That’s it! I have now written a little bit about every place I visited in Israel and Palestine over the last three weeks. I have posted visual glimpses of my journey. I have passed on my pilgrimage learnings, and also shown some of the cracks in my character (many more lie hidden…muahaha). I’ve probably given misinformation here and there and, certainly, I’ve shown not only my own bias, but also the biases of the locals I’ve gotten to know. Indeed, my outlook on Israel and Palestine has been coloured a specific colour by the specific people I’ve met. To hail back to what I learned from Abraham Isaac Kook (via Rabbi Hanan), I’ve encountered a partial truth about this place. And I dare not treat is as the whole truth.

Still, I have spread my net as wide as I have been able to spread it over a three-week span.

A Pragmatic Travel Summary

Places…

I visited modern culture hubs, as well as ancient traditional communities—on both sides of the wall (respectively, Tel Aviv and Ramallah, and Jerusalem and Nablus); I stayed at an Israeli Palestinian town (Nazareth), a highly Christian Palestinian town (Bethlehem), and a more traditional Muslim Palestinian town (Nablus); I witnessed a (self-described) blue-collar Jewish city (Tiberias); and I even stopped by a Jewish Settlement in the West Bank (Gush Etzion).

People…

Many of these are obvious based on the places listed above, but I had conversations with Jewish Israelis, Israeli Palestinians, Palestinians in the West Bank, Palestinian refugees, and Jewish Settlers; Orthodox Jews, non-practicing Jews, Messianic Jews, Palestinian Christians, Palestinian Muslims, and non-religious Palestinians. I had coffee with seniors, and stopped to take the pictures (by request) of heckling pre-teen boys. And of course, I spent some time with Western visitors and temporary residents.

Art…

So many art forms! Curated painting and street graffiti; traditional music, orchestral and choral music, and Western styles like folk, pop, rock, and singer-songwriter; installation and performance arts; architecture; poetry; ceramics and sculpture; metalwork; repurposed crafting; and many others that I’m sure I’ve missed.

Politics…

Along the way I met a wide spectrum of folks with varying political angles:

I listened to speeches from both ardent Zionists and borderline violent Occupation protestors; I spoke with a lot of hopeless, angry, and/or exhausted people (mostly Palestinians), as well as a few quietists (all Israelis); I conversed with some who refused to empathize with the Other, but with many others who actively sought to understand the conflict from both sides; I learned from both political and cultural resistors, and heard from educators who were passionate about connecting personal, peaceful exchanges between Jews and Palestinians; and finally, I’m so grateful to report that I encountered many peace activists, most of whom are committed to one nonviolent method or another as a means toward their goal.

I’d say that’s a pretty decent spread.

That said, there were certainly a few important categories I missed: Haifa would have been very interesting, being a mixed city — roughly half-Jewish, half-Arab; to my shame, I didn’t set foot in a single Palestinian refugee camp (though I spoke with many Palestinian refugees, and I did try to visit Jenin on my belaboured way to Nablus); I didn’t connect with the small Samaritan community just outside Nablus on Mount Gerizim; I didn’t even get close to Gaza, nor did I tour through the important but conflict-ridden city of Hebron; and I didn’t reach the Golan Heights at all, much less encounter any of its Druze population (most of whom identify as neither Israelis nor Palestinians, but as Syrians).

But I guess all that leaves me with ample reason for another visit…

Art + Politics?

I’ve already said quite a lot on this topic, but in terms of summarization, it doesn’t really require much bulk. My conclusion is rather simple: just like in my own culture, all the art here is affected by the political climate; however, not a lot of it is intentionally political.

Of course, some of it is: I saw prominent work from folks like David Tartakover, Sliman Mansour, and Mahmoud Darwish. I saw a lot more of it at a ‘folk art’ level—lots of street art (including many Handala appearances), plenty of martyr posters, some paintings from artists like Zaki, and let’s not forget Walter’s repurposed Christmas ornaments! Because art is such an effectively subversive means of communication, it often serves political messages quite well—and I saw wonderful proofs of this fact during my time in Israel-Palestine.

But a lot of it wasn’t intentionally political. A lot of it was simply artistic expression, pure and simple—expression that gave voice to individuals and to whole communities, delivering messages both weighty and trite. Of course, every artist’s work is informed to a degree by her political situation—but most of what I saw was simply the product of the compelling creativity of the human soul. And yet, as Faten revealed to me during our conversation at Bethlehem’s Dar al-Kalima University, much of this human creativity—provided it’s consistent with one’s cultural identity—is an effective, if unintentional, form of cultural resistance.

These findings sort of shocked me out of my ignorance—ignorance that illogically assumed that because the political climate here is volatile and tipsy, most of the art here would revolve around political subject matter. Once I got a better grip on the actual relationship between humanity and its art, I was delighted to find that my half-baked hypothesis couldn’t be further from the truth.

Conflict(ed) Thoughts

This is the bit of writing I am most loathe to write. After three weeks of travelling through Israel and Palestine, engaging with about equal parts Jewish and Palestinian people, I’ve learned a lot about the conflict from its partakers and primary witnesses.

But I think I’m less ready to stake my flag than I was when I left.

In one sense, this is depressing; it feels irresponsible—as though I’ve chosen to passively sit the bench when I ought to be active on the pitch somewhere. But in another sense, it feels like the only truly responsible and honest answer I can give.

I’ve said it before (and reminded myself many times since): I’m not a political scientist, nor am I a social anthropologist; I haven’t taken any peace studies courses; my knowledge of recent Middle Eastern history has vastly improved since I left Vancouver in mid-July, but it’s still terribly incomplete. What I am is a student of theology and art—hardly the fields of research necessary to make suitable judgments on the perpetually solution-stymieing Israel-Palestine conflict.

But even if I was well-educated in the necessary fields, I still don’t think I could put any judgments forward with much confidence. Once again: I am a Western white privileged Canadian citizen who grew up in the Pacific Northwest—almost as close to the other side of the world as I can get from the conflict, both geographically and culturally. I haven’t grown up anywhere close to the wall. I can’t possibly relate with either side to the necessary degree, no matter how honed my empathy may be.

People like my friend Walter, who is living in Bethlehem, enrolled in a graduate-level peace studies program, and an engaged on-location peace activist—people like him are the closest a Westerner is going to get to being qualified to make any sober judgments. But even then, he’s neither Palestinian nor Jew, and he didn’t grow up in their war-torn little strip of land between the desert and the sea. Thus, even Walter’s qualifications are severely limited.

In sum: I feel completely unqualified to weigh in on the conversation. (It doesn’t mean I won’t weigh in nonetheless, as you’ll see anon.)

But, if you look to the other side of the spectrum, there are many people with valid voices and sober minds: people like Rutie Atsmon, a Jewish woman in Tel Aviv who, through her NGO Windows, is connecting Palestinian and Jewish youth with one another—she’s breaking down relational barriers and building cross-cultural empathy in this land’s future generations.

People like Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger, a chief coordinator for Roots in Gush Etzion, who is doing similar work to Rutie’s for the Jews and Palestinians living in the West Bank—I view his work as an effective step forward no matter how much I disagree with his Zionist ideology or his status as a Jewish settler.

People like Mira Edelstein, a Jewish environmentalist in Tel Aviv who works for EcoPeace Middle East—she and her colleagues are using the shared necessity of the Jordan Rift’s ecological viability as a means for achieving joint Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian collaborations.

People like David Loden, the Jewish composer in Netanya who has wrought musically magnificent, thematically loaded work—like his Psalm 87, which serves to remind his own people that Zion’s embrace is not exclusive to Jacob’s descendants alone.

People like my new Nabulsi friend Mohammed Abu Al-Soud, a newly trained doctor who is committed to working for the future of Palestine, but also committed to the Qur’an’s exhortation for all Muslims to treat Jews and Christians with brotherly love and sacred respect.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. The locals who have (and are developing in others) empathy for the Other—these, in my humble opinion, are at the forefront of finding a way to throw down the Wall.

Not off the hook that easily…

Maybe you still want my candid thoughts, no matter how unqualified they may be. And perhaps writing them down, right or wrong, is a healthy personal practice for me regardless.

Here, then, are my paltry two cents…

I Spy Apathy

I brought up the conflict with a lot of Jewish people. None of them ran away from the conversation, even if some looked suddenly uncomfortable. Almost all of them were visibly saddened when the topic reared its ugly head. And it’s safe to say that virtually every citizen in Israel wants peace.

But aside from admission of its existence—and usually some form of visible sadness—there wasn’t much evidence of action. In fact, unless I brought it up myself, the conflict wasn’t brought up at all. In my experience, it is largely ignored by the lion’s share of Israeli citizens. They express frustration, but I suspect it’s mostly either dutiful or sentimental. Most of them live in comfort, peace, and security. They know this is not so for many human beings who reside a short trip outside of their neighbourhoods—but for the most part, they don’t actually have to think about that reality, and can simply go on with their own lives.

This is what I experienced amongst the Jewish people. But may God deal with me, however harshly He sees fit, if I throw my condemnation down upon them. See, the thing about pilgrimage—the practice of opening yourself up to hear from the land you’re travelling through—is that you might go home awakened to similar words rising up from within your own native soil…

I live in Vancouver, Canada—that is, I live on forcibly confiscated land. Sure, it was forcibly taken centuries ago by people who are ethnically unrelated to me, but I have gleaned the advantages—and this land’s original dwellers have suffered much since then. What have I done to make reparation? Truth and Reconciliation events have taken place—close by and within my reach—and I have not been to one.

What about gay rights, about Black Lives Matter, about the homeless in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside? I haven’t done anything about those things either.

So really, how different am I from an apathetic Israeli?

If I have learned anything from my trip to Israel and Palestine, I better start figuring out how to do my part for the marginalized in my own neighbourhood, comfortable, culpable Canadian that I am.

The Palestinian Plight

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I’ll reveal where my sympathy lies—sympathy that will hopefully inform my own behaviour back home. This sympathy, while hesitantly given, is motivated by a confident theology.

In my engagement with the various people groups here, I see plainly that the Palestinians are suffering. I’ve met refugees who cannot get back home, I’ve met people who have lost loved ones to unnecessary Israeli gunfire; I’ve witnessed excessive and unnecessary prejudice against Palestinians by the IDF; and most of the conversations I’ve had with Palestinians about the conflict brought either anxiety, despair, frustration, anger, or sadness to the surface, drawn up from deep wells of experience.

The Palestinians are not malcontented simply because they ‘lost the war.’ Neither do they carry about them a victim mentality, or wallow in self-pity over their situation—they are a strong and resilient people who continue to express themselves with cultural distinction. But they are malcontented—malcontented because the losses suffered carry with them the strongly bitter tastes of injustice and oppression. From what I’ve understood about the conflict, and from what I’ve personally seen and experienced, their palettes have not betrayed the sobriety of their judgment.

Theologically Speaking…

We need to remind ourselves that the Christian God—the God we profess to believe in, to follow, and supposedly want to be more like—has a deep, deep love for the marginalized. This incontestable truth is all over the Bible—including what is probably my favourite psalm:

Who is like the Lord our God,
Who is seated on high,
Who looks far down
on the heavens and the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes,
with the princes of His people.
(Psalm 113:5–8 ESV)

In fact, when God first reveals His name, YHWH, to Moses at the Burning Bush, He intentionally wraps up its identity with one main piece of imagery: stooping down low—far beneath His station—to personally alleviate suffering:

I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians… (Exodus 3:7–8)

And then, millennia later, this God embodies His heart most supremely through the Incarnation: He comes down—literally, in the flesh—to deliver the Creation that is floundering in the bonds of sin and death. And even then, Jesus gives constant special attention to the lowest of society (don’t believe me? Read the Gospel of Luke).

This theological contemplation on the character of God continues to be one of the most moving elements of Christianity for me—so much so that I co-wrote a worship song about it with my good friend Corey Doak. To date, it’s the only song I’ve ever actually published! Take a listen if you feel so inclined.

So yes: my sympathy lies with Palestine (just as it needs to lie with the marginalized and oppressed back home in Vancouver). This doesn’t mean I am against Israel—nor do I believe Israel is entirely in the wrong. I perceive that both sides have at times given way to negligence, hatred, and selfishness, just as both sides have experienced injustice, pain, and wrong.

And yet, given Israel has emerged with the vast majority of power and dominance, the burden of responsibility for peace and justice lies heavily on them; and given their deep awareness of the character of YHWH—the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth whose deepest concern characteristically goes to the alien, the suffering, and the oppressed—they would do well to administer justice and mercy with level hands. I do not get the impression this has been the case of late.

What Can I Do about Israeli-Palestinian Peace?

Ultimately, very little. But I can do a few things.

1. Quell Illogical Fear | If you’ve read much of what I’ve written thus far—especially my posts about Nazareth and Nablus, you’ll immediately know what I’m talking about. I want to do my part to demythologize the unfortunate and prejudiced strains that have resonated throughout the West regarding Arabs and Islam. As a very white Christian Westerner (i.e., I have a skin tone that sticks out like a sore thumb in Palestine), I travelled through the heart of the West Bank and received naught but love and generous hospitality from the Palestinian people. All of them are Arabs; almost all of them are Muslim. I have been open about my Christian faith and geographical homeland, and I have received warm welcomes in response. Damning Islamic people because of their needle-in-a-haystack violent extremists is akin to calling every Christian a cannibalistic Crusader (and yes, some of the Crusaders did eat human flesh—Muslim flesh, actually—and crudely reported back on what it tasted like). So let’s all of us think carefully about our readiness to succumb to illogical fears.
2. Pray for Peace | You might not be local, and you might have no way of fully understanding the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but you can still petition before God on their behalf. Ask Him to bring His peace as only He can.
3. Model Local Peace-building | You might not be local there, but you’re local here—wherever your here may be. If you truly care to see ‘Peace in the Middle East’—to see justice done against oppression, to see the needy lifted from the ash heap—model it in your own locality. You will find poor, needy, and marginalized people there. If you have no clue what such modelling might look like, talk to your local pastor or social-worker. (Also remember that modelling peace-building does not look the same for everyone—give from your own storehouse; I am a flat-broke student, and so I can’t really help local causes financially—but I am, for instance, a liturgist, which means I can instruct congregations by singing and praying about justice; I am also an artist, a writer, and a theologian—all of these come with skill-sets that have roles to play. Moreover, we can all give of our time.)

Phew. That’s about it. I kind of feel like I spent most of this post preaching, but it couldn’t be helped—these thoughts needed writing, even if only to keep me accountable to them. And now, may the Lord keep me from hypocrisy.

I’ll leave you with a beautiful, challenging piece by Gungor called “Cannot Keep You”; they crafted the song using lines from Psalm 113 (lines that I also included above). Lyrics are posted below.

they could not keep You in a tent
they could not keep You in a temple
or any of their idols to see and understand
…
we cannot keep You in a church
we cannot keep You in a Bible
or it’s just another idol to box You in
they could not keep You in their walls
we cannot keep You in ours either
for You are so much greater

who is like the Lord?
the maker of the heavens
Who dwells with the poor
He lifts them from the ashes
and He seats them among princes
who is like the Lord?

we’ve tried to keep You in our tents
we’ve tried to keep You in our temples
we’ve worshiped all our idols
we want all that to end
so we will find You in the streets
and we will find You in the prisons
and even in our bibles and churches

[chorus]

we cannot contain
cannot contain the glory of Your name
we cannot contain
cannot contain the glory of Your name
…
we cannot contain
cannot contain the glory of Your name

who is like the lord
You took me from the ashes
and You healed me from my blindness
who is like the Lord

One of my biggest regrets of this trip is not having planned more time in Ramallah. In fact, in my ignorance I hadn’t originally planned any, but folks here kept telling me various versions of “If you want to see Palestinian culture, you have to go to Ramallah.” I was able to carve out some time in my calendar to make a day-trip from Tantur. One measly day.

Ramallah is viewed widely as the Palestinian capital—even if it doesn’t hold that designation officially.* It is, anyway, the administrative center of the Palestine. It’s also where both Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Darwish are buried, making it an incredibly important city for Palestinian identity. It’s also the cultural hub of Palestine, and perhaps the most Westernized place I saw during my time in the West Bank.

But still, very few Westerners will ever set foot in this city during their ‘Holy Land’ travels. Even though it’s a modern, fully functioning metropolis; even though it’s a mere 30-minute bus ride from Jerusalem; even though it was originally a Christian city that still boasts a significant Christian population (not that this should matter; but the fact is—whether it’s logical or not—this sort of stat makes the city a little less ‘scary’ in our commonly Islamophobic eyes).

To echo my sentiments regarding Nablus: this is a shame. Ramallah is both worthy of and ready for our attention—though perhaps our prejudices make us unworthy of Ramallah.

• SN: Speaking only anecdotally now: someone I met here in my travels told me that, because such a small number of internationals actually travel to Ramallah, the checkpoints between Jerusalem and Ramallah take on a darker tinge than the one going to Bethlehem. Indeed, during my travels I read of Palestinians being shot at the Qalandia checkpoint (the one I went through) on two separate occasions—and I’ve been told several times that this is a very regular occurrence there. Whether this is because Israeli soldiers feel more trigger-happy without international eyes upon them, or because Palestinians feel more free to express their frustration of Israeli governance, I really don’t know enough to say. Either way, an increased international presence would probably improve the situation.

During my brief time in Ramallah, I took some time to wander through the downtown streets (my favourite thing to do when discovering new cities!), and I was able to visit three important cultural places: the Dar Zahran Heritage Building, Zawyeh Gallery, and the Mahmoud Darwish Museum.

Dar Zahran Heritage Building

Dar Zahran is situated in the Old City of Ramallah, in an old house handed down through one family for generations. It now lay in the hands of Zahran Jaghab.

But the Old City, it seems, no longer serves as a residential area; and as such, many buildings like Zahran’s family home are being gutted and transformed into cafés and restaurants.

So rather than living in it, Zahran has made the building into a heritage site: he has turned it into a display of history and Palestinian identity by hanging up old photos, by creating a museum of old artifacts that hail back to traditional Palestinian life, and by forming a small art gallery of deeply cultural paintings.

The photos and museum were certainly very interesting, but for me the art gallery was by far the most memorable.

Ismail Shammout & Tamam Al-Akhal | Refugee Painters

Unfortunately, the art wasn’t original—the pieces were all high-quality prints (I learned later, however, that the originals are widely known and probably fetch a ridiculously high price). Regardless, I was content to read and learn about Palestine’s story by inspecting what was on display, mere prints though they may have been.

These pieces were all painted by two very important Palestinian painters: Ismail Shammout (1930–2006) and Tamam Al-Akhal (1935-). Both refugees, the former from Lydda and the latter from Yafo, these painters married in 1959 and have since become known for employing distinctly Palestinian symbols into their work, thus expressing Palestine’s life, culture, and story.

The exhibit in Zahran’s home displayed a joint project called Palestine: The Exodus and the Odyssey—a collection of 19 murals that express the plight and journey of the Palestinian people since 1948. I’ve compiled a majority of them below (not in chronological order—sorry!)…

As I slowly drank in the content of each of these paintings, they clearly bespoke an emotional and dramatic saga—and they drew me, piece-by-piece, a little bit closer to the Palestinian story. I can only imagine the effect of seeing them full-scale (the original murals are apparently quite large).

Zahran’s transformation of his home, he told me, had several purposes: first of all, doing so allowed him to keep the home in the family—instead of being pressured to sell it off to a restaurateur or other such small business owner; however, he also wishes to keep the memory and history of his family—and those of Ramallah’s Palestinian Christians in general—alive. This he sees as a valuable part of Ramallah’s—and Palestine’s—history.

Dar Zahran serves these purposes well, and I was thankful for having visited Zahran and his heritage home.

Zawyeh Gallery

After a very friendly but very awkward language-barrier cab ride (lots of hopeless hand-motions!), I found Zawyeh Gallery—an art gallery recommended to me by a new friend in Tel Aviv (Rutie Atsmon, who runs a peace-building NGO called Windows).

When I walked in, things were, well, basically just a big mess; the walls were completely bare (and some were being painted), tools were lying all over the floor, and paintings were leaning everywhere. Dang, I thought, Bad timing on my part!

This initial judgment proved as far from the truth as can be imagined—for down from a flight of stairs came Ziad Anani.

Ziad is the founder, owner, and gallerist of Zawyeh Gallery. He was dressed in casual wear, though dirty and worn, and I could tell he had been hard at work. A visitor at this ‘in-between stage’ of his gallery couldn’t have been very convenient. I expected to be shown the door—but this didn’t happen.

After shaking my hand, introducing himself with a smile, and grabbing me a glass bottle of Sprite, Ziad gave me an exclusive tour. It was amazing. He not only provided me with an informed explanation of the exhibition he was getting set to hang (I’ll get to to this bit shortly), but he also led me up another floor to see a massive collection of pieces from various Palestinian artists that he was storing. There were some absolutely stunning paintings packed away—and some of them fetch a hefty price (such as a couple from the famed Sliman Mansour).

Along the way, Ziad informed me that Zawyeh was the first art gallery to be established in all of Ramallah—and yet, it was founded only a few years ago (2013). Clearly, though, it filled a need here: after four years of intensely hard work, Ziad has made the gallery very successful. His mission, as stated on his website, is simple:

“In addition to presenting local artists to an international audience, the gallery’s mission is to promote established and emerging artists from Palestine through various thematic exhibitions.”

By my judgment, he is succeeding at this rather well.

Intimate Spaces | Rana Samara

Before I interrupted him by poking my nose in his gallery, Ziad had been working on getting its next exhibit ready. This exhibit, called “Intimate Spaces”, was created by Rana Samara. Samara’s artistic inspiration for this work is certainly political, but she comes at if from a very interesting angle.

Before she set brush to canvas, Samara visited Palestinian refugee camps. She talked to some of the women living there and asked them about when and where they have sex.

Yep.

I basically needed to physically grab my innocent virgin eyebrows and pull them back down into place, so as not to cause a scene. (And yes, I know some of you who know me best wish so badly that you could have been there.)

Of course, this isn’t (only) because I’m a bit of a prude—it’s also because it came out of nowhere in a society I would have least suspected it. Muslim culture is generally quite a bit more conservative than I am on this matter.

But the more I thought about it (and the more Ziad explained it), the more I realised how clever Samara was being: she was bringing up the serious, sad fact of Palestine’s significant refugee population by using a subject that is somewhat startling for outsiders, but relatively common for the refugees themselves.

The answers in Samara’s paintings are thought-provoking, and they reveal one of the many inconveniences of refugee camps: they’re cramped; private space can be a rather tough find. Samara painted the various places described in the women’s answers; and aside from bedrooms, kitchens, and living rooms, there were also cars—some of them taxi-cabs!

A little startling for some folks—but it certainly gets the intended message across.

I walked away from Zawyeh once again surprised by, and grateful for, the hospitality of this culture. Ziad generously took time out of his busy day to give me a free tour—a student who he knew couldn’t purchase any work or extend his network in any significant way. In my mind, that’s astounding.

I also took note of the fact that gallery-art may be new here, but it’s catching on—gallery-art: a Western method of fostering the arts in such a way that it actually removes art from the mix of everyday life and sticks it in its own sanitised little category. What will the effects of this Westernization be for Middle Eastern cultures whose art has traditionally been participatory and social rather than curated and isolated? I wonder…

The Mahmoud Darwish Museum

I did not know who Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008) was three weeks ago.

But here, Darwish is probably the most famous artist around (or infamous, depending on what one thinks of him). As I understand it, there is even controversial talk of including his work in the Israeli education program.

Darwish is a Palestinian poet who has been described as “one of the poetic pillars of the Arab world.” His ability with the Arabic language is reportedly masterful and moving, but I’ve only been able to read his work in English (and still I’m enjoying it!).

More than his poetic ability, however, is what he stood for and how he stood for it. Darwish was born in 1942 and thus was only a child during the 1948 Israeli-Arab War that exiled his Galilean family from their home, along with countless other Palestinians.

As he continued to struggle with the obstacles of refugee life, Darwish strove to remember his Palestinian identity and hold it aloft for his people. He did this through evocative poetry that is honest and often full of anguish—and yet he does not seem to harbour hatred for the Israelis who exiled him. The Guardian attests, “In much of his poetry Darwish affirmed his own and his people’s reality yet he did not deny that of the Other.”

“There are two maps of Palestine that politicians will never manage to forfeit: the one kept in the memories of Palestinian refugees, and that which is drawn by Darwish’s poetry.” — Anton Shammas

I won’t go into Darwish’s biography much further, as you’d be better off simply reading his Wikipedia page. I’ll just take the time here to note how massive an impact Darwish’s engagement of art made on his people—on their sense of identity and on their cultural resilience. For the Palestinian people to esteem a poet to a magnitude that seems second only to their iconic leader, Yasser Arafat—this is a testament to Darwish’s work.

I was able to visit Al-Birweh Park, within which lies both Darwish’s grave and a small museum displaying some of his personal belongings and manuscripts. I wasn’t able to glean much from the mainly Arabic-lettered content there, but the visit still carried a weight of significance. I purchased a good English translation of some of his work and am looking forward to reading it through in the months to come.

As I’ve implied above, one day is just not enough to explore Ramallah, and I wish I had set more time aside. Still, I’m grateful for the time I had there, and thoroughly enjoyed this arts-filled day-trip.

Post-Script | The Tamer-Hindi Experience

There was a certain local drink I encountered on the streets of Nablus called Tamer-Hindi. It’s commonly sold by men dressed in snazzy traditional costume who carried it about the streets in ornate vessels. I saw them again in Ramallah:

When you see people all dressed up like this, pouring people drinks out of enamouring spouted receptacles, well, it stirs one’s curiosity. So in Nablus I bought a cup of Tamer-Hindi. And, having been well-raised by a very responsible and considerate mother, I made sure to finish what I was given.

What does it taste like? Well, I’ve been trying very hard to find an accurate description ever since drinking it in Nablus. The best I can come up with is this: it tastes like those Werther’s Original hard candies (you know, those hard caramel-ish candies you break your teeth on as a kid during Christmas?). But in juice form.

So…picture drinking down a lukewarm cup of Werther’s candies (let’s say about 20 of them) that have miraculously just successfully passed through your juicer.

If that sounds like your kind of shtick, you’re either 6 years old or you have a the sort of sweet tooth that good friends should be concerned about. But by all means, if you’re ever in the area, hunt down these flamboyantly dressed juicers and have at it. I, for one, needed to wash my mouth out with hummus.

Footnote:

* What does it mean to have an ‘official-unofficial’ capital? Well, those who know me know I’m mostly politically hopeless — even in terms of Canadian politics (it’s so shameful I can’t believe I’m even admitting it in writing); so don’t ask me to explain the intricacies of politics here!

But to take a tenuous stab at it: I think Jerusalem is its declared capital, but that city lies beyond its current de facto border; thus, Palestine is in a ‘government-in-exile’ sort of situation, and they’ve made Ramallah its in-the-meantime administrative centre.

As I rode the Jewish bus toward my destination further into the West Bank, we made several stops, all in Jewish settlements. These settlements, as you may well know, are considered illegal by the international community, but here they are nonetheless: clean and crisp and beautiful—and heavily secured by armed forces and barricades.

My skin kind of prickled as we passed through the guarded gateways to each settlement and made our round of stops in the militarily calmed neighbourhoods. One of the folks I met in my travels once compared the experience of driving through a Jewish settlement to feeling like she was passing through The Stepford Wives’ setting.

Some Context | How is it that these settlements even exist?

I mean, they’re illegal for one thing, and they’re the cause of much controversy and trouble for another. These Jewish settlers put up with a certain amount of constant fear—they have the guns and barricades to prove it. So why even bother living in there?

(SN: if you need a refresher on the current Israel-Palestinian political situation—in which Jewish settlements play a massive part—watch the Vox vid at the bottom of my first post.)

Though I’m sure a far longer, far more nuanced answer would better explain it, I’ve gathered from a number of conversations with locals that these residences exist for three main reasons:

1. Zionism. Many of the Jewish settlers are Zionists. They believe that God has ordained Israel’s return to the land and that He is putting the entire Promised Land back into Jewish hands. In their minds, this religious belief transcends any man-made politic that tells them they shouldn’t be regaining more of their divinely promised land. Thus, their decision to live in the West Bank is a political act of defiance in the name of their Jewish faith.
2. Politics. For some settlers, the reason is more simple, less religious, and perhaps a bit more crude. They think the land belongs to them, God-promised or not, and they want to physically stake more of it for Israel.
3. Economics. The Israeli government has strategically made housing in existing and prospective Jewish settlements a whole lot cheaper than housing within Israel’s actual territory. Why the government has done this seems obvious to me, and it brings an automatic grimace to my face; but, in an effort to be fair, there’s a good chance it’s a bit more complicated than I’m tempted to make—so I’ll decline to comment further… All we need to note here is that many Israelis move to Jewish settlements (especially ones a quick bus-ride from the border) simply because it’s more economical. Thus, for many of these folks, their chosen place of residence is neither a religious nor a political statement.

Roots | a Peace Movement Run by a Settler?!?

Back to the bus ride. This was a portion of the trip I had been growing seriously curious about as the day drew nearer. Now that it had arrived, I had boarded the bus for the Jewish settlement Gush Etzion, where I was going to learn more about Roots. Roots is a collaborative peace-building movement facilitated by, and geared toward, both Palestinians and Jewish settlers. Their centre of operations, called Mirkaz Karama, is located on the outskirts of Gush Etzion. (Mirkaz is Hebrew for “Centre”; Karama is Arabic for “Dignity”; thus, in English they call it “The Dignity Centre”.)

My main point of contact leading up to the visit had been Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger. Hanan was a rabbi, a convicted Zionist, a Jewish settler, and an ideological enigma; how, I asked myself, can he be interested in making peace with Palestinians at the same time as all this? I had much to learn.

When I arrived at Mirkaz Karama, I didn’t see what I had expected. It didn’t look at all like what I had expected; it looked pretty nonchalant, and even a bit dilapidated.

What I saw was a small farmstead, complete with a greenhouse and a bunch of open greening crops; a few little rundown buildings alongside a few half-developed ones; a shaded area covered overhead by a raggedy canvas roof; a few couches and chairs…and a playground.

I was a little stumped as to what purpose each of these things serves Roots’ cause. And when I sat down with a group of visitors to hear more about the movement, I hoped to would be illuminated.

Turns out that, even after a good hour-and-a-half session, I still don’t quite get it completely. However, I did learn why this crop of land is so important in and of itself, regardless of what lay on top of it: this property is neutral ground.

By the end of this post, I’m hoping you’ll see the value yourself.

What I Heard…

We heard from two Roots representatives—Rabbi Hanan himself, as well as a young Palestinian named Noor Awad. Each of them shared a bit about their respective journeys, both of which led them to a place where they now strive to build peace nonviolently between Palestinians and Jews.

Noor Awad | Violent to Nonviolent Resistance

Noor’s story was similar to Palestinian stories I had heard prior to his—but of course, it was still his own story with its own personal distinctions. Noor was born a refugee in Amman (Jordan). His family moved to Bethlehem after the Oslo Accord of 1993; while this brought them closer to their homes, they were still refugees, unable to return to the land confiscated from them, which now lay beyond Palestinian borders in the State of Israel.

As a youngster during the various political upheavals between Israelis and Palestinians, Noor nursed a growing conviction that as a Palestinian it was his automatic responsibility to resist the unwanted Israeli governance of his people. In 2006, after arriving at the bloody scene shortly after a close friend of his was shot in the head and killed by an Israeli soldier (Noor reported seeing a “lake of blood” surrounding his friend’s body), Noor was galvanized into reckless action. Though only 16 years old at the time, he and some friends stole a vehicle, got hold of a few guns, and went on their way to spend their anger in bullets on the Israeli guard.

Luckily, someone close to him got wind of their plans and alerted the Palestinian police, who arrested them at the gate. Perceiving Noor’s emotional motivation, the empathetic investigating officer went easy on him and he was released. Regardless, Noor continued to angrily resist the Israeli Occupation, and continually hoped to see someone rise up and cause some retaliatory harm to Israel.

A while later, however, Noor earned a diploma to be a tour guide in Bethlehem. During this process, it was necessary for Noor to study the three Abrahamic Faiths. This was the first time he was forced to seriously consider the Other:

“Now I started to hear, I started to analyze…the narrative of the Other…but from a religious point of view. [I learned about] the connection of the Jews with the Land. And I started to understand that there was a gap in my understanding…when I was exposed to that. I want[ed] to understand their point of view.”

A little later, during one of his rounds as a tour guide, his group had arranged for him to stop for a visit with Roots. Rabbi Hanan was the first Israeli he had ever met—a rabbi and a settler! Noor was very suspicious as Hanan began speaking to his group, but Hanan’s words eventually helped Noor truly hear an Israeli’s heart in person for the first time.

It took a little while longer, and some more journeying with Roots, but eventually Noor came to believe that nonviolent methods—methods that sought understanding rather than retaliation—are the best ways to seek for a solution to the current conflict. Near the end of his time sharing with us, Noor quoted Ali Abu Awwad, a Palestinian activist and the founder of Roots, saying, “Our rights should be achieved through Jewish hearts, not Jewish bodies.”

Hanan | Dispelling the Fear of the Other

Hanan’s perspective was a new one for me. Hanan is a rabbi and settler who moved to the area around Gush Etzion from American many years ago. He is very enthusiastic about Zionism—during the first ten minutes of his time spent speaking to us, Hanan constantly made connections between the ancient Biblical people of Israel and his own personal goals within Occupied Palestine (he looked at these ties as ordained “Jewish continuity”). His hopes for Israel’s future are broad and optimistic.

And yet, after he passionately made these connections and shared these hopes, Hanan made an all-important confession:

“My sense is that the power of the narrative of Jewish continuity had blinded me my whole life to another story. My sense of Jewish connectedness to this land historically has overwhelmed me and prevented me from seeing the Palestinians. For 33 years, until three years ago, I lived here and I didn’t see anyone but my people. I didn’t know any story but my story. I took no account of someone who looked and thought different than me. They weren’t part of the story. It’s like the Palestinians were for me—and they are for the vast majority of Jews who live here—just part of the scenery in the background.”

After telling us about several events that slowly shifted the paradigm in Hanan’s mind, he shared about how an American pastor orchestrated a meeting between Hanan and a Palestinian.

This scared Hanan half to death. But the feeling, he learned, was mutual.

It’s important to understand that not only do Jewish settlers and Palestinians generally have nothing to do with one another, they are also petrified of one another. Hanan gave us some perspective:

“Listen to some of the facts: we speak separate languages, Jews and Palestinians; we live in different towns and villages; we have different school systems, we have different economic systems; we read different newspapers, listen to different radio stations, different television stations, which means the news we get is completely different, which means the world we live in is completely different; different religions (did I mention?), different holy books; different calendars; we even have different time zones [Palestinians and Jews switch to and from daylight savings on different days]… Let’s say you wanted to meet a Palestinian—which doesn’t happen around here, but let’s say you wanted to meet one—you say, ‘We’re going to meet Sunday at one o’clock in the afternoon’: you might come both on time and not see each other! And that’s a metaphor for how we live around here.”

In general, the two people groups are scared stiff that the other would only try to inflict harm should an encounter actually occur; and this fear is only propagated by the separate nature of everyday life as described above. It’s a common aphorism, after all, that we fear what we don’t know.

Hanan’s meeting with the Palestinian—which happened on the very ground we were all sitting on as he spoke—marked a massive change in direction for him. This change didn’t shift his political convictions, however, nor did it alter the quality or source of his faith; if anything, these things are probably more resolute than before because of it.

This change, if you’ll pardon my over-simplification, was simply a broadening of perspective to a width that allowed room for the Other—in his case, for the Palestinian. Citing important Kabbalist thinker Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), Hanan explained that “there are sparks of truth everywhere” and that, according to the Kabbalah, the human responsibility is “to gather in these sparks of truth into our own souls.” Doing this develops our knowledge of the truth into a fuller and fuller one.

Considering the Kabbalah states that there are sparks of truth everywhere, Kook went on to ask if falsehood does in fact exist at all. His answer: “Falsehood is partial truth masquerading as full truth.”

Hanan’s mission to better understand the Palestinian—and his broader mission to encourage his fellow Jews to follow suit—is motivated by this assertion. The perspective of each people group, Hanan acknowledged, is a partial truth—and so he seeks to bolster his Jewish one with that of the Palestinian.

And wow!—what a motivation. We would all probably do well to heed such a perspective.

Sometime after his life-changing conversation with a Palestinian, Hanan joined up with Roots. He now acts as one of its three chief coordinators.

What does Roots do?

Roots is only two-and-a-half years old, is very grassroots, and almost completely local in mindset. Their mission is quite simple—help local Palestinians and Jews meet one another in order to further inject the powerful variable of shared humanity into the conflict. Hanan quite bluntly stated that political resolutions couldn’t possibly happen yet because the people simply aren’t ready for it; before political solutions can materialize, relational bonds need to be established.

This is why the curious plot of land I visited just outside Gush Etzion is so important; because it is considered neutral ground—belonging neither to the Jew solely nor the Palestinian solely—it is a safe place for both people groups to visit. This is where both Noor and Hanan met one of their Others for the first time, and it continues to be a place where many more like them are treated to the same nerve-racking—but enormously profitable—experience.

If you’re interested in reading more about them, you can visit their website here. You can also view a great Ted Talk from Roots’ founder, Ali Abu Awwad below:

A Personal Reflection

There are a lot of things I don’t hold in common with Hanan—but chiefly (without trying to be too political!):

1. I am not a Zionist (the lion’s share of Western Evangelicals are).
2. I ultimately don’t believe Jews should be forcibly settling in the West Bank—I don’t believe that God, as revealed through the Old Testament, could possibly support such a means-to-an-end approach to promise-fulfillment (and no, I don’t believe there is such a promise to be fulfilled in the first place).

Amidst these important disagreements, though, I do agree that nonviolence and relationship-building with the Other are the best way forward for practically any conflict.

So, despite these clanging discords, I can still get behind what Roots is doing. And, if I’ve learned anything from Roots, I’ve learned that I should probably get to know more of the people involved before I shout my opinions from even the shortest of rooftops.

Bet Lahem Live was not the only instance of artistry that I encountered in the Jerusalem/Bethlehem area (the two cities are mere kilometres apart, and I had equal access to both from my home base at Tantur). Far from it!

Below I’ll include a share small snapshots of who I met and the art I saw/heard.

Zaki Baboun | Bethlehem

Zaki lives in Bayt Jala, a sort of suburb up in the heights northwest of Bethlehem. I had the opportunity one morning to go visit him in his home there. He welcomed me enthusiastically, first showing me his humble studio — a brick room built up on his roof. Though it was small and relatively bare, I got the sense that a lot of art is continually created in this place.

Zaki is both a painter and a woodworker, and often uses finely sanded olive wood as his painting canvas. He is deeply rooted in his Christian faith and, as much of his work sells as small souvenirs to visitors, it mostly imagines Biblical scenes associated with Bethlehem. Some of it, though, mixes Biblical imagery with current local politics. “My main work in souvenirs is only religious,” he told me. “But as an artist in this land, you have some responsibilities to paint [certain] themes.”

Zaki said this with a certain matter-of-factness that belied no bitterness, no anger, no malice. He is, of course, discontented with the current political climate—and it’s especially understandable given he lives a 2-minute stroll from a well-guarded Israeli settlement just up the hill. On my way to his house, my cab drove by an Israeli military outpost, and we passed a few military vehicles on the road. But the absolute lack of any bile was startling, even as he spoke of artists such as himself as “soldiers…with different weapons.”

We sat for quite a while in his kitchen, talking about art, faith, and locality as he served up orange soda, lemon wafer cookies, and the most delicious grapes straight from his garden. When talking about the common search of artists for widespread fame, he remarked, in his simple unassuming way, “I am famous in my own church. That is enough for me.” Beautiful words!

I left with a full heart, the rest of the grape-bunch, a wonderfully painted panel of olive wood, and a fig Zaki picked from his tree on our way out (fresh figs may well be my new favourite fruit). Here’s a quick vid of Zaki painting in his studio. You can also read an interview of him here.

Sari Srulovitch | Jerusalem

Sari is a Jerusalem-born silversmith whose studio sits just outside the Old City of Jerusalem.

I wandered into her studio with my friend Karis while she was working on finishing up some silver cups. She stopped what she was doing to show us her wares.

Much of Sari’s work centred on ritual items—various implements rooted deeply in the Jewish identity. Some of these looked traditional, but many pushed age-old items into the Modern Age with various new spins. For instance, in the Sabbath observance pieces picture above right, the spices are usually placed in a perforated box of some kind; here, Sari has created an open container concept.

Sari’s work is not only unique: it’s absolutely stunning. This isn’t just my opinion, either—her silver-work have been widely curated both in and outside Israel: her silvercraft has been displayed in many exhibitions, and has found places in collections at displayed in important institutions across the world—Jerusalem, London, New York, and more.

She was also incredibly friendly. She was ready to educate us on Jewish traditions, as well as show us how she did her work.

Before we left, she let us watch her fire a few of the silver cups (apparently this is done to get rid of some of the impurities that taint the silver surface after they are molded and hammered).

You can view more of art at her personal website here.

David Harel and Dina Kopelman | Jerusalem

Karis and I encountered these two painters in their respective studios, side by side at the Artists Colony outside the Old City (the same place Sari’s studio was situated). We didn’t speak with them for too long, but we definitely took our time admiring their work.

Both painters were highly skilled, and I quite liked pieces from both of them. Their styles, on the other hand, were radically different—and so were their themes. While many of David’s pieces contemplated Jewish life and Jewish landscapes, Dina’s did not in the least contemplate matters of nationality or ethnicity—they were far more universal.

I feel that showing this contrast is a good way to show that while the expression of Jewish identity is important to the Israelis, their humanity—like their Palestinian neighbours—far exceeds ethnic barriers and political realities, however crucial they may be.

Click on the links to visit David’s and Dina’s portfolios.

Faten Nastas Mitwasi & Dar al-Kalima | Bethlehem

Dar al-Kalima University College of Arts and Culture was one of the first items on my “What to Check out in Bethlehem” list. Boasting about 60 graduates this year, mostly in programs revolving around visual, culinary, and performance arts, I saw it as an opportunity to further see what kind of art was being pursued and produced by the next generation of Palestinians.

One of the leading professors at Dar al-Kalima is Faten Nastas Mitwasi. She set a good chunk of her day aside to tour me through the facility and talk to me about art.

First, Faten showed me the graduate student exhibit, which contained pieces of intricate metalwork, traditional oil on canvas, a variety of abstract styles, and a piece of installation art. It was all engaging, and most of it was quite well-done.

The installation piece was the only political work in the exhibit, which once again goes to show that most of the art here does not deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Faten corroborates, telling me frankly, “We keep stressing to our students that our lives are not only about politics.”

(By now I’m probably mentioning this ‘not political’ bit ad tedium, but I’m ashamed to admit it took me a few tries to jam this reality into my oft-ignorant and parochial little brain!)

Next, Faten took me into one of the classrooms just outside the exhibition room. A class was in session there on stained-glass art, and several students were busy crafting and drawing and prepping to make their own stained-glass images.

Though the Lutheran Church played a massive part in the founding of the university—and continues to help facilitate its ongoing activities—the education served up here is not explicitly Christian. In fact, there were Muslims and Christians working side-by-side in the one small class that I walked into. There is a certain ecumenicism present in Bethlehem that I’ve grown to really admire. There are bound to be heated theological disagreements between the two worldviews here, but for the most part, it seems that society functions in a spirit of very willing cooperation. I wish more Westerners who visited Bethlehem would stop for a moment, take note of this reality, and report their observations to their Western friends and neighbours back home.

It’s important to mention that Faten is an accomplished installation artist who has exhibited celebrated, site-specific installations around the world; from the limited engagements I saw between her and the students, it felt clear that she has won the respect and admiration of the student body.

Faten has also written two books regarding Palestinian art—one entitled Sliman Mansour, which is about the famous liberation movement painter of the same name; and another entitled Reflections on Palestinian Art: Art of Resistance or Aesthetics, which delves into Palestinian history via its artistic expression over the years, analyzing art’s relationship to resistance and identity along the way. After the tour, she revealed to me some thoughts related to the latter book as we sat drinking Arabic coffee in the cafeteria.

The resistance offered by art, Faten informed me, is not exclusively political—it’s also cultural. In this way, she pointed the conversation to a topic that tackles a Palestinian problem much bigger than the political conflict with Israel. After reminding me that Palestine has always been occupied by one superpower or another, she pointed out that during some of these occupations—such as the British Mandate in the early 20th Century—Palestinian culture and identity nevertheless thrived. But now, she lamented, the culture is fragmenting—and it need not be all because of the Wall.

Cultural resistance, then, is of extreme importance; she explained that such resistance is done by building Palestinian identity and forming a unified culture once more. And art, of course, has a crucial part to play in this. The unification gleaned from the work of poetic giant Mahmoud Darwish is one such example (I hope to write about the all-important Darwish in a future blog).

I resonated deeply with Faten’s words. And as I have traveled through Palestine, I have seen cultural resistance at work. It is happening.

That said, I’m rather concerned about the fragmentation that inextricably accompanies Westernization and global consciousness. I hope and pray that Palestinian art will flourish in the face of these cosmic giants like a David to its Goliath. It would be a crying shame if a culture this distinct and enchanting suffered such disintegration and homogeny.

Shuk by Day, Shuk by Night | Machane Yehudah (Jerusalem)

Finally, there’s Machane Yehudah.

I had stopped by an art gallery in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, and struck up a conversation with a clay sculptor named Chaya. When I told her why I was in Israel and Palestine, she told me that I had to go visit the Shuk at Machane Yehudah.

And not only that, she told me I had to go twice—once by day, once by night.

She explained that, by day, the Shuk was a wonderful old-timey market replete with ware-hawking merchants of all kinds.

True. It most certainly was; The crowds were tight, the merchants were loud, the fare was varied, the free samples and pursuant heckling to make an actual purchase were very forthcoming… all in all, it was a fantastic local experience to walk through — especially after filling up on some excellent falafel there.

But Chaya also explained that by night, when all the shops closed down and pulled their shutters down, the Shuk turned into a sort of art gallery. Apparently, the shutters have become canvases for street artists—well, mainly one street artist named Solomon Souza. Souza started a massive project to paint images across all the shutters—and not just any images: these images all, in one way or another, represent part of the Jewish identity.

This also proved true—and my second visit proved even better than the last (complete with more falafel!). This is some of what I saw:

I didn’t get the greatest pics, though (amateur photographer that I am, I couldn’t figure out how to properly use my external flash without causing glare on the metallic canvases), so you’re best off viewing this video. Trust me—it’s worth it!

The art I saw in Bethlehem and Jerusalem was vast and varied and very, very satisfying. There was a lot more that I saw, and were a lot more artists I talked to, that I haven’t included here; this is only a snippet of the immersive experience I got, but I hope it at least gives a taste.

When planning my trip to Israel and Palestine, I wasn’t fond of travelling there during the height of summer. But it couldn’t be helped.

Why not?

Well, it wasn’t because I was hopelessly attracted to the blazing heat like a mesmerized bug to a bug-zapper.

It was because of Bet Lahem Live.

Bet Lahem Live is a festival in Bethlehem that is put on annually by an organization called Holy Land Trust. The festival’s aim, if you’ll forgive my oversimplification, is to link up the international community with the Bethlehem community by means of the arts, with the hope that together we can help transform Bethlehem into a city of peace despite the conflict and oppression it continually faces.

Sami Awad

The brain behind the festival belongs to a gentleman named Sami Awad, the founder and director of Holy Land Trust. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting him—and in such a way that was true to Palestinian form.

After a full morning in Bethlehem, I stopped in at Javan’s Café for lunch. I stepped inside and was greeted casually by a table of folks who were drinking and smoking shisha—most of them, I noticed, were internationals. Only a few minutes after sitting down, one of the men got up, walked over to my table, and extended his hand, introducing himself as Sami. He asked if he could order for me, suggesting the Makloobeh, which wasn’t even on the menu. He popped out to the bar to place my order, came back with a drink, and sat down to chat with me.

Let me just say again that this was Sami Awad—Sami, a well-educated international activist and speaker who runs what is quite possibly Bethlehem’s most formidable peace-building group; Sami, the guy in charge of the whole bustling festival that had gotten underway only the day before; Sami, the guy who was currently sitting down as host to the international artists who were part of the festival lineup.

I was merely a festival-goer—one of many—and he just took the time to get out of his seat, take my order, and then sit down to get to know me a bit. That is Palestinian hospitality.

From the short conversation that ensued before Sami got up to return to his table, I learned a bit more about Holy Land Trust; I learned that it is a peace-building organization concerned first-and-foremost with peace at a microscopic level—that is, it is concerned about the humanity of each individual involved. “We don’t care about a political solution,” Sami told me, “we care about a human solution.” Their operation is centred on three things: Healing, Transformation, and Nonviolence. You can read more about Holy Land Trust here, if you so wish.

Christmas in August!

I spent most of my time during the festival helping man Walter’s booth of Peace Parcels (I wrote about Walter Brynjolfson and his work in my last post). In addition to the tear gas ornaments, Walter was also selling the shells of rubber bullets that he had transformed into candles, as well as an assortment of earrings, made by one of his friends using the little (and rather harmless) marbles that protesting Palestinian kids used to hurl at Israeli soldiers with slingshots.

Walter was mainly marketing his goods to the ‘ajanib—foreigners (like us!)—who were visiting the festival. They were but a minority, though—a small population interspersed amongst a predominantly local crowd.

Regardless, the booth caught the eye of many passers-by, and I saw many Palestinians look with shock at the little Christmas tree, decorated as it was with beautified tear gas canisters. For many, their eyes merely widened as their necks turned to keep the booth in sight while they continued to walk by; for some very few others, curious confusion eventually resulted in abject disapproval—a few even expressed their disgust to Walter as he tried to explain to them what he was doing; most of the locals who stopped to investigate, however, smiled broadly and hopefully, shaking his hand as they told him that he was doing very important work in a clever and intelligent way.

The Local Acts

Bet Lahem Live had quite an international lineup of acts, but there was also a fair supply of local artists. Given the fact that I’ve been travelling with my eyes peeled for art expressing the local culture, these were the ones I was most interested in.

When I wasn’t selling ornaments, I saw several musical acts of very different stripes. The first one was the four-year-old Miar Kawwas; it may well have been the cutest thing I saw during my entire trip. If you think (as many do) that hearing children speak in foreign tongues is adorable, you need to hear them sing…

Another artist I saw was Amjad Kheir—a talented Palestinian singer from Jerusalem. Amjad’s music has a very local sound, complete with all the ornamental vocal rifs and quarter-tone scales associated with Middle Eastern music. I was astonished at his considerable vocal talent, just as I was both mesmerized and confused by the keyboardist’s synth sounds, which mimicked the bending and weaving string layers so common in this genre of music. I was mildly put off by the artificial sound, but he really nailed his parts and made it work within the overall mix.

Finally, I should also mention Mafar Band—a group straight out of Bethlehem who boast a very Western alternative rock sound. They were a pretty decent live act, if not a bit generic by Western standards.

It’s worth mentioning that, what with global consciousness and all that business, Western music is definitely present here—and it’s making a rather large dent in the musical culture in this part of the world (as I’m sure it is almost everywhere else, really). I’m not sure what to think about this. We in the West have really mastered the way we do music, so I guess we have that going for us. But we’ve also royally screwed up and shrunken down our idea of what music is to a given society.

Somehow it’s become completely customizable and individualistic, where the lion’s share of music is selected and listened to whenever and wherever the personal listener so desires.

Somehow it’s become consumerism, where your audience only needs to sit back while you spoon-feed them mostly trite — though thoroughly entertaining — content that requires little-to-no personal digestion (you might get away with mixing a bit of social protest in, but be careful not to make your listeners feel like they might have a part to play or they’ll vomit it up as vitriol).

Somehow live music has become a visual performance, where how good your music sounds doesn’t matter nearly as much as how good you look doing it.

Somehow it’s become a source of ridiculous, hierarchical idolatry where the musicians who have miraculously managed to ‘make it big’ (because that’s the only way to really financially support yourself in our mode of musical industry) become hot-shot superstars and their audience becomes a slavering mob of passive gush.

(I’ve ranted and raved about this sort of thing much more thoroughly, and hopefully much more intelligently, in multiple academic papers during my time at Regent. So if you want qualifications to my brazen statements above, I can send you some.)

Now, of course, I’m not saying we don’t have anything good to offer, and I’m not saying all Western music looks like the caricature I’ve drawn above. But I can’t help but wonder how much Middle Eastern music culture is losing in the process of integrating the Western approach…

Mumford?!

On that note: by far the most well-known Western act at Bet Lahem Live was Marcus and Winston, of Mumford & Sons fame. They performed on Saturday night…well, they sort of performed. I guess. Maybe.

Their show involved none of their own music, and neither of them had instruments strapped on or mic’s in front of them. Instead of doing what they’re known for, they DJ’ed a short set of music—and, quite honestly, they didn’t quite seem to know how.

Basically, we just all stood there looking at them as they figured out how to transition from song to song and how to kinda-sorta modify the sound a little. For the most part, they took the stage in shifts—one staring blankly at the iPad they were using while they other bounced stage-left for a smoke-break or a drink (well, actually, Marcus usually just brought his drinks and cigarettes on stage with him; so I’m not sure what he was doing off-stage).

The experience was somewhat baffling, and quite chuckle-worthy. As I looked around the people around me, I noticed a fair increase in Western faces,* and a somewhat thinned crowd; the locals, it seemed, were not quite familiar with these Western superstars just yet. And, well, their musical presence at the festival probably won’t do much to change that either.

But here’s why I don’t care.

You’ve read my rant above about Western music, and you’ve just learned about how weird and sub-par their musical showing was at Bet Lahem Live—but I was nevertheless really really excited about their presence here in Bethlehem.

This is because I learned, through Sami, that Marcus and Winston were touring through Israel-Palestine with The Telos Group. Aside from explaining why they were in Bethlehem in the first place (because there is absolutely no way they came all the way here just to DJ a half-hour set of canned music), this has the potential to be really really good news.

The Telos Group is a peace-building organization based out of the States that is Pro-Palestinian and Pro-Israeli. They help raise Westerners to a better awareness of what’s actually going down in the Holy Land, encouraging those Westerners to raise awareness themselves. They’ve worked with one of my favourite and worship groups The Brilliance, who write some of the most insightful contemporary liturgical music I’ve ever heard. Dr. Steven Garber, who is on their board of directors, taught at Regent College just this summer. Way back in travel-planning stage, I had a long and illuminating phone call with their executive director Todd Deatherage, and I got all sorts of help from Sarah Stern, one of their program coordinators in Jerusalem.

In short, based on their affiliations, and based on my personal contact with them, I would assert that The Telos Group is very legit and a way that is very relevant and present to the Western world.

So, that in mind, imagine with me if you will, what might happen when a legit peace-building and awareness-raising organization like Telos educates and works with a highly influential musical group like Mumford…

Couldn’t that be exciting? Mightn’t it create a more widespread awareness of what’s going on here (provided their audience doesn’t vomit up their message as vitriol, of course)? Maybe it’s a stretch, but what if the next Mumford album is to Israel-Palestine what Paul Simon’s Graceland was to South Africa?!? When I asked Sami about the possibility, he certainly hinted that something like that might be in the works…

Well, one can dream at least. In the meantime, I’ll keep writing about my experience of the realities here to my 15 or so readers…

In the meantime, check out this moving video/music piece arising from one of The Brilliance’s forays with The Telos Group:

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* I can’t help but at least add a footnote here. Many of the Westerners present at Marcus and Winston’s set were both a) absolutely star-struck, and b) consumers. They weren’t at the show to hear what the duo were offering—they were at the show hoping to hear what they wanted. At the end of the set, they weren’t happy with what they consumed; they wanted to hear Mumford & Sons music—so they started chanting at Marcus, “Sing! Sing! Sing!” They didn’t get what they wanted, and I definitely saw some visually grumpy faces.

My trip has been fantastic, and I’ll be looking back with great pleasure on all the nuances of human connection I’ve experienced for a long time after I get home. I’ve been travelling alone, and while the lack of travelling companionship along the road has had its challenges emotionally and logistically, for the most part I’ve had plenty of really meaningful encounters with people of all sorts—AirBnB hosts, hostel staff, other hostel guests, restaurant and shop owners, super-friendly cabbies, fellow transit-riders, random people on the street, baristas, priests… and so on and so forth.

In short, this trip has really come to life thanks to the people along the journey. They have been my travelling mercies—both as sources of comfort and as signposts in a strange land.

But…

As the countless exotic and wonderful conversations have passed by, I really haven’t been able to help but want for some familiarity—and going to some Westernized restaurant for more recognizable fare just can’t be expected to satiate the desire (I was tempted to go to a McDonald’s in Tiberias once. The temptation was short-lived).

So when I met Walter Brynjolfson, a Trinity Western grad who grew up in Langley, I felt something from deep within me exhale out a long sigh of relief.

Walter has been living in Bethlehem for about a year now, and, despite his skin complexion and limited Arabic (though personally I was pretty impressed), it seems like he’s already made himself part of the woodwork here. He knows so many of the locals walking along the streets it’s staggering, and his confident level of social engagement with the community is rather surprising.

More to the point of this write-up: Walter is enrolled in a graduate-level peace studies program at Bethlehem Bible College, and his propensity for incarnating theory into practice is truly admirable.

Protest Art, for Instance…

When I first met Walter, I was down by the separation wall, looking at the various pieces of art that had been sprayed onto its bland, grey canvas. As I wandered along the wall, I ran into an excited group of people who were lugging around big paint rollers and awkward lengths of cardboard. One of them had a shiny, professional-looking video camera complete with one of those cool fuzzy microphones that look like Cousin It. So I stopped at a distance to observe. Then I noticed a familiar face.

At this point, I should note that several people back home had made a very similar recommendation to me for my time in Bethlehem; they all said something like, “You should connect with Walter Brynjolfson!” Someone had passed me his contact details, so I reached out while still in Vancouver. We connected briefly on Facebook, and made plans to get together when I got to Bethlehem.

And here he was, materializing in front of me as a member of this little gang of graffiti-artists, wielding a can of spray-paint like some rebel-without-a-cause. Except he definitely did have a cause.

Some of you may recall that in May 2014 Pope Francis visited Bethlehem, and that during this visit he asked the driver to make an unexpected stop as they passed by the wall. He walked up to the wall, put his hand on it, and spent a moment in prayer—you can read about his trip here if you’re interested.

The image of the Pope praying at the wall, only to later urge all believers to pray for peace and justice during a speech at Manger’s Square became a moving media sensation—and it was also a much-needed boost of encouragement for the dwindling Christian community in Palestine.

How is this relevant to Walter? Well, when I first met him he and his comrades were preparing to preserve the memory of the Pope’s wall-side prayer by spray-painting a stencil of him in the exact spot he prayed two years ago (the stencil also happened to be designed by my friend Jenny, another Vancouverite).

They had already tried to do this once, earlier in the day, but an Israeli soldier atop one of the watchtowers threw a stun grenade at them mid-spray, causing them to scatter. Oddly enough, I passed by this part of the wall in the window of time between their efforts, noticed a partially drawn image, and took a photo (see the before/after below).

Upon recognizing Walter in the fray, I got his attention and introduced myself; his eyes lit up with recognition: “Corey!” he exclaimed loudly, spread his arms wide, and gave me a huge hug.

I could have died in those arms.

Okay, that’s maybe too excessive and intimate an expression for the occasion, but still—to hear my name called out enthusiastically from a Vancouver accent, to sense that there was someone before me who grew up on common ground (literally), and to receive his immediate brotherly love: well, after two long weeks of foreign unfamiliarity and continual newness, it felt pretty darn great. Another moment of human encounter I shan’t soon forget.

But back to the story…

Walter and his crew were about to go back to finish what they started, knowing full well that they might get hit by another flash-bang—or worse, tear gas or rubber bullets: such ammunition is not uncommonly spent around here. But first, Walter got everyone’s attention and reminded them that, though they were protesting the wall in a technically illegal way, they were going to continue to protest in a Christ-like way—not with hatred but with attitudes of love, not with aggression but with nonviolence. He exhorted the team to act with resilience, and to strive to finish the job even if they were assailed with further deterrents.

Then Walter invited me to join in. Because I really had no idea what I would be getting myself into (I pieced a lot of this together after it all went down), I respectfully declined; electing instead to follow along at a distance, I watched as they walked courageously back up to the unfinished project.

I watched as they all walked calmly up to the wall and finished their work. I was a bit worried for their safety—but nothing happened. They finished and walked away unmolested.

The videographer, it turns out, worked for the Associated Press. While the piece wasn’t purchased by any media outlets in the end, they still released this story on YouTube just a few days ago:

Peace Parcels

Watching that video, you might be thinking, “Hey, why do I recognize that white guy who was talking at the end?” Well, it could be because you know Walter personally (Occam’s Razor kicking in here). But it could also be because you saw another video the Associated Press put together for one of his other peace-building projects—one that was purchased by the news media outlet AJ+. This one was released last November and it went viral. Check it out:

I had the opportunity, alongside a few other Western visitors, to help Walter keep going with this project; he had collected a bunch of tear gas canisters that needed a thorough cleaning before any Christmas ribbons could be tied through them. So we grabbed some steel wool and got our hands dirty for an evening.

It was grubby but satisfying work, and by the end of the work session, we had added a good deal to Walter’s stock.

Resistance to Resistance

The work Walter is doing has his complete investment—mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. It’s plain to see that he has fallen right in love with Bethlehem and the Palestinian people; he so desires to see peace and justice reach the conflict here.

His participation in the long, slow work toward this end is not without its obstacles, though. There’s always the risk of coming under the scrutiny of Israel’s political watchdogs—and it’s quite possible that, thanks to his viral video above, Walter has already come to their attention. What this means for his future ability to live and study in Palestine is unclear at this point, but Walter may well be endangering it by pursuing his studies at a public and practicing level.

But more difficult than this for Walter is the local resistance— small but nonetheless still existent—to his work; some of the locals here don’t like Walter’s methods of raising awareness, and I’ve personally seen them voice their complaints openly to him. This is somewhat understandable, given Walter is working with the emptied cartridges of a type of ammunition that has come to symbolize oppression and injustice in the eyes of the Palestinian people—many of whom have seen and experienced its effects firsthand. Of course, he’s not marketing his ornaments to the local public—that would be a painful exercise in preaching to the choir.

My feeling, though, is that Walter is encountering a form of ethnic prejudice all his own, however understandable it may be. Locals can see clearly that Walter is not from Bethlehem, and that he has not grown up experiencing the realities; most of them see past this and realize the importance of what he is doing, but some of them don’t—they view him as an upstart Western social entrepreneur who is trying to make money off their suffering. In short, they don’t yet trust him. Yet.

I think that, as Walter continues to learn Arabic, as he continues to live alongside the Palestinians of Bethlehem, and as he keeps sticking his neck out with them (note that he’s already encountered the public distaste of some Zionists who have learned of his ornament project), they will continue more and more to see his deep love for them, and he’ll win over the few nay-sayers he’s encountered.

I’m very grateful for having met Walter, and for having the opportunity to participate in the good work he’s doing here. I have the distinct feeling that I have only just begun a long-standing friendship with an excellent human being. I pray that he continues to develop his vision and skillset for non-violent peace building; I also pray that his relationship with fellow Bethlehemites—along with a trust-worthy reputation amongst them—will continue to flourish in the time to come.

Like my time in Bethlehem, my first day in Jerusalem was reserved for spiritual pilgrimage. I wanted to walk the streets of the Old City with a relatively open schedule, only penning in visits to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western Wall (a.k.a. the Wailing Wall).

Human Encounter #1 | The High-Church Priest in and Old, Old Church

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is an ancient and awe-inspiring building. While it’s true that many of its innards were obscured by scaffolding and white canvas—covered up for a preservation and maintenance project—the potency of this place can still be keenly felt. It was, after all, built around both the traditional location of Golgotha (where Christ was crucified) and the traditional site of Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb (where Christ was buried and, consequently, where He resurrected). Essentially, it geographically represents the fulcrum of the Gospel.*

I lit a candle at Golgotha, I said a brief prayer of gratitude inside the tomb, and as I sat for several moments at a pew off to the side, my ensuing meditation on the events that transpired here 2,000 years ago was personal, weighty, and moving. This hallowed place really gave me a time of rich contemplation and worshipful prayer.

That said, I mark a very brief exchange with another human being as the most memorable moment in this old church.

After I offered my prayers inside the tomb, I sat down on a squat little pew and watched pilgrims from all the corners of the world as they stood in a short queue, waiting to see the tomb and offer prayers of their own there (yes, they also wanted to take selfies, and yes, this was still a bit irritating to me — but it’s not the focus of this post like it was in my last; moreover, I think I learned something from my first day in Bethlehem). Beside me sat an Eastern Orthodox priest, complete with his jet-black robes, ornate necklace, long grey beard, and so on. He was monitoring the queue, often getting up to move the line along and to evict some of the lengthier pray-ers from the inside of the tomb (it’s a tight space, and only fits about four people at a time). He always looked very concerned to ensure order and quietness were maintained, that the reverence of this holy place were not interrupted.

I was rather moved by the priest’s dutifulness as I watched him complete a few rounds between his place in the pew and his active role in keeping the line-up moving. After a while, upon seeing my opportunity, I left the pew and walked up beside him—for he had stopped to take in a very brief moment of rest in front of the tomb; not wanting to interrupt the quiet, I put my hand on his shoulder to get his attention; he immediately looked up, and upon seeing me his whole expression changed instantly: the contained anxiety in his face just melted away and was replaced by a warm, genuine smile—it feels strange to say, but I honestly felt like he smiled right into my soul! In a few words and hand-gestures, I thanked him for his faithful service to the church, and for making it possible for all of us to visit this awe-inspiring place; he nodded good-naturedly and asked for my name; after I gave it to him, he crossed himself and offered up the shortest of prayers in the silence; then, without another word or a second look toward me, he shuffled off into the dimly lit tomb to resume his work.

Honestly, this tiny human encounter was the most powerful moment I experienced inside what is widely considered the holiest site in all Christian tradition. I walked away from the tomb and its guardian priest feeling like I had just been summarily slugged in the gut by brotherly love.

Not that this exchange needs the added context or anything, but it might be worth sharing a bit about the church’s history, nonetheless. You may be somewhat familiar with the rather exasperating drama of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The church building (which is ancient, by the way—founded by Emperor Constantine in A.D. 326) is run and maintained by several different traditions, each of whom regularly hold their own services within. Unfortunately, there’s a rather sordid history of these traditions bickering over who does what and what belongs to whom.

For instance, there’s a ladder that has stood on a ledge overtop the main entrance since the 18th Century; it hasn’t been moved because the various traditions can’t seem to agree on which tradition the ladder—or the ledge on which it stands—belongs to! I’ve also heard (this story is more hear-say than citable fact) that the first step of a staircase, which leads to a secondary entry from the front square, has also garnered some drama: because it’s half-sunken into the ground, nobody really knows whether it’s part of the staircase or part of the courtyard. The courtyard’s rights belong to one tradition, and the staircase to another—so, apparently, there have been squabbles over who it belongs to, who gets to sweep it clean, etc.

As a Mennonite, whose tradition really doesn’t own any site of significance (nor does it really care to), this all seems juuuust a little bit ridiculous to me. I have a feeling it might for most of you too. More than anything, it simply seems like a sad sign of church division (back in 1964, Pope Paul VI made a similar observation with regard to the ladder).

I have to say, though, that this background context to the old church made my exchange with the priest that much richer and more hopeful: this elderly, officially clad Eastern Orthodox priest who helped manage and maintain Christianity’s most important holy site looked up at me, a young Western Anabaptist foreigner twerp in shorts (in shorts! That’s a bit of a no-no when visiting holy sites. Whoops!)…and he smiled a smile that reached into my heart, he asked my name, and he offered a prayer to the Lord on my behalf.

“Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” (Psalm 133:1 ESV)

How good and pleasant—even if only for a brief, quiet moment, before any doctrinal daggers could be raised, and before any interpretive incompatibilities could be revealed, before any steps could be errantly swept by the wrong person…

May the Triune God, who is Himself Unity in Diversity, grant His church ‘good and pleasant’ unity within its rich, variegated diversity.

Human Encounter #2 | The Swiss Barista in the Secret Garden

After my visit in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, I walked blinking back into the brilliant Middle Eastern sunlight. Still sorting out my experience in the church I wandered aimlessly down the little lane outside the front square. As I turned around bend, there stood all of a sudden before me another church—this one was massive, much more traditionally built, and not nearly so ancient (19th Century—still old by Western standards!). It was the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer.

Not having any other pressing plans, I decided to check it out. The building itself was beautifully built; inside, the bare stone walls, the simple stained-glass windows, and the traditional cathedral floor-plan inspired a solemn quiet. The sanctuary was empty, and so I walked up to the crossing (the point where the transepts meet the nave—i.e., visualize the centre of a floorplan that is shaped like a cross), and I just stood looking up and all around me as the multi-coloured light pierced through the windows on all sides.

Then I moved off to the right transept, noticing a small door that looked open to the public. Some natural light streamed in, and as I followed it to its source, noon struck and the church bells started announcing midday. I wandered out into the new environment, pulling out my iPhone as I went to video-capture the new environment (I later shared it on Instagram—if you view it, make sure the sound is on!).

I felt like I had found the Secret Garden of Jerusalem! And I must have been one of the first to do so, because only a few people were there. And one of them was serving Coffee! It was a beautiful stone courtyard full of greenery and solitude—and coffee (did I mention the coffee?).

For some reason, I didn’t end up sticking around for long, venturing out instead to wander through the Bazaar some more. Later on I kicked myself for this. So the next day I returned, deciding to take some time there to edit my photos from the trip so far.

It didn’t end up being a very productive work session, because, after she served me my cappuccino, I asked the barista if she could explain a bit about the café.

The courtyard, it turns out, was once part of a monastery; monks used to circle this little courtyard reciting their daily prayers. Now, the Lutheran Church has turned it into a café—Café Kreuzgang.

The barista’s name is Birgit—she’s Swiss, but lives in Germany, and came here to work in the café for three months. It turns out she’s actually a professional photographer, so I immediately got rather sheepish about my work (if you haven’t caught on yet, let me be the first to tell you that I am a very amateur photographer. I do my best to document my travels, but, well, that’s about all I can say: I do my best). But She encouraged me, and gave me a few tips. You can check out her work on her website here or her Facebook page here.

More than that though, she shared some of her personal testimony, and I also shared some of mine in turn. Our conversation about the church, about religion, and about our faith, was really enriching. It turns out she has some serious Mennonite affiliations back home, and she sort of fell off her chair (figuratively speaking) when she found out my last name was Janz. She asked if I was related to the Janz Team.

Now, I get this question All. The. Time. And so I admit I sort of gave her the token response (usually something like, “Nope. Well, I guess I’m probably related somewhere down the line—we are Mennonites after all—but I’m not sure how far back.”). I must admit, though, that it was weird hearing the question asked in a Lutheran church in Old Jerusalem. But even weirder: her parents worked closely with the Janz Team—she grew up with them, and learned to sing in that environment. And apparently I look just like a Janz—i.e., like the Janzes she knows but I don’t, like the Janzes I’m not really related to (“It’s the nose!” she says, laughing). Go figure.

Funk-y Mennonite stuff aside (see what I did there?), I left this conversation with a renewed awareness of how complete strangers transform into spiritual siblings when we bear witness to our faith with one another. The Holy Spirit truly is the Great Unifier—provided we do our best not to bar His way with our stubbornness or dogmatism (or our ladders or staircases). I’ve met some pretty incredible practicing Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and free-spirited agnostics along my travels—but the quick-and-close connections I make with fellow Christ-followers continue to bring forth something special and unique.

Grammar Guffs at the Wailing Wall

I also went to the Wailing Wall, which is the only wall that retains stones from Herod the Great’s Temple Mount (i.e., dating back to Jesus’ day) — that is, this part of the Temple Mount wasn’t completely torn down when the Romans destroyed the Temple in A.D. 70, drastically changing the Jewish expression of faith ever since. The Wall is thus a spiritually potent site for religious Jews — it holds the last remains of the place where Ancient Israel used to gather to worship during feast days, and where they offered up their sacrifices — in short, it’s where they met with YHWH, their God, according to the laws laid out for them in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible).

Jews continue to pray in earnest here, and many write prayers on paper and stuff them between the cracks in the stone; Zionists envision a day when the temple will be rebuilt on the mount above (the main problem being, of course, that Islam’s sacred Dome of the Rock stands there today).

I grabbed a free kippah (the small skullcap you often see Jews wearing), put it on, and approached the wall; a Jewish man there gave me a pen and a small slip of paper with which to write a prayer request. I wrote, “Peace for all Your people” in very clumsy Hebrew, rolled it up, and stuffed it into a gap already jammed tight with other prayers.

Sadly, I’ve already started to forget all the various suffixes and syntaxes of Hebrew grammar. Professor Long, my Hebrew prof at Regent for two gruelling terms, would probably frown (good-naturedly, of course) at how I wrote what I wrote. But, thank God, neither Professor Long nor anybody else gets to see it. And I’m pretty sure God can read it just fine.

I spent some time at the wall to say a few more words of prayer, and then departed to make space for others who wished to pray.

In short, my first day in Jerusalem was wonderful. I powerfully encountered God in some reverenced places and in some wonderful faces. And I can rest easy knowing that, no matter how much gooder your Hebrew is then mine, God sees passed bad grammar.

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* Keyword: fulcrum. The Gospel is not just about Easter weekend; the Easter weekend is the center on which the Gospel pivots. Certainly, Jesus came to save us from our sins, and to conquer death and foreshadow our own bodily resurrection—but that’s not all He came to do: He came to bring in the Kingdom of God, He came to reveal the Father to us, and He came to show us how to live.

I know most of those who read this won’t really care about this little rabbit trail of qualification (hence the footnote), but this is an important distinction to me, and it’s one that I often like to make when talking about theology. I think we too easily boil the Gospel down to a single atonement theory (penal-substitutionary atonement), forgetting all the other ways Jesus has saved us, and neglecting all the things He’s taught us during his life. I could go on and on about this, but I won’t… (in fact, I just wrote a rant-y paragraph and then deleted it in hindsight!)

For the last leg of my pilgrimage here, I’m staying at Tantur Ecumenical Institute, which is just a 10-minute walk from the checkpoint leading to Bethlehem.

My first jaunt across the separation wall to Bethlehem was with the intent to visit some of the holy sites, and to spend a day in reflection there before setting out for other planned ventures.

A few hours in, I was definitely reflecting, but not quite in the way I had romantically envisioned. After sitting down at Afteem, a great local restaurant here, I thumbed out this unfiltered and emotional (and perhaps overzealous) note on my iPhone:

I’m in Bethlehem. And I feel so frustrated right now.

Cab drivers and tour guides are haranguing me, seeing my white skin, hearing my English tongue. They are exceedingly friendly but they don’t hear what I’m saying — they hear past me and into a prospective day of sight-seeing that they have in mind for me. The solicitation is incessant. It isn’t the Arab hospitality I experienced in Nazareth or Nablus.

There’s a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that we did this to Bethlehem. We the West. We who as an entire culture have become so obsessed with consumerism. We have come to Bethlehem to do homage to the birth of our Saviour, but we haven’t brought gifts like the Magi did in our cherished Nativity story — we’ve simply brought our appetites. And in turn, the Palestinians have commodified our pilgrimage. And given the economic difficulties they’ve experienced of late, who can blame them for making what they can off our greed?

Then there’s the pilgrim population itself. I know it sounds harsh, but at this point I dare not call them pilgrims. They’re tourists. They act selfishly, swinging their cameras and stupid selfie-sticks around, ignorant of those around them, apathetic to the next guy wanting to get the right frame. They bump into you and cut you off and talk loudly in areas that are supposed to be dedicated to silent prayer. They’re not interested in seeing or hearing — not, at least, in traditional terms; they’re interested in exerting their wills on this place so that they can have their moment, capture it on a screen, and then Instagram it to the vicarious #FOMO observers back home.

I’m trying to see. But flash-bulbs and selfie-posers and brochure-waving guides keep obscuring my view. I’m trying to listen. But the din of local cabbies and Western invaders is drowning out the holy noise of this bustling little town of Bethlehem.

And to think its not even high season.

I don’t exactly regret these words, as I think there’s a whole lot of truth in them. But there’s a sort of irony here that you may well have already detected. Perhaps one might even call me a hypocrite.

To Pilgrim or to Tourist…

The reality is, I wasn’t really paying attention to what was in front of me—instead, I was looking for what I wanted. I wanted contemplation and silent prayer; I wanted to partake in holy awe alongside other similarly-minded pilgrims; I wanted more of the kind Palestinian hospitality I have so learned to love during my travels these past couple of weeks.

I suppose I may be hammering this subject ad tedium during these little writings of mine (but I really don’t care—I just think it’s that important), but I have to acknowledge once more that getting what you want is just not what pilgrimage is about. That’s Tourism. Pilgrimage is about having eyes to see and ears to hear what is there rather than what you want to be there. This is not what most of my fellow foreigners in Bethlehem were doing—but it also wasn’t what I was doing. Many of them got exactly what they wanted, and probably went home happy and gratified tourists. I didn’t get what I want, so I got all mopey.

But at the same time, I kind-of-sort-of was being a pilgrim—at least partially. As you can see by my note above, I was most definitely noticing what was in front of me—I was just cross and grouchy about it. Nonetheless, I did bear witness to the faces of Bethlehem I wasn’t looking for—like the ‘tourist attraction’ face and the ‘commodification’ face—and I made note of it.

I suppose, in my case, it all comes down to surprise. You may remember that I quoted Len Hjalmarson in my first post; Len asserts that, while tourists hate to be surprised, pilgrims love it. In the end, then, I was probably more of the former than the latter.

Sad face :(

Ends & Means

Please don’t read me wrong here—I fully believe that many travellers who visit places like the Nativity Church have genuinely worshipful moments when they witness them. There were probably even a few folks there who weren’t even taking pictures, much less selfies. But for the majority who were, and for the great chunk of them who were socially oblivious about it, one must consider the cost.

That foreigners get to come into Bethlehem and visually memorialize their presence at Christ’s birthplace is good.

That some of them experience rich spiritual connection with God while doing so is great.

But do the ends justify the means?

Is the selfishness I see in so many visitors here okay because of the spiritual boon they’re trying to attain?

Is the apparent ignorance of how our tramping and stamping into Bethlehem has affected its culture excusable?

What about our terrible cluelessness about Bethlehem’s current climes—i.e., what about the three refugee camps surrounding the city, the ugly imposing separation wall on its northern border, the tear gas canisters and rubber bullets lying around the streets, the stringent checkpoint process made all the more stringent for Palestinian citizens…? Is our blissful ignorance allowable simply because “we’re just here for personal/spiritual/historical reasons”?

I, for one, don’t think so.

This is not about politics. It’s not a case being made for Palestinians over against Israelis. It’s about us—the foreigners, the Christians. How we do pilgrimage should bear witness to Christ—whether it’s driving a few blocks to church on Sunday morning to meet with Him and His body, or flying halfway around the world to visit the place of His birth. Jesus served humbly and self-sacrificially, He loved ‘along the way,’ and He was most certainly not ignorant of the times.

Granted, this is really difficult—especially when we’ve been culturally reared to become tourists and consumers instead of pilgrims and servants. If you’ve been reading my posts, you know I’m repeatedly failing at this as I go.

May God grant us the desire, the courage, and the strength to slowly turn and go against the grain.

The Song of the Magi

Anaïs Mitchell has been providing much of my soundtrack here (I shared her song “Two Kids” in my Nazareth post), and, to be honest, she keeps bringing me dangerously close to embarrassing tears while listening along in public transit.

If you have the time to hear and contemplate, check out her “Song of the Magi” below. Here she sings about the contrasting images of Bethlehem—between the idyllic Biblical advent narrative and the current gruelling reality.

If you read my last post, you’ll remember that a server from Tiberias likened the West Bank to a “Wasteland.” Let me tell you—emphatically—it is not. The people of Nablus showed me a culture that is rich, unique, and modern.

Nablus, in case you’re wondering, is a modern city in the center of the West Bank, and is located on roughly the same spot as the biblical town of Shechem—which is an important landmark! So many things happen here, but to name a few…

It’s the first place in Canaan that Abraham and Sarah stopped after leaving Haran at God’s command, and it’s where God first promised to give the land to their descendants (Gen. 12).

It’s where Abe’s grandson Jacob dwells after reconciling with his brother Esau (Gen. 33); according to a very, very old tradition, he dug a well here—the one Jesus asked a certain Samaritan woman to get him a drink from (John 4).

It’s where the all-important blessings and curses were uttered by the people of Israeli after their entrance into the land, the former from Mount Gerizim and the latter from Mount Ebal (Deut. 11:29; Josh. 8:33).

Finally—and this obscure little gem is one of my favourites—it’s where Jotham tells a quirkly folktale involving talking trees in order to illustrate the consequences of accepting bad leaders because all the good ones have already refused the opportunity (Judges 9:7–15). Now I’m not super political, but I can’t help thinking this tale has relevance for the presidential race of our southern neighbours…

All that said, while I did visit the Eastern Orthodox church built overtop Jacob’s Well (the ancient well is preserved in a small room beneath the altar), that’s about the biblical sum to this stop. But that’s ok, because this trip round I’m most interested in understanding the people living there today. And there was lots of that!

The Lonely Wide-Eyed White Boy (i.e., Me)

One of the really notable observations that informed and shaped my experience in Nablus is that there are very few Westerners roaming the streets. Several things are worth mentioning on this front:

1. It made things a little bit intimidating. As I walked around the city in my pasty skin, people stared unabashedly; children would often say ‘hello’ and then giggle uncontrollably; a few groups of men tried exercising their limited English lexicon on me, which promptly broke down each time and they’d stand there talking about me in Arabic saying who knows what, leaving me with a rather awkward and tenuous departure as I continued my way down the street. Also, given I hardly know a lick of Arabic, and given most of the people of Nablus only know a little English, it made normal and necessary things (like directions, ordering food, etc.) rather difficult.
2. It’s a bit of a shame. My impression is that most people intentionally avoid going into the West Bank (and when they do, it’s usually on a guided tour bus that sweeps in to see ‘the important stuff’ and then sweeps out right after—this was my experience during my last trip here). There’s a lot of fear and insecurity associated with the West Bank, and it’s really too bad. People are missing out on a beautiful and welcoming culture (which I’ll get to in a minute).
3. It was a breath of fresh air. I had the wonderful privilege of visiting an almost purely Palestinian culture, relatively untouched by the tourism industry (just you wait until I write about Bethlehem). Certainly, Western culture has had its influence here, but its integration has been much more tenuous than, say, Tel Aviv, which by contrast feels very Western to me. Walking through the old city of Nablus gave me a glimpse of a legit Arab marketplace (it’s been nicknamed “Little Damascus” because of its genuine, traditional atmosphere). People were hawking their wares, but they were hawking them to other locals; and their wares were real-deal materials for everyday life, as opposed to cheap souvenir trinkets for tourists to take back home with them.

Wandering the Bazaar

This leads us to the bazaar. The bazaar, in short, was really fun. A bunch of small lanes lined on both sides with tiny little shops. Crammed with people, resonant with shouting voices, odorous with a spectrum of smells from delightfully sweet to straight-up nasty. It was slow going as I made my way through these little lanes, and my (self-acclaimed) ability to weave people-traffic back home was rather insufficient here; when a rather large push-cart—one that takes up about half the width of the lane—passes you, you know you’re kind of sucking at it. I need to learn to be a bit more assertive here, I guess.

And as for the wares themselves, they were pretty varied: clothing, jewelry, furniture, pottery, Arabic sweets, bread and other baked goods, fruits and vegetables—the list goes on. I bought a sweet-roll for only one shekel at a bakery, and when I tried to buy a single apricot from fruit stand, the owner just smiled and gave it to me. And then there were the meat and poultry shops—now those were something! Mainly they boasted very smelly chickens in very little crates, and fully prepped goat and sheep carcasses hanging on big meat-hooks. But there were also stranger sights that my sanitized eyes weren’t at all used to: at one shop I saw goat heads all lined up in a row, skinned, eyes gouged out, and jaws hanging ajar to reveal intact tongues and removed dentals; at another I saw a man digging the brain out of a cow’s skull. I didn’t stop to take pictures (you’re welcome).

I spent most of my time wandering aimlessly around this exciting environment, feasting my eyes and ears (and playing roulette with my nose). Simply the experience of walking through it was a multi-sensuous rush. Whenever I got to the end, I’d often just turn around and dive back in to try find the little laneways I hadn’t ventured down yet.

However, I did make some stops here and there—some planned and some unexpected. I’ll share a few below.

Kunafeh | Palestinian Sweet and Savoury

If you tell a Palestinian that you’re going to visit Nablus, the almost inevitable response is, “Try the Kunafeh!” Kunafeh, which is unanimously done best in Nablus, is a surprising Palestinian sweet — it manages to successfully combine pastry, goat cheese, and a sweet sugary syrup, creating a pretty excellent sweet-and-savoury experience.

I ordered a plate at Al-Aqsa Café, which, aside from being consistently viewed as the best kunafeh makers in Nablus (according to every travel site I perused, anyway), is purportedly the only place you can actually see the stuff being made in front of you.

It was quite a different sort of sweet, but it was delicious.

Aslan Tiles

Before I left Vancouver, my friend Jenny told me about this place that makes traditional Palestinian tiles. I wanted to, but I had no idea where to find it. In my random aimless wandering, however, I stumbled on a place that looks like this:

I ventured warily up to it, hoping it might be the place…and it was! None of the tile-makers spoke English, but they were incredibly welcoming, and they invited me into a section of the facility where I could watch one of the tiles being made.

The process was fascinating: first they thoroughly clean the base of a mould and place a stencil into it; then the tile-maker carefully pours some super vibrant pigments into the various sections of the stencil, filling them up a good inch or so; once this is done, they delicately remove the stencil and then press some sort of cement-y powder down on top of it—I’m not quite sure what this powder was made of, but they pressed it down in two different layers, using two different types of powder; after that, presto! you have yourself a pretty stunning tile.

These tiles used to be simply practical—they’re hardy, and they make good flooring material. But now, given the industrialization of such things, big factories can make tiles for a fraction of the price. So now, this has become a unique art-form that captures some of the Palestinian tradition. Aslan Tiles’ method is a diamond in the rough, though: they’re the last remaining factory that creates these Palestinian tiles in the handmade traditional way.

If you’re interested in learning more, read this Al Jazeera article.

Mustafa Azizi | I didn’t know he was a filmmaker until it was too late…

After Aslan, I sat down for lunch at a random café in the Old City—mainly because the shop-minder at the entrance was friendly and charming and spoke the best English I had heard all day. His name is Mustafa Azizi.

I ordered some food and began a conversation with him, which quickly turned to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Mustafa is by far the most strongly opinionated Palestinian I’ve spoken with thus far (though not in a belligerent, ignorant, or violent way), and he was quite ready to speak his mind about ‘the occupation.’

For me, the most interesting element of our conversation was learning that the Palestinians trace their heritage waaaay further back than I thought—i.e., all the way back to the Canaanites we read of in Genesis. Before Israel ever arrived, Mustafa told me, they were here (and, of course, scripture agrees with him here: “Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.” Gen. 12:6 ESV). Moreover, Mustafa looked at historical patterns to gain confidence that the occupation would eventually cease. Ancient Israel came, and then they left, he told me; The Greeks came, the Romans came, the Byzantines came, the Ottomans came…and they all left—but the Palestinians have remained throughout all these occupations. He chuckled a bit when he told me that this occupation hasn’t lasted all that long yet when compared with those of the past.

We talked of other things, too: of food (how I love Palestinian fare!), of Handala (a political cartoon character I talk about in an Instagram rant), of the various holy sites in and around Nablus. Unfortunately, I only found out in my last few words with Mustafa that he is a published filmmaker, an educated journalist, and that he runs an organization called Karakeeb, which acts as a creative catalyst for local Nabulsi artists. How I wish I would have learned of this sooner! All the same, our conversation over lunch was still wonderful.

If you’re interested in learning more about Mustafa, there’s a great interview published at Beyond Violence; you can read it here.

Mohammed Abu Al-Soud | Tour, Tobacco, and the Nitty-Gritty

This is Mohammed. He just graduated med school here in Nablus. His brother, Amir, is a friend of my friends, Dave and Rachel Laird; Amir was going to show me around the city, but he ended up needing to go to Tel Aviv for some meetings, so Mohammed volunteered to hang out with me in his stead. Very nice of him.

Mohammed is so cool. He’s smart, insightful, and is very conscious of his deep roots in Palestinian society; thanks to his generosity and hospitality, we hit it off right away.

Mohammed gave me a really insightful historical tour of the Old City in Nablus. Not only did he show me places that go way back in time, like the An-Nasr Mosque and the old spice shop…

…he also showed me some of the darker, more recent sides of history. As we wound our way through the old stone streets, Mohammed pointed out certain buildings I wouldn’t have otherwise given a second look: here, in a home that used to be his uncle’s before he and his family were driven out, was where a sniper killed three Palestinians during the Second Intifada (which happened in 2000–05); here, in this parking lot, there used to be a beautiful old Ottoman facility that catered to travelling merchants—but it got bombed out in one of the Intifadas (the Israeli Army thought rebels were hiding out there, but it turns out the only one in the building was a senior who wasn’t able-bodied enough to get out before the building crashed in on her); here, where a new building now stands, a whole family was killed when the Israel Army toppled over the old one during the Second Intifada. This last one made quite an impact on me as I looked back and forth between the building and a memorial plaque on a nearby wall.

Apparently, because there are limited, narrow entrances to the Old City, Palestinian rebels easily sealed it off during the Second Intifada; as a solution, the Israel Army simply created their own entryways by knocking over walls and houses. “They didn’t even check to see if anyone was in there,” Mohammed told me.

Now, if you’ve been following previous posts about my travels, you know I’m not here to take sides or render judgments—I’m hear to learn, to have my eyes and ears opened by the individual local people I engage with on my journey.

But regardless of what I may think of the violent uprisings of the Intifadas (honestly, I really don’t know what to think!), these stops along the tour explained to me why I saw pictures of martyrs everywhere in the city; why Yasser Arafat’s portrait was painted and printed all over the place; why the little cartoon Handala kept showing up on random walls.

I’m trying to stick myself in the shoes of a Nabulsi of my generation: Mohammed was only a kid during the Second Intifada (I would have been in Grade 10 when it started)—and when bombs are blowing down houses, when your kith and kin are being killed in your own hometown, how can that not get ingrained into your memory?

With that at the forefront of my mind, the grace, the optimism, and the incredible resilience I saw in Mohammed during my few hours with him are practically inconceivable. Rather than turning to bitterness, Mohammed is working to help the West Bank stand strong and proud despite its difficulties.

After Mohammed’s tour, we grabbed some falafel from a local hole-in-the-wall eatery and then sat down at a café off the beaten trail (travelling with locals is the best—they know where to find all the good food). I slowly sipped what is probably the best coffee I’ve had in my travels so far, and we smoked some really good shisha for a good two hours (i.e., hookah, or ‘water-pipe’). We talked of politics, we talked of Islam and Christianity (Mohammed is Muslim), of the intricate and beautiful Arabic language, of current Palestinian realities…

I learned way too much during this conversation to include here, and much of it has spilled out of my memory in the overflow. That said, there were two things Mohammed took care to emphasize, and I think it would be irresponsible not to pen them down here:

1. Muslims do not hate Christians or Jews. In fact, it’s quite the opposite—the Qur’an explicitly commands Muslims to honour and respect them. They view the Bible as a sacred text, and they treat all the important figures of Christian and Jewish traditions as Prophets of God—Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Elijah, and most certainly Jesus Christ (they just don’t believe He was God, which is admittedly where we get into some important distinctions). The only time Muslims are permitted by the Qur’an to kill a Jew or Christian is when it is done in self-defense. It is so important for Westerners—especially Christian Westerners—to understand that the Qur’an is a book of peace, and that Muslims are a people of peace. My experience in Nablus absolutely confirms this.
2. Palestine is not a dark place, void of culture or education. Again, it’s quite the opposite. Mohammed proudly told me that Al-Najah University in Nablus, where he just got his medical degree from, is the second best university in the Arab world (second only to an institute in economically loaded Qatar). The education system is good here. So is the healthcare system—Nablus, apparently, has an excellent and fully equipped hospital (the only thing they can’t perform are procedures that involve radiation, because the Israeli government won’t permit anything to do with radiation into the West Bank). There is a thriving culture here that is full of art and beauty. Why is this important to note? Because false stories spread around regarding the ‘primitive’ Palestinian society somehow (don’t ask me why) make it easier for Western citizens to turn a blind eye to Israeli occupation. Remember that, in the eyes of the international audience and according to UN sanctions, Jewish occupations inside the West Bank are illegal (I’m going to visit one in a couple days, and I’m looking forward to hearing their perspective).

Even though I felt somewhat isolated because of my inability to speak its language and because of the scarcity of foreign visitors, Nablus was a great experience. The people were warm and welcoming (honestly, if the people there only knew one English word, it was usually, “Welcome!”), and I hope to visit the city again.

But for now, I had to leave after only two days—onward and southward!

My time in Tiberias was up, and so I turned my feet toward Nablus. Getting there, however, proved to be a rather sordid affair.

A little help?

I asked the guesthouse staff; I asked the servers at the restaurant who served me breakfast; none of them had a clue how I ought to get into the West Bank, and frankly they seemed rather surprised that I should even want to go there. “The West Bank?” retorted one of my servers, incredulously. “You mean Waste Land.” Hrmm… Then I asked around at the central bus station, and I came up empty once more.

Ah well, I thought. I’ll just bus to a town located closer to the border—they ought to be more helpful. A little later I hopped off the bus in Afula, the central city of the Jezreel Valley, which, according to Google Maps, is only a 12-minute drive from the nearest checkpoint into the West Bank. I asked some locals at the bus depot for directions. More confused responses—responses that, beyond being of no help whatsoever, indicated that I’m somewhat off my rocker for even wanting to go there in the first place.

Frustrated, I got to a wifi connection and asked Google Maps how to get to an even closer little settlement—one that practically skirts the border. Google spat out a bus number at me, which I found on a sign at the depot; a bus showed up shortly after, and the driver told me that his route has a stop only a few minutes’ walk from the checkpoint. Oh good, finally. But by this stage I was growing a bit nervous. Was the West Bank really as undesirable as these folks made it out to be? What was waiting for me beyond the checkpoint?

Slipping through…

A short while later the bus arrived at my destination and, after strapping my 2 packs on front and back, I began the short hike in the hot sun to the checkpoint. I made it to the main entry and started walking toward the border when I saw an Israeli soldier who was advancing toward me, rifle in hand; he was holding up his other hand toward me, commanding me to halt, so I did. When he reached me, he grabbed a big iron gate whose hinges were inches in front of me and swung it shut. “The checkpoint is closed,” he said. “You must find another one.”

“Really?” I asked, somewhat desperately. “There’s no way I can get in here?” The soldier shook his head.

“Where’s the next closest checkpoint?”

Shrug. “I don’t know,” he said, apathetically. “Ask them.” He nodded toward a car twenty feet behind me; a man was standing next to the car, leaning into the passenger window, speaking with another man in the driver’s seat.

I turned, groaned, and made my way to the car; now I was desperate: this checkpoint was pretty empty, and I had no idea when the next bus or taxi was going to show up; there was relatively little shade, and I did not relish the prospect of huffing my packs all the way back to Afula in 35º weather. The vultures were already circling in my mind.

I asked the two men at the car, and one of them pointed at a little branch of road that broke off just a bit behind us—and then the other gestured that I should hurry, and held up his hand with all five fingers spread out. “Five minutes. Closed.” I thanked them, turned, and hoofed it down this other road.

I arrived at the cul-de-sac at the end of the road just as a bus of Palestinians pulled up. They all disembarked and funnelled into the narrow enclosed walkway in front of me, and so I joined up just behind them. We walked forward for about 10 seconds, and voila! I was in Palestine. There was a somewhat heavy presence of armed Israeli soldiers lingering about—including the guy who denied me entry at the other entrance—but they just watched as we walked by them toward the road on the other side. I lugged my gear into a taxi trunk, hopped in the back, and hit the road to Nablus.

What Just Happened?

At the time, this all felt a little sideways to me—as though I was somehow eluding the border guards in plain sight. Maybe it was like that story about Peter getting out of prison with the help of an angel—when he just walked through the prison gates right in front of the guards, and they didn’t even seem to notice him (see Acts 12). Maybe these Palestinians were my angels of the Lord, and by following them through the checkpoint I miraculously avoided the attention of the I.D.F. I mean, I do have a bunch of people praying for me on this trip—just like folks were praying for Peter’s release. Plausible, right?

Well, no, that’s not really what happened. But how I wish it were the case. The reality is (I found out much later) that Israel really doesn’t care who gets in to the West Bank; they care about who gets out. That’s the more stringent part—the part where, I suppose, some sneaky-Pete skills might come more in handy (though I’m going to just stick with the ‘show-them-my-Canadian-passport’ tactic I think).

Contemplating Comfort

That said, I still really needed to muster up my courage here. Leading up to this trip, I had always been a bit nervous about this leg of my schedule, and the lack of travel help from the locals in Galilee really amped up my anxiety. It actually felt like I was maybe doing something stupid, and yet I felt incredibly compelled to just keep moving forward. I was praying the whole way, and, as if in response, there came a calm and composed urge to simply continue my intended path. And so I did—in faith, I suppose.

In the end there really aren’t any big dramatic bells and whistles to this little section of the journey: I just took a couple buses and then walked into the checkpoint the way most vehicle-less people do. No biggie—I just got a little jacked up about it is all. But at the same time, this event holds some importance to me—a quiet but significant profundity I don’t want to let slip by without giving it voice.

Basically, it felt like I was a little kid in bed at night, flipping out over the monster that was trying to get out of my closet; and then Pops came in and helped me bravely face it. Who cares that the monster was only timber creaking in the wind, or flickering shadows from the tree branches outside my window: comfort and reassurance can undo the paralysis of fear regardless of the foe’s actual reality. And it seems God cares about casting out even the most illogical of fears from His children’s minds, giving us the courage needed for even the smallest of tasks.

Were my fears a little bit childish and uninformed (or, rather, ill-informed)? Yes, most definitely. But at the time, some comfort and reassurance were what I needed to get into the West Bank instead of taking the beaten path around it—and those were the things I was given.

And wow, am I glad I went in. More on that soon!