For Easter, here is a portion of a great piece by Alicia von Stamwitz published on America, a Catholic weekly, in February. It describes her conversion in college to Zionism as a born-again Christian, and her trip to Israel and Palestine last year, in a faith-based tour for Christian journalists. And in the occupied territories, she had an awakening. Here's an excerpt. Her amazement at the settlements is just what James North said stunned him when he went to Palestine: nothing in the American press prepared me for this. I don't care about the politics, by the way, von Stamwitz is on the road. Once you're on the road, well just ask the disciples what happened on the road to Emmaus... von Stamwitz:
A tour hosted by Palestinians?
I was skeptical at first, but a few e-mail messages confirmed that it was a legitimate event backed by the U.S. Agency for International Develop-ment. It was part of a new initiative to revive the Palestinian economy, beginning with the tourism industry. Even the Israelis were on board under the banner of “economic peace” in the Middle East.
So I went. But almost immediately I found myself fretting about unexpected things. Like the Jewish settlements. When the guide announced that our bus was passing a settlement on the left, I leapt out of my seat on the opposite side for a better view. At first, I couldn’t locate it. Then the guide pointed to a massive compound straddling a hilltop in East Jerusalem.
It was disorienting. My mental image of a settlement was of a humble farming community in an uninhabited desert place, not a modern city of 40,000 on prime real estate. It is probably an exception, I thought to myself. But I could not help wondering: Is this where my Zion tree ended up—on one of these “fallow hills”?
Then there was the separation wall. The 440-mile concrete and coiled wire barrier was an arresting sight from either side. The guide claimed it choked commerce and isolated Palestinian families: “It’s like living in a prison or a ghetto.” I bristled at his choice of words. A more balanced account would have allowed that the wall prevented terrorist attacks, I thought. Still, it was an eyesore.
As the days passed I grew increasingly irritable. The guide’s monologues on the suffering of the Palestinian people, confiscated lands and bulldozed trees were annoying. I was here to see the holy sites of Judaism and Christendom, not to listen to propaganda.
By the time Israeli soldiers boarded our bus at a checkpoint outside Ariel, I was in no mood for political games. At all the other checkpoints, soldiers had merely glanced at our passports and waved us on. This time we were asked to disembark with all our personal belongings.
Grumbling, I collected my bags and followed my companions across the steaming asphalt to a cinderblock security station. We queued up to file through the lone metal detector, then waited to be interrogated by a stone-faced senior officer as she rifled through our bags. “Where have you been?” she asked. “Where are you going? Why are you going there?” An hour later we were permitted to return to the bus but were denied passage.
“Why wouldn’t they let us pass?” I asked the U.S.A.I.D. representative accompanying our group as we headed back to our seats.
“They won’t allow our Palestinian guide through,” he said carefully, picking his way through the words. “There are Jewish settlers up the road, and the soldiers believe our guide could be a threat.”
“So what’s the problem,” I blurted impatiently. “Can’t we just go on without him?”
I regretted my words at once. After an awkward silence, the U.S.A.I.D. rep answered, “We don’t want to do that. He hasn’t done anything wrong.” He was right, of course. I reddened and slunk into my seat.
What was happening to me? My ire should have been directed at the Israeli soldiers who had blocked our passage in order to protect the—for the first time I saw the need for a descriptive adjective—illegal settlers. Instead, I had turned on the Palestinian guide.
I was tired and a long way from home, yes; but a more accurate explanation of my agitation is that I was much further from the familiar stories of my college days. My misty Zionist narrative did not mention fortress-like settlements, graffiti-streaked walls and checkpoints. And it did not include indigenous Palestinians. In fact, it had explicitly denied their existence: “A land without people for a people without land.”
I could see the white centrism/superiority that plagued this women who could never even look an Arab and empathize because for years she’d been told they were something else, not human.
Why the gratuitous white bashing? Are comments like these leading us to a beautiful new world free of racism? Really?
IMHO, I would say her inability to consider another point of view probably came from her Christian fundamentalist/literalist perspective. And, I should mention, having grown up with Zionist Christians (we didn’t call ourselves that) it’s more typically about ignorance, not hate. Literalists subscribed to their method of interpreting the Bible before a modern Jewish state existed. They’re simply coming to logical conclusions which flow from literalist premises and the Old Testament.
I recently spoke to a (pure-blooded) Native American man (a fundamentalist–and a very nice, moral person, by the way) who made a pilgrimage to Israel with a (fundamentalist-oriented) Christian travel/tour company. I asked him about his time there and mentioned the difficulties that the Palestinians have to cope with, what with the wall, etc. (I can’t remember my exact words.) He turned the topic right around on me: “I think they have the wall because otherwise there would be terrorism.”
Of course, there has been terrorism, so in my mind bringing up the terrorism angle is part of understanding the wall, but it’s clearly only part of the story. My (non-white) acquaintance was unwilling to think outside of the Israel-is-for-the-Jews paradigm which literalism instilled in him; hence, viewing the Palestinians as victims in any way and the Israeli government as expansionistic in any way was completely foreign to him.
What I would have been curious about is seeing his reaction if he saw what this journalist saw. There’s a point where I do believe ignorance is no longer an excuse–and that’s when people have seen for themselves in a way which removes the excuse of “being spun.” (Even so, particularly those not inclined to rely even partway on their own reasoning abilities, blind loyalty/obedience to some “authorized” way of thinking about sacred texts or an ideology (e.g., Marxism) can powerfully disrupt an otherwise well-developed sense of right and wrong. In other words, when a person stops having an excuse–whether a Christian, Jew, atheist, etc.–is a question one would have to take on a case by case basis.)
Unfortunately, too many religious Americans just haven’t seen what’s going on, and they haven’t taken the time to think closely about this situation.
I think the American mainstream media bears a large portion of the blame. Despite virtually the whole world’s condemnation of the settlements, they still maintain this inappropriate even-handedness which elevates the pro-settlement viewpoint to moral respectability (which further compromises literalists’ ability to come to the right conclusions). They should be our tour guides into areas my acquaintance’s tour leader doubtlessly failed to take him.
HRK, good response. I was struck by the insensitivity of Jason’s comment.
I read the whole article by Alicia and it is more moving than the segment that PW pasted. As someone raised in a Christian community I could recognize her feelings and also recognize the courage involved in her change. These are the changes that will be required to ever change US support for Israel.
“And, I should mention, having grown up with Zionist Christians (we didn’t call ourselves that) it’s more typically about ignorance, not hate. ”
HRK, do you agree that these days there is a great deal of hate for Muslims among ignorant Zionist Christians?
Have you thoughts on the Pre-Tribribulation Rapturists whose end-of -world view calls for an ingathering of all Jews into Israel?
patm of course we realize the hate that the Zionist Christians spread towards our Muslim brothers. The point here is that this hate can be broken down one person at a time. That is what Alicia represents.
Then there is the “Pre-Tribribulation Rapturists” who continue to lead many Christians. The leaders of this movemen continue to receive large amounts of money and all we can hope for is that more of their followers, like Alicia, will defect. We all know where those funds are coming from but as long as the Zionists are willing to expend those monies we really have no choice but to encourage each person at a time who wishes to object.
But please, do not discourage those few who wish to disengage.
“We all know where those funds are coming from ”
We do?
I think that the religious right in America is perfectly capable of funding its own crackpots, though of course there is cooperation between the Christian Zionists and many Israel-supporters.
I used to be a Christian Zionist myself and I can feel some empathy for people who are misled, but it only goes so far. I was a teenager when I bought into that nonsense. If you’re an adult and you buy into it, it’s either because you pay little attention to the subject (in which case I don’t blame the person, as most people don’t have time to investigate every issue that comes along) or else you eagerly buy into the Islamophobic nonsense. In the latter case you are culpable.
Donald perhaps you know more about this then I do. My experience goes back many years. Yet I do believe what Alicia
describes deserves some respect,
i agree. it is a bumpy road. let’s not condemn those beginning on their journey for they may be leaders of the flock someday.
Hi ToivoS,
Q: Yet I do believe what Alicia describes deserves some respect.
R: I wholeheartedly concur. I have nothing but respect for individuals who are capable of resetting their personal belief system and have the courage to say they made a mistake. Too many times people bend over backward until breaking point, but remain unable to let those words flow over their lips.
I have come to believe this story without visiting Israel/Palestine. Some people need to make the trip to make the realization. (I had no Zionist education to overcome by factual immersion.)
As to visits, a Palestinian visitor to NYC asked me if I had ever been to Palestine. (He meant West Bank I suppose. Ramallah. Under occupation. Today.) I said No. He said, “You must go. It is so beautiful.”
I haven’t wanted to go. I am weak. I am afraid that my revulsion at Israel would overflow all bounds if I made the transition from knowledge from reading to knowledge from immediate sensory-perception, what happened to Alicia von Stamwitz. I would not have wanted to visit the Bantustans of South Africa or Auschwitz in 1944. But perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps I would learn in a new way why the Palestinians love their land.
She’s come a long way for someone so offensively clueless. “not listen to propaganda”. I have to give her credit that she is willing to admit her ugly thoughts.
“I was tired and a long way from home, yes; but a more accurate explanation of my agitation is that I was much further from the familiar stories of my college days. My misty Zionist narrative did not mention fortress-like settlements, graffiti-streaked walls and checkpoints. And it did not include indigenous Palestinians. In fact, it had explicitly denied their existence: “A land without people for a people without land.” AvS
***
I think Alicia von Stamwitz speaks for a lot of us at MW. I confess the “misty Zionist narrative” that slumbered in my head only disappeared in recent years. I expect that’s true of other readers as well.
We’ve all been lied to about Israel, for decades! Ms.von Stamwitz got two whacks of brainwashing, from Jewish AND Christian Zionists.
Hi patm,
Q: I expect that’s true of other readers as well.
R: Yes, count me in as well. There was a time when I flew fully on autopilot when it came to Israel, until I reached a point where I was unable to defend the unfolding atrocities. I didn’t change overnight though, in all honesty, however, I’ve changed my point of view and I guess opened my eyes to have a better insight into the I/P travesty.
Perhaps Ms. von Stamwitz should also have a tour with a Jewish guide who would explain about Fakestinians, their origin (they emerged ex nihilo out of sheer hatred of Jews), their barbarism (they do not tolerate gays, but do not shun women to the end of the bus, or away from most coveted prayer spots). She should visit one of the pionier communities and take part in a daily ritual of humiliating Goim. If she is handy, perhaps she could help cut down some olive tree? And, to culminate the trip, visit a gay club.
Oh please, take your racism and bigotry somewhere else.
Israel is not a paradise for gays or women – Israel’s former president has just been jailed after years and years of raping women. There are regular reports in the Israeli media of women being sexually assault and abused in the Israeli military. Of course, lets not forget that trend in Israel where Jewish women must sit at the back of the bus, are not allowed to lead prayer at the Western Wall or the decree amongst the more religiously fundamentalist Zionists that women are not allowed to stand for public office or sing in public. (link to members.tripod.com
)
Also Palestinian did not walk into the Gay and Lesbian drop-in-centre in Tel Aviv and shoot it up, killing two people and injuring dozens more simply because they were gay. And Palestinians are not amongst the Jewish fundamentalists in Israel who regularly demonstrate against the Pride Parade.
As Palestinian gay rights activist noted in an interview in Haaretz in 2009 “”It´s really pathetic that the Israeli state has nothing besides gay rights to promote their liberal image … Ridiculous, and in a sense hilarious, because there are no gay rights in Israel. There are specific court cases that, when won, allowed certain individuals for instance to adopt a child. What is worth noting is that these decisions are case-specific, in the sense that they are made for this specific case, for this specific child and for these two mothers. You cannot build a human rights campaign on court cases that are not ratified.”
Maikey, like many other gay and lesbian Palestinians refuse to allow their struggle to be coopted by Zionists like piotr stating in the Haaretz article “I refuse to be a part of your campaign … Stop speaking in my name and using me for a cause you never supported in the first place. If you want to do me a favour, then stop bombing my friends, end your occupation, and leave me to rebuild my community. I’m aware that my society has a long way to go in terms of human rights and social issues, but it’s my responsibility, not yours.”
link to haaretz.com
And if you want to talk about barbarism, lets talk about the fact Israeli murdered 1400 Palestinians, including more than 300 children in a 3 week period. And that this three week period came on top of more than 70 years of Zionist barbarism and killing of Palestinian – including the Zionist terror attacks against Palestinian buses in the 1930s, Zionist terror attacks such as the King David Hotel bombing killing Jews, Palestinians and British, the Zionist bombing of the Patria which killed hundreds of Jews, Jewish terror gang bombings of Palestinian market places in the 30s and 40s, the use of book and letter bombs by Zionist terror gangs, car bombings by Zionist terror gangs in the 1980s against Palestinian villages, Zionist terror bombs being placed at Palestinian girls school in the 1990s set for explosion as children were arriving at school.
Fantastic reply. I don’t know if you’re new here (I don’t recognize the screen name) but please do stick around. ESPECIALLY with that response to the pinkwashing crap from Israel, that’s something I find unctuous for personal reasons.
Lovely reply and I will be noting in down in my folder, but I believe piotr was being sarcastic :-)
i thought piotr was employing sarcasm? maybe my esl :)
The irony of it all is that Ms. Von Stamwitz considered herself a woman of faith, surely with all the moral attributes associated with “good ________” (pick any religion), while at the same time considered the suffering of Others to be nothing but propaganda.
There is no greater irony than Jesus suffering for “our sins” while at the same time denying the suffering of others as though it were irrelevant.
Had I been standing there, I might have said, “How Christian of you”.
Still, at least there is a human deep inside, one who is willing to reflect and reconsider.
Is it moral courage or sheer stupidity that drives a person to admit that in public? I would like to believe that it is moral courage.
What’s the point of religion, faith, belief, if one’s interest in it is superficial —
It sounds like a visit to Disneyland — Just show me the cool stuff. I don’t give a hoot about all the moral lessons or the political history behind them all. I want to take pictures, buy some souvenirs and go home.
Anyway, I hope that Ms. Von Stamwitz’s trip opened her eyes to a reality with which she was — willfully or otherwise — unfamiliar.
Does she have plans to encourage others in her community to explore and learn about the reality that she found? Perhaps the virtuous thing to do is to re-examine the myths that enabled this decades-long travesty, and confront them honestly with oneself.
Avi,
I read her article and found it quite moving and utterly honest.
Remember, she comes from a cultural/religious Catholic tradition where “Confession” is reconciliation and ultimate redemption.
Her words startlingly honest in laying bare her ugly failures. She put it out there with no decoration or justification and for all to judge! Give her credit.
And then she published her essay in a quite a conservative weekly Journal. So she makes a confession to co-travelers.
After all she was an impressionable and clueless college kid who got caught up in a mix of Born Again Christianity and Zionism and during this time even got a personal letter from Begin. That must have been a big deal to her back in 1978.
And still, she does not offer this as a justification for herself, but as a part of the confession of her now obviously misguided youth and ideas that continued to follow her into adulthood.
“In my files I have a yellowed letter dated Sept. 10, 1978, from the office of the sixth prime minister of the State of Israel. An embossed seal, with olive branches cupping an ivory menorah, crowns the elegant letterhead.
“Dear Ms. Arellano” (my maiden name), Menachem Begin’s…”
And then: ” All that passed, as youthful obsessions often do. After college, I returned to my comfortable Catholic faith and gradually forgot about my Zionist leanings….”
By publishing this in this Catholic Weekly, she is not addressing Evangelical Christians or “Born Again” Christians. She cannot.
Evangelicals would 1.) not even consider her Christian (as they do not consider Catholics Christian, and 2.) never accept her “confession” or any questioning of Zionism.
I thought I did.
That’s a good point.
“After college, I returned to my comfortable Catholic faith…”
Yes sirree, that’s the way I would describe a religion which denies me the right to control my own body, if I was a woman, “comfortable”. Well, considering the closest I’ll ever come to being a woman is the chorus line at Finochios maybe I don’t know.
But I’ll tell you what is about Catholicism which really bugs me, since we’re on the subject. It’s that Catholics don’t recognise the sacred Commandment “Always hold your mud!” and expect confession.
So this women went to college, avoided learning a goddam thing about the world, its history and the way it works, but managed to convert to Christianity, with a side order of Zionism? Holy mackerel. Well, I hope her parents could afford it easily.
Isn’t she like most Americans? Look at the US Congress. Look at I-Am-A-Zionst Joe Biden.
We’re talking about someone who grew up on Exodus movie for a world view; and probably learned to play the theme song at piano lessons.
Ellen,
I saw that movie with Paul Newman in the 1960s and had great sympathy for the jews.
A few month ago saw a re-run, and what I saw is a propaganda film twisting the truth. Meanwhile I got smarter.
“I saw that movie with Paul Newman in the 1960s…”
He wouldn’t even answer my letters, let alone go on a date with me. Some guys have all the luck.
“probably learned to play the theme song at piano lessons.”
Thank you for the most unpleasant, icky feeling I have had today, so far. (But the day is still young) Oh, how I thank God there was no tape recorder in the house when I was young and taking organ lessons. But just the thought of it (“Exodus”, and the way I played it on the Baldwin 45h) brought me out in a cold sweat.
Oh no, now a Gospel arrangement of “Exodus” is forcing itself on my mind. Thank God there’s no gun in the house.
Mooser, I love your comment.
She is the typical, college educated american, who knows very little about the world or it´s history.
In Israel she probably asked for a cheeseburger and a large coke. Trying the local food, no way.
Now all we hope she wakes up one day to realize the religion sold to her is also a fake.
“In Israel she probably asked for a cheeseburger and a large coke.”
In the Holy Land? Nah, she expected Angels on Horseback!
“In fact, it had explicitly denied their existence: “A land without people for a people without land.”
And of course, having only gotten as far as higher education, she saw absolutely no reason to question that statement. Oh well, maybe she was home with mono (or even stereo) the day they covered world history in junior high.
Amazing.
Isn’t that phrase a Christian Restorationist, rather than a Zionist phrase. I think that phrase out dates modern Zionism. Did Herzl use this phrase? Did Ben-Gurion use that phrase? Anyone know more about this phrase?
Oh sure, Micheal, blame it on the Goyim! No doubt it was Gentile girls who whispered it in their poor deluded Jewish husband’s ears while they slept dreaming dreams of Zion.
“Did Herzl use this phrase?” Maybe not, but they tell me he said Motherf***er a lot, like every third word. I can’t stand a potty-mouth, but he may have had Tourette’s
“Did Ben-Gurion use that phrase?” Nah, they tell me he mostly walked around in a daze, muttering “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe we got away with bombing that hotel” and “I have Bright’s disease, and he has mine!”
You have any more questions on Zionism and it’s early icons, just ask, Micheal, I’ve got all the answers.
Who is Micheal?
“Who is Micheal?”
Well, you’ll just have to tell us, won’t you? Don’t spare the details, and don’t leave out the sex.
I’m sorry I misspelled your name.
It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle of Camelot. King of the Britons, defeater of the Saxons, Sovereign of all England!