feature

Melbourn and the Middle East Conflict

This article describes information given at a meeting held recently in Melbourn by Melbourn’s Churches Together group which raised a lot of questions for those present. It has been included in the magazine because it was a local meeting and it was felt the subject matter deserved a wider audience. We, at the Magazine emphasise that we have not, and cannot, verify the information given on the night, or reported here by Melbourn Resident Hugh Pollock. No inference should be taken that the Magazine holds any view on the issues described. Editor I recently attended an evening of ‘information & discussion’ on ‘Understanding Violence Between Israelis and Palestinians’ at Melbourn’s United Reformed Church (URC). The advertised speaker was Richard Lewney, a URC Eastern Synod Representative, who had attended a 10 day October 2019 educational visit to Israel and Palestine organised for 22 church members following a 2016 Resolution of the URC’s General Assembly.

Although not a church attender, I was curious to attend this Churches Together public meeting. The talk was delivered quietly, using overhead slides, by Richard Lewney, a thoughtful, middle-aged, practising Christian, who is a URC lay-preacher from Cambridge. Here are just some of the points presented during the evening. • The State of Israel was created by the United Nations in 1948, in the shadow of the Holocaust in Europe, to provide a place of safety and security for the Jewish people. Sadly, the people who were already living in that land, known as Palestine, were displaced from their homes through violence or local land purchase from landlords and so displaced from the land they had lived in for generations. As a result, around 50 per cent of that 1948 population of Palestinians became refugees.

On Israel’s foundation, the United Kingdom’s direct responsibility for Palestine’s good government (undertaken in 1917) ended as the United Kingdom withdrew. Conflict continued and more and more of this contested land was occupied and claimed by Israel. • Today the remaining Palestinian Territories – principally the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – exist in a state of military occupation by Israel. The West Bank is surrounded by Israel’s 25 foot high “Separation

Barrier”, a wall that stretches for 440 miles ignoring the official Green Line boundary (the demarcation line set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements) between Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

The Israeli Government does not permit its own citizens to enter the Palestinian Territories and cites the wall and its associated checkpoints as a necessary security measure. Both the wall and the checkpoints are controlled by the Israeli military. Palestinians may only pass through a checkpoint with a valid permit, held by about 1.5 per cent of Palestinians, who work on the Israeli side. • Israel has established over 132 Settlements in the

West Bank; all are illegal under international law.

Some are economic industrial zones, comprising manufacturing, assembly or other production units, producing goods for export.

The Settlements are exclusively for Jews and some are full-scale towns, or even cities, with hospitals and universities (subsidised principally by the Israeli

Government) all connected by a system of roads, with access forbidden to Palestinians. The Settlements provide housing for around 428,000 Israeli Jews. The

Settlements, the wall, and the road system are built not only on disputed land but, in part, on land that is privately-owned by individual named Palestinians.

Also, water supply to the Settlements is a major contentious issue.

The border controls enforced by the Israeli

Government impact widely on all imports and exports, and taxation. They affect every aspect of the economic and social life of all Palestinians living in the

Palestinian Territories. • During their 10 day visit the 22 URC members, as international visitors, saw much. They also met and spoke with local people about the conditions and the need for peace and justice. Mentioned often was the Israeli Government’s discrimination, whether in its water supply policy or in its July 2018 Nation State

Bill which specifies, amongst other things, the nature of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people only. The following stories of two Palestinian Christians served as further illustration of its effects. We in the audience were assured that their experiences were representative of the suffering of many under Israeli Government control – not only Christians, Muslims, Arabs and others, but also Israeli Jews opposed to the policy of the Israeli Government.

Israeli West Bank wall near Mount Zion

Jack Giaccaman, a Palestinian Christian, who lives with his wife and two teenage daughters in Bethlehem, illustrated a typical problem. The family own an olive wood shop with a small factory attached, where they carve the products they sell. They also own, for generations past, olive groves outside Bethlehem which they harvest, providing employment and making olive oil to sell. Olive harvesting is accepted as being of great importance in Palestinian history, culture and life.

The problem is, although Bethlehem is governed by the Palestinian Authority, it is also under Israeli occupation, and is now surrounded by the Separation Barrier built in early 2000. The wall separates the family’s home and shop from the olive groves outside the town. He needs a permit to pass through the checkpoint, and is required to have the gates to his own fields unlocked for him by Israeli soldiers. Olives, impossible to harvest, rot on the trees. Long grass in the olive groves poses a fire risk. His teenage daughters are the first generation of his family who do not know what it is like to go out and pick the olive harvest. Rev’d Dr. Munther Isaac is a Palestinian Christian pastor and theologian. He is Pastor of the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem and is Academic Dean of Bethlehem’s Bible College. His brother-in-law holds an Israeli passport, yet he cannot obtain documents to naturalise his Palestinian wife. His Israeli documents show that he is a single father! His wife cannot obtain citizenship, is not permitted to drive, cannot get healthcare, all things that would be possible if she was married to a Jewish Israeli passport holder. More than 20,000 Palestinians have foreign spouses and the Israeli Government does not grant them visas so these couples are effectively forced to leave Palestine. The College Faculty which Rev’d Dr. Isaac leads has itself lost two staff members who have foreign spouses.

You can see and hear Rev’d Dr Isaac’s 30 minute talk to the visiting Richard Lewney and his 22 URC members in October 2019 on YouTube at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=1p2VfosGSds. Harassment, restriction of movement and fear of arrest are seemingly daily realities for Palestinians in the West Bank. Richard Lewney stated that one week after the URC educational trip had concluded in October 2019 the whole of the West Bank was closed off over the Jewish New Year meaning that Palestinians were trapped within their towns. He pointed out that these experiences of deep and widespread discrimination were happening because people like us – living in comfortable Melbourn and attending our Christian Churches – chose to remain indifferent and so we have become complicit. Conclusion

Antisemitism, being condemnation of a person because he or she is a Jew, of Jews collectively, or of the Jewish religion, is both morally wrong and illegal. It should not occur in conversation or in actions, in public or in private, nor be practiced by individuals or institutions. It is, of course, not ‘antisemitic’ to highlight, condemn and oppose the policy and actions of the Israeli Government – particularly policy and actions that are unjust, discriminatory or in breach of international law. To identify and label critics of the Israeli Government and its policies as “antisemitic” is deeply offensive, made worse when it is deliberately intended to defame and silence critics and prevent legitimate criticism. Indeed, it serves only to strengthen antisemitism and those misguided persons and organisations who hold and practice such hateful beliefs, while enabling the consolidation and expansion of policies and actions that are unjust, discriminatory and in breach of international law.

My evening with Melbourn’s Churches Together group left me reflecting on two other questions: Was the testimony – first-hand witness experience from October 2019 delivered by local man Richard Lewney and his account of the everyday lived experience of real Palestinian Christians, Muslims and others – representative, accurate and truthful beyond dispute?; Are these policies and actions of the Irsraeli Government, conducted in the name of its Jewish citizens and their religious leaders, actually in accordance with the principles and practices of the Jewish faith to which its citizens and religious leaders profess belief?

These matters having been raised in Melbourn with them, are surely entitled to answers. Hopefully we will have a further evening of “Information and discussion” in Melbourn’s URC with various speakers present to clarify these issues. Hugh Pollock