Copyright sluggerotoole
A standing man at the front of an East Belfast Church. Here to share a story. Passing on preamble he unbuttons his jacket, and, with his arms wide spread, asks us to observe, to confirm that he is human. Powered by heart, blood, breath, hopes and dreams. One who feels. Deeply. ‘Am I not also Human?’ As if brother to a Venetian Merchant objecting to his dehumanisation. But Rev Ashraf Tannous possesses a multiplicity of identities: Arab, Palestinian, Semitic. And Christian. His people a part of that story. Not only because he pastors the Lutheran Bethlehem Christmas Church. But that his ancestors were there at the very beginning, in Jerusalem on the first Pentecost. Becoming part of the very first church. That he feels compelled to make the case for both his people’s humanity (and pedigree) shows the extent of our disregard for human dignity – our shared Imago Dei. One that echoes others subjected to myriad cruelties, who cried out, ‘I can’t breathe.’ And that their lives matter too. Or, with a Martin Luther King, Jr., moment, in Chicago 1968, stood alongside black sanitation workers holding placards also saying that, ‘I Am Human.’ Ashraf spells out the plethora of Apartheid indignities faced by a caged population in the West Bank: walls, checkpoints, soldiers shouting, cursing, spitting from behind guns pointed – at long lines stood in the sun, or tortured before the 1200 new gates installed on roads since October 2023. ‘If you raise your voice, you might be seen as a threat. And shot.’ There’s a roulette wheel-spin app that occasionally alerts travellers to chase capricious openings of these newly gated communities. He names the economic strangulation of the West Bank as a ‘silent starvation’ of a caged population unable to travel into Israel to work. It seems, he says, that the aim is to make life so unbearable that you might voluntarily leave. A choice taken by 150 Christian families in Bethlehem over the last two years. He outlines this silent Genocide and Ecocide unfolding throughout the Occupied Territories as ancient olive trees are uprooted or burnt; as looting and frenzied settler attacks continue. Land is stolen, villagers and animals murdered; water sources commandeered, then sold back at inflated prices. To those trapped like insects in a jar, tortured by a cruel child. All at the behest of a God who supposedly administers DNA tenancy tests. In a place where 11-year-old girls write their wills. A slew of maps above Ashraf project ever-shrinking territory – from the 1948 Nakba, to another, 1967 Palestinian catastrophe, which, through the looking glass, doubles as a case of ‘catastrophic success’ for Israel – now become occupier of a subject population placed under military law, requiring repression. Trending to ethnic cleansing. Dehumanising both occupied and occupier. Over time, a well-funded settler movement built critical mass to flood onto hilltops as the Occupied Territories became a Swiss cheese of separated Palestinian enclaves. But rights in Israel/Palestine are granted only as a function of tragedies, the Holocaust outweighing all others. After two years, most of the world now sees the suffering in Gaza for what it is. The G word debate over – proven by facts and messaged by persistently marching feet. But at a cost. Of moral injury. In the process, as Pankaj Mishra says, in ‘The Shoah after Gaza’, protestors ‘risk permanently embittering their lives – in attempts to bear witness and alleviate, even a little, the Palestinian’s feelings of absolute loneliness.’ A cost which most prefer to denial and a dehumanisation of the self. In Gaza, two million lives cast into the air are now left hanging by a thread from the hem of a mad king in search of the prize of peace. Whilst in the West Bank, 2.7 million people squeezed into a tightening net expect to become the next scapegoat sent out into the wilderness bearing the sins of others, namely European Antisemitism. Left to the mercy of hands made mad by ancestral wounds – then absolute power. But our governing echelons, the clients of Empire, remain reluctant to even name the crime and present it to the criminal. Never mind take appropriate action. Empires, like angry beasts easily enraged, lash out with their long sweeping arms of impunity. The force of their blows felt most fiercely by those farthest from the Metropolitan centre. Those without citizenship rights. At the very least, we must lament and bear witness. However, as Rev. Ashraf stressed, it is better still to speak out and support communities while we still can. If you’d like information on Christians4Palestine’s proposal to offer support and assistance by ‘twinning’ local churches and communities with West Bank towns and villages, starting with the town of Taybeh, please visit their website at: christians4palestine.org or email: [email protected]
