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| "Welcome to Palestine" |
My readers will not be surprised to hear that the
Trump election – and its aftermath of lies, deceit and bad executive orders -
has put me into a deep “funk.” I took
some “time off” to process what has happened and how to keep sane while
fighting against all that this man and his administration represent to me. And now I’m back to the beginning – picking my
fights and using my energy on issues that matter most to me!
For me, this is personal. I'm a lifelong Methodist – and remain such
because I firmly believe in the principles of social justice that the Methodist
church embraces. I've done a lot of
Volunteer in Mission travel, and seen a lot of places where justice is in short
supply, but none of them has impacted me the way that the situation in
Palestine impacted me.
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| Taybeh Checkpoint - Occupied Palestinian Territories |
I tell people that I grew up on the “Exodus Myth”
- I read Diary of Anne Frank and Exodus back-to-back when I was a young
teenager, and saw the film versions of both.
“Of course the Jews deserve a homeland after what they have been
through,” I thought – “and of course that homeland should be the unpopulated
Palestine!”
Fast forward 50 years to 2007, when I heard a
presentation by Sandy Olewine, a former Methodist Liaison to the Holy Land, and
my eyes popped open! Until that time, I
had known nothing of the 1.5 million people who lived in Palestine in 1947, or
of the Nakba, or the Wall. I also did
not know the extent to which my government was supporting Israel – using my tax
dollars to perpetrate the atrocities that the Israeli government was carrying
on.
In 2008, I was one of 80+ participants in a Study
Trip through the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministry (GBGM), which brought together Methodists from a number of countries
to see, first-hand, the situation in Palestine/Israel. I came home determined to learn more – and to
share what I did know as widely as possible.
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| My teammate Esteban monitors a school checkpoint |
A few years later, I learned about the Ecumenical Accompaniment
Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), and, in the spring of 2013, I spent
three months with EAPPI (“dual qualified” as a UMIVIM) in the Palestinian city
of Tulkarm. I lived and worked with
internationals from 13 different countries, with ages ranging from 21-75. I was warned before going that the experience
would be life-changing – and it was!
I spent my time in Tulkarm monitoring checkpoints
– labor, agricultural and school – first, because the theory was that people
(in this case IDF soldiers) would behave better if they were being watched, and
also to document the situation in reports that ultimately ended up with the
United Nations.
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| Waiting at an agricultural checkpoint |
We were also called upon to monitor demonstrations
– not to participate, but, to provide a neutral perspective and to keep things
peaceful. Farmers would call us if their
olive trees were being burned or their crops and livestock stolen. School principals would call us if a school
bus was being detained at a checkpoint.
Sometime we could do something – most of the time we could not. Still, the people were appreciative of our
presence.
In our training, it was drilled in us that we were
neither pro-Palestinian nor pro-Israeli; we were simply pro-peace. But how can there be peace when soldiers are
arresting children in the middle of the night?
Or blocking farmers from accessing their crops, their livelihood?
One day we learned that an elderly shepherd had
been beaten and left for dead. At the
end of the day, his sheep had come home without him and his family went
searching. They found him in his field
and got him to a doctor. Thankfully, he
survived. But, because he was taken to
an Israeli hospital, his family was not allowed to visit him.
One final story.
Toward the end of my stay, we got a call that IDF soldiers had shot some
teenaged boys. Nobody knows exactly what
happened – but two boys died that night, one shot in the back. Needless to say, the families (who we met
later) were devastated!
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| Funeral procession for two boys killed by Israeli soldiers (photo by Adeline Morani) |
Part of being an EA is advocacy – and that's what
I've been doing for the past four years.
There are many organizations working on the human rights issues in
Palestine/Israel, but I knew I had to focus – and I knew my focus would be the
Methodist Church. We have a long history
of working for social justice, of feeding the hungry and sheltering the
homeless. And many Palestinian people
are homeless right now because of the Occupation.
