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Bishop Younan told a conference of 400 people on Saturday, November 3, that it is the responsibility of all Christians world-wide and the entire international community to help the Palestinians achieve some justice that will lead to peace He said the situation is getting very difficult for all Palestinians.
The Bishop spoke at Sabeel's 6th International Conference entitled "The Forgotten Faithful," a 7-day look at the life of Palestinian Christians today. Central to the conference was a survey of 1400 families in the West Bank and Israel (they were denied access to Gaza), which showed that a high percentage of young families are seeking to emigrate because of lack of jobs and to find a better life. The conference traveled to Jerusalem, to Bethlehem, Jericho, Ramallah and several villages around there, then ended in Nazareth and villages around there.
The Bishop outlined 5 things churches should do in their role in peacemaking. In our context as Palestinian Christians, living prophetically means that we are to:
He ended his speech with these words: "It is time to liberate our world from the extremism and hate that seeks to dominate and distract us from promoting common values of love, justice, peace and human dignity. It is time to help make religion a driving force for reconciliation and healing that it should be rather than a part of the problem. It is time for us to realize that there has been enough hate, enough violence, enough occupation! How many more deaths, shattered cities, walls of concrete will it take before we refuse to further destroy one another? If ever there was a time to transform our swords into ploughshares, our hatred into love, occupation into liberation, it is now.
A delegation of 12 African American church leaders and leaders from Church World Service visited the Holy Land in late October and early November. The group's main purpose was to learn about life for the Christians here and to see what they could do to help in the search for faith, justice and peace.
On their last day of planned activites, they met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, including Palestinian President Abu Mazen. President Abu Mazen spoke of optimism for a recent mediation initiative, although he was also honest about the enormous challenge the present reality brings.
The traditional Reformation service was celebrated as usual on October 31, a festival communion service in 6 different languages. Many local heads of churches attended the Reformation Service even though their tradition does not celebrate it. In addition, His Beatitude Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos II came to the reception following the service for the first time, a growing sign of the growing unity of the Palestinian Christian churches. Also, a delegation of African American heads of churches from the US participated.
ELCJHL schools celebrated Reformation Day in gatherings that commemorated exhibited their understanding of the Reformation.
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Bishop Munib Younan of the ELCJHL was invited to preside over the religious commemoration of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization Ceremony that honored the 32 UN peacekeepers who have given their lives since the organization was formed in 1948. Ambassadors from the 14 countries who lost people were asked to lay a wreath for their honored dead. Four of the dead were the UN observers killed this summer by Israeli shells. Six people were given awards for having served 25 years with the UN, and others were given other service awards.
Dark skies and rain didn't stop the Sixth Annual Olive Harvest Festival in Bethlehem Saturday, October 28th, in Manger Square. The festival is sponsored by the ELCJHL's Environmental Education Center, the Bethlehem Peace Center, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the East Jerusalem YMCA. Marking the harvest of the Palestinian traditional olive harvest, Palestinians near Bethlehem celebrate with this festival on Manger Square that draws organizations who do traditional practices with olives and olivewood carving, embroider and other traditional crafts. Throughout the day, debkha dancers, singers, puppet shows and other performers entertained the crowd. Many groups came for the festival and to see the traditional site of where Jesus was born, the Church of the Nativity.
On Saturday, October 21, an exhibition entitled “1000 Peace Women Across the Globe” was opened at the International Centre of Bethlehem by Nabila Espanioly, one of the nominated women and the director of the women's center 'Al Tufula' in Nazareth in Israel.
The exhibition includes photographic portraits of the 1000 women from over 150 countries around the world who were nominated jointly for the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2005. Amongst the 1000 'Peace Women' are eight Palestinian women from the occupied Palestinian territories (Hanan Ashrawi, Amneh al-Rimawi, Nafeesa ad-Dik, Issam Abdul-Hadi, Zahira Kamal, Salma Jayyusi, Amneh Suleiman and Yusra Berberi) and three Palestinian women from inside Israel, including Nabila Espanioly.
The International Center in Bethlehem regularly sponsors exhibitions of local and global artists as part of its mission as a cultural center. (See www.annadwa.org for more on the International Center in Bethlehem.)
The 1000 women did not win the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize but they did gain global recognition and their work continues to be publicized around the world in exhibitions such as this. The documentation of their lives and work serves as a body of information that can assist campaigners and the pubic for years to come. The 1000 women continue to coordinate and cooperate through their global network.
The documentary '1000 Women and a Dream', which charts the path of the 1000 Peace Women project, was also screened at the opening. One of the nominated Palestinian women, Nafeesa ad-Dik, appears in the documentary, demonstrating how she fights for the rights of education for girls in her West Bank village, takes part in the Friday demonstrations at Bil'in against the Israeli occupation's annexation of Palestinian land through the construction of the Separation Wall, and has spearheaded income-generation projects for women in her village through the production and sale of traditional Palestinian embroidery. Another woman featured in the documentary is Dr. Ruchama Marton, the founder of the Israeli non-governmental organisation Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR) that fights for the right to health, particularly in the occupied Palestinian territories. In the film, viewers see PHR assisting a 4-year old Bedouin girl from the Negev get proper medical care for the lymphatic cancer she is suffering from.
In the afternoon, Nabila Espanioly held a workshop on the empowerment of women in Palestinian society entitled “Women rights are human rights - human rights are women rights' for a group of local women.
The exhibition runs till 31 October 2006. (From Maan News www.maannews.net)
As I was driving to Ramallah the other day and stopped at an intersection, a child came up to the car with a towel to try to clean my windshield. I said, "what is this?" He said, "Please, for God's sake, one shekel. I want to eat!" Other children later started following us when we were walking, "Please, a shekel, a shekel." I was offended and humiliated to watch Palestinian children turn into beggars. And then, I realized it was daytime, and these children should be in school, but they were just a few of the more than 725,000 public school students who have been out of school for two months now because there are no salaries to pay the teachers. As a Palestinian Bishop, this saddens and angers me.
These children have become the pawns of the politics between the Palestinians and the whole Western world and between the infighting of Hamas and Fatah. It is time that we all – Palestinians, Israelis and the international community – stopped making the children the victims of this political statemate.
We all know the best path for developing a modern, democratic society is education. We all know that education for children is a basic human right, as in the UN declaration for human rights. Children should be in school, opening their minds to the world's best practices and learning to build their community. Now, as a result of the international boycott against the political leaders, our children are becoming beggars and our teen-agers are becoming more embittered by injustice and hypocrisy and driven into the arms of the extremists. This worries every one of us and should worry the international community.
I call on the international community to help us get our children back in school. If we work together, we can make this happen by the end of next week's Muslim holiday feast of Eid al Fitr.
I call on Hamas and Fatah to stop the infighting and move forward to solutions that promote peace with justice. We cannot allow ourselves to be drawn into a civil war where everyone is the loser. The future of our children is at stake. We must act now.
In the meantime, we in the Lutheran schools continue to be open and to serve as many students as we can, regardless of religion, gender, political or denominational affiliation. It is their natural human right.
Bishop Munib Younan
Despite the statement referred to in this ad by Israeli organization Machsom Watch that the State of Israel will guarantee freedom of religion and access to holy sites, Palestinian Muslims and Christians are routinely deprived of their right to pray at their holy places, even - especially - during the most holy times. Friday, Oct 20, was the last Friday during the holy month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast and come to pray in Jerusalem more frequently, especially on Fridays. Every Friday in Jerusalem, they keep out Muslim men from about 15-45. Hundreds of Israeli army and police set up barricades in East Jerusalem and around the Old City gates that allow them to carefully screen all those who attempt to come in. At the checkpoints into Jerusalem, Muslim men of certain ages (usually 15-45 or so) are not allowed to enter Jerusalem or the Old City. Twenty-five people were put into the hospital Friday when tear gas and stun grenades were used to dispel the crowd of families gathered to try to enter Jerusalem at the Bethlehem checkpoint. Pictured here are the men praying at the Bethlehem checkpoint after being denied entry into Jerusalem.
The Oriental Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican Churches invited the higher Islamic council, Chief Islamic Justice Sheikh al Tamimi, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, Islamic Awqaf Adnan Hussein, Jerusalem PLC members and about 100 other dignitaries and civil society leaders both Christian and Muslim to celebrate a traditional "iftar" meal Tuesday after the Ramadan fasting day ended. Bishop Younan welcomed the group, and PA President Abu Mazen's Chief of Staff Mr. Rafik Husseini gave the President's regrets that he couldn't be there since these community-building events are so important. The speakers called for an end to recent tensions between Muslims and Christians, with Sheikh Tamimi recalling the Covenant of Omar in the 7th century which calls for good relations between Muslims and Christians. He recalled that the majority of Christians and Muslims have lived together in peace since then. The speakers agreed that they should work together to see that statements and events outside of this area not affect relations here. All the speakers emphasized the importance of the Holy City of Jerusalem for all, and His Beatitude Michel Sabbah reiterated their common belief that Jerusalem must be shared among Christian, Muslim and Jew and between Palestinian and Israeli. He said these kinds of events are important and must be continued to strengthen community. They also called for unity not only between Muslim and Christian but also among all the Palestinian factions, and urged an end to violence of all kinds.
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