"PALESTINE"

 “PALESTINE”

Sometime this summer – indeed many times this summer – dust will begin swirling in west Africa to form a whirlwind.  Those  winds will move off the mainland and combine together with the warm Atlantic waters to form a system, which with the right conditions, will become a tropical storm and then a hurricane in the western hemisphere.  In many ways, this describes the long and painful history of Palestine.  The ashes, the dust, of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Europe have combined with the ashes of the victims of the “Nakba,” the disastrous eviction of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948, to form a geopolitical storm of hurricane proportions in the modern world.  

In this short space, there is no way to give anything approaching a full account of how this hurricane developed, but it is important to name some briefly.  Last week I looked at the Jewish side of the equation, the long and terrible history of anti-Judaism in world history, a history that led to the establishment of a modern day Israel in territory approximating the former borders of the reign of King David.

    This week is a short review of Palestinians.  That word “Palestine” itself points to the difficulties.  It was used by the Romans to describe the current territory in question in the Middle East, and the root of the word “Palestine,” comes from the Greek word for “Philistia,” who were the ancient Biblical enemies of Israel, the enemies who captured the Ark in Judges 6 that led to the rise of Samuel.  The Philistines were an enemy so strong that not even the great King David could subdue them.  

In the late 1800’s, Jewish leaders worked hard in Britain to get support for a state of Israel in the territories of Palestine, formerly occupied by the biblical Israel.  The work paid off in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Great Britain expressed support for a Jewish homeland in the Middle East.  After the Ottoman Empire collapsed as a result of World War I, the British Mandate was developed, and Britain colonized Palestine, with the intention of moving towards the development of a homeland for Jewish people there.  As the British who came to the Americas discovered, however, there were people already living in the lands being discussed.  In the Middle East, these people continued to be called by their ancient name:  “Palestinians.”  They were mostly Arabs, all seeking to develop a new political entity after the Ottomans had been defeated.  

After the stunning and horrific slaughter of Jews and other persons by the Nazis in World War II, the British and the West made a fateful decision:  the British Mandate in Palestine would end on May 14, 1948, and a new Jewish state of Israel would be created in that territory.  All during the 30 years of the British Mandate, there had been guerilla warfare in Palestine between Arabs and Jews for control of the territories, much of it similar to the Kansas-Nebraska wars in the 1850’s in the USA over slavery, prior to the Civil War.  Slaughters on both sides occurred, but as the date moved closer, the Jewish military power began to dominate in the killing and evictions of Palestinian people.  

    An all-out Arab-Israeli war broke out in 1947-48, with disasters similar to the white Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and the Wilmington Coup of 1898 happening in Palestine.  Preparations were made for a transfer of political power from Britain to Israel, and on May 15, 1948, the transfer was made, and this date in Palestinian history is known as “Nakba.”  The word “Nakba” means “disaster” or “catastrophe,” for it marked the Western world’s endorsement of the killing and the displacement of Palestinian people from their homeland.  Methods similar to those used by the American government to remove Native Americans from their homelands were used to remove Palestinians from their homeland.  An estimated 750,000 people were removed from their homes, with no compensation.

Ever since then, Palestinian peoples have been refugees seeking a homeland.  This predicament was brought home most clearly to me when Caroline and I were pastors at Oakhurst, and the Rev. Dr. Fahed Abu-Akel came to talk with us about the Palestinian crisis.  He is a friend and is a former Moderator of our Presbyterian denomination.  In his presentation, he noted that he was a Palestinian Christian, and that his family had been one of those removed from the homeland by the Israeli army in its drive to create the modern state of Israel.  He spoke profoundly about the great suffering of his family and of so many others.  He is a powerful resource on the issues of Palestine and Israel. If you’d like to contact him,  his e-mail is fabuakel@gmail.com.

The Palestinian people are without a country and have no land to call their own.  There have been various coalitions built among them to seek a homeland – from the PLO to the Palestinian Authority to Hamas – and there have been both non-violent and violent responses to the Israeli occupation of their land.  The Palestinian resistance led to the building of the walls in Israel, especially in Jerusalem.  There is growing oppression of the Palestinians, and those Palestinian homeowners who remain in Israel routinely have their land taken by Jewish settlers.  In a true and deeply sad irony, the oppressed have become the oppressors.  As I noted last week, it is easy to hear the lament of Jesus from Luke’s gospel:  “O Jerusalem, would that you knew the things that make for peace.  But even now they are hidden from your eyes.”  So, it seems currently – is there no just peace for Jerusalem, for Jews and Palestinians?  It is hard to discern a way forward without continuing war, but next week, I will seek to suggest a path.