GALILEE
Mosaic of
Mary from Thailand
Basilica of the Annunciation,
Nazareth
THE ZEALOT
IN NAZARETH
We arrived in Nazareth late Saturday afternoon. After a
meal we found a small place to stay in a guest house run
by French sisters near the Basilica of the Annunciation.
Omar wanted to find a place to check his e-mail. We
looked but there was no internet café. We had passed a
café, named Kept, and returned there. It was a
radical’s haven. Radical posters – including
images of Che Guevara – lined the walls. There was
a photo display of the wall.
Omar asked a young man working there if they had a place
to check the internet. The young man showed him the
computer. As Omar checked his e-mail, I sat down to a cup
of tea.
The young man proceeded to quiz me – no harass me
– about the recent US attacks on the city of
Fallujah, in Iraq. “The US is destroying
Fallujah,” he barked at me in English.
I tried to explain that I had joined just a few days
before in a public demonstration in my home town against
the attacks on Fallujah. But he would have none of these
excuses or pleas of innocence – or maybe he just
didn’t understand my English. In addition, he had
had a few too many beers that evening.
As I waited for Omar, he would occasionally pass by my
table and reprimand me for the US’s action in the
Mid East and throughout the world. It was a little
uncomfortable.
But am I guilty, or at least complicit, – since I
have not spoken up as I should have in the face of the
atrocities in Iraq – and in so many other places
throughout the world?
Omar finished his e-mail. We spoke and shared two Taybeh
beers and then left for the hostel where we were staying.
Omar later told me that the other workers in the café
were somewhat embarrassed by this young man’s
alcohol-induced behavior. They had been trying to get him
to stop badgering me.
As I look back, his badgering was a blessing. I have
experienced some of the passion and anger of a real
zealot. But I also recognize his challenge to my middle
class bourgeois approach in a world of massive injustice.
Appropriately, the café’s name in English is
“Oppression.”
This young man is like many people, overwhelmed by
oppression, full of anger – justified anger,
perhaps, who speak out boldly and at times intemperately.
He is probably like the Zealots of the time of Jesus who
revolted against the Roman empire. Now he is speaking
about the empire he sees in today’s world –
the United States.
Thank you, my young zealot!
Maybe calling the United States an empire seems too
strong? But as I spent more time in Palestine I realized
that this is probably not far from the truth.
The day before I had spent a half hour with a Catholic
priest in a town in the West Bank. One of his first
remarks was that we need to evangelize our politics in
the US. The US seems to have its own vocabulary –
and it’s all about US interests.
But his most poignant question to me, and to us in the
US, was “How can you hold the Gospel in one hand
and act like the Roman empire?”
* * *
* *
EMPIRE
“Iraq has made it clear that there is an empire,
and that today’s empire is the United States. It
imposes its will on the whole planet, with immense power.
Its mystique is its triumph over all others, with cruel
selfishness and in every sphere of reality: an economy
with no thought for the oikos [the household]; an arms
industry with no thought for life; international trade
under iniquitous rules with no thought for fairness; the
destruction of nature with no thought for Mother Earth;
manipulated and false information with not thought for
the truth; a cruel war with no thought for the living and
the dead; contempt for international law and human rights
in Guantánamo—and most shamelessly in Abu Ghraib,
with the mounting flood of obscene photographs showing
that shame is steadily disappearing in the West.
“…the empire may succeed in imposing on all
humanity its own version of their reality, their dignity,
their happiness. In this way it poisons the air our
spirit breathes, and condemns the spirit to death. Most
fundamentally it imposes the primacy of the individual
and success as superior ways of being human, and the
selfish and irresponsible enjoyment of life as an
indisputable value.
“…The empire pollutes the atmosphere. That
atmosphere, in short, suffocates, asphyxiates, and
poisons the spirit.”
Jon Sobrino, S.J., Where is God? Earthquake,
Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope
(Orbis Books, 2004), pp. viii-ix
* * *
* *
The Sea of
Galilee from the Mount of the
Beatitudes
THE MOUNT
OF THE BEATITUDES
Near the northern shore of the Lake of Galilee on a small
hill is the Chapel of the Mount of the Beatitudes. On a
beautiful Sunday morning we spent a few hours there, in a
place of great peace.
Just north on the church there are two small almost
triangular areas off the plaza – one with images of
saints, the other with the beatitudes painted in separate
little circles. What is interesting about this piece of
art is that below the beatitudes is a city – the
city as it is now – and above the beatitudes,
emerging out of them, is the New Jerusalem. The
beatitudes offer us the pathway, not just to heaven, as
some would say, but the pathway to living God’s
Kingdom now.
We passed by the chapel where a group of Mexican pilgrims
were celebrating Mass and paused to hear them sing an
alleluia and to hear the beatitudes read in Spanish by
the celebrating bishop.
Then Omar and I went to the southern colonnade around the
church where I quietly read the beatitudes in Spanish,
from the Latin American Bible, and shared my thoughts
with him.
As I read “Happy are they who mourn, for they shall
be comforted,” tears welled up in my eyes. The pain
I had seen, the longing of people for land and for peace,
the sufferings of so many I have been privileged to share
– in El Salvador, in the US, and now in Palestine
– opened a floodgate in me.
And then I read the footnote: “The bible speaks to
us of another people of God [the church]. It is no longer
the people of the twelve tribes with their land, their
language, their frontiers, and their nationalistic
ambitions, but it is the people of those whom God will
seek in the midst of all the nations. And who are these
chosen ones who ought to be consider happy for being
called? They are the poor, those who mourn, those who
have been tempted many times to curse their fate, their
sins, and their own contradictions.”
I do not read this as denying nationhood to Israel but as
a call to solidarity with all the poor and suffering
wherever they may be, a call that is deeply rooted in the
Hebrew Scriptures.
Mosque in
Tiberias
THE KID
WITH THE GUN
The
only way to get easily from Tiberias to Jerusalem was in
an Israeli bus.
The bus station in Tiberias was filled with soldiers with
their M-16s. In Israeli even off duty soldiers carry
their weapons.
As we bought our tickets a bus was pulling out. We rushed
to try to get it, but with no luck.
The presence of M-16s and armed soldiers in the station
did not give me a sense of security. But, then, i am a
pacifist.
When we boarded our bus to Jerusalem, it was not very
crowded and we could find window seats on opposite sides
of the bus. After we had settled in a young boy, dressed
very casually, in sneakers without socks, walked on the
bus and plopped into the seat just in front of Omar.
He looked about 16 years old. But he had an M-16 which he
promptly dropped on the floor of the bus. It hit
Omar’s feet in the seat behind him. Later the kid
propped it up in front of him, curled up on the seat, and
promptly went to sleep. Was he an off-duty soldier or a
settler?
Israel appears to be a very militarized society, with
guns everywhere. I saw Jewish men in civilian clothes
carrying pistols in the Old City of Jerusalem, often as
they accompanied women through the streets. Perhaps they
were settlers guarding a settler woman. There is a real
fear that they will be attacked.
Exiting from a bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem I noticed
that the young woman in civilian clothes next to me was
carrying an M-16.
Yet I did not see a single Palestinian with a weapon in
the West Bank, not even the policemen. There are
undoubtedly weapons there, but they are not obvious. The
attacks by some Palestinians on Jewish settlements and
the suicide bombings do indicate that there are
Palestinians who have and use weapons, often against
civilians.
The presence of so many weapons is meant for security,
but for me it suggested an underlying fear and insecurity
in Israeli society that saddened me. It may also betoken
a belief that weapons can provide real security –
and the more there are the safer one is.
I wonder.