Interfaith Encounters

I missed my favorite dialogue session this past weekend with the Interfaith Encounter Association. This weekend's discussion was hashing it out about Moses and Muhammad. The first time I went on such a weekend was a bit over a year ago and I had no idea what to expect. I had no real contact with Palestinians, other than my Gypsy family, and I was curious. There were 30 Israelis and 30 Palestinians - mostly young kids from the Nablus Youth Federation, some from Ramallah and East Jerusalem - 18 - 25 years old, university students and prime terrorist age. There was an Orthodox Jewish woman there whose son was badly injured in one of the terrorist attacks. We weren't supposed to speak about politics at this weekend, at least not in the formal sessions, but the casual discussions always led to it. How could it not? They said they came to the weekend because they didn't believe that Israelis wanted peace and dialogue and had to see for themselves. During our Friday night social evening, after viewing each other's prayers (there were quite a number of Orthodox Jews attending), several of them showed me the bullet wounds they received somehow or another at the hands of the Israeli army. This was very difficult for me to take in. At first I thought, maybe they DID something to get shot at? They had a 6:30 pm curfew and some of them thought they'd dodge the curfew to get food for their family, some were caught in the line of fire, some wanted to step outside despite the curfew to visit friends and so on. I ended up crying alot that weekend feeling bad that WE (collective blame here) did this to others. It reminded me of the time when I visited Israel in 1989 and a Christian group joined us on a walking tour of Jerusalem. Several cried during the tour and their leader explained that they were sorry for what Christians had done to the Jews throughout the centuries. I felt the way those Christians felt and hoped that it won't be centuries of us tormenting one another.

That first weekend I befriended a very talented artist from Ramallah. His name is Bashar. He brought photos of his paintings which were hauntingly beautiful. Some were disturbing like the one of the Shaheed with virgins greeting him. I said to him half-jokingly - "There must be a catch. There must be a reason why they're virgins. Maybe they're 85 years old or something." Why did he paint it? It bothered me. It was after the army barged into his apartment and ruined much of his artwork. "It's hopeless for us" He told me. Which is probably many an excuse for a future terrorist. I told him - It seemed hopeless for us too many times throughout history. And never believe anything is hopeless. He grabbed a handfull of soil and looked at me and said "I love this land. I just love it so much." And I realized that he was as passionately in love with the land as I was. No less. And perhaps this just may be a war, a struggle, over love. If they love this land as much as I do, why can't we just love it together.