The Bishop of Jerusalem

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Anglican-Bishop-of-Jerusalem%E2%80%99s-visa-revoked-20875.html


Here we go again. 

The Bishop of Jerusalem is not allowed to have a visa to live in East Jerusalem.  It's a very high profile example of what the Israeli government has been doing to the Palestinians for decades.
When I was in Jerusalem I walked past a Israeli visa building in East Jerusalem, (It was right across the street from the "Garden Tomb" if you want to have a look) and people were lined up to get their cards stamped so they could stay in their homes for another period of time, a month or something.The deal is that you are not a Israeli citizen, but a resident alien. I met a Palestinian whose family had lived man and boy in the same house in the "Arab" quarter of old Jerusalem since the reign of Henry VIII, and still had to go and get his visa stamped in this line up. However the soldiers didn't have to stamp any one's visa. Look funny? Be the random person when some official is in a bad mood about Palestinians, or has to go to the bathroom?  and "So sorry sir, no visa for you." They can also close the office at any moment or not even open it at all. No regular office hours, no criteria, no appeal process, Nada! And if this man I met, missed getting his visa, then too bad he had to move to one of the Palestinian camps in the desert. "...Same house in the city since 1500's sir? tough." Why because no one has ever lived here legitimately except us.  This has been happening for ages. Bishop  Suheil Dawani is  the victim of the same mentality. He sold some land to a Palestinian and " Whoops, you did what?  So sorry sir, no visa for you." 

Capricious, no criteria, no appeal process, no transparency, no civil rights. This is the way the Israeli state protects its people from the possibility of a new Holocaust



The foundational Israeli assumption is that all Palestinian people are squatters. It says in the bible God gave the land to Jews and if its good enough for Abraham its good enough for the 21st Century.   There is a good chance that the Exilic Community  massaged  the Abraham Cycle in the 5th Century B.C.E. to clarify their own claim to the land in the eyes of  their Babylonian/Persian masters and their children, so that it would be clear to every one where they belonged.  Ezra and Nehemiah took this affirmation to its logical conclusion when it disinherited the people of the land of that day when the exiles returned. It is a text that was a terror for the wives of Jewish men who had married outside the clan,  a terror for their children. It was a terror for those who had settled in and around Jerusalem while the Jews were in Babylon. But for Jews, ( and for Christians too for the most part) it has been a happy text, saying what a wonderful thing God has done for us giving us back the land (singing as they wove between the corpses of the disinherited)  So there is precedent for this approach. And indeed this is what Zionists were prepared to do. Beginning in the 1800's Jewish people moved to the land from the diaspora. And look; there are people already there, and cities, and well tended farms. But NO! They were squatters! They had no right to be there. Increasingly  the people who lived there already became inconvenient. Farms were confiscated, Palestinian people began to be pushed back to the edges. After the Holocaust, there was a  completely understandable rage and fear, rising from that hideous trauma, that fed the Jewish perception that the land needed to be theirs so they would be safe. And so it got really ugly for the Palestinians after that.


I saw a video a few years ago produced by the Israeli government that talked about the first Jews returning to the land as "pioneers"  recovering and civilizing an empty land. It showed pictures of green hills and felt like a tourist film, except it claimed that the land had been empty before they came back from the diaspora. This is the functioning myth in Israel. It goes so far that the Palestinian people are referred to as "Arabs" (!) This renaming signals that they don't really belong in Israel at all. If they don't belong, then it follows that they are squatters on someone else's land.

At this point the feed back loop starts. Palestinians get angry, Israelis get mad and defensive, Palestinians try to get their rights and their homes back. They are resisted. They behave in inappropriate ways increasingly violent and begin to behave as  terrorists. The fear that founded the state of Israel kicks back at that and justifies their  actions on the basis of Palestinian actions. "If only the "Arabs"  would be rational. If only the "Palestinians would give up the armed struggle" It all sounds so reasonable. But underneath it's not reasonable. It's founded on fear and on the determination that the Holocaust never happen again. The Abraham Cycle is used in service of that determination. And suddenly there are annexations of land, and towns springing up on disputed areas. " Tough!" And the highways don't have off and on ramps for Palestinian towns. And the Palestinians feeling crowded and pushed, fight back. And it's only after this has been going round  a few times that people start keeping score and then each act seems to be in response to a previous act.

This is the context for Bishop Suheil Dawani's trials. it matters not that he is a contributing member of society. It matters not that he is a representative of one of the most reasonable, peace loving, and faithful strands of Christianity. It matters not that he has lived in the Bishop's house in East Jerusalem since he became bishop. It matters not that the Diocesan offices are in the city. It matters not that the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Bishop himself have been praying for peace and reconciliation for years. (come to think of it this may actually make the Israeli's angrier) It only matters that he is a Palestinian that did something that doesn't fit the political agenda. He sold a piece of land. In Canada? this would not be a problem. In the USA, it might not be a problem. But in Israel, civil rights are for those who are Jewish first, and for those who are something else, only when it suits.  Basing a civilization on fear, and on texts which are isolating is a very bad thing.

Please pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

2 CORINTHIANS 5: 
17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.