Transplanetary Tourism (8)
Peace to Jerusalem.
Today, Sunday, we went to Yardenit at the Jordan river so those of us who wanted to could be baptized, or have a rededicational baptism. I decided that this point in my life is an excellent time for rededication. I told a number of my friends just over a month ago that I only had two problems left with God. One of them was with the speed of his justice, and the other was the hopelessness of the postmodern age. God has answered me on both within this month - in the earthquake, the whirlwind, the fire, and the still, small voice. And so I face the Lord of all and say, there is nothing left. There are no more questions, no more doubts. I am yours completely, take me as I am. The last couple of days I have found peace here. It is a supreme irony in some ways that going to one of the most war-burdened areas of the world would birth peace in my heart, but I've found it here, and I will guard it against the terror of the world.
We ate lunch at a desert oasis, of course. There was a solider playing a game on his PSP... We bought a watermelon - a small one that we paid almost $15 for, but it's heavy - it's fresh, the first and sweetest harvest of Jordan Valley watermelons. Breakfast tomorrow! I bought a necklace designed by Bedouins, at least, according to the clerk, and a little glass vase. There were show-camels, and one lady went for a ride upwards on one of them, with a great shriek as we all laughed.
We saw the Dead Sea from a great distance, and there was a group "Awwww!" when we turned the corner to head into Jerusalem. Today we saw the grounds where Elijah was taken up in a chariot, the wilderness of the prophets. Saw Modern Jericho, which is a Palestinian settlement.
I have a few extra minutes today to discuss the changes in my life. I am learning all the different classifications, the different varieties of Jews and Muslims, the different varieties of other people - the Druze and Bedouin, and much more. I am on the edge of understanding the difference between an Arab-Israeli and a Palestinian, because indeed they are very different and only minimally connected in most cases. I shake my fist at the media for grouping them together with so sticky a glue, since there is no factual basis for that. There's basically six people groups here large enough to warrant a mention, and even those are heavily divided.
To the best of my knowledge there are Jews, Arabs, and the secular of both those groups. There are Zionist and Anti-Zionist Jews, whether or not they are religious. Some Israelis, regardless of their religious or cultural background (i.e., Jewish, Muslim or Other) support the Palestinian claim to land, and some do not. More about them in a minute.
The Bedouins are Muslim, but support the Israeli state. There are Christians, which probably wouldn't be here if they didn't support the Israeli state. There are Druze, which are also supporters of the Israeli state and believers in the same Judeo/Christian/Muslim monotheistic God, with yet another set of beliefs.
The Palestinians, which is a created term for displaced Arabs who have never been a consolidated or united group or nation and still are not, despite the media and Hezbollah/Hamas/Fathah claims. They fight each other constantly. By international law standards, they have never possessed land and have never been a nation. King Hussein kicked them out of Jordan because they were troublemakers in his country. For any other area of the world all these things would nullify their current claim to a nation or landmass and make them a people to be divided between other countries. Arafat admitted that they were not in existence when Israel formed thousands of years ago, for which original occupation there is abundant evidence. Therefore, by purely legal standards with not a touch of religious belief involved, Israel is a legal owner of the land they currently possess and the land they currently are re-settling because all other civilizations and regimes who have by the standards of the UN owned the land no longer exist or, like the British, have renounced their claims.
We have already abundantly proved in WWI and II that, like Churchill said, appeasement is like feeding the crocodile in the hope that he'll eat you last. It doesn't work. If you fail to learn from history it will always repeat itself.
Netenyahu's speech tonight at the CUFI Summit was concerning the result of all these things. I'll quote him a little from the video I took tonight.
"Now our free nation is under assualt, it is under assault from a common enemy. I said a year and a half ago that it's 1938, and Iran is Germany, and it's racing to aquire nuclear weapons. Well, it's 1939 now, and they're racing to aquire nuclear weapons. They say... they will use them. They say... that Israel and Zionism can and should be wiped off the face of the earth. They say that this is the first step, that they want to establish the counterfeit. They're building the ICBMs not to reach the cities in Europe, they're already pretty close to doing that, but to reach the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. If you listen to what they say, you understand that they don't hate the West because of Israel, they hate Israel because of the West because we are, to them, the forward representative, the front line representative of our common free civilization."
And this is the country we are trying to downsize? Here, a little more.
"We say we want peace with our neighbors, but it's a peace [...] of security and prosperity with our neighbors. [...] Nobody will defend the Jews if they do not defend themselves. [...] The biggest battle we're fighting is the battle for the truth. Arafat says we invaded this green, verdant land in 1881. Mark Twain came in 1869 and he described it as 'desolate country' [...] Arthur Stanley [...] famous cartographer [... came] in 1881 [...] 'I stand in Judea and I look north and I look south and I don't see a single human being' "
I think that says everything the secular world needs to know. As far as myself, I am and have always been a Christian Zionist. And now that I have come to explore the term I always gave myself I embrace it even more.
A few more random things.
Today in the countryside we saw what the Bible refers to as the wilderness, where Jesus fasted, and it's prime sheep/goat country. I saw lots of goats, shepherds, and Bedouin settlements - shanty towns, basically, since they don't move around much anymore.
When we came into the downtown area by the government buildings, we came to the Knesset and saw a lot of police cars and a lot of reporters - it was the hubbub surrounding a woman who threatened suicide by lighting her car on fire because she wanted the government to grant her plight with her disabled kids more attention.
We're starting to make a few friends with tripmates now that we're nearly done. There's definitely a couple people I will miss, but we'll probably keep in contact from time to time. I prepped the Flickr group account today so people could post their photos, as I'd already been considering where I wanted to post mine since they're so plentiful and I don't want to burden my LJ account with a thousand pictures.
We had a good bit of free time at the hotel, which is Arab-owned. I have to admit, the irony of staying at an Arab-owned hotel while attending a conference of sorts of Christians supporting the Jews is pretty awesome, but I didn't choose the hotel and apparently it was all we could get that was close to the destination. At any rate, it's clean and they had some psuedo-western style food. In fact, to my great joy, they had salad dressing. I would have settled for any kind of salad dressing, and they had thousand island...
After that, the 1st Annual CUFI Summit was held, and we had a chance to hear Netenyahu speak, as well as John Hagee, whose speech was refreshing, and David Braun, who spoke of the Ten Boom family's gift to the Jews of their lives during the Holocaust and how we were not the descendants of the Crusaders, but the Ten Booms. The Jews are big on patriarchs and descendants.
Which brings me to my personal topic for this evening. Lineage is unmistakably important to the Jews and the Torah/Bible. We had a conversation at supper tonight about personal heritage, my final project in photography was about it, and when it all comes down to it I have to admit that only a few things about my earthly lineage are worth being proud of. The ancestry that I am most proud of would be my Grandma's adoptive father, especially when it comes to my interest in Jews. He was a friend of the Jews in his area and spoke some yiddish. He accepted everyone as people, just as I do. He wasn't one to pick and choose because he loved people. He was honest and had integrity. And so, though here again blood fails me, I consider that heritage a deep part of my identity. And so as the Jews consider lineage to be about something deeper than blood - spiritual lineage - I finally find a reason to offer those who ask me the question, "Why Israel?"
Because here, deep in the past, lies the lineage of my spiritual family, which far outweighs that of my physical one. I am too far divorced from my British heritage on my physical father's side, and though I am connected with my Mennonite heritage, again that is much more about a spiritual connection than a need to spread recipes for Mennonite food. All other bloodlines are basically lost, though I know there is Irish, Scottish, Ukranian, Russian, and I am also Canadian in identity. Already I feel the connection I always knew would be here, a soul connection to the mournful music of these people, an understanding of their culture deeper than observation, because it's based on more than human blood.
Regarding lineage, though, I think I have fundamentally established that I am NOT American after this evening's festivities. I do not find deepest pleasure in singing about the red glare of rockets. I am not big on perfect television spectacles, even though I know their influence. But regardless, I believe in this cause. I believe in keeping the only democracy of the Middle East alive.
Today, Sunday, we went to Yardenit at the Jordan river so those of us who wanted to could be baptized, or have a rededicational baptism. I decided that this point in my life is an excellent time for rededication. I told a number of my friends just over a month ago that I only had two problems left with God. One of them was with the speed of his justice, and the other was the hopelessness of the postmodern age. God has answered me on both within this month - in the earthquake, the whirlwind, the fire, and the still, small voice. And so I face the Lord of all and say, there is nothing left. There are no more questions, no more doubts. I am yours completely, take me as I am. The last couple of days I have found peace here. It is a supreme irony in some ways that going to one of the most war-burdened areas of the world would birth peace in my heart, but I've found it here, and I will guard it against the terror of the world.
We ate lunch at a desert oasis, of course. There was a solider playing a game on his PSP... We bought a watermelon - a small one that we paid almost $15 for, but it's heavy - it's fresh, the first and sweetest harvest of Jordan Valley watermelons. Breakfast tomorrow! I bought a necklace designed by Bedouins, at least, according to the clerk, and a little glass vase. There were show-camels, and one lady went for a ride upwards on one of them, with a great shriek as we all laughed.
We saw the Dead Sea from a great distance, and there was a group "Awwww!" when we turned the corner to head into Jerusalem. Today we saw the grounds where Elijah was taken up in a chariot, the wilderness of the prophets. Saw Modern Jericho, which is a Palestinian settlement.
I have a few extra minutes today to discuss the changes in my life. I am learning all the different classifications, the different varieties of Jews and Muslims, the different varieties of other people - the Druze and Bedouin, and much more. I am on the edge of understanding the difference between an Arab-Israeli and a Palestinian, because indeed they are very different and only minimally connected in most cases. I shake my fist at the media for grouping them together with so sticky a glue, since there is no factual basis for that. There's basically six people groups here large enough to warrant a mention, and even those are heavily divided.
To the best of my knowledge there are Jews, Arabs, and the secular of both those groups. There are Zionist and Anti-Zionist Jews, whether or not they are religious. Some Israelis, regardless of their religious or cultural background (i.e., Jewish, Muslim or Other) support the Palestinian claim to land, and some do not. More about them in a minute.
The Bedouins are Muslim, but support the Israeli state. There are Christians, which probably wouldn't be here if they didn't support the Israeli state. There are Druze, which are also supporters of the Israeli state and believers in the same Judeo/Christian/Muslim monotheistic God, with yet another set of beliefs.
The Palestinians, which is a created term for displaced Arabs who have never been a consolidated or united group or nation and still are not, despite the media and Hezbollah/Hamas/Fathah claims. They fight each other constantly. By international law standards, they have never possessed land and have never been a nation. King Hussein kicked them out of Jordan because they were troublemakers in his country. For any other area of the world all these things would nullify their current claim to a nation or landmass and make them a people to be divided between other countries. Arafat admitted that they were not in existence when Israel formed thousands of years ago, for which original occupation there is abundant evidence. Therefore, by purely legal standards with not a touch of religious belief involved, Israel is a legal owner of the land they currently possess and the land they currently are re-settling because all other civilizations and regimes who have by the standards of the UN owned the land no longer exist or, like the British, have renounced their claims.
We have already abundantly proved in WWI and II that, like Churchill said, appeasement is like feeding the crocodile in the hope that he'll eat you last. It doesn't work. If you fail to learn from history it will always repeat itself.
Netenyahu's speech tonight at the CUFI Summit was concerning the result of all these things. I'll quote him a little from the video I took tonight.
"Now our free nation is under assualt, it is under assault from a common enemy. I said a year and a half ago that it's 1938, and Iran is Germany, and it's racing to aquire nuclear weapons. Well, it's 1939 now, and they're racing to aquire nuclear weapons. They say... they will use them. They say... that Israel and Zionism can and should be wiped off the face of the earth. They say that this is the first step, that they want to establish the counterfeit. They're building the ICBMs not to reach the cities in Europe, they're already pretty close to doing that, but to reach the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. If you listen to what they say, you understand that they don't hate the West because of Israel, they hate Israel because of the West because we are, to them, the forward representative, the front line representative of our common free civilization."
And this is the country we are trying to downsize? Here, a little more.
"We say we want peace with our neighbors, but it's a peace [...] of security and prosperity with our neighbors. [...] Nobody will defend the Jews if they do not defend themselves. [...] The biggest battle we're fighting is the battle for the truth. Arafat says we invaded this green, verdant land in 1881. Mark Twain came in 1869 and he described it as 'desolate country' [...] Arthur Stanley [...] famous cartographer [... came] in 1881 [...] 'I stand in Judea and I look north and I look south and I don't see a single human being' "
I think that says everything the secular world needs to know. As far as myself, I am and have always been a Christian Zionist. And now that I have come to explore the term I always gave myself I embrace it even more.
A few more random things.
Today in the countryside we saw what the Bible refers to as the wilderness, where Jesus fasted, and it's prime sheep/goat country. I saw lots of goats, shepherds, and Bedouin settlements - shanty towns, basically, since they don't move around much anymore.
When we came into the downtown area by the government buildings, we came to the Knesset and saw a lot of police cars and a lot of reporters - it was the hubbub surrounding a woman who threatened suicide by lighting her car on fire because she wanted the government to grant her plight with her disabled kids more attention.
We're starting to make a few friends with tripmates now that we're nearly done. There's definitely a couple people I will miss, but we'll probably keep in contact from time to time. I prepped the Flickr group account today so people could post their photos, as I'd already been considering where I wanted to post mine since they're so plentiful and I don't want to burden my LJ account with a thousand pictures.
We had a good bit of free time at the hotel, which is Arab-owned. I have to admit, the irony of staying at an Arab-owned hotel while attending a conference of sorts of Christians supporting the Jews is pretty awesome, but I didn't choose the hotel and apparently it was all we could get that was close to the destination. At any rate, it's clean and they had some psuedo-western style food. In fact, to my great joy, they had salad dressing. I would have settled for any kind of salad dressing, and they had thousand island...
After that, the 1st Annual CUFI Summit was held, and we had a chance to hear Netenyahu speak, as well as John Hagee, whose speech was refreshing, and David Braun, who spoke of the Ten Boom family's gift to the Jews of their lives during the Holocaust and how we were not the descendants of the Crusaders, but the Ten Booms. The Jews are big on patriarchs and descendants.
Which brings me to my personal topic for this evening. Lineage is unmistakably important to the Jews and the Torah/Bible. We had a conversation at supper tonight about personal heritage, my final project in photography was about it, and when it all comes down to it I have to admit that only a few things about my earthly lineage are worth being proud of. The ancestry that I am most proud of would be my Grandma's adoptive father, especially when it comes to my interest in Jews. He was a friend of the Jews in his area and spoke some yiddish. He accepted everyone as people, just as I do. He wasn't one to pick and choose because he loved people. He was honest and had integrity. And so, though here again blood fails me, I consider that heritage a deep part of my identity. And so as the Jews consider lineage to be about something deeper than blood - spiritual lineage - I finally find a reason to offer those who ask me the question, "Why Israel?"
Because here, deep in the past, lies the lineage of my spiritual family, which far outweighs that of my physical one. I am too far divorced from my British heritage on my physical father's side, and though I am connected with my Mennonite heritage, again that is much more about a spiritual connection than a need to spread recipes for Mennonite food. All other bloodlines are basically lost, though I know there is Irish, Scottish, Ukranian, Russian, and I am also Canadian in identity. Already I feel the connection I always knew would be here, a soul connection to the mournful music of these people, an understanding of their culture deeper than observation, because it's based on more than human blood.
Regarding lineage, though, I think I have fundamentally established that I am NOT American after this evening's festivities. I do not find deepest pleasure in singing about the red glare of rockets. I am not big on perfect television spectacles, even though I know their influence. But regardless, I believe in this cause. I believe in keeping the only democracy of the Middle East alive.