Holy Week in Palestine
a report from Mary Anne Grady Flores, Ithaca Catholic Workers
Good Friday, March 21,2008
Occupation! I've experienced only a tiny taste of it..as a foreigner. I'm here only a short time and it is making me sick to feel it. I have met many Palestinian Christians and Muslims who've been denied a special 2-3 week permit, by the Israeli government, to visit Jerusalem for the Holy Days of Easter and observance of the Prophet Mohammed's birthday. Thousands of Palestinians cannot travel into Jerusalem as our foreign brothers and sisters do. Jerusalem is flooded with tourists and pilgrams from all over the world, but not the indigenous people...the first Christians, the Palestinians. They have been banned from celebrating the resurrection! Most have not been able to travel to Jerusalem for years!
I met some US pilgrams where I was staying who knew nothing about the Israeli occupation, nothing of the apartheid wall, nothing about the rejection of permits or of check points. I recall the scripture of Isaiah that Jesus read in the temple before he was arrested, "I will give sight to the blind, heal the lame, give liberty to the captives". He declared that the scripture has been fulfilled in their midst. Last night I went to the Church of All Nations, built at the garden of Gethsemanie where the Jesus sweat blood knowing he'd be betrayed and cruxified. The service was said in many languages. Not one word was spoken of the broken body of God's people here and now....of our brothers and sisters here in Palestine living under occupation. Talk about betrayal! We processed to the church built where Jesus was brought before the high priests and tortured.
So the pilgram goes home knowing nothing of the 9,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons or the torture committed in the prisons, paid for by the US. Talk about blindness! How is the church embodying Christ's message? How are the words of Isaiah being enfleshed as Jesus did? He asked us to follow Him and do the same. Our silence as a church and as a people does not celebrate the resurrection. We become collaborators through our silence and we betray our brother Jesus once again.
I had been in the south in the 6,000 year old city of Hebron where Abraham and Sarah are buried, accompanying the Christian Peacemaker Team for 2 days. Yesterday I traveled to Jerusalem for the Holy Thursday Mass with US Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit. The taxi van (for 9) that I was in was stopped by young Israeli soldiers of 18 or 20, at the side of the road. As they stop us they tell the driver to turn off the engine. He obeys. They have big guns as all the soldiers do. Then they start asking for everybody's Identity card. I showed them my US passport and asked them where they were from. One of them said US....Where? New York....Where in NY? Manhattan...and I asked what street...trying to distract or stop them from going through everybodies ID card and taking people out of the van...and possibly going through all the bags as well. It is terrible what they do. Treating people like animals. So the young soldier says 84th st. in Manhattan. I say....oh the rich side of town. I lived on the other side of Manhatten (years ago) .
I started to tell him how this is so wrong what the Israelis are doing checking people like this. I told him that we don't do this behavior in NY city. It is not allowed!!! (And yet we do....to the poor and people who are from the middle east and to blacks or latinos.) I told him that he and ALL of us must be good to one another. He didn't want to hear too much more of me so he directed the driver to go. I learned that the soldiers ask not to be put where the Christian Peacemaker Teams are because they make them think and feel too much about what they are doing. It bothers their consciences too much. I know it was what happened for 2 of the soldiers that I met in Hebron on Wednesday.
Just moments after getting out of the van on my way to Jerusalem for Holy Week services, I had to go through a checkpoint ....a big one like a airport terminal. When I first went in, there was a crowd of people waiting. Mothers with little babies, families, older people, people on their way to pray in the mosque, because it was the prophet Mohammed's birthday, others going to Christian services. Everybody standing in a cage like area with a soldier behind thick glass in his stall. He has told the people that they can't go because there is some trouble in Jerusalem. It turns out that this is not true but until he decides he would let us go we all have to wait. I turn my attention to the babies and the beautiful children. It is getting hot here and there was nothing to drink or sit on for anyone. I played with one little beautiful boy of 8 months and he came into my arms to give me a hug. What a blessing from this child! I pray that the beautiful light in his eyes and his soul is not extinguished by living under the occupation and that we end it before he is grown.
Finally about 20 minutes later the metel gate turns allowing only one at a time. I am so afraid for the women being separated from their children. They also have carriages to close and carry and more bags. We move through to a parking lot and enter another building with another revolving gate that allows only one in at a time. During our time passing through this huge terminal there is no contact with the soldiers, only cameras, metal revolving gates, detectors and more gates. Always the soldiers are behind big thick green tinted glass in their bunker like stall. Again it is hard for the mothers with the children. At this point we are held up again... this time because a woman hairdresser had the tool of her trade in her purse....an illegal pair of scissors!!! The soldiers would not let her go through. She was turned back. We had to wait for the revolving gate to be put in reverse to let her out.
We start again... at the second gate within our terminal like building. Now the soldiers begin yelling in Hebrew at an older woman because something she is wearing is metal and causing the alarm to go off. We are left only watching helpless to assist her because she is on the other side of the revolving gate. I watch as she removes a bracelet but continues to walk through the metal detector with the bracelet in her hand. Not one of the soldiers is communicating with her in Arabic.....helping her to know what to do gently. No one tells her to lay the bracelet onto the conveyor belt to check. I can tell she is Christian by her holy medals of Mary and her mantilla probably on her way to pray for Holy Thursday services. So we wait, not able to help her with the alarm still going off.
Finally we move slowly through to the conveyor belt and metal detector. The alarm sounds as I try to pass. Because I'm a foreigner the soldier waives me through. He sits behind the thick glass bunker within this terminal. I turn to him and and say this is not good... none of this... I motion with my hands that he should let the people pass. I said to him that he, and all of us must be good to one another. He answers me silently but I read his lips as he says "I am being good". I've got to run now...people waiting for me to meet.
Peace,
Mary Anne Grady Flores
Ithaca Catholic Workers
West Bank, Palestine
Good Friday, March 21,2008
Occupation! I've experienced only a tiny taste of it..as a foreigner. I'm here only a short time and it is making me sick to feel it. I have met many Palestinian Christians and Muslims who've been denied a special 2-3 week permit, by the Israeli government, to visit Jerusalem for the Holy Days of Easter and observance of the Prophet Mohammed's birthday. Thousands of Palestinians cannot travel into Jerusalem as our foreign brothers and sisters do. Jerusalem is flooded with tourists and pilgrams from all over the world, but not the indigenous people...the first Christians, the Palestinians. They have been banned from celebrating the resurrection! Most have not been able to travel to Jerusalem for years!
I met some US pilgrams where I was staying who knew nothing about the Israeli occupation, nothing of the apartheid wall, nothing about the rejection of permits or of check points. I recall the scripture of Isaiah that Jesus read in the temple before he was arrested, "I will give sight to the blind, heal the lame, give liberty to the captives". He declared that the scripture has been fulfilled in their midst. Last night I went to the Church of All Nations, built at the garden of Gethsemanie where the Jesus sweat blood knowing he'd be betrayed and cruxified. The service was said in many languages. Not one word was spoken of the broken body of God's people here and now....of our brothers and sisters here in Palestine living under occupation. Talk about betrayal! We processed to the church built where Jesus was brought before the high priests and tortured.
So the pilgram goes home knowing nothing of the 9,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons or the torture committed in the prisons, paid for by the US. Talk about blindness! How is the church embodying Christ's message? How are the words of Isaiah being enfleshed as Jesus did? He asked us to follow Him and do the same. Our silence as a church and as a people does not celebrate the resurrection. We become collaborators through our silence and we betray our brother Jesus once again.
I had been in the south in the 6,000 year old city of Hebron where Abraham and Sarah are buried, accompanying the Christian Peacemaker Team for 2 days. Yesterday I traveled to Jerusalem for the Holy Thursday Mass with US Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit. The taxi van (for 9) that I was in was stopped by young Israeli soldiers of 18 or 20, at the side of the road. As they stop us they tell the driver to turn off the engine. He obeys. They have big guns as all the soldiers do. Then they start asking for everybody's Identity card. I showed them my US passport and asked them where they were from. One of them said US....Where? New York....Where in NY? Manhattan...and I asked what street...trying to distract or stop them from going through everybodies ID card and taking people out of the van...and possibly going through all the bags as well. It is terrible what they do. Treating people like animals. So the young soldier says 84th st. in Manhattan. I say....oh the rich side of town. I lived on the other side of Manhatten (years ago) .
I started to tell him how this is so wrong what the Israelis are doing checking people like this. I told him that we don't do this behavior in NY city. It is not allowed!!! (And yet we do....to the poor and people who are from the middle east and to blacks or latinos.) I told him that he and ALL of us must be good to one another. He didn't want to hear too much more of me so he directed the driver to go. I learned that the soldiers ask not to be put where the Christian Peacemaker Teams are because they make them think and feel too much about what they are doing. It bothers their consciences too much. I know it was what happened for 2 of the soldiers that I met in Hebron on Wednesday.
Just moments after getting out of the van on my way to Jerusalem for Holy Week services, I had to go through a checkpoint ....a big one like a airport terminal. When I first went in, there was a crowd of people waiting. Mothers with little babies, families, older people, people on their way to pray in the mosque, because it was the prophet Mohammed's birthday, others going to Christian services. Everybody standing in a cage like area with a soldier behind thick glass in his stall. He has told the people that they can't go because there is some trouble in Jerusalem. It turns out that this is not true but until he decides he would let us go we all have to wait. I turn my attention to the babies and the beautiful children. It is getting hot here and there was nothing to drink or sit on for anyone. I played with one little beautiful boy of 8 months and he came into my arms to give me a hug. What a blessing from this child! I pray that the beautiful light in his eyes and his soul is not extinguished by living under the occupation and that we end it before he is grown.
Finally about 20 minutes later the metel gate turns allowing only one at a time. I am so afraid for the women being separated from their children. They also have carriages to close and carry and more bags. We move through to a parking lot and enter another building with another revolving gate that allows only one in at a time. During our time passing through this huge terminal there is no contact with the soldiers, only cameras, metal revolving gates, detectors and more gates. Always the soldiers are behind big thick green tinted glass in their bunker like stall. Again it is hard for the mothers with the children. At this point we are held up again... this time because a woman hairdresser had the tool of her trade in her purse....an illegal pair of scissors!!! The soldiers would not let her go through. She was turned back. We had to wait for the revolving gate to be put in reverse to let her out.
We start again... at the second gate within our terminal like building. Now the soldiers begin yelling in Hebrew at an older woman because something she is wearing is metal and causing the alarm to go off. We are left only watching helpless to assist her because she is on the other side of the revolving gate. I watch as she removes a bracelet but continues to walk through the metal detector with the bracelet in her hand. Not one of the soldiers is communicating with her in Arabic.....helping her to know what to do gently. No one tells her to lay the bracelet onto the conveyor belt to check. I can tell she is Christian by her holy medals of Mary and her mantilla probably on her way to pray for Holy Thursday services. So we wait, not able to help her with the alarm still going off.
Finally we move slowly through to the conveyor belt and metal detector. The alarm sounds as I try to pass. Because I'm a foreigner the soldier waives me through. He sits behind the thick glass bunker within this terminal. I turn to him and and say this is not good... none of this... I motion with my hands that he should let the people pass. I said to him that he, and all of us must be good to one another. He answers me silently but I read his lips as he says "I am being good". I've got to run now...people waiting for me to meet.
Peace,
Mary Anne Grady Flores
Ithaca Catholic Workers
West Bank, Palestine
posted by The Editors at 7:51 PM
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home