblical Judea where Judea is ending and Samaria begins. With God's help we are still making the Finest Beer in the Middle East and feel this is our peaceful resistance.
On one level it is seriously God expressing his humor in somehow making it possible for a minority Christian family to exist among 98% Muslim population packaging a product that the majority are forbidden to drink by the Koran.
And what is interesting about God is that He has granted much strength and blessings to survive harsh conditions of occupation, closure of roads and economic daily obstacles along with all of the other usual checkpoint problems. Recently the Israeli occupation policies are making us go three hours out of the way to a designated commercial checkpoint with a scanner in order to deliver Taybeh Beer to Jerusalem which is technically only twenty-five minutes away from the brewery. Talk about a way to put you out of business since gas on this side of the world is approximately four times higher than you might know.
So day by day we are beginning to feel we are a terrible threat to Israel. We focus and concentrate on creating an excellent product in Palestine so people could select Palestinian products and help keep Palestinians at work and this is a whole different threat to Israel since they like to keep the Palestinian market flooded with Israeli products whether they are beer, ice cream, milk or chips.
Palestinian people suffer from lack of patriotism and they are very divided in their opinions so supporting local products is not high on their priorities. However, in the last fifteen years of making premium quality beer we have made some accomplishments in conquering the market share and we do our best to promote pride in Palestine.
I am thinking that God has humor since He is somehow allowing through the making of beer to bring awareness to the small Christian community in Palestine. People come from all corners of the world to get a Taybeh Beer tour and at the end they realize our village has been Christian for two thousand years since Christ's visit.
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