23 October 2017
Father Hosam Naoum, Dean of St. George’s Cathedral
We began Monday in Jerusalem with a visit to St. George’s Cathedral, headquarters of the Anglican Church in the region. Our host was Fr. Hosam Naoum, Dean of the cathedral and a graduate of Mar Elias high school in Ibillin. The cathedral’s school educates some 800 students, 90 percent of them Muslim.
The cathedral, modeled after Christ Church in Oxford, was completed in 1890, a reminder of the key role Britain played in the creation of modern Palestine and the success of the European-born Zionist movement. November will bring the 100th anniversary of the British government’s Balfour Declaration, a mere short letter stating that the British government looked favorably on a Jewish homeland in Palestine. To commemorate this anniversary, Anglicans in Jerusalem are asking the British government to repent for Balfour and honor the few words in the 1917 letter that support equal recognition of native Palestinian rights—as Fr. Hosam put it, “at least as a nation, as a government complete what they promised.” We ended our visit by joining him in singing a heartfelt version of “Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem,”
OCHA Mission Statement
Our next stop was the United Nations office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). It is now the 50th anniversary of the occupation of Palestinian Territories, and the UN is only able to document the human rights violations and pass resolutions that Israel ignores. There are now 150 settlements/colonies and 100 outposts in the West Bank—all violations of international law. Israel is also changing the landscape with its barrier wall and frustrating daily life with its system of 44 checkpoints and 572 “movement obstacles,” not to mention exclusive roads for the settlers, housing demolitions, and massive land confiscations. How do they get away with this? Ask your Senators and Representatives in Congress. You can see the full OCHA briefing yourself by clicking here.
We got the same briefing the UN Secretary General got a month ago
Next stop in Jerusalem was the office if the Defense for Children International, where we learned about another result of the occupation. This organization provides legal help to the Palestinian children imprisoned by the Israeli military, which controls the West Bank. We were told that 45 percent of kids are arrested in their homes in the middle of the night. Some 80 percent are denied bail, and almost all are convicted and serve up to a year in prison, usually for throwing stones. Currently there are 330 kids in Israeli prisons, though over the years an estimated 10,000 kids have been incarcerated.
Our hearts heavy at the thought of imprisoned kids, we said goodbye to Jerusalem and headed north toward Nablus. Along the way we saw people harvesting olives. And in one place we saw settlers burning what appeared to be someone else’s crops. We had been warned that settlers were especially aggressive in this area but, still, we were not prepared for what we found at the Church of Jacob’s Well in Nablus. There, the Greek Orthodox priest in charge of the church showed how settlers killed and mutilated his predecessor. The settlers resent and seek to destroy the beautiful church built above the ancient well, site of the New Testament story in which Jesus meets the Samaritan woman. We ended our visit there by drawing water from the well and enjoying a drink (of water).
~ Mary Bader