A Holy Week note to Ontario churches

Dear Friends, Just one week ago today, we walked up the Mount of Olives through the Garden of Gethsemane – the area where Jesus prayed, wept and was arrested – and then back again to the Old City of Jerusalem, to the area where Jesus was crucified and buried. It was our last day in Palestine-Israel, and we were filled – even overwhelmed – with all we had heard and seen, felt and smelt.

Now it’s Passion Week. We’re back home and, with our congregations, are preparing to comemmorate Jesus’ walk of agony to the cross: the same geographical path we took last week – the steps of Jesus in his last days.

Yet, our Palestinian sisters and brothers (Christians and Muslims) are in agony daily, suffering under the illegal military occupation of their lands. A huge Separation Wall cuts through their land and neighbourhoods. Palestinian labours can’t get to work. Palestinians are cut off from family and friends. Shops are cut off from their customers, farmers from their lands. Palestinian olive groves are razed, their homes also.

They asked us to tell their stories to our churches.

As Christians we believe the agony of the cross is not the last word; Resurrection and New Life follow! As we commemorate Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, can we pray and act for resurrection in Palestine-Israel? For justice in Jesus’ land? For peace between our Palestinian and Israeli sisters and brothers? MCC’s Palestinian Christian partners call us to prayer and action, to hope and resurrection. Let’s not disappoint them.

Wishing you all New Life in Christ's Resurrection!
Tim Schmucker, MCCO Justice and Peace Programs Coordinator.

An All Knowing, All Powerful God?

Our learning tour to Israel/Palistine was very intersting, but at times challenging. I found the Holy Land to be anything but Holy.

Our tour was set up well in that we received a weight of reality, then a time of refreshing.
I experienced the weight in trying to understand the situation from both sides of the barrier. I'm still in no position to claim that I now fully understand the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but I can now say that I'm more informed about their situation(s).

A challenging thought that kept coming back to me was: we know that God allowed the Holucost, the creation of the state of Israel, the seperation of the people with barriers and fences to happen, but why? I can't say I know why, but I do believe that our Holy Bible has many answers, so I want to continue to go back to it to learn, and try to understand.
Since I believe that God loves the souls of both the Israeli and the Palestinian people, I pray that
God will use us, through our tour, to bless the hurting Palestinian and Israeli people in such a way, so that He may be glorified.

Flagged as a security threat!

Israel’s international airport in Tel Aviv has the highest level of security in the world. Israel has been, of course, a target of terrorism due to her decades-long occupation and oppression of Palestinians. While travelers are thoroughly scrutinised upon arriving at the Tel Aviv airport, leaving is even more rigorous.

One of us was arbitrarily chosen for lengthy questioning. We weren’t worried, as we had nothing to hide. However, the first round of questioning led to extended interrogation by security supervisors. An hour later, his luggage was unpacked and examined inch by inch. Of added concern for Israeli security was a book given to him by an MCC partner organisation. He was a high level security threat. His and our “crime”? We had stayed two nights in the home of a Palestinian family. Never mind that the families were Christian; evidently all Palestinians are suspect, along with those who stay with them.

"I do not want to take any hatred home"

At our final debriefing last night, the elder statesman of our Team said, simply: "I do not want to take any hatred home." Like many on the Team, he has felt his share of anger on this journey, as well as deep sadness, sometimes confusion, and near-despair. What I take from the wisdom of our travelling mate is that what we have experienced could easily push us from sadness and anger to hate. And, also in his wisdom, he is reminding us we cannot go there. We have powerful invitations from many we have met here, to intercept our tendency to hate, with the opportunity to love. How often did we hear a story from a villager who had been subjected to violence, yet refused to return it in kind. Or a farmer who responded to threats of land confiscation by sowing again next years seeds of hope. Refusing to hate. Choosing to love. As people of the Jesus faith, all things are possible.

Of trees and stones

"The tree of peace...it needs watering every day. If you miss just one day, that tree of peace, it may turn into something else." This lesson in peace, preached by a Muslim villager, is heard by a group of 12 Mennonites who think they already know this lesson. A day later, in Nazareth another new friend: "I am an Arab, Palestinian Christian. You forget we Christians are here. But we have always been here. We are the Living Stones of the holy land." I am struck that both men are living under Occupation. Both live lives impoverished because they are Palestinians. It does not matter that one is Muslim, and the other Christian. Each is diminished in this hurting land because of his race.

From Shoah to Nakba: Reflections from Jerusalem

Shoah is the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, some 6,000,000 Jews – SIX MILLION HUMAN BEINGS - murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, while the world wrung its hands in inaction, while the Church was essentially silent. Genocide. An indescribable horror.

Nakba is the Arabic word for the Catastrophe, the word Palestinians (both Muslim and Christian) use for the invasion and destruction of Palestinian lands and homes along with the murder of thousands and the displacement of 725,000 Palestinians by Jews setting up the State of Israel.

We visited Yad Vashem today, the Holocaust Memorial and Museum. Children under ten years old are not permitted to enter. It graphically documents the development of hatred toward the Jews in Christendom, and then the rise of Hitler and Nazism in post-World War One Germany. Anti-semitism was part of Hitler’s program, culminating in the horrific concentration camps of the 1940s. A model of one of the Auschwitz ovens with thousands of people in it was emotionally overwhelming. Genocide. Unspeakable horror.

Ali gave us a tour of the Old City of Jerusalem today. He said that the removal of Palestinians from their lands and homes continues to this day. He pointed out where Jewish settlers were taking over Palestinian homes, at times building an additional floor on top of a centuries old Palestinian home. He spoke clearly of the oppression and humiliation the Palestinians suffer daily at the hands of the Israeli occupation apparatus. We noticed that everyone knew Ali, people greeting him at every turn. At the end of the tour, he told us he had been political prisoner, jailed in 1968 until 1985 when Israel released him in a political prisoner exchange. Palestine: an occupied land and people.

The Shoah (the Jewish Holocaust) ended in 1945.

The Nakba (the Palestinian Catastrophe) started in 1948.

From Shoah to Nakba in three years.

Psalm 22: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 


O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;

and by night, but find no rest.

When words aren't enough

Sometimes I think our written words fail us. When we met with the Jewish settler he talked about the written and the oral Torah that were given to Moses. As he said we can't really completely know God but some ideas and concepts can only be conveyed orally. I think there is a lot of truth in this. Can we convey in words on a blog what we are truly feeling and thinking? Perhaps as we share our stories in our communities upon our return people might better understand us. I've read once that in communicating only 10% is conveyed in the actual words. The rest is in the tone, the visuals, the emotions we convey.

Today we experienced a Lutheran service in the old city and I really appreciated the opportunity to worship in the holy land with people from all over the world, drawn to the birthplace of our faith.

From there we toured the old city with a tour guide who pointed out things we would have never noticed. He showed where aggressive settlers were moving into buildings in strategic locations trying to change the city creating new facts on the ground. Ariel Sharon the former prime minister whose visit to the Temple Mount triggered the second Intifada bought an apartment in the heart of Muslim quarter. This apartment seats right on the main street and he has never spent a night in it, although he visits it sometimes. We also looked down on the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall. From there you could see how every building was strategic and all the energy and money was being spent not on achieving peace but on grabbing an extra meter or building. So much tension in such a small space, something that words can't possibly describe.

From there we went to visit the Yad Vashem (Holocaust) museum. Again words fail to convey such an experience. The images and words in the exhibit are shocking. I've done enough reading about the Holocaust to know much of the story, but still the staring into family pictures of happy people destined for the gas chambers is really tough. Some of the words and images reminded me to of things I've seen on this trip. A Jewish person's description of being forced into the Warsaw ghetto and comparing there life on one side of the wall with the freedom and prosperity on the other reminded me so much of the plight of the Palestinians we met this week. How is it that we humans create these systems designed to oppress and destroy our brothers and sisters. Surely God expects better than us.

Today we started to talk some more about how to share what we've experienced. But do you convey these experiences when words are not enough.