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Original Content at https://www.opednews.com/articles/Rosh-Hashanah-and-Oppositi-by-Eileen-Fleming-080929-71.html (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). |
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October 1, 2008
Rosh Hashanah and Opposition is True Friendship
By eileen fleming
"Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you. Opposition is True Friendship.-William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1796
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"Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you. Opposition is True Friendship.-William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1796
Last week on a campus of higher learning, after a passionate exchange of words with a young man about what seems to most everyone to be an intractable conflict in the Holy Land, he hits me with a left to the liver when he says his brother was murdered by a "terrorist" in Israel.
In my heart/mind I imagined a hopeless Palestinian who targeted innocent people as his way out of a deep sense of hopelessness. I understand the young man in front of me does not see it that way and I lamely mutter how sorry I am and add that I denounce all violence no matter who wears the uniform or how noble they believe their cause and the cycle of violence must end and the strong must be led to acquiesce to the weak.
Of course I was not as eloquent in the moment. I had stood my ground for what seemed like twenty minutes going in circles with the young man and his friend who had been hurling red herrings and straw men, quoting the Hamas Charter and Alan Dershowitz at me. It was nearly 90 in the shade and I am in jeans and dehydrated. I do repent for allowing my impatience and frustration to erupt and as a Christian who honors the wisdom of all faith paths I write this as my Repentance for all those who claimed to be Christian but were not one in fact, for a Christian is to at least try to be a peacemaker and must forgive, love and do good to ALL others. The problem is not with Jesus or Christianity, the problem is that too few who call him "Lord, Lord" follow him in word and deed.
As Muslims end the fasting days of Ramadan and celebrate Eid, the ten days of Repentance for Jews which begins on the eve of Rosh Hashanah Sept. 29thh and goes to the end of Yom Kippur at nightfall October 9th, which is also the day of John Lennon's birth, may these words that follow help us IMAGINE that while Israel celebrates 60 years, the other side mourns 60 years of Al Nakba/The Catastrophe, an injustice that affects US all.
People of conscience as well as cynics all sigh and wonder what will it take to break the cycle of violence in the Holy Land. The violent spin can only be broken when the strong are willing to compromise and that requires compassion which is inspired by education-learning what one has not yet heard.
Nothing prepared me for my first trek upon the ancient streets with no names in occupied territory. I did not know how little I knew until I saw the view from occupied territory. I am the first to admit I am biased, I am on the side of the poor, oppressed, voiceless and innocent ones who are caught in the cross fire of violence. War is the ultimate expression of terror and it is against/anti- what Christ taught!
In June, 2005, I left my sanctuary on ten acres in paradise to fly to Israel and Palestine for the first time with the Interfaith Olive Trees Foundation for Peace . I also went to meet a little boy of west Bethlehem, George of Beit Jala.
His centuries old neighborhood is less than a mile from the Jewish only settlement of Gilo, which is illegal under international law for it exists in the West Bank and not on Israeli land.
A photo of three year old George adorns the banner of my website and he has become my icon for all the innocent ones caught in the crossfire of violence any where.
Three year old George stood in the rubble of what had been his bedroom the night before the Israeli army blew it wide open. The shrapnel read 'Made in USA' and was delivered by American made Apache helicopters.
Israeli forces had retaliated against a few hopeless militants who had infiltrated George's neighborhood to snipe into the illegal settlement of Gilo and had fired from a spot around a curve and up a hill from George's home.
The moment I saw that photo of George-two years before I first met him in June, 2005- my heart or what some people may call their conscience said "DO SOMETHING!"
What could I possibly do, I wondered, but I did make a copy of the photo, put it in a frame and placed it upon the altar [a bar high table] in the upper room of my home. Dozens of times a day, I still stop and gaze into the eyes of that little boy of Bethlehem and wonder what it will take to end the insane cycle for everyone is hurting and most especially the children. George, his mother and younger sister suffer with PTSD as does most of the population. The father cannot find employment at his trade for the economy has dried up in the little town of Bethlehem.
I vowed to myself and then out loud to George that I would dedicate the rest of my life to doing all I could think of to help bring about the end of the occupation of Palestine and that is the only way Israel will be safe and secure.
Of course I had no clue as to how much of an 'impossible mission' I had accepted. But, every day I persist to look into George of Beit Jala's eyes and I also sigh deeply. And a sigh can be a prayer deeper and more meaningful than words.
"We do not know what we ought to pray but the Spirit intercedes for US, with sighs and groans deeper and more meaningful than any words."-Romans 8:26
A few days after meeting George I went to Hebron, the most painful place I have ever been. My guide was Jerry Levin, then a full time volunteer with Christian Peacemaker Teams. In the 1980's he was CNN's Middle East bureau chief in Lebanon. He was captured and held hostage by the Hezbollah for nearly a year, and after he experienced a mystical Christmas Eve, he escaped unharmed for the door of his holding place had been left unlocked.
Jerry told me, "Every time I get ready to return to Palestine, everyone asks me, 'Aren't you afraid?' I reply, of what, the Palestinians? No way! But when it comes to the Israelis soldiers, you bet I am!"
Hebron, in 2005, held a few hundred Israeli settlers, three thousand eighteen- to twenty-one-years-old Israeli soldiers and the oppression is visceral. The narrow, winding stone streets of Hebron are centuries old, but in the 21st century; one side is Palestinian and the other Israeli. Their only connection to the other was a thick, deeply sagging netting that is strung above one's head which catches huge rocks, shovels, electronic equipment, furniture, and all manner of debris that have been flung onto it by the settlers.
Jerry told me, "The settlers just throw whatever they want onto the netting; they do whatever they want and get away with it. The CPT's run interference by nonviolent resistance; we get the children and woman to where they need to be going and back again. Sometimes, the settlers curse and stone us all; it keeps it interesting."
Upon formerly Palestinian homes, settlers painted graffiti, such as "GAS THE ARABS" and Stars of David.
It is unimaginable to me how those who have suffered from the inhumanity of some could ever want to inflict the same inhumanity upon another. A few hours after that scene I crossed paths with Vanunu for the first time. After a few hours of listening to his story, I was inspired by the need to report as accurately as I could on the world wide web.
A month after my first return home from occupied territory I established my website and became a civilian journalist. A Civilian Journalist is more than a blogger, for we leave our comfort zone to go and report for the benefit of we the people. We follow our heart and not assignments from editors. We spend our own dime and nobody pays us. We do it because we love to write and "Writing...is hard because you are giving yourself away, but if you love; you want to give yourself. You write as you are impelled to write, about man and his problems, his relation to God and his fellows…The sustained effort of writing, of putting [words down while] there are human beings [with] sickness, hunger, sorrow…I feel that I have done nothing well, but I did something."-Dorothy Day
That need to do something for love-and true Christians understand that God is love and "Love is not the starving of whole populations. Love is not the bombardment of open cities. Love is not killing......Our manifesto is the Sermon on the Mount, which means that we will try to be peacemakers." -Dorothy Day
That kind of love is why I wrote two books and have spilled unknown thousands of cyber words all in pursuit of peace which requires justice.
I am fueled by my personal intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, who for me He is a social, justice, radical revolutionary Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up against the corrupt Temple authorities and challenged their job security by teaching the people they did NOT need to pay the priests for ritual baths or sacrificing livestock to be OK with God.
For God LOVED them just as they were: sinners, poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under the Roman Empire and Military Occupation. What got Jesus and any other rebel, dissident, agitator crucified was for disturbing the status quo of the Roman Empire and Occupying Forces.
The military occupation of Palestine is the status quo and innocent ones on both sides continue to be terrorized and die in the crossfire of violence.
Now is not the time for giving into fear or casting more blame. What is needed now is for reflection and repentance for what we have done and what we have not done for the poor and oppressed.
Now is the time for people of conscience to ask themselves on what do they base their biases and open up to hearing biases from the other side. That takes common sense and courage.
"Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right." -Martin Luther King, Jr.
America's most radical founding father, Tom Paine, united a disparate group of immigrants together and ignited the formation of a nation with a forty-page pamphlet called Common Sense.
"Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion... The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."-Tom Paine
Common sense understands that only justice; which requires equal human rights for all people as the way to security and peace for all.
A true friend will always tell the truth even though it can be brutal.
What is needed in times like these is more not less dialogue about the pain of the other, for education is the way to compassion and compassion the way to change.
"We have it in our power to begin the world again" -Tom Paine