GENERAL SYNOD, DAY 6: "Bearing Witness"

GENERAL SYNOD, DAY 6: Thirteen years ago, I was invited to Hebron by a Palestinian family whom I'd come to know through a mutual friend in California.  I was greeted in the city center by Tareq, a young man whose decency and strength I noticed almost immediately.  Tareq walked me through the divided city, narrating his story and his family's, wincing where armed settlers kept vigil, laughing at young friends we passed in the market.

West Bank Sunset, 2017

At the end of that long afternoon, we walked home and Tareq showed me to my guest room in the house he shared with his mother and brother.  I was exhausted from the day's travel and probably weary of the unrelenting conflict I was seeing for the first time in the West Bank.  I felt a deep responsibility toward those who shared their stories, their lives, their pain with me.  I took off my shoes and fell quickly to sleep on the bed in the guest room.  And I must have slept, pretty soundly, for three or four hours.

In and out of dreams.  Rolling from side to side.  Sadness and anger.  Beautiful people and divided cities.  Walls and security cameras.  Armed teens at checkpoints.  At some point, in the midst of a dream, I must have cried out.  As I was drifting back to sleep, I was aware of a figure in the room with me, and then aware of the figure pulling up the blanket I'd shed while dreaming.  Pulling it up to make me comfortable, safe, in his home.  It was Tareq.

Later that night, Tareq took me out, another tour, an evening round in Hebron.  This time, we visited his friends, some his age, some much older.  We went from home to home, building to building; and at each place, he introduced me to his friends, who pulled out sweets or tea for us; and Tareq did his best to translate (Arabic to English) so I could follow the conversation. I remember that one friend had recently returned from Mecca and shared the joy of that hajj with all of us.  It was, start to finish, one of the most extraordinary nights of my life.  Tareq's love for Hebron, for life there, for the community of families, with their many stories and aspirations--it was infectious, genuine and human.

I'm thinking of Tareq tonight, and his many friends in Hebron, his extended family there.  They are suffocated by Israel's occupation, and it's been that way for decades now.  They are threatened regularly by settlers who toss hot water and garbage from high above their markets and streets.  And their city itself is almost always in some state of lock-down, impassable and economically devastated by an occupation that's gone on for years and years and years.  

What Tareq and his friends said--all the way back in 2008--was honest and hopeful: "We're counting on decent people in the West to speak up, to intervene, to use whatever nonviolent tools you have to call Israel to account."  They mentioned the huge American contribution--annually--to Israel's security apparatus and the occupation itself.  They recognized that Amercan governments enabled Israel's apartheid project.  And they knew--even then--that without American intervention nothing would ever change in Hebron, in the West Bank, for Palestinians.  And they were right about all that.  History bears that out.

But they also believed--and this continues to amaze me--that some Americans were eager to stand up and be counted.  They trusted that we were serious and committed about speaking to all that military support, demanding accountability, insisting on Israeli compliance with UN resolutions, bringing the occupation to an end at last.  

As General Synod 33 debates our Resolution of Witness on a Just Peace tomorrow, I'll have Tareq in my heart and in my mind's eye.  His hope for a future in his hometown.  His love for family and friends.  His commitment to creative and daring nonviolence in pursuit of justice for all.  For Tareq's sake, and so many others, I hope and pray the Synod will name the present project in Israel for what it is, and for what Palestinians have been experiencing for decades: apartheid.  It's the language of international law, after all, and only international law and international collective action will bring the occupation to an end.

And then I hope and pray the Synod will hear what Tareq's Christian friends are asking for: an acknowledgement that silence in the presence of such an occupation is sin, that the occupation itself is sin, and that peoples of faith can only begin to play a constructive role when we confess complicity over decades.  Only then--but then--we can be truth-tellers and healers of the breach.

If I have an opportunity to speak tomorrow--to either of these points: "apartheid" or "sin"--I'll be thinking of Tareq as I do so, and the many other friends and advocates like him, whose decency and strength move me to witness.  Now.  Always.