Hi All, This week we will be meeting in the Enigma Tap at 7:30pm – looking forward to seeing those of you who can join us there. This weeks blog is a guest blog from David Hardman. The following is a little introduction to who he is and what he does.
The Methodist Liaison Office & Revd David Hardman
The Methodist Liaison Office in Jerusalem is a partnership of the World Methodist Council, the Methodist Church in Great Britain and the United Methodist Church. Its purpose is to increase international awareness and involvement of the Methodist community in the issues affecting Israel and Palestine.
The office is located in St. George’s College, East Jerusalem. Its role is to be a presence on behalf of World Methodism in the Holy Land. This involves working ecumenically with churches, community organizations, and individuals across the West Bank and partnering with any individuals or organisations who work for Human Rights in the Region. Welcoming Methodist pilgrimage groups from around the world and encouraging them to engage, not only with the historical stones of religious sites, but with the living stones of Christian and other faith communities. Supporting and enabling visitors to volunteer at local projects as part of encounter and mission opportunities and facilitating advocacy especially by amplifying voices about everyday life under occupation in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel.
I am a British Methodist Minister ordained in 1994. I have served churches and circuits in the city centre, inner-city and suburbs of Manchester and London. I have also worked for Christian Aid as Senior Regional Coordinator in the North West of England and most recently as Methodist Team Leader of the Joint Public Issues Team. Justice and Peace have been at the heart of my ministry, I am an accredited mediator with Place for Hope and a committed activist.
Call not for peace in the Holy Land, call for justice so that peace may root itself deeply and flourish.
An old family friend emailed me last week and finished her email with the words ‘is it shalom you have tattooed on your arm? May you know that peace’. The truth is that I have מִשְׁפָּט֙ עֲשׂ֤וֹת tattooed on my left arm, Hebrew for ‘to do justice’. The prophet Micah is very clear that what God requires of us is (מִשְׁפָּט֙ עֲשׂ֤וֹת ) to do justice (Micah 6:8).
The heinous Hamas attack on Oct 7th shocked Israel as it shocked the world, but I maintain only because for far too long we have turned a blind eye to the oppressive policy of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza. Violence has been increasing in the West Bank over the last couple of years including a big increase in settler violence1. Israel has its most hard-line government in power who have placed settlement expansion in the West Bank as a top priority2&3.
It is a simple fact that oppression will foster resistance, and for a great number of Palestinians their resistance is non-violent4. However, brutality can all too easily breed brutal resistance, as we saw on Oct 7th. As a result of that attack we have also seen a disproportionate response from Israel which has killed thousands of civilians and destroyed a large percentage of property in Gaza5. So, call and pray for a ceasefire but don’t be fooled that this will bring peace. It will bring an end to immediate hostilities and a chance for proper humanitarian aid to reach millions of people in Gaza but peace is not simply the absence of war. What peace do people experience under occupation and what peace do people know living in constant fear of attack?
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but physically blockaded the area with a security barrier, a very limited number of permits issued to allow Palestinians to leave and even restrictions on how far out to sea Palestinian boats can sail. A friend of mine who lives in Beit Sahour has family in Gaza, family she has not seen since 2005 because Israel has not approved permits either for her to visit or for her family to visit her6. Even before this last escalation of violence, 95% of Gazans did not have access to clean water, access to electricity was regularly only between 4 and 8 hours a day and about half the adult population were unemployed.
For Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank there is much better access to fuel and water but there are still restrictions on travel imposed by a network of checkpoints, and the need for permits for many Palestinians to travel. The Wall snakes across the West Bank cutting off Palestinians from each other and their land. Bypass roads built by Israel for Israeli’s further bisect the land. Illegal Settlements are continuing to be built effectively forcing Palestinians into small pockets of towns and cities. The United Nations, Amnesty International and B’Tsalem7 among others, including a former head of Mossad (Israel’s Intelligence Agency)8, have called the situation in the West Bank Apartheid.
In the summer I had a holiday which included a couple of days in Budapest. Wandering around the city I happened upon the Ghetto Memorial Wall9. Included in the memorial is a map that has small round openings, reminiscent of bullet holes across its surface, looking through these will allow viewers to see historical scenes from the neighbourhood, scenes of Jewish life. At the end of the memorial you are asked to spend a moment before you move on to remember the victims of the ghettos and the holocaust. As I stood in silence and remembered the evil done to Jewish people, I could not help thinking that one day there will be memorials, not dissimilar to this, across the Holy Land. Memorials for Palestinians driven from their land and forced into the ghettos of Bethlehem, Hebron, Jenin, Jericho, Nabulus, Ramallah… As I remembered the past and reflected on the present I asked myself when will the world learn (מִשְׁפָּט֙ עֲשׂ֤וֹת ) to do justice?
Yet, even in the depth of grief, the call for justice can be heard. In a eulogy for her brother Hayim, an anti-occupation activist who was murdered in Kibbutz Holit on Oct 7th, Noi Katsman called on her country “not to use our deaths and our pain to cause the death and pain of other people or other families. I demand that we stop the circle of pain, and understand that the only way [forward] is freedom and equal rights. Peace, brotherhood, and security for all human beings.”10
This is why I say call not for peace in the Holy Land, call for justice so that peace may root itself deeply and flourish. Until there is justice for Palestinians there can be no lasting peace for them, just as there can be no lasting peace for Israeli’s when there is a constant threat of violence.
On my right arm I have tattooed الله محبة which is Arabic for God is love. Shortly after returning from the West Bank I was in a restaurant in Manchester and the guy at the next table noticed my tattoo and asked what it said – he starting talking about the situation in Gaza and then he noticed my left arm and asked what the Hebrew said. He then asked for a hug – to be embraced by justice and love, by Palestinian and Israeli – to be embraced in hope…
More information on the key moments of the Israel Palestine conflict can be found here.
Questions
- Do you have a tattoo? if so what and where? – If you don’t have one, would you? where would you have it and what would it be? (This isn’t Davids question but we thought we would throw and extra one in to warm you up).
- Is justice more important than peace?
- There are Palestinians Christians (less than 2% of the Palestinian population) and our sisters and brothers in organisations like Kairos Palestine (Home (kairospalestine.ps)) describe the Israeli occupation of the West Bank a sin and call on us to boycott and divest from Israeli firms. Is the occupation a sin? Should we as British Christians be involved in political boycotts?
- When Jesus said that ‘the Spirit of the Lord was upon him to… set the oppressed free’ (Luke 4:18), how might those oppressed by today’s occupation take hope from his words?
Notes:
- Palestinians under attack as Israeli settler violence surges in the West Bank – BBC News
- Israel PM-elect Netanyahu’s deal plans to bolster settlements – BBC News
- Since 1967 the West Bank has been occupied and is divided into – Areas A, B and C
- Today, Area A constitutes 18 percent of the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority (PA) controls most affairs in this area, including internal security.
- In Area B, which comprises about 21 percent of the West Bank, the PA controls education, health and the economy.
- In both areas, Israeli authorities have full external security control.
- This means that the Israeli military retains the right to enter these areas at any time, typically to raid homes or detain individuals under the pretext of security.
- About 2.8 million Palestinians live crowded into Areas A and B whose major Palestinian cities and towns are Hebron, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Nablus.
- Area C is the largest section of the West Bank, comprising about 60 percent of the Palestinian territory.
- It is also the site of the vast majority of the more than 200 illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, where more than 400,000 settlers live.
- Although control of part of this area was meant to be transferred to the PA in 1999 as per the Oslo Accords, the handover did not materialise, leaving security, planning and construction matters in the hands of Israel.
- About Sabeel-Kairos | Sabeel-Kairos
- Updates | United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – occupied Palestinian territory (ochaopt.org)
- Four members of her family were killed as they sought sanctuary at St. Porphyrios Church in Gaza on Thursday 19th October. Israel said that they targeted a Hamas building, the church was next to the strike and it caused walls of the church compound to collapse. St. Porphyrios Church was their church, they were living there because their homes had been destroyed by previous Israeli Airstrikes, they worked for Christian organisations working with young people in Gaza. I stood in St. Porphyrios Church a year ago when I visited Gaza.
- B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (btselem.org)
- A former Mossad chief says Israel is enforcing an apartheid system in the West Bank – ABC News (go.com)
- Ghetto Wall Memorial – Budapest, Hungary – Atlas Obscura
- RGB Media – Responsive Email Template (972mag.com)
This post is written by one of our many friends. At BeachcomberFX we love to hear what others have to say and are always on the lookout for people who want to share their thoughts or stories with us.
