http://www.tikkun.org/9803/9803kern.html
A Christian Perspective
By Kathleen Kern
Tikkun, March/April 1998
I am a Christian who came to Israel with a deep
awareness--instilled by my parents and my academic
background--of the horrific abuses the Church has
inflicted on Jews for two millennia.
In the winter and spring of 1995, under the auspices
of my organization, Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT),
I visited with numerous Israelis and Palestinians
involved in peace and human rights work. After meeting
with grassroots organizers in the West Bank city of
Hebron, we received an invitation from the mayor's
office to set up a project there.
I knew before the project started in June 1995
that my knowledge of the history of Christian
anti-Semitism would be both a burden and a tool. On
the whole, my knowledge has been a useful tool that
has helped our team in Hebron establish warm
relationships with dozens of Israeli peace and human
rights activists. It has helped us connect Israelis
with Palestinians who are facing home demolition and
ongoing harassment from Israeli soldiers and settlers.
To do our work, our team has had to open ourselves to
the pain and suffering that begat the pain and
suffering that begat the pain and suffering ad
infinitum.
But at the moment, I only feel the "burden" part.
I am tired and sick at heart from what I have seen
over the last two years, and I have done almost
nothing for the last three days besides deal with the
fallout from death threats that some Kachnik--probably
at the behest of the Hebron settlers--has made against
my co-workers there.
When I first sent Tikkun my reflection piece on
Israel at fifty, I tried to convey my ambivalence--how
I juggle my relationships with Israelis and
Palestinians, my evangelical/fundamentalist
upbringing, the realities of what I see, and the
historical context that gave rise to Zionism.
You, Michael Lerner, told me it came across as
emotionally detached.
So you want to know how I really feel about Israel
after having worked for nearly seventeen months as a
human rights activist in Hebron? You don't want the
sion that I give in presentations to Mennonite
Churches that emphasize our conflict resolution work?
You don't want the version I give Jewish friends to
avoid seeing that veil of pain drop across their
faces? You don't want the version that I tell the
children in my household so they won't grow up
thinking Israelis are bad people?
Are you so sure you want to open those doors that
my rage has strained against for the past two years?
Are you? Well here it goes. Israel makes me want to
throw things at a wall until the plaster shatters and
my arms are too sore to hurl anything else. Israel
makes me wish that my theology permitted me a
purgatory where folks like Ariel Sharon would have to
experience every bit of the pain and terror they have
inflicted on their victims over the last decades.
Israel makes me want to point my finger, like Emile
Zola, like the prophet Nathan, at Netanyahu and his
cronies, and say: "J'accuse--You are the man," as
silent wraiths heap corpses of ewe lambs, slaughtered
on the altar of Israeli expansionism, at his feet.
God! Do you have any idea what you are asking of me,
when you say you want something less detached? I have
expended enormous energy to subdue my passion so that
I don't repulse those who are only moderately
interested in my work. I walk on eggshells so that I
do not detonate the passion of others who are too
involved with the conflict.
Much of what I have witnessed, I can report only
with detachment: I have seen a man with his hands and
feet blown off, skin boiled red, thrashing about like
a seal. I have seen men picking up little bits of
people stuck to asphalt, walls, and trees in
Jerusalem. I have seen Israeli soldiers in Hebron
beckon settlers to come over and spit on terrified
young men they have detained at a checkpoint. I have
seen the huge grin on the face of a man holding me up
by the hair with his left hand as he drew the other
hand back to punch me in the ear. From the ground I
watched him run away with my camera held over his head
like a football, surrounded by other settlers in white
shirts and black pants. They laughed and cheered as
though he had made a touch down. I have been called
"Nazi"; I have been spit at times too numerous to
mention. I have on many occasions had Miriam Levinger
cackle at me, "Don't say I didn't warn you."
I have listened as countless soldiers and settlers
who have never had a civil conversation with a
Palestinian--let alone eaten with them, lived with
them, babysat for them as I have--tell me all about
what Arabs "are like." I have heard Israeli soldiers
tell me, "you have seen nothing," when I confront them
about physically abusing young Palestinian men they
had detained against the wall across from our
apartment. I have stood one too many times in front of
tearful Palestinian women asking me "Laish? Why? Why?
WHY are they doing this? What have we done?" as they
nursed the bruises of their children who had been
attacked by soldiers or settlers. I have listened to
their sobs and wails as bulldozers plowed into their
houses while Israeli soldiers laughed and cheered. My
bile, my tears, well up as I write. Before I went to
Hebron I lived under the illusion that houses and
human bodies were solid. I didn't know they could come
apart so easily.
It is better to detach. It is better to think of
myself as a biological organism, made up of a finite
amount of fluids, because otherwise I think my tears,
my vomit, would drown the Fertile Crescent.
The year before I joined CPT, I finished a book,
We Are the Pharisees, in which I examined ways the
Church has used Jesus' diatribes against the Pharisees
as anti-Semitic propaganda. I wrote "... until we
understand our horrible history of persecuting the
Jews, we cannot really talk with [Jews] on issues
surrounding the state of Israel and
Israeli-Palestinian relationships. Some of my friends
have expressed impatience with the way Jews "use"
their past persecutions in order to justify Israeli
policies. I believe this is the wrong approach. As
long as we refuse to listen to the Jews regarding
their history, the Jews have every right to refuse to
listen to us. We need to understand why Jews
throughout the world crave the security that came with
the founding of the State of Israel."
I received my author's copies a week before I flew to
Israel for the first time. As I re-read my words
today, I ask myself, "Do I still believe them? Do I
still believe anything I believed before the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict infected me?" I am able
to rise above my rage long enough to realize that,
yes, my words still hold true. Even given my
experiences in Hebron, I don't think there is much I
would add or change.
As a Christian white European American I want to
take responsibility for the injustices in the Middle
East. If I can take responsibility for what has
happened, that gives me a small measure of control,
right? The silence roils in my stomach. I will
continue. I still believe I have an obligation to
follow Jesus' command that I love my enemies. Can I
love Mr. Shektman, Miriam Levinger, and the anonymous
Kachniks currently threatening the lives of my friends
in Hebron? Yes, I can love them. They were not born
hateful. I know--no, I am certain--that God loves
them.
Israeli friends have told me that W.B. Yeats' "The
Second Coming" has become especially meaningful to
them to them in the last few years--"things fall
apart; the center cannot hold."
The lines from that poem that leap out at me are,
"the best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are
full of passionate intensity." Is that what you meant,
when you said you wanted less detachment and more
passion? Because there has to be some emotional force
that matches those who vociferously defend their right
to treat others with contempt? What if the passion
only adds to the cumulative rage mushrooming in the
region? What if it makes me lose control and betray
the principles of nonviolence to which I have
committed my life? What if my detachment is the only
thing holding me together?
Kathleen Kern is the author of We are the Pharisees
(Herald Press, 1995).
