Stephen Sizer expresses some strong views on 'Christian' tourism in Israel.
The presence of literally tens of thousands of Western Christian tourists and pilgrims in the Holy Land at any one time has great potential for good, after all as children of God, the Lord assumes we will be peacemakers. Ironically, I believe for the most part, the Western Christian presence actually does great harm.
That is because most Christians visiting the Holy Land follow a predetermined itinerary purposely designed or encouraged by the Israeli Government Ministry of Tourism to bring them into contact with a Jewish Israel perpetuating a myth of how the Zionist dream is being fulfilled. There will invariably be visits to the Knesset, Yad Vashem, Masada, the Dead Sea and a Kibbutz, etc, all under the watchful influence of a licensed Jewish guide.
It is quite untrue, to quote a recent letter to EN, that 'Palestine at the end of the 19th century was virtually uninhabited and mostly waste land.' My Times Atlas of the World, dated 1895, and Baedeker's Palestine dated 1912, shows Palestine to be densely populated with hundreds of small villages and major towns such as Jerusalem, Akko, Joppa and Jericho.
Ignoring Christians
Most tour groups are oblivious of the fact that they will be passing through heavily armed checkpoints into what is still, under international law, illegally held 'Occupied Territory' on the West Bank, in order to visit places such as Bethlehem and Jericho. Even more significant, based on recent research, something like 95% of pilgrims who visit the Holy Land do not even meet any indigenous Christians who are 99% Palestinian. As Bishop Kenneth Cragg, former assistant Bishop of Jerusalem once said, 'Sharp moral issues are easily submerged by outsiders in archaeology or tourism, while the local Christianity is relegated to sentiment and the museum.'
Can you imagine what it must feel like to watch countless air-conditioned coaches full of Christians from around the world driving past your crumbling church and impoverished community every day to visit yet another holy site, guided by someone of another religion, and fearful of any contact with you because they have been fed the lie that you and your people are just a bunch of terrorists?
The kind of pilgrimages we organise and promote are intended to help to explode those myths and reverse that trend. Our journeys to meet the Living Stones are designed to make a constructive contribution to the life and witness of the indigenous Church there. Unlike most tour groups who worship in their hotels or at the Garden Tomb with expatriates, on Sundays we choose to worship with the ancient local Christian communities, in their own language, singing their hymns, instead. The fellowship at St. George's in Jerusalem and Christ Church in Nazareth, for example, is warm, appreciative and unforgettable.
Restricted travel
It is strangely incongruous however, that we as foreigners are free to travel thousands of miles to visit the churches and religious sites of Jerusalem but local Christians living just a few miles away in the surrounding villages are denied access to worship at these sites so central to the Christian faith.
Despite yet another closure of the border we managed to get into Gaza for a day. Where 99% of the population are Muslim, it is the Anglican Church who run the only free hospital. Evangelicals may be critical about the liberal theology of the World Council of Churches but it is humbling to recognise that on this the most densely populated piece of land on earth (in reality, one giant concentration camp), it is the Near East Council of Churches who are putting the gospel into action, offering educational and vocational training to refugees. The local Christians were delighted to see us, insulted that we were told to take packed lunches, keen for us next time to stay overnight with them. In good times they get such a visit from a tour group about once a month.
Branching out
In Jericho, while we watched tour buses hurtle past to go and photograph a 200 year-old sycamore tree that Zaccheus most certainly did not climb, and stand on the remains of the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth, we took a detour to visit the Christians of Jericho. In what looks like a deserted refugee camp from the days of 1948, today the YMCA, World Vision and Christian Aid are investing in the future of Palestine, giving young men the chance to learn vocational skill in car mechanics, carpentry and computers. It was embarrassing to discover we were the only group of English people to ever visit the camp.
In Ramle we visited 'Open House', an unpretentious house on the corner of a very ordinary street where a miracle has occurred. Amid the thousands of homes confiscated from Palestinians in 1948 and given to Jewish refugees from war-torn Europe, one family, the Landau's, on discovering they had been settled in the home of a Muslim family forced into exile in Ramallah, although forbidden to give it back, instead decided to share it. So today Open House runs a kindergarten and camps for local children from both communities. Like an oasis in a dry and barren land, Open House is a place of nourishment, where Jews, Moslems and Christians come to learn to live together through sharing instead of separation, through giving instead of taking.
Another indispensable stop on our itinerary is always Ibillin up in Galilee and the school and university built through the vision and sweat of Elias Chacour. Fighting apartheid with bricks and mortar, overcoming State opposition with stubborn tenacity and defeating racism with education, Elias has created a unique working experiment where staff from all three faith communities teach children without respect of their creed or colour. For someone who as a child saw his own community of Baram bulldozed and many of his people massacred by Jewish soldiers, Elias has repaid Israel with a lasting legacy that puts all who merely talk about peace to shame.
Confiscated land
We sing that lovely Easter hymn, 'There is a green hill far away without a city wall...' or at least there used to be before the Israelis confiscated it. The Shepherds Fields of Beit Sahour surround an ancient Christian village on the edge of Bethlehem, the only Christian village in the area. They are seeing their beautiful wooded hill turned into yet another illegal and exclusive Jewish settlement that will, like all the others, need defending by Israeli troops. We stood and watched as on the horizon the construction lorries desecrated another ancient holy site. We were similarly shocked at the excavations for a giant multi-million dollar tunnel being constructed complete with viaducts to take a new road over and under the hills between Beit Jala and Bethlehem to enable a handful of Israeli settlers safe access to a bolt hole in Jerusalem, avoiding any future trouble from Palestinian villages along the original road. The Occupied Territories today seem like one giant Israeli construction site, a 20th Century version of the American 'Wild West' land grab, although this time US funds are wiping out the Palestinian 'Indians' . It is sad that something like 30% of all the land confiscated from Palestinians since 1967 has been taken since the Peace Accord was signed. As Naim A'teek, Canon of St George's Cathedral said recently, 'Peace cannot be built on confiscated land.'
In August the Israeli government approved the building of another 900 homes for Orthodox Jews at Kiryat Sefer on the West Bank. It is significant that the American government remains silent. Perhaps the Israelis realise they can get away with it, since with the US elections a few weeks away, neither Dole nor Clinton will dare upset the Jewish lobby. And while the building of settlements continues, so too does the demolition of Palestinian properties, such as a community centre in East Jerusalem in August. The Israelis claim it was built without a permit. That is quite correct, but it is also correct that as an occupying power they rarely give permits to Palestinians to build on their own land, preferring to confiscate it for their own use.
Songs of peace
One of the songs Garth Hewitt was asked to sing repeatedly as we met with indigenous Christian communities right across Israel and the Occupied Territories was his song 'Ten measures of beauty God gave to the world' in which he calls us all to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. The chorus is a prayer:
May the justice of God fall down like fire and bring a home for the Palestinian.
May the mercy of God pour down like rain and protect the Jewish people.
And may the beautiful eyes of a Holy God who weeps for His children
Bring the healing hope for His wounded ones
For the Jew and the Palestinian.
That peace seems less likely to come humanly in the near future as a result of the recent elections, because a majority of Israelis spell it 'piece' and think they can hang on to it by force of arms. Netanyahu's election as Israel's new Prime Minister appears to signal the end of the delicate peace negotiations initiated by Rabin and Arafat. We must pray that Netanyahu and those who support him will be brought to realise soon that acknowledging basic human rights to the Palestinians, those rights we take so much for granted for ourselves, are more likely to lead to peace and reconciliation than by any agreement of coloured lines on a map.
For Christians to attempt a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, yet fail, for whatever reason, to meet with the local Christians in such a troubled situation, where they are ignored, abused and maligned, is not only deeply offensive to them, it is surely a contradiction of what a pilgrimage should be, and ultimately immoral before God. It is nothing less than to perpetuate the evil of the Levite in the Parable of the Good Samaritan who walked by on the other side. He should have known better.
Stephen Sizer
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