Some Articles on Israel

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A Plea for Palestinian Christians

By Robert D. Novak

The Washington Post

May 25, 2006

Rep. Henry Hyde, showing the courage that has typified a political career now in its final months, is pleading the case of endangered Palestinian Christians to President Bush.  A faithful supported of Israel over many years, Hyde said in a letter sent Friday to the White House: “I cannot be blind when Israeli actions seem to go beyond the realm of legitimate security concerns and have negative consequences on communities and lands under their occupation.”  He urged the president to take up this issue with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during his visit to Washington this week.   

Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, sent along with his letter a five-page, single-spaced report prepared by his staff based on visits to Israel and Palestine over the past two years.  It contends that “the Christians community is being crushed in the mill of the bitter Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”  The Israeli security wall and expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the report continues, “are irreversibly damaging the dwindling Christian community.”

This issue was not on the agenda of the Bush-Olmert talks.  There is no sign that Bush studied the House report or even that it made its way through an unsympathetic National Security Council staff into his hands.  But Hyde’s concern is shared by important members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.  Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the new papal nuncio in Washington, represented the Vatican in Jerusalem for the past eight years and realizes the plight of the Christians there.  So does Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the retiring archbishop of Washington, who recently went to the Holy Land to experience conditions there firsthand.   

Hyde has been trying to get the attention of the Bush administration – and the world – since 2004, when he wrote Secretary of State Colin Powell expressing concern about Israeli policy.  In 2005 Hyde took up the issue personally with Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres.  At age 82, in his 32nd and last year in Congress, he is making what may be his final effort to get the president interested in what happens to less than 2 percent of Israel’s population.   

Since his letter to Powell two years ago, Hyde wrote to Bush, “the situation has significantly worsened.”  While backing Israel’s “need to defend itself,” he called it “important that United States support for Israel not be perceived as involving the affirmation of injustice.”   

Hyde’s committee report employs stronger language than the congressman has used previously.  It calls for insistence that Israel “honor its pledge to stop settlement expansion” and suggests that the security barrier is “a pretext for annexing territory.”   

The report rejects the widespread impression that the Olmert regime really is abandoning the West Bank and disbanding the settlements.  The report says that “the Bethlehem area is home to over 20 Israeli settlements and there are plans to build more.  The settlements and the barrier completely encircle the Christian triangle of Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour (Shepherd’s Field).”  In addition to causing housing and land shortages, “this construction physically obstructs the Bethlehem community from its spiritual, cultural and economic lifeline in Jerusalem.”   

Furthermore, the report contends that “fundamentalist” settlers in East Jerusalem “intend to establish their own brand of Jewish exclusivity” and have “Messianic aspirations on the Temple Mount.”  That “undermines” the stability of Jerusalem as a future shared capital of Israel and Palestine, which is described as “vital” to U.S. interests in a two-state solution.   

Even as the new Israeli prime minister arrived in Washington, his government was taking unilateral steps affecting Palestine.  On Sunday it was announced in Israel that the Defense Ministry has approved the expansion of four settlements in the West Bank.  On Tuesday the Israeli Supreme Court approved a security wall route running between Beit Arieh, Ofarim and the village of Aboud, an early center of Christianity.

“It would be helpful,” the Hyde report says, “if the United States Government committed itself to working with the Israeli government to end support for and prevent the establishment of new realities on the ground, which complicate a negotiated solution over Jerusalem, destroy its multicultural identity and constitute an increase in the political volatility of the city.”  But will George W. Bush be that helpful?

Living and Dying in Terra Sancta

by Rev. R. Adam Forno

Rev. Adam Forno is an American Parish priest at St. Joseph Parish, 1620 Third St. Rensselaer, N.Y. 12144. He stayed in the Holy Land for an entire month. He wrote to us from the Holy Land about what he have seen.

Before the altar of a modest but decorative parish church in Beit Jala, which sits atop an adjacent hill with a breathtaking view of Bethlehem, stands a small statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is June 1997.

This image that once powerfully spoke to generations of Catholic immigrants to the United States of America, who like Jesus were wounded, cursed and often crucified, has lost its power for Americans today.

Lost with this image is the sense that since God, in Christ Jesus, can endure such great suffering then so can we who bear is name. Lost too, are both the sense that God is near and the courage to look suffering in the face and hold it in the heart of Christ.

Nine years earlier, upon my first return from Terra Santa (the Holy Land), I could be found for two weeks kneeling and weeping before the Blessed Sacrament of Christ the King Church in Guilderland where I was an associate pastor. Images of that first pilgrimage were burned into my consciousness. Among the images of my visit to the holy sites were the scenes of abject poverty, massive oppression, collective punishment, radical fear and the tragic losses endured, in particular, by the Christians of this region. Among the many losses were human life in death, a quality of life in economic deprivation, along with a loss of a sense of personhood and national identity.

Troubled by my tears and these many images, and the thought I may be "losing my mind", I sought the perspective of my spiritual director. He told me that I had had a "conversion experience"; that I had encountered the living God in the faces of the people of the Holy Land. This nearness to God was experienced vicariously through the many glimpses I had of the Palestinian people, the Christians in particular, who dared to look suffering in the face and survive. I have returned for a thirty day stay to once again glimpse suffering in the face and there encounter God.

Behind the walls of a forty-four bed hospital called St. Louis, close to the New Gate of the Old City Jerusalem, one can experience, if only for a brief moment, how Moslems, Jews and Christians together face suffering and death. St. Louis is a hospice for persons with advanced disease (terminal illness is not a phrase used here). St. Louis Hospital is equivalent to the Community Hospice Inn at St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany (formerly St. Peter’s Hospice Inn). Sponsored by a group of religious women, the Sisters of St. Joseph, from France, St. Louis Hospital becomes a final home for the people of the three monotheistic faiths who share this sacred land.

St. Louis is a soulful place in an ancient fortress-like building, with a dedicated staff of Jewish doctors, Jewish and Arab registered and practical nurses and scores of volunteers from all three faiths. It is here that one could find a Moslem offering a Jew a cup of tea or an embrace as a gesture of comfort and compassion in the face of suffering and death. Here, for those who choose, one can look suffering in the face and be near to God. In this modestly sized hospice program, the only one with such a mission in all of Terra Sancta ( there is no home care component) we can catch a glimpse of the peace that God intends for all of us. Unfortunately, however, once one steps out into the streets of Jerusalem, and beyond, suffering continues without this kind of compassion.

I bought a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice from a young Palestinian Moslem man near Gethsemane. He recently graduated from a four year nursing program but cannot find a job. A Christian man from the territories who takes videos of weddings, baptisms, and the like, wishes to pass into Jerusalem to video his friend’s daughter’s wedding. At the checkpoint into Jerusalem, it is demanded, by the Israeli authorities that he pay a 70% VAT tax to pass. He cannot afford to pass into Jerusalem and video the wedding. Also, at this checkpoint between Jerusalem and Bethlehem one can see dozens of Palestinian men sitting under the watchful eyes of the Israeli police. With hands behind their backs, in punishment for trying to cross over in Jerusalem for a day’s work so as to simply feed their families, they sit and wait for hours in the heat of the day before being released.

A Christian-Catholic lawyer from Beit Sahour cannot obtain the permission from the Israeli authorities to visit the sacred shrines or friends in Jerusalem . It was easier for him to recently take a vacation in the U.S.A. than go to Jerusalem ten miles from his home. A Christian family I know from Bethlehem did manage to obtain a one-day pass into Jerusalem so as to continue on to a family picnic near the sea. They were lucky that day.

Perhaps one of the most dramatic examples of daily dying, by attacks upon the dignity of persons, is the story of young woman in Hebron. She discovered an Israeli soldier urinating in her water tank atop the roof of her home which is her only source of water. Upon confronting him she was arrested for disorderly conduct. When she was brought to the police station she issued a complaint against him and was told by the head officer that she should simply wash out the tank.

These are but a few glimpses of the lives of the Palestinians who still face the suffering of separation from past roots and a hope for a dignified future. Nine years later, on my fifth and most extensive pilgrimage, I have sought to experience once again what it is that sustains a people in the face of such multiple losses as they continue to face personal, religious and socio-economic death. Perhaps in the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in that humble parish church, I have found my greatest clue. Perhaps, at least for the Arab Christians, it is in finding solace in the human heart of God, the sacred heart of Jesus, who like Himself experienced the pain of daily living and dying in this place of our redemption that has come to be known as "Terra Sancta".

Jesus and the separation fence

Even some US conservatives are now condemning the West Bank security fence
Ofer Shelah

Since Condoleezza Rice visited Israel for the first time during the first Bush administration and announced some US reservations about the security fence, the Americans have been virtually silent on the matter. The White House's automatic support, which stems both from its evangelical Christian, Israel-supporting electoral base and a rising animosity for the Palestinians, is understood hereto be obvious.

There is almost no American voice in the international and legal circles discussing the fence's route, and in Jerusalem, the American voice is just about the only one that counts for anything. Israel is not too worried what the "rich uncle" will say about the fence.

It is well known that Israeli governments treat US assertions with great respect; not only with regard to what we can do, but also with regard to whether or not we are right.

A different voice

Last week, another voice snuck into this ideal. Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, sent a stinging letter to President Bush, criticizing Israel's fence policy, as well as Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem.

Hyde is one of the most senior Republicans in Congress and a staunch supporter of the president. His main concern is certainly not the Palestinians: The main thrust behind his effort is to protect Christian residents. It is worthwhile paying close attention to his words, especially considering the fact that he has a lot of influence in the establishment.

Hyde writes that Israel's actions "go beyond the realm of legitimate security concerns and have negative consequences on communities and lands under their occupation," places such as Bethlehem and Beit Jala. He writes of the difficulties Christian residents have reaching holy sites such as a result of the security fence.

"We fail to understand," he writes, "how the route of the security fence in Jerusalem, which creates an impassible barrier between two regions fundamental to the Christian faith – the birth of Jesus (Bethlehem) and his resurrection (Jerusalem) and imprisons 200,000 Palestinians on the Israeli side will improve Israel's security."

Fundamentalist East Jerusalem

Nor does Hyde limit himself to the security fence. He also talks about accelerated purchases of homes in East Jerusalem by "fundamentalist settlers in East Jerusalem who "intend to establish their own brand of Jewish exclusivity" and have "Messianic aspirations on the Temple Mount."

"The settlements in the barrier completely encircle the Christian triangle of Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour (Shepherds' Field)," he writes.

Hyde's letter is based on reports issued by several American-Catholic groups who have visited Israel in recent years. He is not alone. His letter found its way to influential conservative columnist Robert Novak, who quoted it extensively in his column in the Chicago Sun Tribune over the weekend.

Like Hyde, Novak is a staunch supporter of President Bush. But neither he nor the politicians who made sure he had a copy of Hyde's letter are buying Israel's explanation, as if the justified need for security justifies any and all Israeli crimes.

Bush, whose political standing is at an all-time low, needs his electoral base more now than he ever has. Hyde is Catholic, not evangelical, but he is an inseparable part of this base. He is close to people like him, and his eyes have been opened to the suffering of Christian Arabs. But don't be surprised if his voice changes something about the automatic US support for anything Israel decides with regard to the security fence.

[Amianthus]

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