The following editorial appeared in Ha’aretz, an Israeli newspaper, and has been translated for us by The Villages Group.  It concerns the school in the Palestinian village of Susiya, a school with a demolition order as you will see.  The editorial is by the school’s headmaster.  I am using my blog to amplify the voice of the headmaster and the Villages Group, because sometimes someone else can tell a story better than I can, and because it is always better to let people speak for themselves when possible.  I hope you will find this as compelling as I have.  I visited the school several times, including right after it received its demolition order.  How distressing to the community after having built a small school building to have a threat of losing it.

The children of the Susiya community live in tents and caves.  They have little in the way of material possessions, but they value family, their traditional way of life, and education.  To have a school in their community should not be too much to ask.

All the rest of this blog post is copied from The Villages Group.

_________

“In a rare direct expression of an Occupied Palestinian voice in the Israeli printed press, the school’s prinicipal Muhammad A-Nawwajeh published an editorial in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper about the demolition order on his school. Unlike most of Haaretz op-eds, this article was apparently not translated to the newspaper’s English site. We provide the translation below.

———————

What Will You Tell My Students?

Muhammad Jaber Hamed A-Nawwajeh

Our elementary school at Susiya is small. It has two classrooms, in which a total of 35 pupils – girls and boys – study. The staff includes four teachers and the principal, who is also the English teacher. The school opened in late 2010. Before we established our school, local children had to walk 4 km each way, every day, to reach the nearest school. To avoid this, many had stayed with relatives during the school week, without seeing their parents, causing severe psychological problems. No doubt, it is far better for young children to live with their families and attend a school near home.

Our school has no electricity, no running water and no schoolyard. Still, students arrive each day with excitement. When they grow up, they want to be doctors, police officers, teachers. Even though the school is in an area under Israeli control, it is not the government of Israel that built it. We, the residents of Susiya, have built it ourselves, with the help of the Spanish organization ACF and the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees.

Our elementary school, whose area is 100 square meters, is the only structure of this size around Palestinian Susiya. All students live in caves. Before the school structure was erected, we had used five tents. We live in a hilly high-altitude region with cold winters. First water leaked into the tents, then a strong storm blew them away.

Our new school might be demolished at any moment now, without any justifiable cause. The “Civil Administration” has issued a demolition order against it. Among the pretexts for the demolition order, the “Administration” cites the presence of “portable bathrooms” and a cistern that we had dug with our own hands, so that the children will have water to drink.

If the Israeli government demolishes the school, it will deny education to our children. More than half the students will stay at home and not go to school anymore. All the world’s children are entitled to education. It is a basic right enshrined in the United Nation’s Human Rights Charter. I am trying to comprehend: what would Israel accomplish by demolishing our school? What is the position of Israel’s Education Minister? What do Israeli teachers think? How will they explain to their own students the destruction of our little school at Susiya?

Mr. A-Nawwajeh is the principal of Susiya’s elementary school.

(Translated from Hebrew by Assaf Oron)

___________

At the Villages Group, helping Massafar Yatta (South Hebron Hills) residents in their efforts to realize the right to education for their children has been one of our central missions over the years. Until 2010 when the Susiya school opened, we helped arrange student transportation from Susiya to Tuwani. In 2010 we brought a report about a tent school in a neighboring village, where teachers tried to educate under conditions much like the ones described above by Mr. Nawwajeh. Here are a few pictures from that visit, illustrating the learning conditions which we then described as “the worst in the Middle East”.

Please do not let the Occupation force these disgraceful conditions upon the children of Susiya. Please don’t let them rob these children of their dreams, and rob teachers, volunteers, and donors of the fruit of their hard labor.

The formal authority presiding over the deceptively-named “Civil Administration”, that pretends to be “the legal authority” in the area – is Israel’s Defense Ministry. Here are a few contact details:

Israel’s defense minister, sar@mod.gov.il or pniot@mod.gov.il, fax +972 3 6976711 (they are said to hate faxes), or the ministry’s US outlet (info@goimod.com, fax 212-551-0264).

Israel’s Education Minister whom Mr. Nawwajeh mentions in his article, is quite likely deny any responsibility. Personally, I (Assaf) think that the fraudulent “Civil Administration”, and all other arms of Israel’s government, should just keep out of West Bank Palestinian civil affairs, on which they have no genuine jurisdiction – only a fraudulent one.

But Mr. Nawwajeh has a point. Israel’s Education Ministry, after all, constructs and heavily subsidizes schools in the Jewish settlements all around Susiya, and pays for teacher salaries. The minister himself, a politician named Gideon Sa’ar, is a rather vocal proponent of the ideology that all of Israel-Palestine belongs to the Jews. Well, with ownership comes responsibility. Since the government behaves in the West Bank’s “Area C” (where Susiya is located) as if it is Israel’s to keep, it should provide the same level of education infrastructure to that area’s Palestinians, as it lavishes upon the Jewish settlers.

In short, here’s a link to the Education Ministry’s main contact. The Minister’s email addresses are sar@education.gov.il, dover@education.gov.il and info@education.gov.il. Phones – 072-2-5602330/856/584, 972-3-6935523/4/5. Faxes: 972-2-5602246, 972-3-6951769. And finally, here’s an online comment form.

Feel free to let Mr. Sa’ar know what you think about this blatant discrimination, and about the criminal neglect of, and the atrocious assault upon, right to education of children in what he calls “The Land of Israel”.

And please help spread Mr. A-Nawwajeh’s words far and wide.

Thank you.”

I recall one evening last month when our team wanted to relax before the 3 am wakeup to go to the checkpoint. So we decided to have a movie night.   At the last minute before leaving the USA, I had packed several DVDs from home, so we looked to see what the choices were.  At first, we thought we would watch Far and Away, an adventure story about Irish immigrants.  But as I watched the trailer, I remembered more of the plot.  These immigrants had been forced off their land, and had arrived in America as refugees, only to finally make a better life for themselves by participating in a land rush in the newly opened American West (where the American Indians had lived until recently.)  Given the sort of thing we had been dealing with and wanted a break from, this plot did not seem to be a good choice; nor did Dances With Wolves, which I had also brought, and which detailed the removal of the American Indians from that very frontier.  We finally settled on a feel-good movie, a love story called August Rush, in which a displaced child finds his way home and reunites two people who had been forced apart.

Today I’ve been thinking about the pervasiveness of this plot line of displacement in our modern entertainments.  Why is tragedy entertaining? Maybe it’s the fact that, as Thomas Wolfe taught us, we can’t go home again.  Deep down inside, we are all longing for a home we cannot return to; it’s the existential loneliness of the human condition.  After all, the immensely popular Fiddler on the Roof carried the same idea.  Not only did the people in Anatevka unavoidably have to change as the times changed, but finally, of course, the Jewish residents of Anatevka were driven forever from their homes.  It was a tragic moment, complete with a fantastic musical score, reminding us that for centuries the homes of Jewish people were not secure.  The show was more than entertainment.  It was larger than life.  It was a metaphor for human existence.

Now the same story line continues in real life, with the apparent plans for displacement of the Bedouins and Palestinians from Area C in the West Bank.  Seen up close and personal, it’s not entertainment — unless you like a horror show.  Not a movie or a Broadway musical, this is a real-life repetition of Anatevka, except moreso.  Instead of just being driven away, the Bedouins get to watch their homes get leveled by bulldozers first.  And in a supremely ironic historic twist, it is the Israeli military doing the displacing, this time around.

Area C is over 60 percent of the West Bank.  Under the Oslo Accords, Area C was supposed to be administered by Israel for just a few years, and then was to revert to the Palestinian Authority.  But now the area has many Israeli settlements (490,000 settlers at last count in the West Bank, and growing), and there is not the slightest hint that Israel has any intention of allowing the land to return to Palestinian control.  In fact, instead the military keeps a very tight hold on the area, bulldozing shut Palestinian roads, bulldozing down Palestinian electric poles and houses, doing random flying checkpoints, and threatening the basic fabric of everyday life for the Palestinians living in the area.

It’s worth taking a moment to recall that according to international law, it is  forbidden for an occupying power to move its civilian population onto the occupied land.  It is further clearly forbidden for the occupier to remove or displace the local civilian population, unless a temporary evacuation is necessary to protect them.

I got to go to see a demolition in a Bedouin village just outside of Jerusalem one day.  The village is called Jaba’. The demolitions were over when we got there.  Two homes for people and five homes for sheep had been destroyed.  Children milled around anxiously as they replayed in their minds what they had just witnessed.  Some of the elders sat silently, staring into space, too traumatized to say much after giving us the facts.

Several more demolitions took place as I was worshipping on Thanksgiving day.  My team and I interviewed some of the communities after the fact. In the village of Susiya, a home and an animal shelter were destroyed.  In the village of Um Fagara, homes and a mosque, this time, were bulldozed to the ground.  Young women who cried out and tried to rescue belongings from their homes were pepper sprayed at close range, arrested and held without representation for a week in a military prison.

In the southeast part of the West Bank, in the desert, the village of Dkaika is a modern-day Anatevka.  Situated on land the Israeli government wants, it has a demolition order against nearly every structure, except the Ottoman-era cemetery.  (Apparently its more acceptable to stay in Dkaika if you are dead than if you are alive.)  The people, however, do not have any intention of leaving.  This is the only home they have ever had, the only home they want.

Like Anatevka, it’s no picnic living in Dkaika.  It’s off the electric grid, outside cell phone range, and without local water, so the Bedouins have to truck it in for themselves and their livestock.  Every day they put some water out for the camels that wander into Dkaika and out again at will, available to carry burdens if the people need them.  Maybe they’ll help women carry bundles of thorn bushes for a cooking fire. It’s about as remote an existence as you can possibly imagine in Dkaika, kind of the way North Dakota must have seemed, or Nebraska, or Wyoming, to the land-hungry conquerors from the east. But just like the settling of the American West (where there was already a people on the ground, living a way of life the conquerors did not understand or respect),  Jaba’ and Um Fagara and Dkaika and the other villages in Area C have a way of life.  The moment you arrive, the teapot goes on the fire, for the people here  are renowned for their hospitality.  Destroy their home, and they will build a thorn-bush fire and make you tea on the rubble.  You are welcome, no matter what.  It is the custom of the people of the desert, the legendary Palestinian hospitality.

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  In the USA, we profess to believe everyone has a right to these things.  Self-determination is the way these rights are described when we speak of groups of people and international law.  Does history have to repeat itself over and over and over again?  We all know that we can’t go home again.  But must we continually create conditions in which our fellow human beings are driven away from their homes because the victor sees their land as more valuable than they are?

What else can we do?  Well, we don’t have to be silently complicit.  We don’t have to be fatalists.  It doesn’t have to be this way. We can imagine being better than this.  We can object.

For instance, we can write letters of objection to Defense Minister Ehud Barak and to Quartet representative Tony Blair. We can say that the destruction of Bedouin homes and villages is not in line with our values as members of a humane and democratic society.  For Americans: we have a special relationship with the government of Israel.  We can demand that international law be respected. We can object to our elected officials (just google them; they are easy to find.).  We can say that if we are to continue giving 3 billion dollars a year to Israel, we insist on a standard of human rights in that government’s actions.  All of us can boycott products made in illegal Israeli settlements, which steal land and resources from the Palestinian people in the West Bank, and ask retailers not to carry such products. We can become better informed: go to www.eappi.org and read eyewitness reports about what is happening.

And we can go and see.  Those of us who are able can go and visit our Bedouin and Palestinian brothers and sisters in Area C.  They are very welcoming.  Talk with them. Go to their homes. Eat with them.  Drink tea with them.  Learn about their lives. Bake bread with them.  Hold their baby lambs in your arms.  Play soccer with their children. I guarantee that if you do these things, you will learn that these people deserve a home just like your own children do.

Or we can tune up the violin and get ready to write a new tragic musical.

Minister of Defence Ehud Barak

Ministry of Defence

37 Kaplan Street, Hakirya

Tel Aviv 61909, Israel

Fax: +972 3 691 6940/ 696 2757

Email: minister@mod.gov.il  (Salutation: Dear Minister)

Quartet Representative to the Middle East

The Office of Tony Blair

P.O. Box 60519

London, W2 7JU

United Kingdom

Email: info@tonyblairoffice.org (Salutation: Dear Mr Blair)

My greetings to my Moslem brothers and sisters.  In this post I make a connection between your Hajj and pilgrimages in the Christian tradition.  I deeply respect your tradition of the Hajj.  Being called “Hajji” continually for three months has caused me to reflect here on your name for me.  Thank you for this form of address and thank you for your faithfulness to your prayer which I find deeply moving.

Although I have not been to Mecca, I was given this name.  Initially I was told that all men and women of a certain age, old enough to have made the Hajj, are given this title of respect.  However, later on I observed that the younger EAs were also called Hajji and Hajj.  This has led me to the reflection you find here.

The sermon was preached in a Christian context and is primarily intended for that audience.  No offense is intended by the comparison of the Hajj to other pilgrimages, nor is there any attempt to convert Moslems to Christianity or vice versa in this post. Instead I am grateful for our common ground.

Ma a salaam. In peace.

A sermon preached for Epiphany, 2012

Grace to you and peace from the Holy One and from the Daystar, our Lord Jesus Christ, and from the Spirit descending and dwelling within you, Amen.

With the appearance of the Three Wise Persons, and the Baptism of Our Lord, we move from Christmas to Epiphany.  Epiphany means Showing Forth, a startling appearance or a moment of clarity.  The Church in her wisdom gives us a season of shining, a season of light, in the midst of what is, for the Northern Hemisphere, the darkest time of the year. For us, living in the northern parts of the world, we appreciate candles in the dark.

As most of you know, from September to December, I worked as an Ecumenical  Accompanier and human rights observer for the World Council of Churches in the occupied Palestinian Territory, otherwise known as the West Bank.   I was placed in the southernmost part of the West Bank, to accompany shepherds and day laborers and families living in remote Palestinian and Bedouin villages.  The people living south of Bethlehem are almost entirely Moslem, so I spent the fall immersed in Muslim culture, a culture I have come to know and love.

I was given this candle as I ended my Ecumenical Accompaniment service in the South Hebron Hills on December 4, in a ceremony in which I passed the light to Rosemond from Scotland, who took my place in Yatta.  At that moment I became an Ecumenical Advocate, with a mandate to tell the stories of the people living under Occupation, and to work for a just peace.

As I accompanied my Moslem, Jewish and Christian brothers and sisters in Palestine and Israel,  I wore this vest.  (show vest).  I’ve got to tell you, the vest was a puzzlement to the children of Yatta, where there are few internationals.  Some of them thought it was some strange military uniform, and I learned to tell them, “Ana mish jesh.”  I am not a soldier.

And it was even more of a mystery to Israeli personnel running the checkpoints.  There are checkpoints throughout the West Bank, where Palestinians and others who want to cross must show identification and submit to searches.  For Palestinians, the procedures are often harassing and humiliating.  So part of our job was to do a human rights watch there twice a week. We would arrive at 4 in the morning, and one of us would stay on the Palestinian side while the other walked over to the Israeli side, through the car checkpoint, so we could greet the men after they had gone through the massive metal building.  Inside, they were delayed by stop and go turnstyles, xray machines, body scanners, handprint checks, identity paper checks, and search rooms.  We were hampered by restrictions. As internationals, we were very clearly told we were not allowed to go through the checkpoint building because it was for Palestinians only.  So I had to walk around the long way. As I went through the security procedures at the car checkpoint, people would ask me questions.  “Are you carrying any guns for self-defense?”  “What is this symbol on the vest?” “ What is the World Council of Churches?”  “Since none of these men are Christians, why are you here?”,  and the real kicker, “Don’t you have anything better to do? Don’t you have families in your own countries?”  My reply  – that as a Christian I wanted to greet the men, and see how they were doing  —  left them shaking their heads and rolling their eyes to each other.

I would walk past the cars being checked and enter the parking area just beyond the checkpoint building.  Here, the men who had completed their security screening would line up to pray together, bow deeply from the waist, and then make prostrations touching their heads to the ground, before boarding shared taxis to take them to their jobs.  I was always moved to pray silently as I went past them, sensing the holiness of the place where these men, in the midst of great hardship, prayed humbly before God.

Once I was at my post, just outside the checkpoint building, I would watch the moon move slowly across the desert sky and greet the men as they came out of the checkpoint building.  Their screening took anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour and a half. Sometimes they had problems, and sometimes they didn’t.  The mood was sometimes cheerful, sometimes desperate.  Sometimes I was told I was doing a holy job, and at other times the men were angry and frustrated, and asked why I couldn’t solve all their problems at the checkpoint.  But routinely, as they came out, the men would call me Hajji.

Every Moslem man is obligated to make the Hajj, that is, to go on pilgrimage to Mecca once in his lifetime if he can, and thereafter he is called a Hajj.  For a women the trip is optional, but if she goes, she is called a Hajji.  A woman who has made a sacred journey.

Being called a Hajji was an honor I felt deeply.  In Yatta, we observed that neighborhoods would put up huge banners in the streets whenever someone made the hajj, and they would hold a party of several days to honor them.  The Muslim men at the checkpoint, whatever else they thought of us, recognized that we were making a Hajj, a holy journey, a pilgrimage. After looking at our vests and reading the Arabic leaflets we provided at the checkpoints, the men believed we had come to Palestine, and to the human rights watch at the checkpoint, in response to a Divine summons.

I can tell you that it often didn’t feel holy.  It often felt helpless, as when the line slowed to a trickle leaving thousands of men banging the walls and trying to jump the line in frustration while we called the Israeli Military’s Humanitarian Hotline to complain, often without results.  It often felt boring as we counted the men to obtain statistics for the United Nations and the Quartet.  We often felt ill-prepared because of the language barrier.  Often it felt very cold — but I was warmed by the greetings of the men as they made eye contact, smiled and cried, Sabah noor, hajji.  Morning light, pilgrim.

The three wise men, magicians or kings depending on your traditions and preferences, were making such a journey. Maybe as they set out, their families thought they were ditzy.  Following a star?  Presumably this wasn’t the sort of thing they usually did.

But they went anyway.  Honoring a Divine Call, they were moving through darkness, toward light.  They were battling all the troubles travelers have: fatigue, homesickness, fleas, bad water, bad roads, the heat of the day, the cold of the night, and the threat of roadside bandits.  They were strangers in the land they were visiting and they knew it.  But they kept moving forward.

Following the Light, the star that guided them, they expected to find a newborn Royal, perhaps with servants and fanfare in some gilded palace.  Instead, the star guided them to another place, where an infant not related to them, from a people they did not belong to, lay without fanfare in a bed of straw in a feed trough.  To this impoverished child they gave wealth…portable wealth that would be recognized across borders in the Eastern Desert: they gave gold, and spices.  Who knows? Maybe it was their stash, money they planned to use to provide for themselves on the way home.  We don’t know, but we do know that they were on a holy journey.  And as pilgrims, when they saw a need, they did what they could.  They responded to poverty by opening their treasure chests.

And through them, God provided for Jesus.  Soon afterwards, the child and his parents would have to flee for their lives to become political refugees, running away from Herod and his thugs.

As for the three visitors, well, they went home, that’s all.  We don’t know much more.  They didn’t have a mandate to do public speaking about their experiences, as I do. After all, we don’t get to read their memoirs, and they probably never wrote an opinion to the local newspaper. They didn’t catch the precious moments on video. Heck, they were even warned not to speak to politicians afterwards.  After what must have been the ultimate life-changing pilgrimage – Imagine following a star and getting to see the Lord of the Universe -  maybe they went back home and nobody “got it”. Or maybe, the experience was so intense, they just couldn’t find the words.

Let’s jump ahead a little bit, 30 years or so.  The wise men have probably gone quietly to their heavenly reward by that time, and in the meantime baby Jesus has grown up as Mary and Joseph’s son, helping with the village planting and harvest, learning a trade.  Life has returned to something like normal, as it usually does, and Mary ponders all these things in her heart.

And then, when he reaches a certain age, Jesus leaves.

He leaves his everyday work, his everyday life, and begins to walk to the Jordan valley. The baptism site is far away from Nazareth, about a week’s journey.  The distance Jesus walks suggests that his meeting with John is not by chance. It suggests that Jesus is deliberately making a holy journey out of obedience to God.  Maybe Jesus senses that, just like at the beginning of creation, the Spirit of God is hovering over the waters again.  Jesus walks from Nazareth a several days’ walk over rough, mountainous terrain into the desert wilderness before he encounters John the Baptiser.  And as he is baptized by John, the Spirit descends upon him in visible form, like a dove, just as the Spirit will later descend upon the disciples at Pentecost, in visible form, like fire.   Something about Jesus’ understanding of God’s will sends him on a holy journey. It begins as he leaves his ordinary life Nazareth, takes him into the wilderness, and continues  – until the present day.

The Three Wise Persons came following a star looking for a king.  Later, in his moment of baptism, his identity is revealed: Jesus is God’s beloved Son.  But notice what John says about Jesus: He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Those words are spoken to us.  As members of Christ’s body, it is we who are now called the beloved sons and daughters of God.  As members of the body of Christ in the world now, it is we who are led by the Spirit, out of the ordinary into the extraordinary.  We too are on a holy journey, maybe unaware, sometimes through wilderness, but never alone.  Never alone because, while our pilgrimages are our attempts to move closer to God, God’s pilgrimage, the holy journey of Jesus, is to be with us.

So we walk the holy journey with Him.

Jesus’ holy journey continues to the present day, in you and me. So let us walk with Him to bring light into darkness.  Let us walk with Him to bring justice to the poor. Let us walk with Him to bring liberty to captives.  Let us walk with Him to speak of the Lord’s favor to each and every soul, whether they are Jewish or Muslim or Christian or secular, ruler or people of power or prisoners or slaves.

For the world sees differences.  But God sees God’s Son. The world sees boundaries. But God sees us as one. The world sees categories. “my people-not my people.” But God sees each of us as God’s precious people. The world wages war.  But God wages peace.  And this is the star we follow, the vision we are called to be part of. This is the life of the wise persons, who seek God. For the magi looked for the newborn king of Judea but they didn’t quite understand: the angels said he would be Savior to all the people,  and we are members of His Body, living His life.

So blessed Epiphany. Morning Light, Pilgrims.

Amen.

The young woman, Sausan, was in a cave dwelling with three children when she heard the sounds of machinery and voices.  She came out and saw the bulldozers and she quickly got the children out of the cave.  She started screaming and ran to get some things out of her house, which she could see was about to be demolished.  An Israeli soldier pushed her and told her to stop, but she kept moving. He pulled and dragged her to a place where they sprayed some kind of spray in her eyes and mouth at very close range.  She fainted to the ground then.

When she woke up, the soldiers were all around her. They were going to arrest her. When her mother protested, they pushed her mother to the ground, breaking her leg. By now the young woman’s eyes, affected by the spray, hurt so badly that she cried, “Give me water for my eyes.” A soldier put a very little bit of water in her eyes so he could have a friend take a photo of him doing so, but then wouldn’t give her any more.  She kept crying, “Give me water!”  A relative, a 17-year-old girl named Amal, came with water for her, but the soldiers grabbed her and made her sit down on the ground too.  In the process, she spilled the water she had brought, getting a soldier wet. They tied her hands together.  The soldiers put both of them into an Army jeep, tying the woman’s hands too and putting a belt around her upper arms as well.  She kept crying out for water for her eyes, but the soldier deliberately emptied his water bottle out onto the ground in front of her. They drove them away to another location where they were transferred to a police vehicle, and during that transfer, the girl was intentionally kicked in the stomach.

They were taken to a police station some distance away, where the woman was accused of throwing a stone.  The girls were kept there until evening.  They were then handcuffed, blindfolded and moved to three different places.  Finally they were put in a room where they slept, with hands tied, and blindfolded, until morning.  They were kept in this condition until mid afternoon.  At that point they were transferred to another prison, arriving around 5 pm.  Since their arrest they had not been able to eat or drink anything.  They were aware of food being offered, but being blindfolded and with hands tied, they could not eat.

In the new military prison they remained for four days.  Here prisoners were allowed to buy and cook food for themselves, so they were able to eat. But they were very cold.  After four days, the girls went to court.  The younger girl was released for the time being.  The older girl was transferred to yet another prison.  In this prison the cell was filthy and the small amount of food offered was inedible.  She was there for one day.  The next day at 7:30 AM she was taken to court.  There a soldier testified that she had attacked him not with a stone, but with a big rock. After her court appearance, which lasted about a half hour, she was taken to a holding area until the end of the day, 5:30, before being transferred again to the first prison, where her father paid 5000 skekels bail for her release pending a court date.

This was their testimony to me.

Yesterday was the court hearing for Sausan. She received a plea bargain. She does not need to do any more jail time, but she has a record now in this kangaroo court, in which she is accused of having hit a soldier with a rock, and 3000 shekels of the bail money will be kept by the court. This fine, plus the legal fees, make the cost very steep for this family of impoverished shepherds who have just lost their home.  The charges against the youngest were not pursued by the court, presumably because a little water sprinkled by accident on a soldier can hardly be considered a crime…….

……. even in this sorry excuse for a justice system, where people are punished with pepper spray and arbitrary arrest, and held without a court hearing, and interrogated without legal counsel, and kicked and blindfolded, and kept restrained without food and water, and not allowed contact with relatives, all because, when the Israeli military machine bulldozes their homes without warning, they have the audacity to object.

I didn’t know that you can make walls or a roof

Out of the sacks the World Food Program flour comes in

If you sew them together

And I didn’t know that fresh sheep milk boiled with sugar

Is like drinking pure bliss

after a night sleeping out

In the tent village

And I didn’t know that you offer

Salaam Aleichem

To the angels upon each of your shoulders

When you bow down to pray

And I didn’t know that a school uniform gives a child

A way to put on dignity and put off

The dust of the dirt floor

and the wet

From the leaking roof

and the smoke

from the scrap wood fire

the only warmth in her home

Or that when someone makes one cheese toast for supper

on top of the electric space heater

He gives half of it away to a stranger

of course

Or that a thirsty man you meet on the street

might ask you for a drink from your water bottle

And think it was the most normal thing to do

And the holiness of everyday mangos and

The abundance of pomegranates shared between friends

A kind of Communion.

Our common humanity became visible here

Became naked here

Like a certain Child who came wailing into the world here

And I will name them all my people

As certainly as I name that Child my Lord.

Your teenage girl in prison

In a jail far away without charges

For four days

Because she dared to try to save

a few things

from the bulldozer,

if you could demolish a home

while people screamed -

and smile,

“all in a days’ work,”

If you could see the place now

Looking at the remains of a family dwelling after a demolition

The tent poles bent

Into crosses

On the ground

you could understand

this absurd and tragic place.

And then

Maybe you could explain it

To me.

See the VIDEO by Operation Dove about the demolition at Um Fagara; it will break your heart.

I spent mine at beautiful Tantur, a theological institute just outside Bethlehem, enjoying the lovely olive groves and trying not to look too far into the distance, where I could not avoid looking at the illegal settlements and Checkpoint 300.  At 12:45, I went down to join other worshippers in the chapel.  I left my phone in my room because it kept sending me notification of demolitions of homes in progress in the West Bank.  It was my day off, after all. I don’t get so many opportunities to worship in a chapel right now because we live in a Muslim area, so I had been looking forward to this service for some time.

As I walked into the chapel, a pastor I know, who gets the same messages on his cell phone, received a notification.  He looked at the phone and turned to me.

“It’s Susiya,” he said quietly. There was no further information.  I know many people in Susiya very well. They are quiet people who just want to live on their land and herd their sheep. Who was it? Which of my friends was losing their shelter?

We went into the chapel and sang a hymn.  Then we prayed a prayer asking God to bless our homes, our roofs and walls, our families safe inside.  It was a lovely prayer, but it was very hard for me to pray it.

Meanwhile, in Susiya, a man we had met just a few weeks before was having his simple tent home and the shelter for his sheep removed by a bulldozer.  And in the chapel, tears were filling my eyes.

We finished our prayer and went into the dining room. Just as we sat down, my pastor friend’s phone went off again.  “A mosque,” he said.  “In Um Fagara. Is that near you? The message says some homes and a mosque were bulldozed.”

My mind raced.  We had just visited Um Fagara the week before to condole with them after the military removed the electric poles that were being installed to bring electricity to the village.  We had been so warmly greeted. We had played with the children.  We had enjoyed being shown around.  “Come see where I live, “ the people had told us as they showed us their tents and cave homes.  And they had showed us the mosque, a small concrete block dwelling with a loudspeaker on the top, probably not more than 5 square meters of floor space, but the pride of the village.

What was happening? My mind and my eyes were swimming.

“It will be on the news,” my pastor suggested.  But I doubted it.  Many human rights abuses in the South Hebron Hills are not on the news.

Not on the news that the simplest possible house of worship was demolished while I worshiped in the beautiful chapel at Tantur.

Not on the news that 43 people were made homeless as I relaxed in a safe and warm place enjoying my friends.

Not on the news that two young women, trying to take personal items out of their tents in the face of the bulldozers, were arrested and taken to prison on trumped-up charges.

There was an Israeli group on the scene, working for human rights, called Taayush.  This is their video of some portion of this event, by Taayush member Guy Batavia.

Just now, our EA team lit one advent candle.  I’m asking you to pray. Pray for Israel, captive to its policies displacing people in this region.  Pray for the two girls held captive for no reason at all.  Pray for those made homeless by the cruelty of others.

Pray.

And then pray the prayer of St. Thomas More: God grant us the grace also to work for the things for which we pray. Amen.

In the movie, The Lion King, a young lion cub haunted by guilt for something he did not do is taught the healing phrase, “Hakuna Matata.”  “It means no worries for the rest of your days. It’s our problem-free philosophy.  Hakuna Matata.”

The Arabic equivalent would be “mish mushqili”, I guess.  “No problem.”

I find myself humming the music to “Hakuna Matata” every now and then here.  It’s the Great Escape.  And granted, it’s a Healing Moment if you are consumed, as Simba was, with guilt and shame over the past.  But it doesn’t work as an antidote for the future.

We can’t, for instance, personally look a poor child in the eye and apply Jesus’ words, “The poor you will always have with you”, as a way to get let off the hook. It’s not about keeping us from feeling bad about what we should be doing, and aren’t.  Jesus never meant to give us a Quick Fix to make us Feel Better.

If you take a jeep (or in our case a very resilient Subaru) over rough roads for an hour into the desert, you reach what is arguably the most remote of the villages we visit.  In a corridor of Area C and precariously placed between two military zones at the southern tip of the West Bank, Dkaika is home to a Bedouin population of around 220 residents. According to the school headmaster, the people have lived here since before Turkish rule.

The people of Dkaika have little in the way of material possessions, and their land is not favorable.  Their dwellings are tents with dirt floors.  Water is brought into the community by tractor.  Here there is no electricity.  Children do not have toys here, not really, although I did find an old toy gun in the sand. Because of this, an organization called Right to Play has come to the school, which serves 60 children, and taught games. They brought supplies. The school does not have basic school supplies, let alone things like balls and games.  The children receive a biscuit and 5 ounces of milk from the World Food Program a few times a week. There is an infrequent traveling medical clinic 5 kilometers away, but no local medical staff.

Israel has been trying to reduce this community’s buildings to rubble and to displace its people since the 1980s. In January of 2011, 13 buildings were demolished. In June, the army destroyed some tents, four rooms and two toilets originally constructed by Oxfam.  One of the rooms demolished was a school classroom; two other classrooms suffered extensive damage as well.  Islamic Relief and Unicef have been working to rebuild these classrooms, but the army is not happy about the repairs and the entire school continues to be very vulnerable.

The pretext for these demolitions is that the structures were erected without building permits, but this is the Occupation talking.  The truth is that because fewer than 100 building permits have been given to Palestinians living in Area C since the Oslo accords, Palestinians usually do not wait to receive one before doing necessary work, because they know they will not receive a permit. Destroy, rebuild. Destroy, rebuild.  For the village, it’s very bad economics and it doesn’t do much for mental health, either.

Currently there are demolition orders outstanding for 46 structures. These include 5 toilets and a cistern for storing the water.  These demolition orders comprise almost all the structures in the village and affect 220 people as well as 700 sheep and goats and 20 camels.

Why?

In the face of this,  it’s tempting to shrug our collective shoulders.  What can be done?

“Hakuna Matata.”

But you can’t use the Arabic equivalent.  This is not a moment for “mish mushqili.”  This is a big problem.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Which is which?  We won’t know unless we try.

It’s cold.  Fifty degrees doesn’t seem bad until you realize it’s the temperature inside the house.  But what if you had no house?

A family outside their home in the desert town of Dkaika, which is under a demolition order. Photo taken earlier this year by Guy Butavia.

Here are the grim realities for the families living in the village of Dkaika.  Please write your elected representatives and state departments if you can, and thanks for your time.

Dkaika Under Massive Impending Demolition Order

Where:  Bedouin village near the Green Line in southeast part of West Bank.  In Area C between two military zones.

Who is affected?: 220 residents, 700 goats and sheep making up the livelihood of the inhabitants. A primary school of 60 children.

History: The people were here during the Ottoman period. They have been threatened by demolitions and displacement by Israeli army since 1980s. A legal battle has been ongoing since 2005. In December 2010, a portion of the school was demolished by the army. Recently, in January of 2011, 13 buildings were demolished.  In June, the army destroyed some tents, four rooms and two toilets originally constructed by Oxfam. Through funding provided by UNICEF and labour provided by Islamic Relief, a new school consisting of 5 classrooms, an office and a small kitchen has been built. Students moved into the new facility last month.

Current Status: On November 1, the Civil Administration (a branch of the Israeli Defense Force) arrived in the village with 36 demolition orders applying to 46 structures. According to the office of Dov Hanin, a member of the Israeli Knesset, these orders directly affect a population of 220 people, 700 sheep and goats, 20 camels, 55 poultry and 3 donkeys. The demolition orders are on a variety of structures, including 5 communal toilets, a cistern and a quarrying preparation for a cistern, a number of animal structures and a number of residential tents. Villagers were told on a previous Civil Administration visit that they have no right to have the school and it must be removed or else the army will demolish it. These orders comprise almost all the structures in the village.

Humanitarian issues: water, fodder, electricity, sanitation, education, health care, mental health, nutrition…in other words, everything.

Actions we are taking: Advocacy to increase public awareness and public pressure to protect the community; networking with Rabbis for Human Rights, Unicef, UNOCHA, UNRWA, MSF.

There were never any formal charges.  There was never any possibility of a lawyer.

He was visiting in a neighboring village a couple months ago when the helicopter came.  He and two of his friends were arrested by the Israeli Army. It was 8 o’clock in the morning.  They were questioned, beaten: everyone in the village saw it.

What did they know about workers crossing the border into Israel without using the checkpoint, the soldiers demanded.  Nothing, the detained men insisted. They were taken by car to an Army base where they were detained and questioned some more. His friends were released, but he was taken to a police station some distance away, in an Israeli city.  There, he was held, interrogated, and beaten some more. Blindfolded, his wrists tied, he was slapped, thrown to the ground, punched and kicked.  A foot pressed down on his neck. Eight people were there, he said, Six soldiers beat him. Two policemen watched.

Later that evening, he was returned to the village.  Two weeks ago, it happened again.  A couple days ago, they came for him a third time and he hid.

It doesn’t matter what his name is.  It doesn’t matter where he lives.  It doesn’t even matter whether he did know anything about the subject. All people of conscience know this.

“What happened to you was wrong,” said the EA intensely, leaning forward in an attempt to bridge the gap between them. “You should never have been beaten.”

He had to ask us one chilling question: ”If they do this to my children, will you come?”

“You don’t know about these beatings,” a friend told us. “But I know. You can’t imagine.”

We shouldn’t have to.