Christ and the Checkpoint

I walked where Jesus walked.

This last week Jon and I joined my uncle Rob on the tour he was leading through the biblical sites of the land.  My excitement building to this tour was twofold: I would be getting to travel throughout Israel and Palestine visiting the sites mentioned throughout the Scriptures, paying essentially only for the roof over my head, and the best part was I would be doing this with my younger sister, Anna! For those who have not been around when Anna and I are together, suffice it to say we have a very close, uniquely exciting bond.  We tend to get along quite well, so I was certainly excited to be traveling again with her.  I had not traveled internationally with her since 2001.

Last Saturday, then, Jon and I traveled the approximately 7km distance to Jerusalem (which is about a 30-40 min trip from Beit Sahour due to the hassles of the wall and checkpoint) where we checked into our hostel in the Old City.  We had some time to spare before the tour arrived so we walked down King David Street to our good friend Mahmoud's shop where we sat and talked with our dear Palestinian Muslim friend about the situation of the land.  His eyes were sad as he talked of the plight of his people.  He told us how he, as a Palestinian with permanent residence status in Jerusalem, pays more taxes than Israeli citizens, but receives hardly any of the benefits.  According to Mahmoud, he pays approximately 45% of his income to the Israeli government in tax, for which he receives very little in return.  I wondered at the justification of a heavier tax on Palestinian non-citizens than on Jewish citizens...

From there, we met up with the group and traveled in the footsteps of Jesus and other well-known biblical figures.  We spent 3 1/2 days in Jerusalem, covering the city extensively.  We walked through the Garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives, Hezekiah's tunnel, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Temple Mount, etc.  From there, we drove into the West Bank to visit Bethlehem.  After seeing the traditional site of Jesus' birth, we spent a day hiking the historically significant mountain Masada and floating in the Dead Sea.  Our week ended with a journey to the Galilee, the Golan Heights, and the coastal area.  The Galilee is always an amazing place to visit.  At one point, we were sailing on the Sea of Galilee, and I took a moment to take in my surroundings.  Just behind me was Capernaum, where Jesus lived with Peter (we even know which house among the ruins was Peter's!) and taught in the synagogue.  Just beside those ruins rises the Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount.  Further along the lake front are the hills where Jesus probably fed the 5,000.  On the other side of the lake was Gergesa, where Jesus cast out the legion of demons into the pigs.  And beneath me was the water on which he walked.  In the north, when we visited Tel Dan, we saw an ancient mud gate that is known as "Abraham's Gate."  The reason it is named such is because it apparently dates from the time of Abraham....which means the gate before which I stood was about 4,000 years old.  I didn't quite know how to let that sink in, so I tried telling myself this:  Essentially, everything I have ever studied in human history - all the rise and falls of empires; all African, Middle Eastern, American, and European history; everything in the Bible after about Genesis 12; most every well-known war or peaceful conflict resolution - all of it happened after this gate was built.  This mud structure has existed there as a silent bystander through it all.  This realization was mind-boggling for me.

Of all the places we visited, though, two stood out as particularly significant, and these due to my faith.  The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, though ornately decorated in a manner unlike most every church building in which I have worshiped, is a place of profound reflection.  Constantine's mother constructed this building, along with many biblical monuments, over the most likely site of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection.  To walk up some stairs and see part of the rock of what very well may have been Golgotha, and then to descend the stairs and see the place where Jesus may have been emerged, resurrected from the grave...I find words too ineffective.

Perhaps the most significant visit for me last week was the Mount of Beatitudes. I sat alone on a rock neath the shade of a tree, peering out into the calm waters of the Sea of Galilee.  I read aloud to myself the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5.  I cannot describe the feeling I had while reading those words, words upon which I am striving to mold my life's wandering, as I sat in the place where they were first spoken. "Love your enemies," "do not resist the evil person with violence," "blessed are the peacemakers," "do to others as you would have them do to you," "you have heard that it was said...but I tell you," "pray for those persecute you..." These words haunted me Sunday morning as I sat on that rock, and they haunt me now.

I don't know how to love my enemies.  Perhaps this is because I do not know who my enemies are.  My enemies, and the enemies of the United States, or any nation-state for that matter, are not synonymous.  I suppose I could say my enemies are those who perpetuate violence and injustice, wield power over others, and oppress the weak.  But since I am not really the victim of violence, injustice, power, or oppression, but in fact am often the exact opposite, how do I know who my true enemies are? But now, as I think about this question, I am beginning to wonder if I am totally missing the point of Jesus' statement.  Maybe Jesus was not intending for me to figure out who my enemies are and then remind myself to love them.  Maybe Jesus was directing me toward a world where enemies are nonexistent.  Maybe I am not supposed to be finding my enemies because if I follow the teachings of Jesus and love all because they are made in the image of God, then I will never find an enemy but only another broken human being searching for a purpose.  I think Abraham Lincoln was on to something when he said, "I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends." Perhaps I should not be worrying about discovering the identity of my enemies but instead on creating a world where the concept of "enemy" is not understood because I am friends with all people.

But I must question myself.  I have been struggling a great deal recently on the balance between idealism and realism and how to incorporate my ideals into reality.  I do not want to fall into the trap of disregarding the enormous implications of Jesus' teachings because of the commonly used excuse of the "fallen" state of our world, as if the world was not in a similar state at the time Jesus taught.  No, I want to take his teachings completely seriously.  But at the same time, I am aware that such theorizing of being friends with everyone is very likely a statement I am able to make due to the fact that I essentially have no enemies.  I am wary of my theorizing because such ideals are emerging from a position of privilege and comfort.  As I sit in my apartment in Palestine, I am acutely aware that some people in the world do have enemies, and for understandable reasons.

As Jon and I left the West Bank yesterday to travel into the outskirts of Jerusalem to pick up the newly arrived Paul, we had to cross through the Bethlehem checkpoint.  The time was around 6:30am and the checkpoint was full with Palestinian men heading to their jobs on the other side of the Wall in Jerusalem.  On the Palestinian side of the Wall runs a long fenced-in corridor.  Tall, spiked metal rods make up the walls, and razor wire covers the gap between the spikes tops and the tin roof overhead.  The path between the fenced walls of this corridor are wide enough for perhaps three grown men to stand shoulder to shoulder, fairly tightly.  When you stand in this corridor, you feel like you are in a cage.  Gradually, the Palestinians seem to have become the animals the Israeli government has tried to create.  I have heard stories of Palestinians in such desperation to reach the other side that they begin pushing and shoving in this narrow cage, climbing over and under each other, yelling angrily.  Then once they reach the exit to the checkpoint they are greeted with a poster of a happy family on an Israeli beach with the words "Israel: Where It's Vacation All Year Round" looming overhead.  These checkpoints are robbing the dignity from both the Israeli soldiers who run them and the Palestinians who are the victims of them.  Jon and I chose not to use our privilege of carrying an American passport and thereby having the option of skirting the long lines (this is because American tax dollars are paying for these checkpoints and barriers).  Instead, we chose to wait in line with the humans who were being forced to behave like animals.

The week before, when I went through this checkpoint, I watched as the Palestinian man in front of me was sent back and forth through the metal detector at least ten times, emptying his pockets of coins, then taking off his shoes, then his belt, then emptying his bag, then taking out his wallet, etc.  I felt as if the soldiers were just playing a game with this man, causing him obvious frustration and anger.  Then, when my turn came, I walked up, dropped my backpack on the conveyor belt and walked through the metal detector with shoes on and belt on and metal (money and keys) jingling in my pocket.  The detector sounded, but not a word of protest from the soldiers.  I didn't even have to show my passport.  Because my skin and hair were lighter and my face not that of an Arab, I somehow am no threat to Israeli national security.  But yesterday as Jon and I went through, we encountered something different: Nothing.  This time, instead of harassing the Palestinians by making them go back and forth through metal detectors and searching them meticulously, they did nothing.  As I looked in the booths where the soldiers sat who were assigned to the metal detectors, watching the computers, and checking IDs, I was amazed to find them doing nothing!  Every time someone walked through the metal detector it sounded, but not one person was stopped.  One of the female soldiers assigned to watch the computer monitoring the conveyor belt was chatting away enthusiastically on her cell phone, while another bunch stood joking and laughing.  If the Palestinians pose a threat to the survival of Israel, then these soldiers are being very lax with the continuing existence of their country.  For me, this further showed that the wall and the checkpoints are not actually about security but instead harassment and humiliation.

As I stood in line at the checkpoint that day, I thought to myself, I understand why Palestinians see Israelis as their enemies.  If I were a Palestinian, I have no doubt I would feel the same way.  Similarly, if I was an Israeli who had felt the impact of an explosion due to a suicide bombing and smelled the stench of burning flesh as innocent people died due to the violence of one hopeless individual, I have no doubt I would see the Palestinians as my enemy.  So I ask myself, How, in the midst of such a complicated situation, do I begin to be a peacemaker?  How, when living with the Palestinians and witnessing their plight, do I love the Israeli soldiers?  For me, I am not satisfied to simply say that the IDF soldiers are humans and I love them too.  I want to know how to show that, concretely.  How do I embody love to the oppressor?

Perhaps the first step is to realize that, for many of them, they are oppressed too.  Every Israeli citizen, with very specific exceptions, must serve in the military, men three years and women two.  If you refuse, you are sent to prison, often from three to six months, and you give up most privileges that the State supplies, social security being one of them.  Essentially, you become like the Palestinians - outcast.  Many of the soldiers do not want to do what they are asked, but they are stuck between a rock and a hard place.  Not all soldiers, and certainly not all Israelis, are militant or racist toward or even dislike Palestinians.  Many stories exist of soldiers who have shown compassion to the suffering Palestinians around them and who experience remorse for the things they have done to Palestinians in the occupied territories.  Once again, generalizations prove to be unhelpful.

But some soldiers are racist and militant.  How do I find a way to show love to those soldiers that arrest children and hold them without trial, inflicting psychological and physical tortures on them?  How do I love those soldiers who open fire on Palestinians who bang pots and pans together in protest at a Jewish settlement?  How do I love those soldiers who force Palestinian men out of their car at a checkpoint and line them up to use them as human shields to stand behind as the soldiers open fire on children throwing rocks?  How do I love the antagonists of the stories I hear and the doers of most of the violence I see?  How do I help them retain their humanity and not become soulless monsters?  As of now, I have no answer for these questions.  But I am searching.  I am wandering, but this time I feel lost.

Lord, I walked this week where Jesus walked. Now help me walk as Jesus walked.

Michael              

(Pictures top to bottom:  Abraham's Gate, bougainvillea in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jon and I sailing on the Sea of Galilee, Palestinians crowding to get through the metal detectors at the checkpoint, shot from inside "the cage."