MennoLetters

MennoLetter from Jerusalem
Vol. V, No 5, May, 2006

A Mideast View by Mennonite Church Liaison,
Glenn Edward Witmer.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The IDF is acting according to the rule articulated in Jewish tradition:
“If someone is trying to kill you, kill him first.”
—Rabbi Dow Marmur

“We long for peace as much as anybody else…
since we are the premier victims of violence and war.”
—PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh

“The New Testament historically has been a book
that has been thrown in the face of Jews.”
—Rabbi James Rudin

“The wounds of occupation will take years
and perhaps generations to heal.”
—Dr. Gershon Baskin

An ancient pilgrimage route that follows in Jesus’ footsteps—from Bethany, the place where he raised Lazarus from the dead, to Jerusalem—is about to be severed by the construction of Israel’s 30-ft wall. The cutting of the two-mile path, from Bethany over the Mount of Olives and down past the Garden of Gethsemane into the Old City, will end a 1,600-year tradition begun by early Christian pilgrims.

The wall stands above the site revered as the place where Jesus performed the miracle of Lazarus a few days before his crucifixion. The Gospel of John describes how the miracle led many Jews to walk from Jerusalem to see what had happened. Exactly the same route was used by 4th-century Christians.

Archaeological evidence also shows that Bethany was a thriving Jewish town in Jesus’ time. The remains of ancient homes with ceremonial Jewish bathing cisterns were found near Bethany when the wall was being erected, and the route of the wall was diverted to protect the Jewish artifacts. But today Bethany is a Palestinian town outside the wall, with a large Arab population. The wall has made life extremely difficult for thousands of Bethany residents who used to commute into Jerusalem for work. Furthermore, the local economy has suffered. The short drive from Jerusalem to Lazarus’ tomb now requires pilgrims to make a one-hour
detour. Consequently, the thousands of pilgrims who used to come monthly have trickled to a few hundred.

Israel is increasingly referring to the wall as the country’s new eastern border. When the border is formalized, pilgrims will have to cross an international frontier. Israel continues to argue that it is a necessary defense against suicide bombers, but the International Court of Justice in The Hague has declared the wall illegal, saying that it is built on occupied land.
—UK Telegraph

In each generation each person must regard themselves as if they personally were redeemed from Egypt. Abba Eban once said: “The redemption of the Jews from Egyptian bondage must be regarded in any serious view of history as one of the authentic points of climax in the progress of mankind. The memory of Israel’s first struggle for freedom has inspired and consoled many subsequent movements for national independence. The Exodus is the original and classic episode of national liberation.”

That memory and that struggle are retold every year by us to our children so that they will remember that we too were slaves in Egypt and today we are free. This Passover season once again celebrated our liberation from slavery and our freedom as a nation.

Israel was born into struggle in 1948 and our national liberation movement was celebrated by us and by humanity as a great achievement, especially after our freedom from the Nazi Pharaoh. Our struggle for redemption was just, and efforts to create a free State of Israel were viewed by the world with awe. In June 1967 our victory in war led to our imprisonment into modern slavery as the occupiers of another people. We were drunk in our victory and blindly strengthened our hold on the Palestinians. Their struggle for freedom and independence eventually gained international support and solidarity, and we became the modern day Pharaoh.

“Our dream of national independence and liberation
can only be fully fulfilled when we release ourselves
from the infliction of occupation.”

Since 1967 Israel has become a divided society—divided between those who saw our enslavement as occupiers and those who worked to further our entrenchment in the occupied territories. Now when the overwhelming majority of Israelis understand that we cannot continue to occupy the Palestinian people, we recognize that we are now struggling for a new kind of freedom. Our dream of national independence and liberation can only be fully fulfilled when we release ourselves from the infliction of occupation. Now, so many years later that we recognize that our freedom is inextricably linked to the freedom of the Palestinian people, it is much more complicated to leave behind what we have labored so hard with blood, sweat, and tears to create.

The Exodus from Gaza was only chapter one of the new story of freedom and redemption. What we built with our own hands we destroyed with our own hands. What we built in the West Bank with our own hands, we will also destroy with our own hands. The ruins left behind are not only the physical remains of homes and communities. The ruins include the chances of building hope and of building peace with those who were enslaved by us. The wounds of occupation will take years and perhaps generations to heal.

This is not a story of good and evil, or true and false, or of right and wrong. This is a struggle of two rights that have both done wrong. The Palestinians have been enslaved by their reliance on terrorism. The Palestinians remain enslaved by their belief that they do not have to recognize our rights. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke about the rights of the Palestinian people to a state of their own. His statement was the first real step toward redemption for the State of Israel. The new Palestinian leadership will have to follow in his foot steps. But we do not have to be enslaved by their non-recognition of our rights.

“…the experience of slavery has created for us
a deep consciousness and a passionate commitment
to freedom and justice as incorporated in the Torah.”

The Palestinians have suffered and continue to suffer by the mistakes of their own doing. We too continue to suffer by missing opportunities that are at our doorstep. Mahmoud Abbas is not our dream of a Palestinian leader. He may be weak, he may be hesitant, he may lack charisma, but he is the leader of the Palestinian people. He is struggling against the Hamas government which he perceives as the entrenchment of his people in their continued suffering. He wants to lead his people out of enslavement. He believes in freedom and liberation, he recognizes Israel and he is ready to make peace with us. Yet rather than helping him to build his position and to strengthen the chances of a negotiated peace, we continue to weaken him and to undermine his leadership.

During Passover we remember that the experience of slavery has created for us a deep consciousness and a passionate commitment to freedom and justice as incorporated in the Torah. We vow to remember that we were once slaves in Egypt and today we can retell our story of liberation. Let us truly become free, free from occupation, free from conflict and free to build peace with our neighbours.
—The writer is the Israeli Co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. Excerpted from the Jerusalem Post.

After a year of meeting in secret, 120 former Israel Defense Forces combat soldiers and Palestinian militants unveiled a unique peace group two weeks ago, hopeful their union will spur dialogue and end bloodshed. Formation of the “Combatants for Peace” is a rare sign of comradeship at a time when separation increasingly characterizes relations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Recently Israel said it was cutting direct contacts with the new Hamas-led Palestinian government. The Islamic militant group is sworn to destroy Israel. But in a school yard in the Palestinian town of Anata north of Jerusalem, former enemies exchanged handshakes and hugsas they inaugurated what they called the first joint group of its type.

“This is the breakthrough event, to say to the world we are here,” said Avichay Sharon, 24, and a former IDF soldier. “We don’t want to look at each other through weapon sights, we want to see each other as human.” Palestinian Osama Abu Karsh, 35, and jailed for three years by Israel for attacking troops with firebombs, added: “Both our sides have been fighting, but we want to sit at the same table. We hope we can achieve something.”

The former combatants have been meeting for a year in different towns around Jerusalem after founders on both sides decided to do something to try to foster peace. The group aims to put pressure on both governments to talk peace, halt violence, and establish a Palestinian state. They plan to visit Israeli and Palestinian schools and universities and set up joint media teams to influence public opinion. One problem is getting together. It is illegal for Israelis to enter most of the West Bank. Palestinians find it difficult to get permits to enter Israel.

Yonatan Shapira, who made headlines in 2003 when he and nearly 30 other Israel Air Forces pilots refused to carry out operations on civilian Palestinian areas, said he did not expect endorsement from the governments on either side. “The Israeli government is bombing Gaza and killing innocent people so I don’t think they will be part of this event, nor will the Palestinians who are involved in militant attacks,” he said.
—excerpted from Reuters

I can’t judge the strategy of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but I don’t think that it can be blamed on moral grounds. The IDF is acting according to the rule articulated in Jewish tradition, “If someone is trying to kill you, kill him first.”

The Qassam rockets that land in Israel daily are intended to kill and maim civilians. To try to eliminate them seems, therefore, to be legitimate. To try and stop suicide bombers preparing to enter Israel to cause carnage is equally legitimate, even if it involves killing them and, alas, occasionally causing “collateral damage.”

The question is, though, whether the IDF actions are effective. Of course, it’s impossible to judge what the situation would have been without them. Nor can we judge whether the information we’re being fed is always accurate. Nevertheless, we’re in a position to wonder if all the military activity yields the required results, namely peace on Israel’s borders and safety on Israel’s streets.

I’m impressed by those ex-generals who, though praising the IDF, question the politics behind its actions. They argue that there can be no military solution, neither to the rockets nor to the suicide bombers. According to this view, only negotiations can bring about the necessary results. Others remind us that, after the Hamas victory, Israel has once again nobody to negotiate with. Though Abu Mazen is a potential partner, they argue that he has been so weakened that he hasceased to be relevant. Therefore, though military action may not put an end to the violence, it seems to be Israel’s only way to contain it.

This latter argument ignores the fact that Israel has greatly contributed to the weakness of Abu Mazen by not giving him the support that could have made his situation better. This argument insists that even now, in this late hour, it’s possible to talk to Abu Mazen who, in turn, perhaps with the help of the Egyptians, can be the go-between to the Hamas government and offer it a fig leaf with which to cover its own self-destructive belligerent rhetoric.

“Ehud Olmert has the need, before the new government is formed,
to assert himself as being as strong and as resolute as Arik Sharon”

There’s no reason whatsoever to say anything good about Hamas. However, there are grounds, firstly, to acknowledge it as being able to exercise a fair amount of power over the other militants, should it choose to do so, and secondly, as having intelligent men at its helm. Both these factors may make for realism and lead to a working relationship, through Abu Mazen and/or others, with Israel.

That may still happen. Israel’s Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has the need, before the new government is formed, to assert himself as being as strong and as resolute as Arik Sharon would have been had he been well. Hence the display of military prowess. But once the coalition is formed and the influence of partners is in evidence, a softening of Israel’s position becomes a reality.

That’s what we should be hoping for. Though every Israeli and every Jew has good reason to take pride in the IDF, each of us also knows that not the raw exercise of power but the reasoned exercise of prudence is the only way to peace.

It was something to pray for as we Jews gathered around the Seder table.

—The writer is Rabbi emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, and a former professor at the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto School of Theology.

Of all the texts considered required reading in a thorough Jewish education, one major work with Jewish roots is usually missing from everyone’s list: the New Testament. Most Jews shun Christian Scripture. As a result, they cannot answer Christians who ask why Jews don’t accept Jesus as the Messiah.

Reform Rabbi Michael J. Cook says this “self-imposed ignorance” is dangerous. At a time when many Christians are embracing the Jewish origins of their faith, holding Passover seders before Easter, Cook says he has taken on the “Herculean task” of convincing Jews they must learn how the Gospels molded Christian attitudes toward Judaism.

“The New Testament is the greatest single external determinant of Jewish history, and deleteriously so in its causing Jews grievous problems,” said Cook, who holds the unusual job of New Testament professor at a Jewish seminary, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. In a book he plans to publish next year, Modern Jews Engage the New Testament, he will present an education plan for how Jews can learn enough to answer “why they process it differently from Christians.”

“In an ideal world, of course we would train our students
to know something about Christianity.”

Many scholars agree that Jews would benefit from studying the Christian texts. They say it could improve interfaith relations, especially on the local level where rabbis are expected to work with fellow clergy from other denominations. It also would help when public debates arise—like the controversy about how Jews were depicted in the Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of the Christ. Many outsiders viewed Jewish objections to the film as an affront to Christianity, damaging relations between the two faiths. Cook said most Jews had no idea how to explain their concerns about the script—even to their own children.

Burt Visostsky, a longtime professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the flagship institution for Conservative Judaism, said many rabbinical students enroll at the seminary without strong backgrounds in their own religion, let alone Christianity and other faiths. “In an ideal world, of course we would train our students to know something about Christianity, and also Islam,” said Visostsky. “But where is it on the triage list? I’m afraid not very high.”

“Jewish resentment grew over the centuries
as Christians used the New Testament to try to convert Jews.”

Jewish aversion to the New Testament is rooted in both religious law and historical experience. Some passages in early rabbinic literature bar Jews from reading the Gospels, Cook said. The Talmud, the compilation of Jewish law, reinforces this point by prohibiting Jews from saving the Gospels from a fire even though the name of God is written in them, said Jacob Neusner, a Bard College professor and expert on Judaism and Christianity.

Jewish resentment grew over the centuries as Christians used the New Testament to try to convert Jews—either through evangelism or by force during the Crusades and other violent periods. The belief derived from the New Testament that Jews are collectively responsible for Christ’s death has now been rejected by the Roman Catholic Church and other denominations, but the idea persists among some Christians to this day.

“The New Testament historically has been a book that has been thrown in the face of Jews,” said Rabbi James Rudin, the inter-religious adviser for the American Jewish Committee, who agrees that Jews need to learn about the Gospels. “As the years have gone by, it has been seen as the Scripture of the ‘other’ and the other has always been perceived, until recently, as a hostile group trying to subvert or replace Jews and Judaism.” The text is now almost completely absent from course work for rabbinical candidates, students at American Jewish colleges and the many young people enrolled in Jewish high schools.

“The highest priority for a believing Jew is the study of Torah and its fulfilment,” said Rabbi Shalom Carmy. “The study of other religions and cultures may be the source of psychological insight and may help us better to understand others. But these goals are ancillary.” Cook says he understands these arguments, but ultimately rejects them, contending it is illogical for Jews who so heavily emphasize education to ignore such an important text. He called lack of knowledge about the New Testament the Jewish Achilles’ heel.

“Once Jews catch on to this, most will recognize how valuable this venture can be,” Cook said, “and how...damaging has been their self-imposed taboo.”
—excerpted from an Associate Press article

As the Palestinian people continue their long and painful journey for freedom and independence, we look to the future with hope and optimism. Indeed, it is this hope, this strong faith in the justice of our cause that kept us going all these years and made us withstand the suffering and brutality meted out to us by an evil and dehumanizing Israeli military occupation.

From time immemorial, Palestine was the peaceful homeland of native Muslims, Christians, and Jews who lived together in peace and harmony, sharing a common history and heritage. In fact, it was only after Palestine was placed under the British mandate following World War I, and when the British colonialist authorities subsequently decided to illegally give Palestine, our ancestral homeland, to Zionism, that inter-communal and inter-religious harmony was disturbed.

As result of that wanton injustice, we find ourselves today as prisoners in our own homeland, enslaved and tormented by an illegal and immoral occupier who is treating our people as children of a lesser God, or even as if we were animals. In fact, the criminal nature of this occupation transcends reality. The ugly scenes of murder, home demolitions, and humiliation to which our people are subjected to on a daily basis and which people outside Palestine watch on their TV screens, are but a small part of what is really happening on the ground.

Needless to say, the Israeli occupiers wouldn’t be perpetrating their crimes against a helpless people whose only ‘crime’ is its enduring yearning for freedom and justice were it not for the disgraceful apathy of the international community towards my people’s plight. Hence, I call on the international community to pressure the Israeli state to stop its systematic oppression and institutionalized persecution of my people.

I know there are many people who mendaciously and maliciously—or maybe ignorantly—portray us as bellicose and anti-peace and prone to violence. But this is untrue. We long for peace as much as anybody else, or even more than anybody else, since we are the premier victims of violence and war. Peace is a sublime value without which the entire human experience becomes lacking in substance. However, for peace to be real, durable and meaningful, it has to be based on justice.

Violence will continue as long as one group of people, intoxicated by their political and military power, feel that they have the right to impose their will on another group of people, by way of bullying and coercion. A ‘peace’ like this is an act of rape.

Needless to say, for a just peace to materialize in Palestine, the world community must adopt an honest approach to this conflict. We say so because we are tired of the international community’s hypocrisy and double standards in dealing with both parties to the conflict. Indeed, we would like to know why the UN has allowed Israel to repeatedly fly in the face of more than 100 UN resolutions aimed at ending the illegal occupation of my country. Are there two sets of international law, one for the weak and another for the strong?

Is Israel above international law? Is Israel entitled to a special treatment by the international community whereby it can kill our children with impunity, steal our land with impunity, and expel us to the four corners of the world with impunity? It is time that all men and women of conscience and rectitude to speak up in support for justice for the Palestinians.

We have suffered too much, and it is time that we are allowed to reclaim our usurped freedom and dignity. We are not demanding the impossible. We only challenge the world community to be faithful to the UN Charter and international conventions that prohibit the acquisition of land by force.

In short, the occupation must end, and it must end now!

Registrations is now being accepted for the May 2007
MennoJerusalem Pastors and Bible Teachers Study Program

Based at Jerusalem’s Tantur Ecumenical Institute, with on-site teaching/touring throughout Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.

Keynote lecturer: Dr. Perry Yoder, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, + 8 others.

For full information write to

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Views expressed in MennoLetter are not necessarily those of the editor or of our church agencies: Mennonite Church WITNESS, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; Mennonite Mission Network, Elkhart, Indiana & Newton, Kansas, USA.

Content is copyrighted by the writer ©2006. If reprinting outside of local congregational publications, please request permission from the .

Peace/shalom/salaam from Jerusalem, – Glenn Edward Witmer

Number of visits since May. 2002 — 1,183 July10 2006