Conflict in the Holy Land

This post was originally printed in the Dec. 9 parish bulletin

I thought you might be interested to know that last week I closed out the First Sunday of Advent by doing something that I hadn’t done in 25 years: I went to a roller skating rink. I am not joking. A friend of mine from a parish where I once served as a priest has always been involved in roller skating, and he rented out Saints North near Maplewood Mall to throw a party for everybody he could think to invite. He even had me invite my parents and siblings and nieces and nephews, and most of them came. I was strongly tempted simply to sit and cheer everybody on, but I indeed put on roller skates and went around for a while. The music from the 1980s brought me back to grade school and high school days! Yes, I did fall – it was not very graceful, but caused no serious damage. I wonder what it would have been like if I had been on inline skates? Anyway, the youngest of my relatives who attended was my 18-month old nephew Otto, who watched the action, mesmerized by the flashing lights and the loud music. He is much too young to skate, but when he saw his cousin’s skate sitting near him, he picked it up and started tugging at the Velcro strap on his own little shoe. It seemed he didn’t want to be left out! Anyway, it was a fun thing to do – very retro. The owners must be faithful people, too, because the rink’s Christmas decorations even include a lighted Nativity scene. Since so few businesses dare to display religious items, maybe you’d like to support Saints North.

A much more serious topic in this holy season is the tension that recently erupted in the Holy Land. My trips to Israel that began with a semester there when I was in the seminary have led me to have quite an attachment to the land where Jesus walked. Its beauty and its religious significance make it especially tragic that it is so unstable politically. The Holy Land has always been a crossroads of cultures and nations, and its position geographically as the land that connects Asia to Africa has placed it in the path of invading armies. But it would be a mistake to claim that the Israelis and the Palestinians “have always been fighting,” as I so often hear. The small population of Jews who had always lived in the part of the Ottoman Empire that later became Israel lived among the Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs, and spoke Arabic themselves. To my knowledge there was no hostility among those different ethnic groups through the 1800s. It was when significant numbers of European Jews began heading for the Holy Land just before 1900 that tensions began. Arabs became uncomfortable about the amount of land being purchased by Jews who had left Europe after deciding that there could be no future for the Jewish people on the continent that had brought them so much persecution through the centuries. (They would not have known that in a few decades the German leadership would bring about the worst kind of persecution imaginable.)

It was only in the early years of the 20^th Century that conflicts broke out between Jews and Arabs. Later, the proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948 led to its invasion by Arab armies from the surrounding countries. The Israelis held their land and even gained territory in that war and the many wars that have followed. I have great sympathy for the Israelis, and at the same time acknowledge the injustice of the fact that many innocent Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, lost their homes and land as a result of the conflict. History chose the partition of the land and separate communities for Jews and Arabs rather than a mixture of people living in harmony, and each side can point accusing fingers at the other to assign blame. But that partition led to the entity known as the Gaza Strip, populated by Arabs. Israel decided to end its occupation of the Gaza Strip several years ago, and once it withdrew some of the residents of the Gaza Strip began firing missiles into nearby Israeli towns and cities. Last month’s conflict was a renewal of that tactic, except for that now the Arabs in Gaza have more advanced missiles that can reach both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We need to pray for peace.

The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, was issued by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council just as the Council was ending in 1965. In it the world’s bishops famously state, “Peace is not merely the absence of war… Instead it is rightly and appropriately called an enterprise of justice” (GS 78). They say that because human will is wounded by sin, peace calls for us to master our passions and to respect the dignity of all members of the human race. Gaudium et Spes goes on to say:

That earthly peace which arises from love of neighbor symbolizes and results from the peace of Christ which radiates from God the Father. For by the cross the incarnate Son, the prince of peace reconciled all men with God. By thus restoring all men to the unity of one people and one body, he slew hatred in his own flesh; and, after being lifted on high by his resurrection, he poured forth the spirit of love into the hearts of men. For this reason, all Christians are urgently summoned to do in love what the truth requires, and to join with all true peacemakers in pleading for peace and bringing it about.

As we continue to progress through Advent, let us pray that the peace Jesus brings will fill the hearts of all people.