My wife, Dorothy, and I lived and worked for four years in the midst of Palestinian communities. That was our primary context. Our immediate context was the community of Anglican Palestinian Christians linked to the St George’s Close in east Jerusalem. We did make a point, however, to develop a friendship with several Israeli Jewish families.
My doctoral studies had focussed on the political theology of the Christian writers (all male) of the New Testament writings. That study alerted me to the seeds of anti-Jewishness that were planted and nurtured within the very same Christian scriptures. And those malignant seeds grew unabated for almost two thousand years, culminating in the horrors of the Holocaust against the Jews.
Also, living as we did in east Jerusalem, we witnessed first hand the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israeli administration, especially the military. And we heard the stories of what is euphemistically called ‘the Occupation’ from those who had to endure the ugly underbelly of that Occupation. The first Intifada (‘uprising’ or ‘resurrection’)was but a year oldwhen we came to live there. It witnessed the disproportionate casualties that have marked every conflict between those two peoples to this very day.
That uprising eventually tugged at the conscience of the wider world and the Oslo accords, signed in September, 1993 granted some gain to the Palestinians. But, as I say, it had cost a disproportionate number of lives: Some 1,266 young Palestinian men and women were killed, including 200 children, On the Israeli side, 43 Israeli soldiers and 3 Israeli children were killed Source: The Israeli human rights group named B’Tselem – btselem.org]
There was a further cost in Israeli lives through suicide bombings by radical Palestinian groups, which, between 1989 and 1998, caused 128 deaths.
In the current (2023-2024) conflict the number of casualties (at this point in time) is:
- Israelis, around 1,300 killed
- Palestinians over 29,000 killed in Gaza (and over 500 killed this year in the West Bank by the Israeli military and by illegal Jewish settlers). Of the 29,000 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them were women and children. [19/2/2024]
These statistics map the ongoing trauma on both sides.
I am reminded of a theology that can be summarised thus: The pious offer prayers, the powerful proffer force.
I realise that that quote may seem most inappropriate for today’s occasion. I could be accused of religious rudeness. But sadly, given the news we hear day after day about women and children being killed with no heaven-sent let up, I could more readily be accused of quoting reality.
And two questions affecting both peoples in the Holy Land are very hard for Christians to answer:
Where was God in Auschwitz? Where is God now in the killings in Gaza?
While working in the Holy Land, I distinctly remember reading a six-word sentence written by a historian. The words are these: There are no exits from history. I believe these words are pertinent to us here in Australia, where our history is haunted by the historical killings carried out against its Indigenous people. A history of which so many Australians are ignorant, or we continue to avert our gaze from its reality.
There is another parallel with Australia. The British imperialists, in claiming this continent for themselves, declared falsely that “the land was without people” – Terra nullius”. As regards the Zionist slogan – “A land without people for a people without land.” the first half of the slogan was false and prompted the partial dispossessing of the Palestinian people. Reaching back into European history, the second half of the slogan – for a people without land – had been largely true because for centuries Christians would not allow Jews to own land in Europe.
But the six word history quotation about ‘no exits from history’ is pertinent for understanding both the Jewish and Palestinian people in the Middle East. Both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people are to be seen as traumatised peoples. Persecution and conflict cause long-lasting trauma.
The Jewish people have had to journey through the experience of centuries of European Christian persecution of their people. I refer to the thousands of violent anti-Jewish pogroms launched in Christendom from the early Christian era. Such onslaughts culminated in the horrific Holocaust from 1933 to 1945 that claimed the lives of 6 million Jews. That was the most intensive and systematic massacre in human history. The murderous attack upon Jewish lives by Hamas on the 7th October, 2023, in which over 1,200 Israelis were killed, rekindled that trauma.
For a study of Christian anti-Jewish bigotry, I recommend a book by Richard Rubenstein and John K Roth entitled Approaches to Auschwitz: The Legacy of the Holocaust (1987)
But even before the present conflict erupted, the Palestinian people, too, had been traumatised. Their experience covered not centuries, but decades. And they have been traumatised by their treatment by the state of Israel.
They have been traumatised by their experience of the ethnic cleansing of several hundred thousand of their people from the 1948 “catastrophe”. They were ethnically cleansed – being removed from their homes either by armed force or by fear. And the supposed temporary Occupation of their homeland after the Six Day War in June, 1967, has stretched into prolonged Israeli military rule of (and interventions in) their lives in the fifty-six years since. Temporary?
The Palestinian people even now are monitored day-and-night by surveillance, by military personnel and by drones. In their homeland (even just in the West Bank alone) it is reliably estimated that there some 593 Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks! And that in an area about the size of the Sunshine Coast. Would you welcome that surveillance by a foreign occupying force of you and your families here?
For a study of the past, and present, Palestinian experience of Israeli dominance see Anthony Lowenstein’s recently published book entitled The Palestine Laboratory (2023).
And the current bombardment of the people in Gaza, especially the death toll amongst Palestinian women and children, will traumatise the survivors for generations to come. So, too, the Israeli hostages and their families will be traumatised into the years ahead.
I am mindful that it is Palestinian Christian women who have shaped today’s liturgy. They are mothers, aunts, grandmothers of Palestinian children in extended Palestinian families.
There are prayers that may be seen as appropriate to the current situation. The two Collects for Holy Innocents Day focus attention on Matthew’s gospel account (2:13-18) of the slaughter of children and infants. If you wish to say those prayers, the words not only address those themselves praying, but also are addressed to a God who should be active in the midst of the killings. I quote:
“…give us grace [not] to stand indifferently by… and
“God of the dispossessed, defender of the helpless, you grieve with all the women who weep because their children are no more. May we also refuse to be comforted until the violence of the strong has been confounded… [A Prayer Book for Australia, p.626]
Today, at this service, the only things at my disposal are words. But if my words can, at the least, reduce our ignorance of the traumas that both peoples bring from their past into their present experience, we can move beyond piety into a greater and deeper awareness of both people’s reality.
That is a journey that the traumatised Christian Palestinian women in the Holy Land invite us to embark on. Are you prepared to join their journey?
…
This sermon was originally delivered on World Day of Prayer for Palestine.
The Rev’d Dr Ray Barraclough was a lecturer in Biblical Studies at St Francis Theological College in 1989 and from 1993 to 2005, and was a senior lecturer at St George’s College in East Jerusalem from 1989 to 1993. Ray majored in History at the University of Queensland. His Doctoral study encompassed researching political ideas contained in the New Testament writings. These two fields of study have come together in his continuing interest in religion and politics in the Middle East.
Photo: Fr Munther Isaac
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