Met a guy at the weekly Sheikh Jarrah demonstration, an evangelical minister from Washington state. He was with an Israeli member of the city council, Meir Margalit, author of the excellent book “Seizing Control of Space in East Jerusalem.” We had coffee. Margalit thinks there may be one year left to give the Palestinians a meaningful share of Jerusalem. The Israelis are grabbing up the central sectors fast, condemning Palestinian houses for demolition. That’s a complicated story of neighborhoods, beyond my current knowledge. Margalit is Argentinian, a former settler and right winger himself.
Wayne Smith, my evangelical minister acquaintance, deserves a word. He volunteers in the remote Palestinian village of Yanun. It’s overlooked by the Itamar settlement. Some years ago the settlers threatened the village. They came with guns and told the Palestinians to clear out, they wanted their land. The Palestinians aren’t allowed to have guns. But in an early show of force, the Israeli human rights community rallied around the villagers, and they’re still there, trying to tend to their olive trees (the settlers often burn them) and sheep (the settlers have burned them too). Here’s Smith’s blog. http://prayforthepeaceofjerusalem.wordpress.com/
Anyway, Smith is in the Jordan River valley, and says the Israelis have been making huge agribusiness investments – and lopping away at the villagers land. It’s a land grab—in an area which “everyone knows” would be turned over to Palestine in a two state settlement. Except maybe the Israelis will claim “security concerns” require them to keep it. Or that Israeli agribusiness interests no more envisage a two state solution than does Ariel Sharon.
Wayne Smith has spent a life as an American evangelical minister. He has spent several months on the West Bank—acting as eyes and a shield for an ancient farming community trying to protect their land from aggressive armed zealots. When he returns, he will be an evangelical voice for justice and fairness in a critical segment of American Christendom.
I’m not much for Jesus talk, I haven’t walked the walk. But our dinner conversation turned to American evangelicals, their possible receptivity to a message other than Israel worship. For a lot of them, Smith thinks, it’s pretty high. I did say, during dinner, “What the hell do they think Jesus would say about the current situation, the roadblocks, the land seizures, the racism, the burning of crops, the bureaucratic ethnic cleansing?” He agreed, we got caught up in a Christian moment. At least I did.
