For whoever is still looking...
I am a bit reluctant to write another post about a travel adventure: as if events in our lives here Stateside were unnoteworthy, and foreign trips are our prereq for posting. If that is the case, then this blog has a sorry future. Hopefully a happy medium can be found between this blog doing what Chelsey's plants do (presumably, die for lack of attention) and what my plants do (die from over-watering).I am working as a chaplain at a hospital in Trenton, NJ, for the summer, and I could say a lot about that. But for now I want to post briefly about a ten-day trip to Israel and the West Bank, from which I have recently returned. The trip was privately led by a faculty member from the CCCU's American Studies Program in Washington, DC, where I spent my last undergrad semester. True to ASP form, the focus was on balance and hearing the widest possible variety of perspectives on the political situation. The biggest, but also most rewarding,
challenge was to understand the viewpoint of people I violently disagreed with (and there were a few of those). My group had three or four briefings a day with various NGO's (Liberal, Conservative, Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Druzze), a member of the Knesset (Israeli parliament), Palestinian Authority ministers in Ramallah (even one from Hamas, recently arrested), crossing checkpoints, multiple bag-searches and security interrogations at Ben Gurion Airport, visits to settlements and refugee camps, overnights with families, Israeli parents of suicide-bombing victims, and Palestinians who had been shot by Israeli soldiers as nine-year-olds, not to mention the odd bit of tourist stuff thrown in there. The three highlights, for me, were a visit to a Palestinian Muslim family in Beit Umar (West Bank, near Bethlehem), bar-hopping in Jerusalem with Israeli twenty-somethings, and a post-service Shabbat dinner with an Orthodox Jewish family. I could write a huge blog entry on all of this, needless to say, but I'll leave it brief.
By way of explanation for these two photos, it is customary for people to write prayers on slips of paper and stick them between the cracks in the Western Wall of the Temple Mount (only bit the Romans didn't destroy). You can see me doing that above. I thought it appropriate to do the same when my group stopped at a portion of the separation wall which Israel is busy putting up along and inside the border with the West Bank. Graffiti out of the picture to my left read "No to another Waling Wall."I am not sure where people stand on the Isreli-Palestinian conflict, and I have no intention of being polemical. For the record, I think the injustice suffered by the two peoples is inversely proportional to their military capabilities. But there is no black-and-white distinction between good guys and bad guys possible here, and there are both good people and thuggish extremists on both sides. I will say that our visits helped me not only to solidify my particular leanings, but also to understand what drives and motivates people on the other side, and to sympathize with them. Even the crazies (and both groups have got them). It is truly tragic to see the kernels of deeply human, and even admirable interest that can drive us to assent to cruelty done in our name. When you fear for the lives of your children, and want them protected, it is easier to ignore it when other people's kids are killed in the process.
I strongly urge you all to go someday. Despite news reports of the situation heating up, I did not once feel unsafe when I was over there (of course we weren't anywhere near Gaza). The violence is not so random and unpredictable as our
new media often depicts. If something is going to go down, you'll usually see it coming if you read the newspaper. As long as Hamas's moratorium on suicide bombings holds...Icing on the cake, I had a long lay-over in London on the way back, and got to have a quick pub lunch with our friend Nicole. She even assented to having our picture posted. Here's to our next reunion being in England!
Cheers,
Zack
posted by Zack @ 7/02/2006 07:33:00 PM
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