The Elusive Reasons for Rami's Death (by Philip Rizk)
Gaza is a place isolated and unknown. Although the small coastal strip is all too often in the media spotlight, this can be a source just as much for generalization as information.
The murder of Rami Ayyad one month ago today was a source for such confusion concerning what would have brought about such a horrendous act and who would have carried it out. It is too simple to suspect that which is unknown or those who seem to be opposing "us."
An AFP article quotes Rami's brother Ramzi explaining his reaction:
"We are not afraid of Hamas because as a government they are responsible for protecting people. We are afraid of those who are more extreme than Hamas."
Palestinian Christians number around 75,000, but there are only 2,500 - most of them Greek Orthodox - living in the Gaza Strip among nearly 1.5 million Muslims, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
Gaza has no history of tensions between the two communities, and Christians say they are bound to their Muslim neighbours by shared suffering.
The article also quotes Gaza City's only Catholic priest:
"Christians are isolated just like Muslims. They are scared just like Muslims," says Father Manuel Musallam, the head of Gaza's 200-strong Catholic community, his lips trembling with anger against Israel. ...
In a rousing sermon, Musallam - an ardent Palestinian nationalist from the West Bank who Israel has only allowed out of the Gaza Strip twice since he assumed his post in 1995 - called on his weary flock to remain strong.
"The Church has always been under threat, and it has always endured. Rami was not the first martyr, and in the life of the Church he will not be the last," he said, his soaring baritone voice echoing off the stone walls.
"To those who are scared, to those who want to flee Gaza, we must open our hearts, our doors, and our pockets ... and we must always remember the sacrifice of Christ on the cross."
Some may fear that Gaza is going the way of Iraq, spiraling into chaos and out of control. How would you and I manage in a community completely closed; isolated from the rest of the world; being barred from travel, schooling, and work opportunities; locked in an enclave of unemployment and humanitarian dependence? We need to ask ourselves what role we, our governments, have played in allowing such events. This is a question of chicken and egg and it is too simple to blame Palestinians, Muslims, or extremists without looking at the context they exist within.
If people want to take a minute to examine the complexities of Gaza's conflict, here is a 30 minute BBC documentary that is an excellent resource for this:
Philip Rizk is an Egyptian-German Christian who lived and worked in Gaza from 2005-2007. He blogs at: tabulagaza.com
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Comments
I'd like to believe that the conservatives who post here are unrepresentative of conservatism in general, because they propose no answers, seemingly only blind belief in failed policies. If they have anything to offer at all, it's most often to do more of the same that hasn't worked already.
They seem to prisoners of ideology, unable to adjust actions to perceptions of realities as truth emerges.
Maybe we have all been tainted far too much by neo-conservatism, which is much more ideology-driven than the more practical and less politically radical nature of traditional conservatism.
From a Christian perspective, neo-conservatism is far more inimicable to its principles which so often rest on ends justifying means - probably intrinsically so, since neo-conservatism emerged from a crucible of tensions between marxist and liberal political ideologues of the sixties - to many conservatives, a most poisonous environment of time and place.
Posted by: N.M. Rod | November 6, 2007 4:02 PM
We might say the same about you and your sort, N.M. Rod. But as for a solution...
The situation that Gaza is in can be solved by three simple measures: Hamas recognizing Israel, renouncing violence, and agreeing to abide by the previous agreements that the Palestinian authority made. They will not do this, so let the consequences come as they will.
Posted by: Ben Wheaton | November 6, 2007 5:30 PM
I'd like to believe that the conservatives who post here are unrepresentative of conservatism in general
I however like the idea you represent liberalism as it is offered to the public in general . It means after this mess the Republicans allowed themselves to get involved in , it will not be hard winning the war of ideas .
The use of an unpopular war , fear , race , and baiting those fears to the poor have always been used by the most horrific regimes in our history , calling it god's politics does not change that , or does saying your a progressive instead of a liberal . Get stuffed .
Posted by: Mick Sheldon | November 6, 2007 5:55 PM
Mr. Rizk says: "This is a question of chicken and egg and it is too simple to blame Palestinians, Muslims, or extremists without looking at the context they exist within."
With respect, I disagree. A poor man robbing a 7-11 to feed his family will still be arrested and punished, and rightly so. Palestinians are there primarily because they continue to believe that someday, Israel will disappear. Islam believes that Israel will be made to disappar, through the will and action of Allah. Extremists believe that Allah has appointed them to make Israel disappear. And what they do,what they all do, is in violation of numerous U. N. resolutions, beginning at least as early as 1947.
What they do is bring much misery upon themselves. Christian palestinians ought to know better. Islamic palestinians need a crash course in reality. And Islamic extremists pretty much should not be surprised that the Law of Sowing and Reaping applies to them, too.
Posted by: joekc | November 6, 2007 7:26 PM
I won't call people the rude things I've just been called.
However, the moderator removed the post I was responding to, which was the first one.
Needless to say, it was so far beyond the pale (now there's an appropriate phrase in context) that I'm not going to reprise it here. I think my response was quite circumspect, wondering how the poster of such things could call himself representative of conservatism in a raw appeal to
stirring up racism.
For I'm no liberal, and his identifying what he wrote with conservatism was a calumny. Unless you're of one mind with Thomas Dixon, who was no Republican.
Posted by: N. M. Rod | November 6, 2007 8:23 PM
N M ROD
You did not make a comment to one person , you steretyped him and stated "conservatives"
For one who appears to make sure the rest of us know how humble you are , you have a hard time admitting your wrong without blaming your actions and words on someone else . Take responsibility for yourself , leave the rest to the Lord , thats all we can do .
Posted by: Mick | November 6, 2007 9:26 PM
Oh brother. Someone who's posing as a conservative (and is one for all I know or at least thinks so) makes some abysmal incendiary remark designed to cast anyone skeptical of the hardest of hardline Israeli positions as being against Jewish people per se, and I respond by saying I don't think they're really conservative. Perhaps we've been too influenced by neo-conservative positions that have been knee-jerk ideology-driven. Read The American Conservative - they don't think it's that over-simple, either, and no one can question their conservative bona fides. They are not liberal by any stretch, now, are they?
I don't have anything to apologize for, no one's been maligned, but someone who had a truly distasteful post got it deleted, but not before I had a chance to read it and be appalled.
Posted by: N.M. Rod | November 6, 2007 9:57 PM
I did make the observation that, in an unsolved murder, the author chooses to blame the Jews, who clearly were not culpable. It was not rude of me to make that observation.
Posted by: kevin s. | November 6, 2007 9:59 PM
Rude enough to get your post deleted - and you didn't sign it, either.
Posted by: N.M. Rod | November 7, 2007 12:11 AM
Joekc says:
Palestinians are there primarily because they continue to believe that someday, Israel will disappear.
No, they are primarily there because it is their homeland, where their families have been living, and working the land, and worshipping, for centuries. What any individual Palestinian may or may not believe about the longterm viability of the state of Israel is a secondary matter.
Are you proposing that they voluntarily cease to be there? If so, where do you propose that they go, and how do you propose that they be compensated for their loss?
Mark
Posted by: mark | November 7, 2007 1:15 AM
Ben Wheaton:
The situation that Gaza is in can be solved by three simple measures: Hamas recognizing Israel, renouncing violence, and agreeing to abide by the previous agreements that the Palestinian authority made.
I agree that these are necessary conditions. I do not agree that they are sufficient conditions - land rights (or compensation in lieu), water rights, and freedom from Israeli siege and bombardment also need to be in the picture.
Mark
Posted by: mark | November 7, 2007 1:21 AM
Hi,
Are some of the SIMPLISTIC comments here (including the one stating that 'Christian Palestinians ought to know better', including even the one you are reading) truly, in any way, shape or form, proper responses to Philip Rizk's article above?
Must we pretend to know everything while clearly exposing our ignorance and - even - 'don't-care' attitude towards a terrible situation affecting real human beings like you and I? Can we get off our moral high horses and stop apportioning blame, as if that makes as 'white as the driven snow'?
What did the Palestinians do to the people here who write so disparagingly about them?
Why is it that, on God's Politics, again and again and again, I find followers of Christ refuting all the evidence regularly published here that indicates that the occupation of Palestine by the Israelis is oppressive? How can proud Americans, who, I read, refused to be colonised by the British and fought for their Independence blame all of the Palestinian problems on 'Hamas', an outfit only a few years old in a conflict going a few decades now?
Why is it that we, Christians, lose all sense of FAIRNESS when it comes to the Israel-Palestinian conflict? Do we, perhaps, imagine that we are doing God a favour, or returning His favour!?
Are the Palestinians a little of lesser humans, like, say, the Native Americans once were? Just asking!
Blessings!
- Alu
Posted by: Robert Alu | November 7, 2007 2:50 AM
Philip Rizk, thank you for your words!
please do not be discouraged by these silly arguments under your well-written article.
Posted by: andy | November 7, 2007 3:50 AM
Mark
Yes,I am suggesting exactly that. I would suggest that the U.N. general assembly (the same body that originally voted, overwhelmingly, to establish the nation of Israel), should determine a location for "Palestine," and that location should be offered, along with some reasonable compensation,to the "Palestinian" people. Thus, and thus only will they ever get a homeland, and the world knows this, at a diplomatic level. Currently, Israel is where Israel is, and that is not going to change - - the US guarantees it. The "palestinins " are expendable pawns in an ongoing chessgame, the Arabs do not want them, they never have,and even some of the historic palestinian leadership would have been appalled if a "state" had ever been truly provided. Those people are worth too much as the pawns they currently are, in the camps.
If there ever is a "Palestinian" state in the current west bank - Gaza area, it will last only long enough to be a military staging area for the next attack on Israel,and then Israel will occupy it, and we'll all be where we started,except with a need to bury a lot of dead.
Perhaps the palestinians will get a homeland. But if they ever do, it will be because the Islamic world, and more specifically the Arabs, stop using them as international showpieces, and begins to cooperate in finding them some real estate. Where they are now is not that place; it might have been at one time, but it is time for the new paradigm to be accepted. The U.N. can make this happen.
Posted by: joekc | November 7, 2007 8:17 AM
Joekc: Yes,I am suggesting exactly that. I would suggest that the U.N. general assembly (the same body that originally voted, overwhelmingly, to establish the nation of Israel), should determine a location for "Palestine," and that location should be offered, along with some reasonable compensation,to the "Palestinian" people.
Great! Why don't they move to Delaware, it's about the same size?
Posted by: Cushy Butterfield | November 7, 2007 10:59 AM
Are the Palestinians a little of lesser humans, like, say, the Native Americans once were? Just asking!
No , I think its the friends they keep . Notice your comments in the past have not been favorable to the west either , see .
Posted by: | November 7, 2007 11:07 AM
Cushy, or why doesnt the U.N. (for once) do its job and "unite" to find a place? I assume your "Delaware" suggestion is intended to show how difficult it would be to do, and that is right, it would be. But it is absolutely impossible to put a "palestinian state" next to Israel, for the simple reason that surrounding enemies of Israel will run over the Palestinians in their stated and on-going desire to destroy the Jewish state; and, as I pointed out, that just isn't going to be allowed to happen, ever.
There is plenty of space on this planet to introduce a "palestinian homeland". First of all, however, the "palestinians" are going to have to accept the blunt fact that, when we humans dont get our first choice, sometimes we have to live with our second - maybe even our third.
Keep in mind -no one wants the palestinians out of those "camps" any less than the surrounding Arab and / or Islamic states, for whom those folks are great playing cards for diplomatic poker. Second best, for those Arab and other Islamic states, is a "state" from which they can jump off to begin the next attempt to destroy Israel. If Israel does seem to be repressive (and often they do), it might be realistically worthwhile to remember this.
Posted by: joekc | November 7, 2007 11:53 AM
Frank Baum of Wizard of Oz fame, justifying in an editorial for the Kansas City Star about the ethnic cleansing of the American Indians, "They cumbered the land, and were removed."
Basically, even though we're not in Kansas anymore, the majority opinion about inconvenient peoples is still,
"they cumbered the land, and were removed."
And all the better that they should resist with violence, for then... we would be justified in doing... anything... to them.
Truly. there is neither Jew, nor gentile, no white, no black - just humanity, in all its common glory of honoring God.
Posted by: | November 7, 2007 11:55 AM
There is plenty of space on this planet to introduce a "palestinian homeland". First of all, however, the "palestinians" are going to have to accept the blunt fact that, when we humans dont get our first choice, sometimes we have to live with our second - maybe even our third.
OK, but find me a inhabitable spot on this planet that doesn't have people living in it. It's not the Palestinians who have to accept this it's the same for whoever they are going to displace.
Posted by: Cushy Butterfield | November 7, 2007 12:37 PM
There's a certain horrible irony in Jews being faced with the problem of what to do with a hated people they have displaced and no longer want in their midst, and yet being unable to find anyone else who will take them or any place to put them.
Posted by: | November 7, 2007 12:51 PM
Cushy, not to be flippant,but its not my job to do that. There are folks in this world, however, who DO have that in their job description. And I seriously question whether anyone needs to be "displaced." What might have to happen is - - some people of vision, with bulldozers, irrigation pipe, cement blocks and mortar, and other like stuff, might have to spend a few hundred billion to create a liveable Delaware-sized space, but the cost is minimal compared to the cost to this world the next time some nation attacks Israel. No, I am not a "Christian Zionist," but even American heartland farmers like me can read the handwriting on the wall. We can no longer afford to play the "two-state solution" game over there; there are people in this world who would love to see that go on and on, until such time as the entire region is turned into a wasteland, by a war the likes of which you and I have never seen. The time for the palestinians' facing reality is long since past. Israel will not go away, will never be asked by the world to go away, and the US will militarily ensure its continuation. The UN is also committed to it, has been since 1948. So, if the palestinians want a homeland, they are going to have to get serious about accepting reality. I don't know where they might go, that is above my pay grade; but I am pretty sure it isn't going to be where they are now, if they are ever to have a "homeland."
Posted by: oekc | November 7, 2007 12:58 PM
There are folks in this world, however, who DO have that in their job description.
Well it's a moot point, because so far they've had enough sense not to come up with that 'solution' to the problem.
I know why don't we set up a colony on the moon for the Palestinians? It's just as feasible.
Posted by: | November 7, 2007 1:02 PM
Oops - that last post was mine.
Posted by: Cushy Butterfield | November 7, 2007 1:03 PM
So, Joekc, it seems you are in favour of forced deportation of a whole people because they are inconvenient to the powerful.
And, incidentally, in the process, of virtually eliminating Christian witness from the land where Jesus walked.
And you think this wouldn't create problems?
Mark
Posted by: mark | November 7, 2007 1:08 PM
Of course it would create its own set of problems - every act does. And NO, the reason I suggest this type of solution has nothing to do with "appeasing"anyone. It has to do with recognizing realities: (1) Israel is where Israel is, and will not be moved; (2) there is a growing group of "the powerful" who anticipate any "two-state solution" over there to provide a jumping-off point for the military final destruction of the Jewish state - a publicly stated goal of several sovereign states as well as "political/religious/military organizations."
They seem to really imagine that this can happen. It cannot. One US Naval carrier battle group, alone, can end those "dreams" at any time, never mind adding the Israeli Air Force to the mix.
If we persist in playing the "two-state solution" game there,it is only a matter of time (and likely not much time) before this scenario is reality. So, Cushy, feel free to make as much fun of the idea of relocation as you will - -it is a much more sensible idea than Israelis and palestinians ever walking hand in hand into the sunset together. That isnt going to be. And the world has limited time left to figure this out.
Posted by: joekc | November 7, 2007 1:27 PM
I wonder just what will happen when the irresistible force meets the immovable object - can't stay in their homeland, nowhere else to go.
A provocation, and then --
Justifiable genocide.
Notice that everyone, somewhere and sometime, no matter whether Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, comes to this same place. Other people become intolerable and must be eradicated, just like Cain killed Abel.
Damned phoney Christianity. What a false hope that was. The biggest of fools.
Posted by: | November 7, 2007 1:53 PM
Joe,
No one is saying they will be singing cumbayah together and eating smores. What we are saying is that they can live next too each other. That's not a pipe dream. There have been plenty of states that hated each other and lived right next door too each other. Israel will have to change many of it's policies including water rights and checkpoint policies. Relocation won't work and neither should that be an option. This is their land. It was wrong when our ancestors relocated the Sioux, the Danae (Navajo) and countless other groups. Your idea of relocation is wrong too. It won't solve anything except making them more poor, more desperate and more angry at Israel.
p
Posted by: payshun | November 7, 2007 3:12 PM
Love thy neighbor?
Posted by: Mujahada | November 7, 2007 7:23 PM
"Are the Palestinians a little of lesser humans, like, say, the Native Americans once were? Just asking!
No , I think its the friends they keep . Notice your comments in the past have not been favorable to the west either , see .
Posted by: | November 7, 2007 11:07 AM"
Hi Unsigned,
So, essentially, there are lesser humans, I take it? That would explain the lack of compassion.
I am upset that you adopt a new label for yourself - "the west", Mr or Ms Unsigned. And I do not know what you mean when you say my comments have "not been favourable to the west".
Yes, I have been very highly critical of the callous comments by SOME who respond to comments about Palestine/Israel on God's Politics.
But,
The owner(s) of this blog are American Christians too, they are in the west. Yet I have nothing but admiration for them.
It would seem that there are SOME people who wait eagerly for anything and everything that "Jim Wallis and friends Brian McLaren, Diana Butler Bass, Becky Garrison, Gareth Higgins, Shane Claiborne, Mary Nelson, Gabriel Salguero, Tony Campolo, and others" (from "About This Blog" above) write: just to criticize and attack, never mind the facts.
It is totally predictable that, no matter what appears here, a good number of the comments will border on, I don't know - you tell me ... So, those of us who come to possibly learn something new, something in the power of all the above writers to satisfy - in my opinion - end up reading all sorts of irrelevant asides in the comments - from the same cast of detractors.
I have QUALIFIED my criticism of the insensitivity that SOME here treat the Palestinian people with the word SOME. NOT ALL! Nevertheless, if the cap fits ...
But, what the hey, it isn't my blog. And I do not come here for comments such as yours, really. I come here because I have the utmost respect for Jim Wallis and his friends; what they stand for and what they have to say.
Why do YOU come here?
- Alu
Posted by: | November 8, 2007 12:36 AM
Some anonymous individual wrote:
Damned phoney Christianity. What a false hope that was. The biggest of fools.
Whoever you are, rail against the church and against Christians if you need to (and most of the time you'll probably be right), but please don't give up on Jesus. I am frequently ashamed of what we, his supposed followers, have done and are doing, but is there anyone to compare to Him?
Mark
Posted by: mark | November 8, 2007 2:00 AM
One thing to bear in mind, Alu, is that America didn't really throw off colonialism. It was more of a dispute between colonists and their relations with their own mother country, a schism as it were between competing colonial administrations contesting the same geography. The indigenous peoples were almost completely swallowed up and were not able to throw of colonialism, right to this day, but still have the status of conquered nationalities.
As the American Supreme Court ruled, the indigenous peoples are "domestic, dependent nations."
Recently, at the UN, the four colonial-era nations where the colonists displaced almost completely the indigenous peoples were the only nations voting against a resolution in support of the rights of indigenous peoples. Those nations, with overwhelming colonial populations were Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
So it is not completely inconsistent for many Americans, especially religious ones, with their own similar past history of native removal, to be unsympathetic to governments which on the basis of an interpretation of religious writings, decide to remove ethnic groups considered inimical from territory they control. It is likely made easier by the fact that they share some of the same scriptures and invoked it in substantially the same way.
Posted by: | November 8, 2007 2:30 AM
I have an idea for Joekc, who wants someone else "above his pay grade" to find a new home for the Palestinian people.
I'm sure, Joekc, that you want this to be done right.
I used to have a dispensationalist-zionist friend (he died a few years ago) who had spent some time shipping Jews from Russia to Israel (well, probably not to Israel but to the West Bank actually, but he was rather unclear on that because he thought the West Bank was part of Israel). The place where they were living in Russia was little more than a mosquito-infested swamp in the far east, which one of Stalin's officials, presumably significantly above Joe's pay grade, had assigned to them. It's no wonder a lot of them wanted to leave.
I'm sure you wouldn't want to make the same mistake with the Palestinians, Joe. So here's a suggestion. Write round to John Hagee and Pat Robertson and Tim LaHaye and Hal Lindsey (if he's still around) and all the other robber barons of dispensationalist-zionism asking them for large quantities of money to set up a fund to purchase enough land to accommodate 5.3 million Palestinians comfortably - that's the total Palestinian population in the West Bank + Gaza + Israel. Maybe make it 6 million to include some of the refugees in other Arab countries. It should be somewhere that their existing agricultural skills are relevant - maybe a substantial chunk of southern California and Arizona would be appropriate. But the land must be bought, not expropriated.
Those gentlemen should be only too happy to oblige, because they will see it as speeding on the fulfilment of prophecy. The federal government could kick in a bit too - after all, such a programme will mean that it won't have to spend so much on funding Israeli tanks and bulldozers to demolish peoples' houses with or fragmentation munitions to fire at their villages.
And I'm sure the USA, generous nation that it is, wouldn't mind giving away a chunk of its territory for such a good cause.
Wouldn't it?
Posted by: mark | November 8, 2007 2:54 PM
Better yet why not move ISRAEL instead?
After all, they're the ones who went in and stole the Palestineans land and moved in on them from their original homes in Europe and America. (Or purchased the Pals lad from absentee Ottoman overlords amounting to the same thing.)
Moreover, the Israelis need to accept the fact that they will never be welcome in the region; especially after their attacks on their nieghbours and their brutal occupation and mistreatment of the indigneous Palestinean populace.
I'd suggest shifting the curent Jewish communiy in Israel to Europe esp. Germany (failing to do soafter WWWII was actually gifting Hitler's policies with poshumous sucess - the Nazi's wanted Europe w/o Jews and Isreali granmted them that desire.) Or they could buy New York and its surrounds and set up 'Israel' there.
The Jewish people could then be "the light of the world" they claim to be and show their generosity and peaceful nature to other faiths and cultures and take the credit.
That way everyone wins.
The Israelis get their state surrounded by friends and under no threat of likely annhilation ever again.
Amercians no longer have to fund Israel's illegal Occupaton and aggression nor worry so much about Iran and others angered by their one-sided supoport for Israel.
The Palestineans could have their land back
The Lebanese, Iranians, Syrians etc .. need neer again fear Isreali attackand occupationand no longer need todefend themselves from Israel.
& Western-Islamic relations would be vastly improved.
Lets do it? Friends Rabbis, thinkers , lets get this happening!
Move Israel from where it should never have been created in the first place (because the Palestineans were innocent of the Wests anti-Semitrism esp. the Holocaust and its the Palestineans land) to where it belongs - in the Western world.
Posted by: StevoR | November 10, 2007 12:59 AM
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