Notes on the Palestinian Diaspora

Here I'm puzzling together several links that at first glance appear disconnected, but share several common threads: faith, migration, land claims, cultural identity and even suicide. Here are the three links:

• 'This Place Is Only for Jews': The West Bank's Apartheid Springs -- Settlers have taken over dozens of springs in the West Bank, all of them on private Palestinian land, and are keeping the owners away. Rina Shnerb, a Jewish teen, was murdered last week at one of them.
• Bomb Kills Israeli Girl, 17, at a West Bank Oasis (August 23) An Israeli teenager was killed and her father and brother were wounded on Friday when a homemade bomb exploded near a natural spring in the occupied West Bank, one of many small oases where Palestinians and Israelis seek to cool off but that have become hot spots in the conflict.
• “We Refugees” – an essay by Hannah Arendt Originally published in January 1943 as “We Refugees” in a small Jewish journal called Menorah, the piece captures what it really means to be a refugee – the endless anxiety, ravaging despair, deluded optimism, jolting absurdity and even the humour of the “refugee.”

The first link is from Israel's Haaretz, the second from the New York Times, the third from Amro Ali's blog (faculty at American University, Cairo) whom I follow via Twitter.

The first link caught my eye with the reference to apartheid. I was expecting as I read to find yet another example of how Palestinians are considered and treated as second-class people, both inside Israel and the Occupied Territories. I knew about settlements in the Occupied Territories, formerly Palestinian land now designated for the exclusive use of Israelis. But I don't remember reading about open discrimination on the part of civilians, not to this extent:

According to Dror Etkes, the founder of Kerem Navot, an organization that studies Israeli land policy in the West Bank, there are today more than 60 springs in the central West Bank that settlers coveted and seized as part of a project of plunder that began 10 years ago. The landscaping and renovation work at about half of them has been completed, the dispossession made absolute, the Palestinians blocked from even approaching the springs and their lands. Other springs targeted by the settlers are in various stages of takeover. 

Etkes explains that the seizure of the springs is part of an ambitious plan of a far larger scope – to take control of the remaining open spaces in the West Bank. This is being done by way of creation of bathing areas and hiking trails, designation of graves of Jewish spiritual figures as “holy sites,” and development of picnic sites, all on Palestinian-owned private land. The aim: to isolate the Palestinian villages, instead of isolating settlements, and of course to seize more and more land. 

Last Friday this criminal undertaking claimed a high price: The gurgling waters were tainted with red – the blood of Rina Shnerb, a teenager who was killed by an improvised explosive device that had been planted next to the Ein Bubin spring; her father and brother were also wounded in the blast.

The rest of the article is interesting with more information. But the report of a young Israeli woman killed by an IED, immediately assumed to be of "terrorist" origin, got me sidetracked. Why has this not been another big news story? Every time yet another rocket is intercepted by Israel's iron dome defense, every time there is an assault or attempted assault by a Palestinian on a Jew, it always seems to make headlines. So why not this? The NY Times article has the answer.

The second link from NY Times was a way of validating facts in the first. 

An Israeli teenager was killed and her father and brother were wounded on Friday when a homemade bomb exploded near a natural spring in the occupied West Bank, one of many small oases where Palestinians and Israelis seek to cool off but that have become hot spots in the conflict. 

Government officials declared it an act of terrorism, and security forces set up roadblocks near Ramallah to try to catch those responsible. 

The attack at Ein Bubin, a spring in the wooded hills near the small settlement of Dolev, roughly midway between the cities of Ramallah and Modiin, killed the teenager, Rina Shnerb, 17, the authorities said. She had visited the spring with her father, Rabbi Eitan Shnerb, and an older brother, Dvir, 19. Both men suffered shrapnel injuries and were airlifted to Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. (...)

Springs on the West Bank have become flash points between Palestinians who bathe or water their flocks in them and Jewish settlers who have increasingly sought to prevent them from doing so. A 2012 United Nations report identified 30 springs that had been completely “taken over” by settlers and another 26, including Ein Bubin, that were “at risk” of takeover, whether by frequent tourism or by the presence of armed patrols seen as intimidating to Palestinians.
To the settlers, however, the security precautions are necessary, as shown by Friday’s attack, as well as by a chilling murder in 2015 at the same spot.

Near the end of the report this event in the Occupied Territories, not in Israel proper or even in any of the settlements, adds fuel to the anti-Palestinian themes of Israeli politics.

Israel has an election on Sept. 17, and Ayelet Shaked, the former justice minister who is battling Mr. Netanyahu for right-wing votes, called Friday’s attack “a punch in the stomach” that damaged the sense of security of every Israeli.
“Today it’s Dolev, tomorrow it’s Tel Aviv,” she told the nationalist news outlet Arutz Sheva.

This brings me to the third link, the extended Hannah Arendt quote.
I have been trying to find the right language to fit these links together. The commonality is not just the violence or even the legal/protocol entanglements. The part that's easy to overlook are the features that both Jews and Palestinians have in common.

• Refugees Both groups have experienced life as refugees
• Immigrants It follows that all refugees must become immigrants elsewhere.
• Migration Even if moving from one place to another is not forced, migration is a natural impulse throughout human history. 
• Displacement There are many reasons for people to relocate, including needing more land, expanded commercial activity and religious freedom. 

Both groups have been persecuted over time, even to the point of ethnic cleansing. Both have been forced to flee to safety when forces out of their control became existential threats. Both have generational roots as refugees (migrants, if you like), relocating whole families, even communities, to places with different customs, languages, political environments and cultural traditions. One might think they share enough in common that embracing one another would be more appealing than fighting. But instead the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has endured all my life, ever since the birth of Israel. Few people alive today remember a time when these two groups were not fighting.

In 1943 Arendt says:

...as soon as we were saved—and most of us had to be saved several times—we started our new lives and tried to follow as closely as possible all the good advice our saviors passed on to us. We were told to forget; and we forgot quicker than anybody ever could imagine. In a friendly way we were reminded that the new country would become a new home; and after four weeks in France or six weeks in America, we pretended to be Frenchmen or Americans. The most optimistic among us would even add that their whole former life had been passed in a kind of unconscious exile and only their new country now taught them what a home really looks like. It is true we sometimes raise objections when we are told to forget about our former work; and our former ideals are usually hard to throw over if our social standard is at stake. With the language, however, we find no difficulties: after a single year optimists are convinced they speak English as well as their mother tongue; and after two years they swear solemnly that they speak English better than any other language—their German is a language they hardly remember.

It is a historic irony that Israel bases her claims to all the real estate from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River on biblical promises, together with historic tribal origins. Palestinians make the same claims, pretty much on the same grounds, because they are the ones who have actually lived on that real estate most of that time. Bones and other archaeological remains from from both sides lie buried all over the place, including Jerusalem, so both sides can point to hard evidence.

A Palestinian diaspora has historic roots much further than the Nakba. The History of Palestine at Wikipedia is quite a long article. The geopolitical divisions of what we call the Middle East together made up historic Palestine. This is elsewhere at Wikipedia:

Palestinian individuals have a long history of migration. For instance, silk workers from Tiberias are mentioned in 13th-century Parisian tax records. However, the first large emigration wave of Arab Christians out of Palestine began in the mid-19th century as a response to the oppression of Palestinian Christians in Ottoman Palestine.
Since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Palestinians have experienced several waves of exile and have spread into different host countries around the world. In addition to the more than 700,000 Palestinian refugees of 1948, hundreds of thousands were also displaced in the 1967 Six-Day War. In fact, after 1967, a number of young Palestinian men were encouraged to migrate to South America. Together, these 1948 and 1967 refugees make up the majority of the Palestinian diaspora. Besides those displaced by war, others have emigrated overseas for various reasons such as work opportunity, education and religious persecution. In the decade following the 1967 war, for example, an average of 21,000 Palestinians per year were forced out of Israeli-controlled areas. The pattern of Palestinian flight continued during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Non-violent conflict resolution is the only way past challenges like this. Even then generations of hard work are sure to follow.

The Family -- a Twitter Colloquy

This is a curated version of a Twitter thread about The Family, Jeff Sharlett's research now made into a documentary.



Rabbi Jill Zimmerman Based on yr recs, we're watching #TheFamily Question: what do they do with Jews & others who do not believe that Jesus was the Messiah? It's FINE that they believe that but getting involved in govt? That's supposed to be for ALL the people?


Jeff Sharlet  Originally #TheFamily was anti-Semitic in traditional sense—after WWII, they recruited former Nazi leaders—but over time they adopted the subtle anti-Semitism of “Jesus+0,” which allowed them to absorb a few powerful Jews. Nixon’s Jewish Fed chief, Arthur Burns, led the way.

Debbie Hemenway: I think they're still praying for our conversion. That's what evangelicalism is all about. And if it doesn't work out, we'll be burned up in the Last Days. Easy peasy.

Covfefe LePew @RinzenLhamo:  Conversion. They completely forget that, if true, "Yeshua", (Jesus is Greek version), was born a Jew and died a Jew...died going against the corrupted priests that had strayed from the Old Testament, which Yeshua had devotedly studied at the feet of the old scholars. These so called devotees of "The Christ," a title like that of The Buddha, etc., had their teachings from this man and were rewritten & edited to push their own personal agenda(s). They believe at the End Times that Jews, who have been placeholders in Israel, etc., will have the opportunity to renounce Judaism, (Jesus'/Yeshua's religion), and accept Christ as their Savior. If so you ascend to Heaven as part of the chosen. If not, you rot on Earth as the dead rise and the rest of the apocalyptic fun ensues.

Jenna Wright: That’s sums up what heard a lot, growing up in the south. I was at a childhood friend’s house who’d just moved to Orl from Dallas. The Jerry Lewis telethon was on. Her Dad, in his underwear & cowboy hat, said, through his cigar, “Jerry’s a nice guy. Too bad he’ll burn in Hell”

Chrissy Stroop: The Family cultivates relationships with anyone with power. They don’t seem as conversion driven as many evangelicals, though ultimately they’re not pluralists, let alone universalists.

Rabbi Jill Zimmerman: But - separation of church and state! 1st amendment! They are completely blurring that line!

Chrissy Stroop: They definitely don’t care about separation of church and state, or really respect institutions or the rule of law. They’re anti-democratic to the core.

Rabbi Jill Zimmerman:  Oh Chrissy & Jenna I am very uneducated in this world. I can't even wrap my head around it. So the family is not dominionist?

Chrissy Stroop: They can be described as dominionist with a lowercase D, but that’s a very broad term. It doesn’t refer to a single entity with a single command structure or anything of the sort. It just refers to Christians who think Christians should take power and impose their views as law.

Rabbi Jill Zimmerman: Oh God. I'm sure not up for that. Such deep believe that one has all the answers for everyone else is very dangerous.

Jill: There are some interesting old interviews I have seen with Bill Barr talking about how he doesn’t believe in the Separation of Church & State. These people think that separation is causing the moral decay of our society. They want to legislate their morality. Ex:prayer in school

At this point a link to this thread was mentioned.
https://twitter.com/JennaWrightHC/status/1151590396927102976

Neuhaus on Kierkegaard

(This is a reprint of a 2004 post at my old blog. I came across it looking for something else and decided to copy it here because it still reads pretty good.)

Readers bored by theology may skip this post and proceed to yesterday's stuff.
I have many friends in the Church - using that word in its universal sense - who are charitable enough to tolerate my understanding of the faith, although they do not agree with either my understanding of scripture or my positions on social issues. Being too tight to pay for a subscription, I read First Things on line instead. (The current issue is never available, being used as an incentive to attract new subscribers, but past issues are available.)

Last month's commentary on Kierkegaard is long but insightful. First Things, of course, is the mouthpiece of Richard John Neuhaus, representing the forward edge of one school of contemporary Roman Catholic thought. Whatever else might be true of Neuhaus, he does his homework and speaks with clarity and intelligence a language that ordinary people can grasp, if they have the patience and inclination.

In the same way that I watch cable or public TV programs simply because they are not broken up by commercial messages, I take time to read some essays, not because I am in full agreement, but simply because they stay on task and don't seem to be pushing a hidden agenda. For me, any mention of Kierkegaard is noteworthy, as I consider myself a Christian Existentialist. Think Kierkegaard without the rage.

There are Christians who call themselves Kierkegaardians, much as others call themselves Augustinians or Thomists or Barthians. But Kierkegaard provides no school of thought, and most emphatically no "system," that can be a secure resting place for one's Christian identity.

So true. Part of being what Neuhaus calls Kiergegaarian is having to live adrift in the universe, with no institutional place to call home.

Kierkegaard offers only a mode of being, of thinking, of living that has no end other than the end of being "contemporaneous" with Jesus Christ, true man and true God, who has no end. The certifying mark that one has accepted what he offers -- or, more precisely, what Christ offers -- is martyrdom, and Kierkegaard yearned to be a martyr. The word martyr, one recalls, means witness. If Kierkegaard was not to be given the privilege of literally shedding his blood, he would bear witness in other ways. He welcomed the derision of those surrounding him, recognizing in them the same crowd that surrounded the cross of his contemporary, Jesus Christ.

Soren Kierkegaard provoked nearly everyone he encountered, especially churchmen, by his stubborn refusal to allow Christendom to overrun Christianity. His anguished life is by no means a model to copy, but his insights are no less valid. If truth were dependent on exemplary messengers, it might never be known at all.

Neuhaus's essay considers the notion that the message of Kierkegaard is usually considered too insubstantial to survive youthful idealism. Hence the title Kiergegaard for Grownups. He finishes with what I find to be an excellent attribution.

Kierkegaard was eccentric in the precise meaning of that word -- off center, even out of the center. He believed that the center of his time and place, and of any time and place, is where the easy lies are told. He was Hiin Enkelte writing for the singular individual who might understand him. Many have read him to experience the frisson of youthful dissent from establishment ways of thinking and being, and have then set him aside upon assuming what are taken to be the responsibilities of adulthood. That, I believe, is a grave mistake. Kierkegaard is for the young, but he is also for grownups who have attained the wisdom of knowing how fragile and partial is our knowing in the face of the absolute, who are prepared to begin ever anew the lifelong discipline that is training in Christianity.

~~~

Reading over the essay these two paragraphs now seem to be important. The churning, boiling extremisms of religion both at home and abroad seem to be increasing. America points to the extremists of Islam and is blind to the swelling tide of Christian extremism that is washing over our own country. Many of my Christian friends beam with pride when they see politicians or others in high places flaunting piety. Sorry, but it makes me want to roll my eyes.

Christendom is the enemy of Christianity—it is, Kierkegaard says repeatedly, the "blasphemy"—that stands in the way of encountering Christ as our contemporary. Christendom assumes that Christ is far in the past, having laid the foundation for the wonderful thing that has historically resulted, Christendom. Of course we are all good Christians because we are all good Danes. It is a package deal and Christ and Christianity are part of the package. If we are good Danes (or good Americans), if we work hard and abide by the rules, the church, which is an integral part of the social order, will guarantee the delivery to heaven of the package that is our lives. But Christ is not in the distant past, protests Kierkegaard. He confronts us now, and a decision must be made. "In relation to the absolute there is only one tense: the present. For him who is not contemporary with the absolute—for him it has no existence."

This encounter with Christ the contemporary is not to be confused with today’s evangelical Protestant language about conversion as a decisive moment in which one "accepts Jesus Christ as one’s personal Lord and Savior." Kierkegaard did not, of course, know about the nineteenth-century American revivalism from which today’s evangelicalism issues, but he had some acquaintance with the enthusiasms that were in his day associated with "pietism." As he inveighed against Christendom, it seems likely he would also inveigh against Evangelicaldom today. As he would inveigh against Christianity of any sort—whether it calls itself liberal or conservative, orthodox or progressive—that neatly accommodates itself to its cultural context. To decide for Christ our contemporary is always a decision to be a cultural alien, to join Christ on his way of suffering and death as an outsider.