St. Raphael's sermon

I have been blessed these past few weeks with the opportunity to delve into the Gospel of Luke as I’ve prepared a few sermons. And what has struck me most about Luke’s writing is his focus on the human, on faith, and on relationships – and, how all of these intersect our relationship with God.

Three weeks ago, there was this curious reading. Jesus spoke of faith, saying that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, we could say to the mulberry tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea. I’ve mulled over this passage for weeks. It’s not today’s reading, and I could easily just let it go, but I couldn’t. It’s so enigmatic, so puzzling, so beguiling. As worshipping members of Christ’s body, we consider ourselves people of faith, but we don’t go around asking trees to toss themselves into bodies of water. And so, this ambiguous passage has been with me for several weeks – and as I prepared for today, I puzzled over how it might relate to Jesus’ parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector.

I sat. I thought. I scratched my head. And finally, my thoughts brought me to a memory. I thought of an older and wiser friend of mine who once told me this about faith:

He said, “Allison, to consider “faith” a noun is missing the point entirely. Faith is not a noun, not a concrete entity from which you can subtract or to which you can add. Faith is a verb, dynamic, malleable, plyable, lived in relationship. It undulates, climbs, dips, advances, retreats, and through it all, matures: an active verb, not a passive noun. You know, changing the grammatical construct could change how you live your faith – how you live as a Christian.”

When I remembered this conversation, a few pieces of this puzzle of a parable fell into place. Jesus told us that, if we only had faith the size of a mustard seed – and let’s fancy, for a moment, that we might – we could move things, which indicates faith’s activity. That faith is an actor – it will uproot the tree. It will not be uprooted.

Now, given the constraints of the English language, I can only flesh this idea out in the most cumbersome way. Please bear with me.

In the former model, where faith is a noun, transitively acted upon:
The world has diminished my faith. The world could/can/or has attacked my faith. My faith is waining.

But in the new model, where faith is an active verb, acting upon:
Faith fills my being, so that when I speak – faith is speaking through me. When I love, faith is loving through me. When I listen, when I learn, when I change, when I grow – faith is acting through me. Most importantly, when I learn , my faith is learning. It is maturing. Faith is lived. Faith transforms us. It transforms us in relationship.

But, I think: one major caveat: we have to LET it.

In today’s reading, Jesus tells a parable to some who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and regarded others with contempt,” that is, he was speaking to people who had a system, as we do, of “us” versus “them,” of “me” versus “those people.” These people to whom Jesus is speaking obviously placed little value on relationship with those people whom they considered “less than”: less educated, less cultured, less wealthy, less dignified, less respectable. More sinful. Perhaps poor.

In light of the memory of my friend who described faith as active, I saw that Jesus was talking to people who were distorting active, dynamic faith by deciding that those people were not worth their time or their relationship, that they had nothing to offer. That there was NO WAY they might actually teach them something. And Jesus says quite plainly (this is not an enigmatic parable), that “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” The Pharisee had a great deal, then, to learn from the tax collector. But he thought too highly of himself to “stoop” down to be in relationship with that tax collector, and to learn from him.

How often have I been guilty of the same thing? Too many times to number. And you know what – it’s because I continue to fall back into this horrible but very human habit that I am grateful for Reading Camp. Because the children of Reading Camp, the families of Reading Camp, the relationships I’ve formed with other volunteers at Reaidng Camp – they help me to remember. They call me back to remembrance of this parable. They call me away from a stagnating piety back to an active faith.

On Friday morning as I was preparing this sermon, I looked up and stared at a small piece of paper pinned to my bulletin board.
Dear Allison
I hope Clay comes back next year. I hope you have a good time when we have ice cream and s’mores. Thank you for making camp fun and letting me come to camp. I hope I can come back next year.
From Billy.

Billy and his twin brother Patrick live in Pineville (pahn-vuhl) with their father Bill, and they attended Reading Camp at Pine Mountain for their second year this past summer. I have notes from my first conversation with their father, back in 2009, when I was calling all the campers’ parents and preparing for camp:

(grumbling): “This’ Bill.”
“Hi, Bill, this is Allison, the director of Reading Camp. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine. That lady done filled out those papers for the boys. They’re comin’ to yer camp.”
“I’m glad to hear it. And I’ve got it down that they’ll be on the bus.”
“mmm hmm. Now, I want to tell you ‘bout my boys. I’m the only one who’s raised ‘em, and they’re good boys. But, if you need to, you use a switch to make ‘em mind. If they wuz ever hateful, you tell ‘em I told you you could use a switch.”
“Oh, I’m sure we won’t have to do that.”
“Well, if you need to.”
“(haha). Alright. Well, Bill, you just call me if you have any questions.”

From the time I received Patrick and Billy’s applications, I knew the boys and their father would be some of the most interesting people I had worked with. The boys’ teacher forms read, in all caps, “NON-READER.” On the part of the application where teachers can check each child’s strengths and weaknesses, the boys had no strengths. Every weakness was checked, and then those words, “NON READER.” The parent-guardian form had been filled out by “that lady,” (Deb Obermann from St. Mary’s in Middlesboro) because Bill was illiterate and could not fill it out himself. His signature was simply, “Bill,” not “William Miracle or even Bill Miracle,” just “Bill,” in a scrawl-like cursive that looked like a first grader’s.

In my years volunteering with Reading Camp, I had met many families and many children whose way of living, way of speaking, and way of being were different from my own. But, Bill, Billy and Patrick Miracle were a whole new type of foreign.

The Miracles stopped me dead in my tracks, and I felt before camp even started, that they might affect me more than any other Reading Camp family ever had. I wasn’t wrong.

The boys arrived at camp on Sunday very sullen, shut-off, and internal. They were gruff, they were abrasive. Most volunteers had an immediate reaction of “uh oh, these kids are trouble.” I have to admit, I didn’t particularly like them. However, part of the transformational nature of Reading Camp is that there’s this quiet understanding that permeates the staff, that informs how you treat the children, speak to the children, and eventually feel about the children: the ones who are the hardest to handle, the easiest to dislike – those are the ones that you commit to loving, the ones that you don’t give up on. You make a purposeful decision to be patient. You intentionally take deep breaths. You pray for active faith. And, there’s a collective sighing prayer that Reading Camp might be a conduit for the Holy Spirit – because you know, you’re sure gonna need him.

Patrick and Billy remained gruff, mean, and monosyllabic until Wednesday morning, when it finally seemed to “click” for them that everyone at camp cared desperately about them, that no one cared that they struggled so much to write their name, and that the teachers were ecstatic when they finally named all the letters of the alphabet. By Wednesday, they started opening up. They formed a close bond with Aaron, a young man who was a writing center teacher – and Aaron worked patiently and tenderly with the boys on their writing. Billy and Patrick really wanted to write letters to Marcie, a young woman who was our Pleasure Reading “librarian.” It took Aaron’s coaxing, prodding, encouragement, and help with every letter of every word, but by Friday morning, the boys had written their letters to Marcie, and they beamed when they handed them to her. It was a sobering moment for the whole staff – an awe, a “hush,” and not a few tears that these boys had been able to achieve something their public school teacher never thought possible. And I guess, an awe at the fact that in the course of a short week, we had fallen in love with those two stubborn boys.

The year passed, and the majority of our volunteers from that first summer returned again in 2010, and all of them wanted to know if the twins were coming back. And, they were! I picked Patrick and Billy up in Pineville and brought them to camp – and I cannot describe to you the level of excitement that was pouring out of those two. They knew what they were coming back to – an environment where it was okay to make mistakes, where people were patient, where people really cared about them, believed in them, and were going to help them to learn. A place where they could be children: curious, joyful children who wanted to learn. And I’ll tell you, their approach to camp this year was a 180-degree turn around from 2009. They were telling the other kids how to behave in the learning center. They were focused and engaged with each teacher, working SO hard to write more letters, stumble through simple books.

They were transformed. We were transformed. Faith asked us to be patient, asked us to open ourselves to those boys. And we soon realized that Patrick and Billy had just as much to teach us and to offer us in relationship as we had to offer them. We helped them write their names and read simple sentences, but they taught us humility. They taught us not to take our literacy for granted. To acknowledge children like them, families like theirs – people who perhaps don’t read, don’t speak English like we do, and have radically different lifestyles – as complete as we are, worthy of dignity, brimming with potential, full of things to offer in relationship. They taught us that all those letters that were either behind our names, or that we were trying to get behind our names through decades of school, didn’t matter. They taught us the meaning of grace. And they taught us to be grateful.

I am a proud follower of St. Raphael’s on Facebook, and so I know that your congregation raised $12,000 at the recent Mediterranean Gala – a significant portion of which will go to support Reading Camp in South Africa. Fundraising can be a very trying endeavor, especially when economic times are hard. What you have done for the children of Reading Camp in Grahamstown will transform their lives. And not only that, but the experience of working with those children will call the volunteers to remembrance of active faith – it will nourish and deepen their spiritual journey, and sustain them in dark moments. It will be with them throughout their walk with God.

I want to invite you to have the same experience in summer 2011. I don’t know of any budding travel plans amongst members of your congregation (though I hope Mary Jane will be returning to Grahamstown as a nurse and will be sending me pictures from her iPhone), but I want to invite all of you to a transformative week of Reading Camp. The Cathedral Domain and Pine Mountain camps sustain vibrant Reading Camp communities with interesting and passionate volunteers – who learn as much from the children and from each other as they may impart.

There’s another reason I want to invite you to volunteer at Reading Camp next summer. It comes from the wisdom of the rabbis of the Talmud:

They taught that Gemilut Chesed (loving-kindness) is greater than charity. For charity is done with one’s money, while loving-kindness may be done with one’s money or with one’s person.
You have fulfilled gemilut chesed through your Mediterranean gala, raising money so that children and volunteers in South Africa will be transformed by their experience. Won’t you consider fulfilling gemilut chesed again by joining us next summer?

One of the Pine Mountain volunteers wrote me after camp this summer, saying, “I received more than I gave at Reading Camp.” That is grace, and that is Reading Camp. You give all of yourself, and yet, at the end of the day, you have always been given more. There’s always a net gain.


So this “active faith” stuff, this loving kindness…. ....

isn’t that bad, eh?

my very first sermon!

As I spent time pouring through this week’s lectionary readings, I couldn’t remove one thought from my mind. God’s chosen people – the Israelites of the Hebrew Bible, first-century Palestinian Jews of the Gospels, including Jesus’ followers – were oftentimes nervous, fearful people. God had a heck of a time trying to convince them that foreigners and strangers were really their neighbors. Since we are members of the New Israel and the Body of Christ through our baptisms – included in the great drama of God’s relationship with humankind – we have graciously been bestowed with the same very human tendencies: there are people in this world of whom we are afraid. They are “others” to us. And yet, God continues to reach out to us to show us a better way. And this is what happens as the Spirit speaks to us through today’s readings.

In the reading from Jeremiah, the Israelites are in Babylon, having been sent there in exile by King Nebuchadnezzar. In chapters 27 and 28, just before today’s reading, the prophets Hananiah and Jeremiah have been engaged in something of a showdown – Jeremiah first proclaims God’s message that the Israelites will be exiled until He decides otherwise, then Hananiah prophesies the people’s restoration to Jerusalem in two years, then Jeremiah counters him with God’s message, then Hananiah throws a temper tantrum, rips Jeremiah’s mantle from his neck, and breaks it, saying, “And that’s what it’ll look like when Nebuchadnezzar’s mantle is broken, too.” The fight ends when God tells Hananiah that he’s lying and that he’ll be dead within the year. Case closed (though, I did have to Google “mantle,’ before I moved on, and it is a cloak that drapes loosely around the neck).

Then Jeremiah writes to the Israelites in exile and tells them to stop listening to the false prophets who had been proclaiming a speedy restoration to Jerusalem. “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce,” he says. Settle in Babylon and form relationships with your neighbors. “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
This is an early prophetic example of God’s radical proclamation of love – and God’s revolutionary re-definition of foreigners and strangers as neighbors. Here the Israelites are, strangers in a foreign land, yearning to return home, and God tells them to stop yearning to leave. To settle. And to pray for the welfare of Babylon and the Babylonians – their enemies.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus steps outside of social propriety to heal ten lepers – first-century Palestine’s untouchables. The newly healed depart, and only one returns to thank Jesus. The gospel text makes a point of saying that the one who returned was a Samaritan. In terms of first-century Palestinian Jewish norms, this man has two strikes against him – he (was) a leper and is a Samartian. Jesus has done something quite extraordinary by healing HIM. When this Samaritan comes back to thank him, even Jesus seems surprised that out of the ten, it was THIS one who returned, this Samaritan:

(Then) Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
We could just breeze right through this text, but it seems to me like something crucial has just happened in the story. None returned to give praise to God except this foreigner. And this foreigner’s faith has made him well. A pretty audacious statement for Jesus to make: this social pariah, this leper and Samaritan, not a Jew, has been healed by his faith. For first-century Palestinian Jews, for Jesus’ followers – this realization of the Samaritan’s humanity, of his faith, and of Jesus’ healing of him, would have been pretty extraordinary. Pretty radical. And it should be for us, too.
ON Friday morning as I was preparing this sermon, I looked up and stared at a small piece of paper pinned to my bulletin board. I’ve looked at it time and again, but on Friday morning, it struck me in a new way.
Dear Allison
I hope Clay comes back next year. I hope you have a good time when we have ice cream and s’mores. Thank you for making camp fun and letting me come to camp. I hope I can come back next year.
From Billy.
Billy and his twin brother Patrick live in Pineville (pahn-vuhl) with their father Bill, and they attended Reading Camp at Pine Mountain for their second year this past summer. I have notes from my first conversation with their father, back in 2009, when I was calling all the campers’ parents and preparing for camp:

(grumbling): “This’ Bill.”
“Hi, Bill, this is Allison, the director of Reading Camp. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine. That lady done filled out those papers for the boys. They’re comin’ to yer camp.”
“Oh, that’s great news. I wanted to check on transportation for the boys. Will you be bringing them, or…”
“Well, that lady said there’d be a bus at the Pic Pac to pick ‘em up.”
“You’re right. Well, great, I’ve got it down that they’ll be on the bus.”
“mmm hmm. Now, I want to tell you ‘bout my boys. I’m the only one who’s raised ‘em, and they’re good boys. But, if you need to, you use a switch to make ‘em mind. You tell ‘em I told you you could use a switch to make ‘em mind.”
“Oh, I’m sure we won’t have to do that.”
“Well, if you need to.”
“(haha). Alright. Well, Bill, you just call me if you have any questions.”

From the time I received Patrick and Billy’s applications, I knew the boys and their father would be some of the most interesting people I had worked with. The boys’ teacher forms read, in all caps, “NON-READER.” On the part of the application where teachers can check each child’s strengths and weaknesses, the boys had no strengths. Every weakness was checked, and then those words, “NON READER.” The parent-guardian form had been filled out by “that lady,” (Deb Obermann from St. Mary’s in Middlesboro) because Bill was illiterate and could not fill it out himself. His signature was simply, “Bill,” not “William Miracle or even Bill Miracle,” just “Bill,” in a scrawl-like cursive that looked like a first grader’s.
In my years volunteering with Reading Camp, I had met many families and many children whose way of living, way of speaking, and way of being were different from my own. But, Bill, Billy and Patrick Miracle were a whole new type of foreign. I was a student at Transylvania University, reading as much as I breathed, writing more than I spoke. I was living in a hyper-literate world, knowing that my bread and butter depended not upon my literacy skills, but upon how well I could apply them – how high could my GPA be, where might I go to graduate school. Not that I could write a paper, but on how long, how well constructed, how well-argued my thesis was.
The Miracles stopped me dead in my tracks, and I felt before camp even started, that they might effect me more than any other Reading Camp family ever had. I wasn’t wrong.
The boys arrived at camp on Sunday very sullen, shut-off, and internal. They were gruff, they were abrasive, and they were mono-syllabic. They were “hmm, no, yeah,” until Wednesday morning, when they finally realized that everyone at camp cared desperately about them, that no one cared that they struggled so much to write their name, and that the teachers were ecstatic when they finally named all the letters of the alphabet. BY Wednesday, they started opening up. They formed a close bond with Aaron, a young man who was a writing center teacher – and Aaron worked patiently and tenderly with the boys on their writing. Billy and Patrick really wanted to write letters to Marcie, a young woman who was our Pleasure Reading “librarian.” It took Aaron’s coaxing, prodding, encouragement, and help with every letter of every word, but by Friday morning, the boys had written their letters to Marcie, and they beamed when they handed them to her. It was a sobering moment for the whole staff – an awe, a “hush,” and not a few tears that these boys had been able to achieve something their public school teacher never thought possible.
After camp, Billy and Patrick called several of the volunteers for weeks. We had all of course gone home to our comparably mundane lives, but Patrick and Billy assumed that when they called one of us – all the rest of us would still be there. They called me, “Where’s Clay?” “I don’t know Patrick. I think he’s at home.” “Well, I wanna talk to Clay.” “Well, I’ll give you his phone number.” “Okay.”
The year passed, and the majority of our volunteers from that first summer returned again in 2010. And, so did the boys. I picked Patrick and Billy up this year at the Pic Pac and brought them to camp – and I cannot describe to you the level of excitement and anticipation that was pouring out of those two. They knew what they were coming back to – an environment where it was okay to make mistakes, where people really cared about them, believed in them, and were going to help them to learn. A place where they could show that they wanted to learn. And I’ll tell you, their approach to camp this year was a 180-degree turn around from 2009. They were telling the other kids how to behave in the learning center. They were focused and engaged with each teacher, working SO hard to write more letters, stumble through simple books.
These boys, who had been complete and total strangers to all of us in 2009, had become, in 2010, our friends. For so many of us – counselors and support staff who come from affluent families and teachers who worked in private schools – Patrick and Billy were the personification of the many statistics that we had read about at-risk children, drop-outs, and juvenile delinquents. And those statistics were no longer impersonal numbers to be read and frowned upon – those numbers had faces. They had names. They were Patrick, Billy, Phebe, Brandon, and Callie. And they changed us. Transformed us, and dismantled our idea of who was foreign and what was strange. The children of Reading Camp – while from such different circumstances than our own – are our neighbors.

I think this is one of the reasons the ministry of Reading Camp is so crucial for this diocese, and also why its been spreading like wildfire. Reading Camp lifts the Gospel from the page and deposits it, right in front of you. The outcasts of society, the poor, the illiterate, the angry, the fearful, the misbehaving – they are there, right in front of you, crying out to be loved. And there you are, with your heart open and your soul vulnerable, asking God for the same thing. It is humbling; it strips you down to the bare essence of your fragile humanity. Reading Camp is, in many ways, the great equalizer. It brings us out of our circumstances, and gives us a look inside the circumstances of those who are so different from us. And it teaches those children, who need love, attention, help, and just for someone to believe in them – that they are worthy, beloved children of God.

I think this is one of the reasons the ministry of Reading Camp is so crucial for this diocese, and also why its been spreading like wildfire. Reading Camp lifts the Gospel from the page and deposits it, right in front of you. The outcasts of society, the poor, the illiterate, the angry, the fearful, the misbehaving – they are there, right in front of you, crying out to be loved. And there you are, with your heart open and your soul vulnerable, asking God for the same thing. It is humbling; it strips you down to the bare essence of your fragile humanity. Reading Camp is, in many ways, the great equalizer. It brings us out of our circumstances, and gives us a look inside the circumstances of those who are so different from us. And it teaches those children, who need love, attention, help, and just for someone to believe in them – that they are worthy, beloved children of God.

The rabbis of the Talmud taught that
Gemilut Chesed (loving-kindness) is greater than charity.
Charity is done with one’s money, while loving-kindness may be done with one’s money or with one’s person.
Charity is given only to the poor, while loving-kindness may be given both to the poor and to the rich.
The renowned rabbi known as the Haffetz Hayyim defined loving-kindness as “any good dead that one does for another without getting something in return.” Jesus, thus, performed loving-kindness when he healed the ten lepers.
And our rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, said in the verses just following today’s Gospel reading:
“The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed…. For in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”
Which says to me that the kingdom of God will be brought forth when we allow God to use us as a vehicle for his love – when we become doers of loving-kindness.

When you make gifts to Reading Camp – you are fulfilling a portion of gemilut chesed, of loving kindness. Your gifts are not going to some impersonal pot of cash, to impersonal statistics regarding childhood illiteracy. They are going to a Billy, to a Patrick. They are going to the service of children whose lives will be transformed by the radical Gospel that permeates each Reading Camp community.

When you volunteer at Reading Camp, recruit a child to come to camp, drive kids to camp whose parents don’t have cars, work with your ECW to make lunches for the campers, come to the Reading Camp office to help process forms and call parents – you are living out the other part of loving-kindness. Your gifts have made camp a logistical reality for the children, but it is your presence and your actions that have brought the Gospel into their lives.

Furthermore, when you’re involved with Reading Camp – the Gospel comes alive to you in a way that is startling and somewhat bewildering. All of us a sudden, you are enfleshed in the great drama of the biblical story – in the narrative of God’s life with his people. You are opened, you are shown, as though through God’s whisper, that this child in front of you – this vulnerable, scared, struggling, poor, hungry, and fearful child – is your neighbor. And you care for that child, just as God cares for us when we come to Him in our vulnerability, fragility, and despair.

And you sit down with that child, and you open a book together, and read, in tandem, the first page, alternating words, alternating phrases, alternating sentences. Stumbling through, building trust, building friendship, and building hope. And thus, you are together living out, in tandem, your love for that child, not unlike God’s love for his children, and the child’s hope in you and your help, not unlike our hope in God.


In the name of the Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

self-differentiation

"With families, I stopped creating encyclopedias of data about all their issues and began to search instead for the member with the greatest capacity to be a leader as I have defined it [a well-differentiated leader]. That person generally turned out to be the one who could express himself or herself with the least amount of blaming and the one who had the greatest capacity to take responsibility for his or her own emotional being and destiny. I began to coach the 'leader' alone, letting the rest of the family drop out and stay home. I stopped trying to get people to 'communicate' or find better ways of managing their issues. Instead, I began to concentrate on helping the leader become better defined and to learn how to deal adroitly with the sabotage that almost invariably followed any success in this endeavor. Soon I found that the rest of the family was 'in therapy' whether or not they came into my office. For it is the integrity of the leader that promotes the integrity or prevents the 'dis-integr-ation' of the system he or she is leading."

-Edwin Friedman in A Failure of Nerve

Loosening the blockade

Published: 07/15/10, 10:39 AM / Last Update: 07/15/10, 10:59 AM

Hamas panicked when Israel eased blockade

by Hana Levi Julian

Israel's decision to ease its blockade on Gaza has had an odd effect on the region: it has apparently thrown Gaza retailers into a panic, causing them to pressure their rulers.

As a result, the Hamas terrorist organization is fighting the implementation of the crossing agreements proposed by the Palestinian Authority and Israel. This, despite years of bitter complaints from Hamas, albeit unsubstantiated, that the blockade by Israel was causing a humanitarian crisis in the region.

Hamas now says Israel's agreement to ease the blockade is “part of the plot by Israelis, Arabs and Europeans" to topple Hamas.

According to the Gaza-based Al Ayyam newspaper, clothing retailers are claiming that rather than a lack, there is now an overabundance of selections in their market.

The problem is that since Hamas has not paid salaries, there are few customers available to buy the goods.

Soft drink manufacturers and those in the furniture industry are also complaining, as they don't want to compete with the lower prices of Israeli goods.

Both have called on the de facto Hamas government to prevent the entry of Israeli products, citing their ability to meet the needs of the local market themselves and fears they may have to close their factories if they cannot meet the competition.

Due to the goods that continue to be “imported” through the Gaza smuggler tunnels, as well as those that enter the region by truck, there is now a surplus of products in the small market.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri claimed the agreement is “part of the plot by Israelis, Arabs and Europeans to restore the rule of the [Fatah-led] Palestinian Authority in Gaza.”

Aid to Gaza Up by 60%
While Hamas backpedals on its claims that Israel has been starving its population by limiting the flow of aid through the crossings, the new policy change has resulted in what Gaza retailers are calling a glut of goods in the region.

Data gleaned from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (CoGAT) for June showed a 60 percent increase in aid transferred from Israel to Gaza via the Kerem Shalom Crossing.

A new joint task force comprised of personnel from the Palestinian Authority and the IDF's CoGAT was created to oversee the policy changes and work on advancing coordinated projects to be supervised by the international community. The task force also continues to work on finding ways to increase the capacity of goods being transferred daily through the crossings, according to a statement from the IDF Spokesman's Office.

More than 3,000 trucks crossed into Gaza through Kerem Shalom and the Karni Crossing last month. In addition, the Jewish State continued to supply the region with heating gas (4 million liters), cooking gas (4,000 tons) and diesel fuel (approximately 600,000 liters).

Some 2,500 PA residents of Gaza entered Israel as well during the month of June, passing through the Erez Crossing, which is specifically intended for human traffic. The number is a 25 percent jump over previous figures.

In total, the number of trucks making their way into Gaza through the Israeli crossings has increased by 12 percent, according to the CoGAT.
(IsraelNationalNews.com)

on settlements

If you are against Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, read this article to appreciate the complexities of Israeli society and politics. With which segments of Israeli society do you have philosophical or ideological trouble? If and when we are "anti-Israel" - exactly who is it that we are against?

The Orthodox Jews fighting the Judaization of East Jerusalem

Leading the demonstrations of solidarity with Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah are some young Israelis with a religious background. They explain their activism and how it correlates to their conception of the true meaning of the Torah

by Nir Hasson. Published online by Ha'aretz, June 24, 2010.
Link to the article

Not long before Hillel Ben Sasson attended his first demonstration in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Aryeh King − perhaps the person most identified with Jewish settlement there − declared that in the battle over the capital of Israel, the left had been defeated.

“In the past they organized demonstrations,” King told Haaretz last November, “but now we have made them understand that they have lost the battle. They can’t even recruit 20 people, and if there is a demonstration it’s Europeans who take part. Israelis don’t show up anymore. We have won.”

	A demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah. The settlers plan to demolish the 30 homes and establish a new neighborhood there.
	Photo by: Yuval Tebol

But King was wrong. A few days later, Ben Sasson and his friends joined the demonstrations in support of residents of Sheikh Jarrah, and thus launched a rearguard battle not only on behalf of the residents’ rights, but on behalf of both the status of the left in Jerusalem and their own identity.

“From my point of view, being in Sheikh Jarrah is the full and supreme realization of my religious existence,” Ben Sasson says, as he walks on a recent day through the neighborhood. “When I don’t show up on a Friday, I feel as though I have not put on tefillin [phylacteries] in the morning. When I am here, I am fighting against the expulsion of people who will become refugees for a second time, but also against the settlers − because they are trying to expel me from the boundaries of legitimacy. They are double enemies: They are trying to plunder the homes of the Palestinians and, by contrast of course, also the religion to whose God I pray.”

The eviction of a few families from Sheikh Jarrah last summer spurred one of the most intriguing protest movements in Israel in recent times. Like the weekly demonstrations against the separation fence in the West Bank villages of Bil’in and Na’alin, there is no single body behind this movement. A few dozen activists, in partnership with the residents, are its driving force. They have been joined, every Friday afternoon since last November, by between 200 and 300 people, only a few of whom are Palestinians or are not Israeli citizens.

It is possible to estimate cautiously that about half of the 30 key activists in Sheikh Jarrah are now or were in the past religiously observant. Most are young people in their twenties and thirties, and they represent an entire spectrum: religious, datlashim ‏(formerly religious, but usually people for whom religion and tradition are still important to some degree‏), datlafim ‏(sometimes religious‏), “transparent skullcaps” ‏(bareheaded people who describe themselves as religiously observant‏), secular, and those who do not want to specify their position along this continuum. In any event, nearly all consider Judaism and their religious education and background to be important elements in their political thinking and activism. They also wonder if their presence in Sheikh Jarrah spells the advent of a new phenomenon in religious society, or whether they represent a disappearing breed of the religious left.

The most veteran beard and skullcap in Sheikh Jarrah probably belong to Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights. For years the Reform rabbi, who speaks Arabic with a pronounced American accent, has fought shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and many other locales.

“I think this is a new phenomenon,” he says. “Something that crosses religions is emerging in Jerusalem today. [These are] young people who are not bound to their parents’ conventions and don’t care whether their partners in the struggle are religious or not, but all of them share the feeling that our future is in danger.”

‘Symbolic capital’

“I can imagine one of my cousins saying, ‘Again those leftists are identifying with the other side and not with the unfortunate people among us,’” Ben Sasson says. “But in Sheikh Jarrah there is no mistaking the good guys from the bad guys. No matter how you look at it or describe it − there is no way the settlers living there can be considered the good guys and the Palestinians the bad guys. Maybe in other places you can consider Palestinian suffering to be somehow relative, but here it’s so clear. And it doesn’t matter how what additional data you factor in or even if you ‘recruit’ Herzl [in your arguments]: It won’t make a difference.”

A few dozen Palestinian refugee families have been living in Sheikh Jarrah for the past 60 or so years. Of late, a company called Nahalat Shimon, an operative arm of settler organizations, has started to evict them, based on Jewish ownership documents from the end of the 19th century which have been validated by the courts ‏(See box‏). The settlers have already taken permanent possession of three homes. Many more Palestinian families are in danger of eviction.

Israeli law permits people to claim Jewish property abandoned almost a century ago, but does not permit Arab families to claim ownership over property they abandoned during Israel’s War of Independence. Thus, refugee families of 1948 are liable to become refugees again, in 2010 − and this asymmetry is nourishing the struggle in East Jerusalem.

Ben Sasson, son of the president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, historian Menahem Ben-Sasson, is currently writing his doctoral dissertation in Jewish studies. The subject: the explicit name of God. He describes the Sheikh Jarrah demonstrations as “worship of Hashem [the Hebrew name for God]” and is very eager to engage his settler-adversaries in theological debate. It’s clear he has already rehearsed these arguments in his mind many times.

“If you take away their Uzis and kick out the police, sit us down and remove the media − they will leave with their tail between their legs,” he says emphatically. “In the Middle Ages disputations were held between learned Jews and Christians. Sometimes the Jews won, in which case they had to escape to avoid being killed. If you bring [the settlers] for a disputation now, I will win. All the Jewish sources are on my side. Their whole activity is twisted. What they are doing is desecration of God’s name, in the most explicit way.”

Asked to illustrate his thesis, he recites rapidly: “Ezekiel 33: ‘O mortal, those who live in these ruins in the Land of Israel ... and you shed blood, yet you expect to possess the land!’”

Another longtime activist who has been prominent in the struggle, Assaf Sharon, 35, is less assertive in this regard. “There is no such thing as [one form of] Judaism,” he says. “There are many ideas and streams and motifs − some of them on our side [politically], others not. Unfortunately, the latter are more dominant in the society I grew up in.”

Sharon, now secular and a Ph.D. student in philosophy at Stanford University, attended a hesder yeshiva ‏(combining religious studies with army service‏), studying at Alon Shvut in the Etzion Bloc south of Bethlehem and Otniel Yeshiva, also in the West Bank.

“In one of the left-wing actions in the southern Hebron Hills, we escorted Palestinian children to school, with about 100 settlers surrounding them and the Jeep,” Sharon recalls. “They started hitting us and in the midst of all this I heard my name called. It was a friend of mine from high school, who was with them. In the middle of everything there were hugs, and the Border Police removed all the left-wingers, but took no notice of me, because I was with the settlers.

“I was alone facing 40-50 guys, who started to engage in a theological debate. ‘Plunder is plunder,’ I shouted at them, citing verses from here and there. It was interesting and enjoyable to argue, and it’s important for me to feel that Judaism is on my side, not theirs. I really do think that the right and beautiful parts of Judaism are with me, but there is also a great deal of racism and violence in Judaism. Roughly speaking, they are still with the early prophets, at the stage of the conquest of the land, and I am in the era of late prophets, building society. I say we have finished conquering the land, the War of Independence is over and the question that remains is what type of society we will have.”

Like most of his friends in the protest movement, Sharon is from a liberal religious family, a relative anomaly in the religious-Zionist landscape. One of the turning points in his political thinking and on the path that ultimately led him into the secular world was November 4, 1995 − the night Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.

“It wasn’t done in my circles, but I went to the square that evening [for the peace rally] and after the murder I stayed until almost dawn. In the morning I went to the yeshiva. I was very religious then. That day the rabbi of the yeshiva told me that people from [the left-wing youth movement] Hashomer Hatzair wanted to meet with us.

“Just think what a crazy reversal it was,” he continues. “Rabin’s body wasn’t yet cold, and instead of us looking for a way to reach them and ask them for forgiveness − they come to us, on top of which the rabbi approached me because he knew I was considered left wing and that most of the students would not agree to meet with them. In the end, we met, but not in the yeshiva; in an apartment, so people wouldn’t see. The Rabin assassination became a ‘lever’ for the settlers: Not only did they not back down, but since then they’ve gained key positions, influence in the media, in politics and in culture. Most important, they seized control of the ‘symbolic capital’ of Israeliness. They are now identified as owners of the Jewish cargo. They constitute the hegemony.”

Activist religion

Some members of the Sheikh Jarrah group associate themselves with the remnants of a liberal left-wing religious community which once existed in Jerusalem, but disappeared within the nationalist currents of religious Zionism.

“Sociologically, Jerusalem religiosity is far more pluralistic,” says Amos Goldberg, 44, who teaches in the contemporary Judaism department at the Hebrew University and is a major activist in the struggle. “The Jerusalem left is far less anti-religious and contains many more people who are now religious or were observant in the past.”

Sharon proposes a different explanation for recent left-wing religious activism: “Maybe it’s precisely because we did not come up through the intellectual left, but through Gush Emunim [Bloc of the Faithful], where the principle is that politics must be manifested through activity − you have to be where things are happening and not only where it’s convenient to be. The idea is that political activity means action, not persuading someone you are in the right. Maybe from this point of view we are a lot closer to the ‘Zambish’ types [nickname of Ze’ev Hever, a settler activist] than to others. We also learned from them how to confront the state’s mechanisms.”

Goldberg mentions a “formative moment,” when he experienced the change that led him to Sheikh Jarrah − and even to a detention cell. A few years ago, he joined an escort group provided by peace organizations for Palestinian farmers who were being harassed by settlers.

“I was always left wing, but also a soldier. Suddenly I saw an elderly Palestinian who wanted to plow his field being chased away by a soldier. You identify instinctively with the old man, and you say, ‘That soldier is a brute,’” says Goldberg, a doctoral student who is writing his dissertation on Holocaust survivors.

“Suddenly you’re in reverse mode: My solidarity is unequivocally not with the state, not with its symbols and not with the police. I consider them ... I hold myself back from saying ‘the enemy.’ After that you can no longer see things as you did beforehand. I have not switched sides, but one’s map of identification changes and once it does, there is no going back.”

As a researcher who deals mainly with the Holocaust, Goldberg lets history direct his conscience: “At the personal psychological level, this is a matter of moral duty, the duty of those who are bystanders. It might be a large or a small injustice, but there is no need to wait until the situation becomes so extreme. When one sees injustice and racism such as we have here, you have to intervene.”

Goldberg ceased being religiously observant years ago but refuses to define his status today. His children are religious and he wears a skullcap. “It’s for protection against the sun and does not make it possible to define me. It’s also convenient, because I am getting bald,” he quips.

Indeed, he still sees hope in the thinking of some members of religious society, even settler circles: “The discourse of large swaths of the religious public is saliently racist. Their conceptual world resonates with ideas espoused by folk movements in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. But at the same time, we have to remember that the greatest wrongs against the Palestinians were perpetrated not by the settlers, but by secular nationalism. To pin the blame on the settlers is a type of internal cleansing process that you find in Israeliness. It’s precisely within the religious-settler discourse that the potential exists for a different type of political discourse − one that is far more egalitarian. I am referring to ideas that spring from a religious worldview that will sanctify the entire region, because the land is God’s and not a nation’s. That is where ideas of equality can spring from.”

Goldberg draws the ire of his fellow protesters by not rejecting the name Simeon the Just, as used by the settlers, the Jerusalem Municipality and the police to denote the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, because the Second Temple high priest’s tomb is there. The debate around the name is the symbolic manifestation of the struggle for the neighborhood.

Goldberg: “The tomb of Simeon the Just was there for a great many years and did not bother the Palestinians. Jews came and there was no violence,” he notes. “I want to believe that a joint struggle should also give rise to new language. We have to find a way to say that it’s both Simeon the Just and Sheikh Jarrah.” Religion, he says, can be helpful in this regard.

To which Ben-Sasson responds, “If only the day will come when the name Al-Quds [the Arabic name of Jerusalem] will also appear at the entrance to the city. If only we will be deserving of this.”

Practice and belief

“To grow up in religious society means to translate your beliefs into deeds,” says Elisheva Milikovsky, a 27-year-old social worker who was raised in a national-religious home in the settlement of Efrat, near Bethlehem. “You don’t just sit at home and cogitate. You put into practice the things you believe in.”

Milikovsky gained fame a few years ago, when she became a one-woman institution looking after the African refugees who reached Israel. The standard operating procedure was for the army to leave the refugees it had rounded up crossing into Israel from Egypt on a street in Be’er Sheva, after which someone from the army would call Milikovsky and inform her. She did all she could to help the refugees get through their first days in the country. Since then she has continued to work with refugees, and this, she says, is what eventually brought her to Sheikh Jarrah as well.

“In Efrat it’s very obvious that the Palestinians are transparent people. You live in the settlement and don’t have the slightest notion of what’s going on around you. As a teenager I viewed myself as left wing, but the true change was fomented by my activity with the refugees. I made an effort to see the other side.”

Gil Gutglick, 44, production director at Keter Publishing House in Jerusalem, was not a political activist before joining the Sheikh Jarrah protest movement. He has long been secular, but admits that his religious past is one of the reasons he demonstrates in the East Jerusalem neighborhood.

“My Jewish identification is very strong. I feel ashamed that the Jewish settlers are entering the homes [of the Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah] while the beds are still warm. That feeling of shame was the first thing that induced me to participate. Amos [Goldberg] sent me an email saying they needed people to be with them. I went after work that day and since then I have been in the neighborhood, whenever possible.”

Gutglick is one of 14 activists who are under court order to stay away from the neighborhood for five months, after being arrested in a demonstration on May 14.

“I am religious, but there was a period in which, even though I did not stop believing, I did not want to walk around with a skullcap,” says Netanel Warschawski, 27, who also works at Keter. “I was a bit ashamed that in the name of the beliefs of the settlers, and in the name of the skullcap, as it were − people say and do terrible things. I did not want to identify with that society, did not want them to think that I was like them, that we share the same views. Eight years ago I had an argument with friends, during which one said I was ‘shaming’ the skullcap on my head, and since then I decided that it is precisely an opposite symbol. I am proud to be religiously observant and I represent the religion better than they do. That is why I still wear the skullcap and go to demonstrations with it.”

The group of religious and formerly religious activists in Sheikh Jarrah includes young adults as well as people in their mid-forties. Their life stories are illustrative of the changes religious society has undergone in recent decades. Years ago, Goldberg and Gutglick participated in peace demonstrations of religious youth. Sharon, 35, attended the rally after which Rabin was assassinated. The young women in the group, Milikovsky and Shira Wilkof, 29, an M.A. student in town planning at the Technion − Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, are amazed to hear that such activities even existed.

“What I remember from the sixth grade, three years before the Rabin assassination,” Wilkof says, “was a rabbi who taught us Gemara in a special girls’ class. When he arrived for the first class he wrote on the blackboard, ‘A good Arab is a dead Arab.’”

On the night of the assassination she was in the Ra’anana branch of the national-religious Bnei Akiva movement. “I remember the spontaneous cheers of joy of children in the ninth grade when they heard about the murder,” she relates. “There were very few left-wingers where I grew up. That probably has something to do with the difference between Jerusalem and Ra’anana. In Jerusalem you had the liberal intellectual elite. But I am from the intermediate generation, in which there was a facade of open religious Zionism. An atmosphere of ‘You are either with us or against us’ has now taken over, so I suppose it’s 10 times harder these days.”

In contrast to Ben Sasson, Wilkof considers her activity the opposite of “worship of Hashem”: “My experience is totally different,” she explains. “There is no dimension of religiosity in my going to Sheikh Jarrah. On the contrary: It constitutes a very clear decision between the particularist, isolationist messages of religious society and messages of universalism.”

Gutglick, who until three years ago lived in the Galilee, has a distinctive take on the whole process: “I lived in a bubble and am missing 14 years of acquaintance with the changes that have occurred in Israeli society. Since I moved back, I have not been able to understand the hatred. I grew up in a right-wing society; we were taken on trips to Judea and Samaria, but there were other things, too. I don’t remember hatred like there is today − of Arabs, left-wingers, Tel Avivans, of the other.”

It seems that there is no simple answer to the question of what will be considered a victory in the Sheikh Jarrah struggle.

“It’s not the kind of thing where if you just solve something, everything will be all right,” Sharon explains. “What is happening there is a reflection of the foundations of the Israeli regime: the race-based privileges. So in a profound sense, success in the struggle will be almost a revolution.”

Late start

The struggle between the Sheikh Jarrah demonstrators and the Jerusalem police recently took a very peculiar turn. At 5 A.M. on Wednesday two weeks ago, police arrived at the home of the parents of one of the main activists, and asked her to accompany them for questioning. Her mother told the officers that her daughter was not living at home and refused to give them her address.

The next day, the young woman went to the police station at her initiative. An officer asked her to join him for a “conversation.” He told her that she had been summoned to the station in the wake of intelligence information, to the effect that she intended to set herself ablaze at the next demonstration. “I was told that I had written in Facebook that I was going to throw Molotov cocktails and set myself on fire to cause provocations,” she says.

The woman, who had never written anything remotely resembling that, told the interrogator, “You should question whoever gave you the information.” She was released after 20 minutes.

The activists believe that the fabricated report was given to the police by right-wingers as part of a harassment campaign. The activist’s name, along with the names of many others, was recently placed in right-wing websites calling for the harassment of protesters.

“Instead of dealing with the lawbreakers on the right, the Jerusalem police are continuing to pester the Sheikh Jarrah activists,” Assaf Sharon notes. “We filed complaints about harassment and threats from extreme right-wing activists three months ago. The police did nothing to investigate the threats or to put an end to them. That is another manifestation of the dangerous bias of the district police, which has become an operative arm of the right-wing associations. The police find themselves wasting their meager resources in futile pursuit of ghosts.”

A spokesperson for the Jerusalem police stated that, in the wake of “serious statements and grave actions attributed to the female activist, policemen searched for her the whole day to hand her a summons for questioning. Someone was found to be home before dawn, so the policemen arrived. At midday she appeared for questioning accompanied by her lawyer, was questioned and released.”

A simple question

The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was built in the 19th century as a luxury Arab quarter. The homes of some of the most distinguished and best-known Palestinian families, such as Nashashibi and Husseini, are still there. For centuries, the burial cave in the center of the neighborhood has been considered the final resting place of the high priest Simeon the Just. A small Jewish neighborhood sprang up around the tomb toward the end of the 19th century. Like similar Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, it was abandoned during the 1920s and 1930s, in part because of harassment by Arab neighbors.

During Israel’s War of Independence the Jordanians nationalized the land of the Jewish neighborhood in question and in the 1950s, 28 Palestinian families who were uprooted from their homes inside the Green Line were relocated there. The Jordanian government and UNRWA, the United Nations relief agency, settled the refugees for a symbolic price on land that had been purchased by Jews. In return, the Palestinians gave up their refugee certification and paid low rent.

In the early 1970s, two groups − the Sephardi Community Committee and the Knesset Israel ‏(a term referring to the Second Temple period‏) Committee − succeeded in receiving rights to land there from the Israeli custodian of absentee property, and registered it in their name. In 1982, the Palestinians made what, in retrospect, appears to have been a crucial mistake in terms of the continuation of their struggle. In the wake of misguided legal counsel, they signed an agreement recognizing the committees’ ownership of the land and in return were granted the status of protected tenants. Since then, the Palestinians and their lawyers have tried to disavow and annul the agreement, but all attempts have been rejected by the courts.

The situation of the Palestinian residents was aggravated after the Nahalat Shimon company purchased part of the land from the two committees. It is this company that has been waging the legal battle to remove the residents. To date, three families have been evicted. Legal proceedings are under way to evict many others as well. The evicted families erected protest tents on the sidewalks opposite their homes, which have become permanent sites of friction and confrontation with the settlers.

The legal proceedings over Sheikh Jarrah have serious political and moral implications. The Palestinian residents, who have almost despaired of the Israeli judicial system, are planning international action based on a simple question: Why did the Jewish committees receive their property, which was abandoned in the 1930s, by presenting Ottoman documents in court − whereas the Palestinians are unable to put forward an identical claim to property they abandoned in 1948? The families that were evicted say they are ready to forgo their homes in Sheikh Jarrah in return for properties they abandoned in the past in Jaffa, Tzrifin and elsewhere.

The settlers plan to demolish the 30 homes in Sheikh Jarrah and establish on their ruins a new neighborhood of 200 residential units, which will be part of a string of other communities planned in the area: the Shepherd Hotel compound, which has been acquired by the settlers’ American patron, Irwin Moskowitz, the Kerem Hamufti section and others. In such a scenario, the veteran Palestinian neighborhood will undergo rapid Judaization.

Given Israel’s current sensitive political situation, and in the light of the difficulties involved today in receiving authorization for housing projects that are far less provocative − it’s hard to see such a plan being approved in the foreseeable future. But in Sheikh Jarrah it sometimes looks as if not much more provocation is needed to ignite the powder keg called East Jerusalem.

‘This land is our land’

The leading spokesperson for the Jewish settlers, in what they call the Shimon Hatzaddik ‏(Simeon the Just‏) neighborhood, is Yonatan Yosef, grandson of Shas spiritual mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and the son of former MK Yaakov Yosef, who has led the current struggle to integrate Sephardi ultra-Orthodox girls in the Haredi school in Immanuel.

Yosef downplays the phenomenon of religious demonstrators in the other camp. “I am there seven days a week and we have a photographer who films all their demonstrations,” he says. “The number of religious people is minuscule to the point of a non-presence. There are maybe a few with small skullcaps.”

In any event, Yosef continues, “Anyone who is religious and acts against the religious belief that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people, anyone who has doubts and adopts the Arab narrative and marches under the PLO flag and pesters Jews who come to pray on a Jewish tomb − he has removed himself from the religious community.”

Nor does Yosef fear a theological disputation. “Why does the Torah begin with Genesis and not with basic precepts? The answer that is given is that the Holy One blessed be he created the world in order to give the Land to the people of Israel. They tell us that we are coming to steal, but how can you steal something that belongs to you? Anyone who argues otherwise is violating an explicit rule of the Torah − any infant who has studied a little of it knows that.”

Yosef also mentions large-scale demonstrations organized at the site by the right. “On Lag Ba’omer we had 27,000 people and on Jerusalem Day many thousands more, and the media make a fuss over 150 anarchists.”

Rawabi

Today was the most hopeful day I’ve had on this journey. We visited al-Haram ash-Sharif (the Temple Mount) this morning (pictures below), and this afternoon we visited the offices of Massar International, the real-estate company breaking ground – literally and figuratively – on Rawabi, the first planned Palestinian city.

Bashar Masri is the charismatic founder of Massar International, which, in conjunction with Qatari Government-owned Qatari Diar, are the investors backing the work of Masri’s Bayti Real Estate Investment Company. His story is remarkable. Born and raised in Nablus in the West Bank, he lived in Washington D.C. for well over a decade and became a U.S. citizen in 1987. He founded Massar International, a small private sector development company, in 1994, and moved back to the West Bank. After working on small development projects in Palestine, he realized that to compete globally, the company needed to upgrade. By September 2000, the company was hiring dozens of employees, and owned a brokerage company, a technology company, an advertising company, and a newspaper publishing company. However, also in fall 2000, the first Intifada broke out. With increased security forces of the IDF placing West Bank residents under curfew for four months out of the next year and a half, and increasing difficulties with mobility and a complete halt to development projects, Massar International had to think creatively, or go bankrupt. Mr. Masri decided to diversify and invest in real estate. Bayti Real Estate Investment Company was born and operations started in 2004. Mr. Masri began projects in Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, and Serbia.

“Real estate was promising,” he said. His company realized that there was a significant population of middle and low-income families living throughout the Middle East who don’t own homes, “and there is no good reason why they don’t,” he said. With six years of work in Morocco, Bayti homes sold over 12,000 apartments, growing their initial investment of 1.2 million euro into a 300 million euro enterprise. “Bayti homes have a great reputation. And we made such a profit on the homes in Morocco, within three years we were renovating and updating the homes… When you say ‘Bayti Homes’ in Morocco, they have a great reputation, and a great resale value,” he said.

He continued, “So, we said, ‘If we can be successful in other countries, why not elsewhere? Why not attempt to do this in Palestine?” 2005 was a great financial year for most of the countries in the Middle East, and momentum started building for Mr. Masri and the managers and employees of Bayti Homes and Massar International in Ramallah. In 2007, the idea of Rawabi, the first planned Palestinian city, was born. From the Winter 2010 Newsletters to investors in the Rawabi project:

“Rawabi is being developed by the Bayti Real Estate Investment Company, jointly owned by Qatari Government-owned Qatari Diar and Ramallah-based Massar International- two companies with unsurpassed real estate development experience and extensive knowledge of regional and international markets.

Rawabi will be built as a modern, high-tech city with gleaming mid-rise buildings, green parks and shopping areas. It will include fully developed infrastructure, a business district and commercial center, private and public schools, mosques and a church, public parks, a hotel and convention center, a cinema, a library and a municipal complex. Primary and secondary health care facilities, a police station and a fire station will be key features of the city, ensuring a safe, comfortable and healthy environment. The infrastructure and public facilities will benefit not only Rawabi but also the nine neighboring towns and villages.

Rawabi will provide more than 5,000 affordable housing units with nine different floor-plans to choose from, spread across 23 neighborhoods. Rawabi will initially be home to 25,000 residents, with additional residential and commercial unis slated for subsequent construction phases that will ultimately serve a city with a population of 40,000.”

The Rawabi project has already begun, and it is awe-inspiring. We were driven to the site today to overlook the work being done in the first phase. The mountain is being carved into a contour suitable for building, with the crushed aggregate stone being saved as building material. Three different Palestinian private contractors are busy on the project, causing a significant snowball effect in the Palestinian economy. Banks are approving the contractors’ application for business loans, and the contractors are purchasing new, state-of-the-art equipment to get the job done well and on schedule. The hundreds of workers on site are stimulating the economies of the small surrounding towns and villages by eating in their restaurants and cafes, shopping in their stores and markets, and project managers sleeping in their hotels. With more and more construction workers joining the project every week, new business ventures are popping up in Ramallah and villages near the site to provide large quantities of boxed lunches for the workers. Over 1,000 qualified prospective residents have already been interviewed by Bayti homes and are registered to purchase the first units, which are scheduled to be completed in the next three years.

“We are targeting young professionals, young families who want a safe place to raise their families… a clean, well-planned city that provides jobs… This project is growing the Palestinian economy,” said Amir Dajani, project planner and manager.

The cooperation that has gone into the Rawabi project and the support it is enjoying are unparalleled. Just last Thursday, Tony Blair was on site to learn about the project and see its progress. The newsletter reports, “Bayti holds regular meetings and briefings with Palestinian community and business leaders interested in Rawabi, to provide updates on the project and to gain feedback from the attendees. Recently, Bayti conducted briefings for community leaders on the progress of the Rawabi project. During the meetings, Bayti received valuable insights from the participants, whose suggestions will be incorporated into future development plans. Due to this level of community interest and the fruitfulness of such meetings, Bayti plans to continue to hold such briefings and involve Palestinian business and community leaders in the city’s development.” The notable dignitaries who have visited and support Rawabi include Daniel Rubinstein, U.S Consul General; David Harden, Senior Advisor to U.S. Envoy Senator George Mitchell; Senator John Kerry; board members of the Middle East Investment Initiative; Howard Sumka, USAID Mission Director; and Archbishop Theodosios, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, among others.

It was humbling to realize that I was receiving the same tour that these very important and very influential leaders had received. I was dumbfounded, actually.

I was most moved by the initiative to make Rawabi an environmentally sustainable green space. The Jewish National Fund has for decades received donations from around the world for the forestation of Israel. Now, it is possible to buy a tree that will be planted in Rawabi. I highly encourage you to do so. So far, 10,000 trees have been planted through the GROW for a Greener Palestine program. Visit http://www.rawabi.ps/ to purchase a tree and help forest Palestine.

One more “hallelujah” about the Rawabi project: this project will not only be the first planned Palestinian city, but it is also “the first time in Palestinian history that structured long-term mortgages will be available to target segments of the Palestinian population, such as future Rawabi homeowners (through programs such as Amal [an affordable mortgage and loan company] and those offered through local banks).”

Some of the remaining headlines and taglines of the articles in this newsletter:

· “A Model for Future Palestinian City Developments”

· “A City of Firsts in Palestine: Offering a Better Quality of Life”

· “A Pioneering City, Home to Innovation”

· “10,000 Trees Planted Under the GROW for a Greener Palestine Program”

· “Rawabi to Spur Economic Growth”

· “Mortgage Finance Programs: A Path to Home Ownership”

· “Adhering to Better International Standards and Practices”

It is stunning that the private sector is leading the way in the development of the infrastructure for the birth of a new Palestinian state. After so many failings and so much corruption within the Palestinian Authority under Arafat, the rise of Hamas and brutal and violent clashes with Fatah, the building of the wall to put an end to terrorist attacks originating in the West Bank, and the blockade of Gaza to prevent the entry of weapons in the strip and reaching the hands of Hamas militants –

this is a success story to hold on to. This is the building up of a new generation of Palestinian hope, originating from strong, sound leadership within Palestine’s private sector.

I had a moment for a conversation with Amir Dajani, the project manager, today when we were looking at the construction site. I asked, “Do you think that with your initiative, with you leading the way, that other private sector actors will join in building up Palestine, and that the public sector will follow your lead, too?”

“Oh, definitely,” he said. “We’re paving the way.”

Indeed they are.

If you support the Palestinian cause – you MUST educate yourself about Rawabi. And, you must realize the drastic difference between the past Palestinian modus operandi and the new transparent pioneering vision of Massar International and Bayti Real Estate Investment.

They are paving the way for a transparent, accountable, organized, and modern Palestinian state.

Saturday night

Day four (Saturday night).

At the end of the “business day,” I was ready to pack my bags and go home. Go home. Done. I’m done – see ya later.

Then, we had our oh-so-necessary and long-delayed Episcopal alcohol outing. Two lovely bottles of red wine from the Golan Heights Winery later – I think I can face Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

In every trip I take, there’s always a moment of “wow, I love these people. I’m really going to be sad to leave.” Today was that day for me. I love the people on this trip – in all their eccentricities – and I love the camaraderie and humor we share. I also appreciate – to such a great extent that I cannot express it – that all these bishops and priests have accepted me with open arms and actually LISTEN TO ME. I don’t feel marginalized. I don’t feel young. I don’t feel insignificant. I actually feel quite normal, quite able to contribute, and quite happy. This is a huge moment for me. I think I’ve finally made the transition from child to adult in the church. These very wise and very educated people are listening to me, dignifying me, and most times, agreeing with my assessments of certain issues. I feel pretty damn fantastic.

Also, though, I feel somewhat out of place. Today we had a meeting in Bethlehem with a Palestinian family, and we were offered candies, coffee, and treats. I’ve lived with Arabs, and Arab hospitality is beautiful. I knew going into the meeting that it would be rude to refuse the gifts being offered to us. To me – this is just common knowledge of how to behave in Arab culture. I was astonished by how many members of our group refused – politely, of course –the food and drink. I was a little embarrassed, actually. This is a simple matter – it’s the American politeness of declining in the American way versus Arab hospitality being offered to make the stranger feel like a friend. Two very different systems. I just wish we had discussed it prior to the meeting. I remember my Moroccan mother once being almost hurt that I refused the cookies she had set out for me to enjoy. She offered dozens of cookies – all for me, and all for a simple visit. I said, “La, shukran,” (no, thank you) because I was already full. And then the look on her face came, and I immediately regretted that choice. Arabs are generous and hospitable to a fault. Folks – if you ever travel in the Middle East and you are lucky enough to spend time with people who live there, don’t refuse their offerings. It is their cultural – and beautiful – way of welcoming you, of making you feel like a friend and not a stranger.

At dinner this evening, I was eating with three other women in my group. Across from us, a few tables away, a black Jewish couple sat eating their meal. One of the women at my table is black, and she wanted to get a photograph of this black Jewish couple, since they were the first we had seen. We waited until after dinner. As we were leaving the dining room, the man had his head bowed in prayer as he cradled his prayer book in his hands. His wife was at the buffet getting some more food. One of my friends retrieved the camera from her pocket to photograph the man. I took out my cellphone to look distracted and distanced myself from my group. I didn’t want to be part of these curious and inappropriate Americans taking a picture of a man engaged in humble prayer to his god – in an intimate location, close enough to reach out and touch him. Taking pictures at the Western Wall is one thing. It is huge, it is an open air, public space, and thousands of tourists visit every day. Taking a picture of a black Jew praying in a dining room full of tourists and other Jews at the end of a holy Shabbat– this is just audacious. He ignored her while she took the picture. His wife returned to the table and gave us all a quizzical look. Her husband had not lifted his head from his prayers. “Do you mind if I take your picture?” she asked. The black Jewish woman did not understand her question, so my friend proceeded to position herself to take their photograph.

I was rather disgusted and annoyed. It’s just backwards and strange. Let’s imagine for a minute: I’m in Ghana, or Mongolia, or some other place where my skin color and culture make me out of place. And, curious and silly tourists take out their camera to take a picture of me while I’m kneeling in prayer. “Oh, look at the interesting white girl kneeling down, performing her religious rituals. How fascinating. Let’s take a photograph of this curiosity.”
Oh- but wait. This would never happen to me in another place. This is pure American tourist syndrome, orientalism, and an “oh how quaint and fascinating” attitude rolled into one.

Eww. Ewwwwww. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

These are not cultural curiosities. These are people, living their lives. They’re not on display, they’re not on stage, and they’re not play-acting for your amusement. Why are we taking their photograph?

Those things aside, I will conclude today by saying that I don’t want to write about this conflict today. The layers are only piling up, the interreligious, interethnic, inter-Jewish, inter-Palestinian, and inter-political dialectics are only twisting my brain into a knot.

I can say, with assurance and in full confidence, that there is 1000 times more complexity to this conflict than opinionated Americans understand, or than educated pundits care to write about. Before you jump ship into the extreme pro-Israel camp, or wear your keffiyeh and carry your Palestinian flag, stop for a moment. Think. Read. And get your butt to Israel and Palestine for something more than a religious pilgrimage.

There’s much, much, much more to this conflict than any of us dare to imagine. It’s too weighty. It’s too hard. It’s too much.

And that’s exactly why we should either read voraciously, study voraciously, and talk to people living these realities (normal people, on the ground – and not politicians), or just claim ignorance and shut up.

Why didn’t I shut up before?
How stupid I was.