Busy Day in Jerusalem

Started the day with class with Marc Gopin of George Mason University.  Today was our Jewish Narrative  day.  A few interesting points from Marc:

• in his growing up violence had only been associated with Gentiles.  Now Jews are in the unprecedented place of being the ones inflicting violence. 
• In all of his peacemaking work, nearly everyone who is being persecuted, is also persecuting someone else below them.
• Part of the intractibility of the problem in Israel is the "thickness" of the web that it has created - people can't get out of the problem because of the longterm occupation - not only of Israel and Palestinians, but of Russian, British, American, Jordan, and other involvement in the region long before the state of Israel.  There are so many competing interests, which makes it difficult to resolve.
• An example of this is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which has a Russian Orthodox memorial to Jesus' tomb, has Ethiopian monks living on the roof, two Moslem families which open the door, etc.  A very complicated, painful marking out of who has what and who does what in the church - a compromise that has been worked out over decades.

Then I had a great meeting with Arik Eischelman (sp?), head of Rabbis for Human Rights, to see how NVP could learn from and interface with RHR.  Arik squeezed me in before he had to go to court to defend himself since he was being charged with trespassing for protesting over the demolition of Palestinian homes.  RHR does such wonderful and varied work, but a few of their projects caught my eye.  One was their "Diologues of Olive Groves" where they bring together Palestinians and Israelis to pick olives in a grove.  A great example of getting different people together to do something!  Change happens when people are focused on a task in front of them.  They also have worked on interfaith publications, and sponsor youth trips as well.  He might be out in LA around September 11.  Maybe we should get him to speak at All Saints or at AFPI??  He invited me to protest with him tomorrow afternoon at 4 - the demolition of Palestinian houses.  But I think I'll be in Bethlehem.


For lunch, I met with Irene Nassar, of Just Vision.  They are the folks that put together two movies, Encounter Point, and Budrus.  The latter film is about a community that organized to change the direction of the wall that divides Israeli and Palestinian land, through nonviolent protest that was constant, involved women and Israelies, and brought together different factions of the Palestinian world. Both movies are on netflix.  They also provide online videos to be used in sermons, classrooms, etc.  Two interesting program ideas:  Peace It Together - Palestinian and Israeli youth are brought to Canada to make movies together (hmm... sounds like the Coral Summer Institute!), and we discussed the idea of bringing youths of differing faiths from the US to Palestine to help rebuild demolished Palestinian houses.  Very interesting idea!  Irene likes the idea of direct action, not just dialogue.  Sounds like us!

Later in the afternoon it was on to Givat Hatamoshet, a big hill in Jerusalem that is significant for the Israeli army.  Then we visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, a sprawling 45 acre museum and collection of monuments to the Holocaust.  Of course it was very moving.  The grounds are so peaceful and beautiful.  Lots of trees for "righteous persons", those that helped the Jews like Corrie Ten Boom and Oscar Shindler.  We had a long discussion afterwards on the power of the pain and murder of the Jews on the Israeli psyche.  The question follows up, "why are Israelis treating the Palestinians similarly to the way they were treated in WWII"?  Our guides answered that Israelis are conflicted - they want a safe place where something that happened in the past will never be able to happen again (thus you need Jewish state), and yet they cannot have that if they go for a 1-state secular society, a la America.  Very interesting discussions....

Later it was dinner on ben Yehuda street, where there are literally thousands of young people out enjoying the evening.  What a scene!  I didn't think I would see that kind of thing in Jerusalem.  I thought things would be more tense and scary.  It felt like any other big city in Europe.

Enough for one day - off to bed!