The Israeli news agency Hareetz is carrying a story today about the door of a Christian monastery being lit on fire. Some of my friends would expect this to be from Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Egypt. It's not. It's from Latrun on the border of Israel and Palestine, land claimed by Israel as a result of the '67 war between it and most of its neighbors.
The arsonists left "graffiti tags" - markings similar to what a gang does - linking the attack and the recent eviction of an illegal Israeli settlement in Migron, West Bank. In essence, those tags were used to indicate to the community that breaking down illegal Israeli settlements will end up in retribution to the civilian society.
According to Hareetz, the settlement was "established through deceit, without a permit, and on privately-owned Palestinian land," without the owner's permission, "dispossess[ing] the land's rightful owners for more than a decade." The tags can be seen below and Hareetz says they translate to "Jesus is a pig" and "Migron."
The government of Israel apparently went through a period of dissociative identity disorder (sometimes called multiple personalities) where the justice branch ordered the eviction and restoration of rights for about a decade while the executive branch provided "generous assistance" to the settlers.
For Migron, it took intervention by an Israeli NGO, Peace Now, to help restore the rights of the landowners.
The graffiti alone might not be enough to tie Migron to the attacks on the Latrun Monastery - Google maps tells me Latrun is about 25.5km to the west of Jerusalem while The National tells me Migron is 15km north of Jerusalem, but thankfully there's an asshat who was willing to tie it all together. According to the Hareetz article on the attack, "Baruch Marzel, a right-wing activist, connected the attack to the evacuation of Migron. 'We said that evacuating Migron could fan the flames. There’s an entire community that feels very bitter,' said Marzel."
It's not the first "price tag" attack against Christian churches, either. "'In February, similar anti-Christian graffiti was found sprayed on the walls of the Greek church at a monastery in Jerusalem’s Valley of the Cross, and a Baptist Church in central Jerusalem. In both incidents, the graffiti included phrases such as 'Jesus is dead,' 'Death to Christians,' 'Mary is a prostitute,' and 'price tag.'"
Yes, in response to being forced to comply with the law, the response has apparently been to threaten death to Christians. It's been to desecrate the walls of Christian holy sites and to set them on fire. As I said on facebook when I first saw this story, "I know Jesus would forgive but I just want to say f*** off." I know it's not very Christian of me, but sometimes my not-very-Christian self wins. But, I'll get back to the Christian-ness of it all in a second. I'm going to handle the legal part first.
In response to the Migron eviction, Bejanmin Netanyahu echoed these multiple personalities of the Israeli government for the last ten years: "We are committed to respecting the rule of law and we are committed to strengthening the settlement enterprise."
To which I have to ask: how can you be committed to the rule of law and simultaneously committed to perpetuating illegal actions?
Now I tend to tread carefully when I wade into Israel-Palestine publicly because experience tells me that no matter what I say I can simultaneously be labelled pro-Israel and anti-Semitic, pro-Palestine and anti-Arab. Let's be clear: criticizing the government policies of Israel is not anti-Semitic. If I can be pro-American (and I am; I love my homeland) and criticize both the Bush and Obama administrations, I can criticize the Israeli government without being anti-Israel or anti-Semitic (and I do disagree with MLK, Jr., as to whether being anti-Israel is the same thing as being anti-Semitic; as it happens, I'm neither, but I don't think the two are tied as much as people like to make them). But, literally having one conversation and being called both anti-Palestinian and anti-Semitic can sting a person - particularly a white American woman who likes to be culturally sensitive - almost into submission.
But I know that's what they want - and by "they" I mean everyone who has a stake in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. This includes leaders and religious / nationalistic zealots on both sides of the line. So, I'm going to wade anyhow.
The Israeli settlements in the OPT are illegal. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. Israel (as a government) likes to play a little international law loophole-ing - think G. W. Bush administration's classification of waterboarding as something other than torture - and claim that since the OPT did not have a "sovereign" before the 1967 conflict, then it's not actual "occupation" and therefore the settlements aren't illegal.
To explain a little further, international law forbids an occupying force from establishing settlements, permanently altering the borders or permanently taking land from the occupied territory. There are a slew of other protections for those in occupations, mostly contained in the Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a party. But, the definition of occupied land is land that previously belonged to another state. As Israel is fond of pointing out, Palestine was never a state. It was a territory of the British government, who in the half-assed manner in which they left countries during their "decolonization period," left Palestine when the 1948 agreement became too complicated. In doing so, they had followed through on the establishment of Israel but not on the establishment of the other state, Palestine. So, in the Israeli government's reasoning, no previous sovereign = no occupation = no illegality to the settlements.
Except here's the rub, Israel. It doesn't really matter if the OPT had a previous sovereign. Successive UN Security Council resolutions have, in various ways, ordered Israel to stop building the settlements. Those resolutions are often invoked in subsequent resolutions and it's pretty much settled by the UN Security Council that settlements are illegal and must stop. That they violate the 4th Geneva Convention, even taking into account Israel's legal arguments. As a member of the UN, Israel has "agree[d] to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter" (article 25). That means even the ones they don't like.
More importantly - and thankfully something the Hareetz editorial on this issue points out - Israel itself has agreed to stop the settlements through the '93 Oslo Accords. Yes, it's true that the question of Israeli settlements - meaning those already established in 1993 - was to be decided by subsequent agreement. But, Israel recognized the right of Palestine to self-governance over the OPT. It agreed to withdraw its troops and to cede jurisdiction over the area. In recognizing sovereignty and self-government of OPT, it means that Israel has no further justification or legal claim to establishing settlements without the agreement of the Palestinian government. None. And, of course, Migron was, along with 23 other settlements, established after Sharon's election in 2001, well after the '93 accords.
Of course, Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down by a fanatic, and the Second Intifada started, and Oslo fell out of favor with both Palestinians and Israelis. but falling out of favor is not the same thing as the government repudiating or suspending the agreements. You don't get to say "we're not abiding by the law" just because it's unpopular. Otherwise, there's no point to having a law.
So, Netanyahu cannot simultaneously be committed to settlements and to the rule of law. He has to choose one or the other.
Now, turning back to that Monastery in Latrun... It appears those responsible decided that since they were criminals (or supporting criminals), they'd go ahead and take it a step further and become terrorists. And yes, I intentionally used the word because that's what it is: terrorism. It's the intentional targeting of a civilian place of worship in an attempt to manipulate the government or society into doing what you want through intimidation and fear. It's terrorism. Plain and simple.
And Baruch Marzel, the right-wing guy Hareetz quoted, is encouraging that terrorism. He is, quite literally, a terrorist-lover (as opposed to those of us who think even terrorists get the right not to be tortured, which I think is being a law-lover, not a terrorist-lover).
I do feel the need here to put in an aside pointing out that I know many Israelis who do not condone these acts, and others who do not condone the settlements at all. Just like Christians and Muslims have terrorists who claim to be acting on behalf of the faith but are really acting on behalf of their own egos and political aspirations, so does Judaism and these are is. Not all Israelis and not all Jews should be considered responsible for these acts. But Baruch Marzel and his ilk should be.
And this is what drives me insane about the evangelical movement in the US (let me say that I am a born-again, evangelical Christian so it's not an indictment of all evangelical Christians; just the movement as a movement). For some unexplainable reason - which, according to multiple news reports about 5 years ago is actually explainable in that people think they're helping the Second Coming of Christ (as if someone who is omnipotent and all-powerful needs that kind of assistance) - the evangelical Christian community in the US regularly supports the concept of Israeli settlements.
They take little trips once a year with 20 people on a bus and go and visit an Israeli "outpost" and learn about the religiousness of the settlers and about the plight they have (i.e., having to fight off mean, scary Arabs who want their land back and want to push them from the land God Himself offered the settlers. And live without malls or entertainment venues. I don't know why but every time I see settlements discussed on US TV and by US evangelicals, the distance between the settlement and the nearest shopping / entertainment venue is discussed. It's really bizarre.).
They go to the church at Bethlehem to pray and maybe they meet a single Palestinian there, but mostly they just shuffle on and shuffle off their tourist buses. They don't really meet Palestinians and they definitely don't meet the Palestinian landowners who were dispossessed from their land for the settlements. In doing so, they miss out on actually meeting their Christian brothers and sisters who are harmed by the occupation and the settlements.
Yet, Christian Palestinians do suffer from the occupation, and not just as a consequence of other disputes, like the retribution at Latrun or the threat to kill Christians left at the Greek and bapitist churches and the Valley of the Cross monastery.
Even with a rather light touch on the problems of Palestinian Christians, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren called the 60 Minutes' piece was a hatchet job, without having ever seen it because he made the complaint before it even aired! Subsequent to his complaint - and still before the story aired - he was interviewed and said something I still don't understand:
The truth is our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ are being discriminated against. They suffer every day under the occupation, while those in the US who claim to know and love Christ - who claim to feel a special connection to Bethlehem every year at Christmas - ignore their suffering. We praise the Israeli government for actions we should be condemning, and we encourage settlements that simply thrust our brothers and sisters into poverty and physical harm.
I don't think we should cherish one human being over another simply because of their religion, but Christians are admonished to pray for the persecuted in our faith. We are supposed to love them and support them and encourage their faith and their development. Instead, too many evangelical Christians in the US unthinkingly support the occupation and Israel's expansion into the territory, which is not just causing individual harm to individual Christians, but it's actually forcing Christians to flee the area, diminishing the Church's presence in its very holiest of lands.
It makes me sick and angry.
Now, I have to say this, which is a bit unrelated: I learned of this incident because I am very fortunate to be friends with Ziya Meral, a Turkish writer and researcher based in London, who fills my newsfeed up every day with stories like this. Much like how I let Jon Stewart find interesting and under-discussed US news for me, and then supplement the Daily Show with online newspapers, I pretty much do the same thing on the Middle East and freedom of religion issues by following Ziya's tweets and then supplementing that.
If you're interested in the Middle East - its politics, its people, its stories - or in issues relating to freedom of religion ("FOR"), I highly encourage you to like Ziya on facebook and follow him on twitter (yes, I linked to his twitter again in case you were too lazy to go back!). He also shares up sometimes hilarious, non-Mid-East / FOR stuff, too, so if you don't care about the Middle East / FOR, you may still want to follow him.
The arsonists left "graffiti tags" - markings similar to what a gang does - linking the attack and the recent eviction of an illegal Israeli settlement in Migron, West Bank. In essence, those tags were used to indicate to the community that breaking down illegal Israeli settlements will end up in retribution to the civilian society.
According to Hareetz, the settlement was "established through deceit, without a permit, and on privately-owned Palestinian land," without the owner's permission, "dispossess[ing] the land's rightful owners for more than a decade." The tags can be seen below and Hareetz says they translate to "Jesus is a pig" and "Migron."
 |
| From AFP at Hareetz |
For Migron, it took intervention by an Israeli NGO, Peace Now, to help restore the rights of the landowners.
The graffiti alone might not be enough to tie Migron to the attacks on the Latrun Monastery - Google maps tells me Latrun is about 25.5km to the west of Jerusalem while The National tells me Migron is 15km north of Jerusalem, but thankfully there's an asshat who was willing to tie it all together. According to the Hareetz article on the attack, "Baruch Marzel, a right-wing activist, connected the attack to the evacuation of Migron. 'We said that evacuating Migron could fan the flames. There’s an entire community that feels very bitter,' said Marzel."
It's not the first "price tag" attack against Christian churches, either. "'In February, similar anti-Christian graffiti was found sprayed on the walls of the Greek church at a monastery in Jerusalem’s Valley of the Cross, and a Baptist Church in central Jerusalem. In both incidents, the graffiti included phrases such as 'Jesus is dead,' 'Death to Christians,' 'Mary is a prostitute,' and 'price tag.'"
Yes, in response to being forced to comply with the law, the response has apparently been to threaten death to Christians. It's been to desecrate the walls of Christian holy sites and to set them on fire. As I said on facebook when I first saw this story, "I know Jesus would forgive but I just want to say f*** off." I know it's not very Christian of me, but sometimes my not-very-Christian self wins. But, I'll get back to the Christian-ness of it all in a second. I'm going to handle the legal part first.
In response to the Migron eviction, Bejanmin Netanyahu echoed these multiple personalities of the Israeli government for the last ten years: "We are committed to respecting the rule of law and we are committed to strengthening the settlement enterprise."
To which I have to ask: how can you be committed to the rule of law and simultaneously committed to perpetuating illegal actions?
Now I tend to tread carefully when I wade into Israel-Palestine publicly because experience tells me that no matter what I say I can simultaneously be labelled pro-Israel and anti-Semitic, pro-Palestine and anti-Arab. Let's be clear: criticizing the government policies of Israel is not anti-Semitic. If I can be pro-American (and I am; I love my homeland) and criticize both the Bush and Obama administrations, I can criticize the Israeli government without being anti-Israel or anti-Semitic (and I do disagree with MLK, Jr., as to whether being anti-Israel is the same thing as being anti-Semitic; as it happens, I'm neither, but I don't think the two are tied as much as people like to make them). But, literally having one conversation and being called both anti-Palestinian and anti-Semitic can sting a person - particularly a white American woman who likes to be culturally sensitive - almost into submission.
But I know that's what they want - and by "they" I mean everyone who has a stake in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. This includes leaders and religious / nationalistic zealots on both sides of the line. So, I'm going to wade anyhow.
The Israeli settlements in the OPT are illegal. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. Israel (as a government) likes to play a little international law loophole-ing - think G. W. Bush administration's classification of waterboarding as something other than torture - and claim that since the OPT did not have a "sovereign" before the 1967 conflict, then it's not actual "occupation" and therefore the settlements aren't illegal.
To explain a little further, international law forbids an occupying force from establishing settlements, permanently altering the borders or permanently taking land from the occupied territory. There are a slew of other protections for those in occupations, mostly contained in the Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a party. But, the definition of occupied land is land that previously belonged to another state. As Israel is fond of pointing out, Palestine was never a state. It was a territory of the British government, who in the half-assed manner in which they left countries during their "decolonization period," left Palestine when the 1948 agreement became too complicated. In doing so, they had followed through on the establishment of Israel but not on the establishment of the other state, Palestine. So, in the Israeli government's reasoning, no previous sovereign = no occupation = no illegality to the settlements.
Except here's the rub, Israel. It doesn't really matter if the OPT had a previous sovereign. Successive UN Security Council resolutions have, in various ways, ordered Israel to stop building the settlements. Those resolutions are often invoked in subsequent resolutions and it's pretty much settled by the UN Security Council that settlements are illegal and must stop. That they violate the 4th Geneva Convention, even taking into account Israel's legal arguments. As a member of the UN, Israel has "agree[d] to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter" (article 25). That means even the ones they don't like.
More importantly - and thankfully something the Hareetz editorial on this issue points out - Israel itself has agreed to stop the settlements through the '93 Oslo Accords. Yes, it's true that the question of Israeli settlements - meaning those already established in 1993 - was to be decided by subsequent agreement. But, Israel recognized the right of Palestine to self-governance over the OPT. It agreed to withdraw its troops and to cede jurisdiction over the area. In recognizing sovereignty and self-government of OPT, it means that Israel has no further justification or legal claim to establishing settlements without the agreement of the Palestinian government. None. And, of course, Migron was, along with 23 other settlements, established after Sharon's election in 2001, well after the '93 accords.
Of course, Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down by a fanatic, and the Second Intifada started, and Oslo fell out of favor with both Palestinians and Israelis. but falling out of favor is not the same thing as the government repudiating or suspending the agreements. You don't get to say "we're not abiding by the law" just because it's unpopular. Otherwise, there's no point to having a law.
So, Netanyahu cannot simultaneously be committed to settlements and to the rule of law. He has to choose one or the other.
Now, turning back to that Monastery in Latrun... It appears those responsible decided that since they were criminals (or supporting criminals), they'd go ahead and take it a step further and become terrorists. And yes, I intentionally used the word because that's what it is: terrorism. It's the intentional targeting of a civilian place of worship in an attempt to manipulate the government or society into doing what you want through intimidation and fear. It's terrorism. Plain and simple.
And Baruch Marzel, the right-wing guy Hareetz quoted, is encouraging that terrorism. He is, quite literally, a terrorist-lover (as opposed to those of us who think even terrorists get the right not to be tortured, which I think is being a law-lover, not a terrorist-lover).
I do feel the need here to put in an aside pointing out that I know many Israelis who do not condone these acts, and others who do not condone the settlements at all. Just like Christians and Muslims have terrorists who claim to be acting on behalf of the faith but are really acting on behalf of their own egos and political aspirations, so does Judaism and these are is. Not all Israelis and not all Jews should be considered responsible for these acts. But Baruch Marzel and his ilk should be.
And this is what drives me insane about the evangelical movement in the US (let me say that I am a born-again, evangelical Christian so it's not an indictment of all evangelical Christians; just the movement as a movement). For some unexplainable reason - which, according to multiple news reports about 5 years ago is actually explainable in that people think they're helping the Second Coming of Christ (as if someone who is omnipotent and all-powerful needs that kind of assistance) - the evangelical Christian community in the US regularly supports the concept of Israeli settlements.
They take little trips once a year with 20 people on a bus and go and visit an Israeli "outpost" and learn about the religiousness of the settlers and about the plight they have (i.e., having to fight off mean, scary Arabs who want their land back and want to push them from the land God Himself offered the settlers. And live without malls or entertainment venues. I don't know why but every time I see settlements discussed on US TV and by US evangelicals, the distance between the settlement and the nearest shopping / entertainment venue is discussed. It's really bizarre.).
They go to the church at Bethlehem to pray and maybe they meet a single Palestinian there, but mostly they just shuffle on and shuffle off their tourist buses. They don't really meet Palestinians and they definitely don't meet the Palestinian landowners who were dispossessed from their land for the settlements. In doing so, they miss out on actually meeting their Christian brothers and sisters who are harmed by the occupation and the settlements.
Yet, Christian Palestinians do suffer from the occupation, and not just as a consequence of other disputes, like the retribution at Latrun or the threat to kill Christians left at the Greek and bapitist churches and the Valley of the Cross monastery.
Christians do not have a "right of return" to Israel. Neither do Palestinians. Only Jewish people have a "right of return" to Israel. This is a legal reality. So the Christians present in Israel and Palestine are those who predate 1948. There are likely also Christian converts, but this appears to make up a small percentage of Christians present in the two areas.
Principally, Palestinian Christians are of Arab ethnicity and face the same restraints and problems as other Palestinians. This means, amongst other things, that their travel is limited, and as a result many Christians in the area can't visit Jerusalem to see the holy sites there. So if you're an American Christian, you have greater rights of pilgrimage to visit a site thousands of miles away than if that of a Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem. Think about it: from my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, it is 5983 miles (9626.65 km). From my friend's hometown of Bethlehem to Jerusalem it is only 5 miles (8.05 km). Yet, I am more entitled - and somewhat more likely! - to celebrate Easter at a holy site in Jerusalem than my brothers and sisters from Bethlehem.
60 Minutes recently highlighted this on a news segment (I've only read the transcript of the segment; I haven't watched it). But the 60 Minutes story was a bit naive and factually wrong. It claimed:
Christianity may have been born in the Middle East, but Arab Christians have never had it easy there, especially not today. In Iraq and Egypt, scores of churches have been attacked, hundreds murdered. In Syria, revolution seriously threatens Christian communities. The one place where Christians are not suffering from violence is the Holy Land: but Palestinian Christians have been leaving in large numbers for years.Christians aren't immune from the violence being perpetrated in Israel and Palestine. And Palestinian Christians aren't immune from the violence being directed at their Palestinian Muslim neighbors. Their land is being taken for settlement. They are being detained, tortured and killed for protesting the occupation or settlements. They suffer for the same reason: their claimed nationality and ethnicity. And, apparently, when someone wants to lash out at the Palestinians, it's easy to go ahead and burn the door of a Monastery in response.
Even with a rather light touch on the problems of Palestinian Christians, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren called the 60 Minutes' piece was a hatchet job, without having ever seen it because he made the complaint before it even aired! Subsequent to his complaint - and still before the story aired - he was interviewed and said something I still don't understand:
It seemed to me outrageous. Completely incomprehensible that at a time when these communities, Christian communities throughout the Middle East are being oppressed and massacred, when churches are being burnt, when one of the great stories in history is unfolding? I think it's-- I think it's-- I think you got me a little bit mystified.So, the argument is that since churches are being threatened and burned in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere we should care about a little discrimination against our brothers and sisters in Palestine? Do we get to care now that the Monastery at Latrun was burned?
The truth is our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ are being discriminated against. They suffer every day under the occupation, while those in the US who claim to know and love Christ - who claim to feel a special connection to Bethlehem every year at Christmas - ignore their suffering. We praise the Israeli government for actions we should be condemning, and we encourage settlements that simply thrust our brothers and sisters into poverty and physical harm.
I don't think we should cherish one human being over another simply because of their religion, but Christians are admonished to pray for the persecuted in our faith. We are supposed to love them and support them and encourage their faith and their development. Instead, too many evangelical Christians in the US unthinkingly support the occupation and Israel's expansion into the territory, which is not just causing individual harm to individual Christians, but it's actually forcing Christians to flee the area, diminishing the Church's presence in its very holiest of lands.
It makes me sick and angry.
Now, I have to say this, which is a bit unrelated: I learned of this incident because I am very fortunate to be friends with Ziya Meral, a Turkish writer and researcher based in London, who fills my newsfeed up every day with stories like this. Much like how I let Jon Stewart find interesting and under-discussed US news for me, and then supplement the Daily Show with online newspapers, I pretty much do the same thing on the Middle East and freedom of religion issues by following Ziya's tweets and then supplementing that.
If you're interested in the Middle East - its politics, its people, its stories - or in issues relating to freedom of religion ("FOR"), I highly encourage you to like Ziya on facebook and follow him on twitter (yes, I linked to his twitter again in case you were too lazy to go back!). He also shares up sometimes hilarious, non-Mid-East / FOR stuff, too, so if you don't care about the Middle East / FOR, you may still want to follow him.
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