The history of words and places- a look at another article from Sabeel's Cornerstone

On October the first I posted an article, Laundering words, omitting words, both are lies. I was writing about an article titled, “The Laundering of Words and the Oppression of Palestinians.” It was written by the Rev. Naim Ateek Director of Sabeel in Jerusalem. In Sabeel’s magazine, Cornerstone, the summer 2009 edition, he is pointing to another article, “The Factory of Words,” by Gideon Levy. Picture the Western Wall of Jerusalem taken by en:User:Chmouel,

While Ateek often approaches his topics from a liberation theology point of view, Levy approaches his topics from a far left secular position. Ateek is a Christian, Levy a secular Jew. They both believe that there should not be a Jewish State and believe any such state would be a racist state.

Levy, like Ateek, is attempting to prove that Israel is using words in such a way that they will cover up the truth. And, like Ateek, he believes this was done from the beginning of the State of Israel and even before.

Levy starts his article with his own propaganda-like words. He writes of being a young teenager during and after the six day war. He writes, “At six o’clock after the war Israel was in a nationalistic and religious orgy. Almost everyone participated in this orgy – orthodox and secular, Ashkenazi and Sephardic, young and old. The Land of Israel was liberated and the people of Israel, the chosen people, were saved.” (emphasis mine)

Levy goes on to write about his interest as a teenager in seeing, after the war, “Abraham’s tomb in Hebron, Rachel’s tomb in Bethlehem” and “the Wailing Wall.” He later complains that now, they are “cursed places,” because there is “armed soldiers and policemen at the entrance of Abraham’s tomb and an apartheid wall that separates Rachel’s tomb from Bethlehem….”

As I have written over and over this is simply half a story. Before the Six-Day War the Israelites did not have access to these places at all. For a history of the Wailing Wall see Western Wall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. In the years before the State of Israel was formed there was constant interference with the Jews in their attempts to worship there. They were even arrested for blowing the shofar on the Day of Atonement. After the birth of the State of Israel the wall came under Jordan’s control and the Jewish people could not go there, not even those Jews who were visiting Jordan from other countries.

The tomb of Abraham has a deeply violent history that faults both Islamic groups and radical Jewish groups. The Mideast and North Africa Encyclopedia gives the details:

“Although predominantly a town inhabited by Palestinian Arab Muslims, a small Jewish community lived in Hebron throughout the centuries. During British rule, the Jews left after the Arab-Jewish disturbances of August 1929 when sixty-four Jews were massacred. Hebron was annexed by Jordan in 1950 in the aftermath of the Arab-Israel War of 1948, and it was occupied by Israel during the Arab - Israel War of 1967. As a result, Jews were allowed to pray in the al-Haram, something formerly forbidden to them.” (Emphasis mine)

The article goes on to tell of a horrible massacre by a Jewish person after some militant settlers moved into the region. “Hebron's worst violence in decades occurred in February 1994 when Baruch Goldstein, a U.S.-born Jewish settler, entered the al-Haram al-Ibrahimi mosque and massacred twenty-nine Palestinian worshippers before he himself was killed.”

Rachel’s tomb, the third holiest site for the Jewish people, was also a forbidden place for the Jews after the 1948 war. Today it is surrounded by a wall because it had become such a dangerous place that no one would travel there. The story of Rachel’s tomb and the reason it is surrounded by walls and soldiers is told at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

All of these stories are to say that the problems in the Middle East are hard, complex and sad. They do not fit into an article that paints Israel with the brush that Levy has used. Levy complains that Israel cannot be a Democracy because she has occupied the Palestinian territories for so long. But what other Democracy does the modern world know whose neighbors are intent on destroying her.

This is not to excuse some of the actions of Israel; her people are sinners like all of humanity. But painting false pictures of Israel, as Levy has done is unacceptable. A.B. Yehoshua one of the great writers of Israel, a member of the peace movement in Israel, and a critic of the occupation wrote a letter criticizing Levy for his extreme views and his thoughts on the last conflict in Israel and Gaza. From his letter:

“The doleful thought sometimes crosses my mind that it is not the children of Gaza or of Israel that you are pining for, but only for your own private conscience. Because if you are truly concerned about the death of our children and theirs, you would understand the present war - not in order to uproot Hamas from Gaza but to induce its followers to understand, and regrettably in the only way they understand in the meantime, that they must stop the firing unilaterally, stop hoarding missiles for a bitter and hopeless war to destroy Israel, and above all for the sake of their children in the future, so they will not die in another pointless adventure.”

I believe God calls us, in our Christian walk, to honesty.