The Ancient Roots of The Palestinian Problem

Interior of a Palestinian Christian

home in the mid-19th century

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he plans to promote legislation that will constitutionally establish the country’s status as the nation-state of the Jewish people.  This will effectively scuttle the two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and it plays into the favor of those Orthodox extremists who, believing that the Land of Israel was given by God to the Jewish People and exclusively for the Jewish People, want non-Jews to be expelled because their presence defiles the sacredness of the land given them by God.  (It needs to be clarified that not all Orthodox Jews favor the establishment of a Jewish State as they believe that only the awaited Messiah has the divine authority to restore Israel.)  

The posting that I did recently on Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Teaneck New Jersey and his suggestion to relocate the Muslim Noble Sanctuary from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount to “Saudi Arabia, Syria or wherever it is wanted” as well as his encouragement to push the Arab/Palestinian population from Israel/Palestine is symptomatic of this sort of thinking.  After all, it makes sense—the Arabs are latecomers to the Promised Land.  What claim do they have to live in this land that God promised to Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, and gave to Joshua and the children of Israel more than 3200 years ago?

There is some confusion about the Palestinian people and that leads to this racist misconception.  We call them Arabs because they speak Arabic, but their ethnic identity is a bit more complex.

There were native Syrian peoples living in the lands that today are called Israel and Palestine more than 12,000 years ago.  They began as nomadic tribes with their domesticated sheep and goats, but gradually settled down on the rich soil and began raising crops. Like other peoples in the “Fertile Crescent”—that geographic strip that runs northward from Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the East and then crescents south along the coast to Egypt, there was a flourishing civilization in the region some six millennia or more ago.  At this time—c.4000 BC—various tribes such as the Jebusites, Hittites, and Amorites migrated into the land and established their own settlements side by side with those already there. These people are often referred to as “Canaanites” but that term can mislead us to think of them as a single homogenous people. In fact, these various peoples tended to have distinct settlements with a minimal amount of inter-marriage except among the ruling class where inter-tribal marriage forged political alliances.  While they may have borrowed various cultural elements from one another and even borrowed the worship of various gods, they tended to remain distinct from one another with their own rulers and socio/legal traditions. 

Sometime around 2300 BC the Phoenician peoples made settlements along the coast.  Through this period these people tended to be even more unique than the various Cannanite tribes and the Phoenicians, being a sea-going people, branched out westwards into the Mediterranean establishing trading posts and colonies in what is today Sicily, North Africa, and Spain. 

The Israelite exodus from Egypt and their entrance into the land is usually dated between 1250 and 1200 BC.  The Israelites found the land already occupied by the aforementioned peoples but throughout the period of the Judges gradually carved out territories for themselves where they established their own towns and villages.  One of the chief concerns of the Judges, of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, and later of the Prophets, was to prevent cultural assimilation with their non-Israelite neighbors and maintain their distinct tradition, Law, and religion.  This met with mixed success as we see with the infidelities of David and Solomon as well as the criticisms of the later kings for idolatrous practices by the prophets. 

The Israelites were not the last people into the land.  Only a generation after the Children of Israel entered the land of Canaan, the Philistines came and established settlements along the seacoast.  A century later the Arameans came in. 

The Assyrians, the Babylonians, and then the Persians invaded the land in 722, 587, and 540 BC respectively.  The difference with these invasions is that the invaders came to conquer but not to settle, and so they did not leave the imprint on the ethnic makeup of the land that the various settling peoples had.  The Greeks under Alexander the Great would be the next invaders in 333 BC.  They were followed by a small but not insignificant Armenian invasion around 100 BC.  In 63 BC the Romans annexed the land as a “client kingdom” under the Hasmonean dynasty until Herod Archelaus, son of Herod the Great, ruled so badly the kingdom was taken from him and formed into the Roman Province of Iudaea. 

During the period of Greek domination under the rule of the Antiochean Seleucid Kings who ruled the land after the death of Alexander the Great, the policy had been to homogenize the diverse peoples, cultures, and religions of the land into a single Greek culture.  While most of the various peoples dwelling in Syria/Palestine/Judea acceded to this plan and began to cede their unique cultural identities, the Jews, under the leadership of the Macabees, resisted this Hellenization and did so to the point of martyrdom. 

Mark 7:26 has an interesting description of a woman as “Greek, a Syro- Phoenician by nation.”  This indicates that while there was a certain amount of assimilation, particular ethnic identities survived.  One group that was distinct that we have not yet mentioned are the Samaritans.  The Samaritans were Israelites who never accepted the hegemony of the Temple at Jerusalem but had (and have today) their own Temple on Mount Gerizim in what is today Israel.   They were regarded as heretics by the Jews for whom the Temple at Jerusalem was the only place where sacrifice was to be offered.   The Samaritans, a small community today, have retained their distinct ethnic identity to the present day. 

the Jews were expelled from the land of Judea after the failure of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 AD.  While small groups were able to remain in the Galilee, most of what is today Israel remained without Jewish inhabitants until the late 19^th century and the Zionist movement which encouraged Jews to return to the ancient land they claim as their patrimony. 

Under Roman Rule the remaining population continued to homogenize and as the Roman Empire gradually slid into its Byzantine Identity in the fourth and fifth centuries, Christianity gave an even more unifying force to the once distinct peoples.  Christianity was not totally unifying, however, as the segment of the population that was descended from the various Canaanite peoples and who tended more to be rural, followed the West Syrian liturgy known as the Liturgy of Saint James, while the Byzantines—townsfolk and predominately descendants of the Greeks and the Romans—followed the Greek Rite that would come to be called the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom.  The Armenians retained their distinct identity with their own liturgical rites as well as some basic doctrinal differences with both the Greeks and the Syriacs. 

In the seventh century, invaders came up from the Arabian Peninsula bringing Islam.  While they seized control of the land from the Emperor at Constantinople, they did not force either Islam or the Arabic language on the local population.  Indeed the native population remained overwhelmingly Christian for centuries and Aramaic, the common language of the land in the time of Jesus, remained the ordinary language of most of the population. 

What one had then in the land was a base population that was, except for pockets of Druze and Samaritan minorities, predominately Christian divided into their different villages according to their specific liturgical/ethnic peculiarities: Syrian, Melkite (Greek), Armenian, Maronite and with an Arab Muslim ruling class.  During the period of the Umayyad Caliphate at Damascus, Christians often held key administrative posts.  The father of Saint John Damascene, for example, was a court official of the Caliph. 

Non-Muslims were free to practice their religion but they did have to pay an extra tax, the jizya.  This tax was an exemption from serving in the military, participation in which was limited to Muslims.  Over a period of time, of centuries, more and more of the population converted to Islam, in part to avoid this tax.  Nevertheless, at the time of Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, almost half of the Palestinian population, descendants of these Greek-Syriac peoples who themselves were descended—at least in part—from the ancient Canaanite peoples—were still Christian.  They were about half Greek Orthodox, with the other half divided between Roman Catholics and Melkite (Byzantine) Catholics.  There were also significant Armenian and Syriac Orthodox communities and a smaller Coptic Christian community.  As the situation in Israel made life more and more intolerable for the Palestinian peoples, many emigrated to the United States, to Canada, to Australia and to other parts of the world where they would not suffer the limits of freedom and opportunity imposed on them by the unabashedly apartheid policies of the State of Israel.  The Christians, being mostly townspeople and merchants, have found it easier to emigrate than the Muslims who, being predominately farmers, are more closely tied to the land and orchards their families have operated for centuries and which are now being confiscated and turned into “settlements” for the refugees that have flooded Israel from Russia and other Eastern European countries.  

A Fight For The Future

It is a battle for the soul of the 

Church--Evangelical Catholicism

or old-school Catholicism

I have always liked going to morning Mass.  For years went to a local monastery for Mass most of the time, but since I recently moved, have been going to the local parish.  Not bad—not great (I still miss the friars) but not bad.  Homily this morning was somewhat pertinent to what I have been writing in recent entries.

The priest reminded us that the Samaritans were outcasts, “unclean” in Jewish eyes.  As left-behind descendants of the ancient Israelites (the ten northern tribes whom the Assyrians had led into exile in 722 BC (more or less, exact year uncertain), the Samaritans worshiped Yahweh and had the Five Books of the Law (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), albeit in their own language and with considerable variation from the Hebrew Text.  Because they worshiped God at their own temple on Mount Gerizim and not in the Jerusalem Temple, and because they followed religious law that differed from the Jewish standards, they were considered particularly unclean.  The devout Jews of Jesus day were convinced that while the Greeks and Romans were unclean and thus unworthy of God’s attention, the Samaritans should have known better and thus their sins were particularly foul.  But the Samaritan in today’s gospel received the same mercy as his Jewish colleagues and, moreover, was all the more appreciative of it because he had been an outcast, not only as a leper (as were the 9 Jewish lepers with whom he met Jesus) but as one who had always been told that, as a Samaritan, he stood outside the mercy of God.  Jesus’ dealings with the Samaritans—whether in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Woman at the Well, or today’s exercise of mercy towards a leper—were a red-flag to the pious Jews.  In the same way, Pope Francis’ agenda of reaching out to those whom pious Catholics consider to be “sinners” or in need of “repentance” and “conversion” before they are welcomed back into the community of the faithful is offensive to today’s scribes and Pharisees.  We are stewards of the Divine Mercy, not protectors of it; we are meant to had it out generously and freely as there is a (literally) inexhaustible supply of God’s Mercy.  It should be squandered on sinners; it was meant to be squandered on sinners.  But only those who have received the Mercy, like the Samaritan in today’s gospel, can appreciate it sufficiently to revel in its excess without worrying that it might someday be exhausted.  Those who would be stingy in spending it will never themselves be given its abundance because they don’t know what it is for. 

I have done a number of posts on “Evangelical Catholicism” based on my reflections on George Weigel’s book by the same name. Weigel defines Evangelical Catholicism as

The Catholic Church is being invited to meet the Risen Lord in the Scriptures, the Sacraments, and Prayer and to make friendship with him the center of Catholic life. Every Catholic has received this invitation in Baptism, the invitation to accept the Great Commission, to act as evangelists and to measure the truth of Catholic life by the way in which Catholics give expression to the human decency and solidarity that flows from friendship with Christ the Lord.  

I am not happy with how Weigel unfolds this ideal in his book with concrete proposals for how the Church might act in regards to its mission in the contemporary world, but I think his definition of Evangelical Catholicism is exactly on target.  As he defines the specifics of what he means by the above vision of the Church, Weigel attempts to somewhat squeeze the broad foot of Christ’s Risen Body into the somewhat narrow shoe of Pope Benedict XVI, whereas Pope Francis seems content to let Christ enjoy the freedom of being barefoot. 

Looking at Weigel’s definition of Evangelical Catholicism we get the following elements.

1.   We are all called to meet the Risen Christ and make friends with him in the Scriptures

2.   We are all called to meet the Risen Christ and make friends with him in the Sacraments

3.   We are all called to meet the Risen Christ and make friends with him in Prayer

4.   We are all called to become evangelists, going out into the world to make disciples of all peoples, teaching them what Christ has taught us, and baptizing them in the Name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. (The Great Commission.) 

5.   We are called to give witness to the truth of our Catholic faith by the way our friendship with Christ leads us to express our human decency and our fundamental ties (solidarity) with all others. 

Looking at the fifth principle (spelled it correctly this time, Anonymous of 11/10, thank you for making me more carefully aware of my propensity to choose the wrong spelling of that word) let me draw your attention to the fact that Weigel mentions human decency and solidarity as essential elements of how we relate to others.  I think this is the problem with those of the “Burke School” of Divine Mercy (as differentiated from the “Pope Francis School” of Divine Mercy.  With solidarity—the key concept of Pope John Paul II—we understand that we are all in the boat together and that the salvation of the one depends on the salvation of each of the others.  With solidarity there is no “them” and “us,” there is only a we.  We do not judge, as Pope Francis has declined to judge, precisely because we know that we are in the same boat as the most miserable of sinners.   

In light of that, let me say that I don’t judge Cardinal Burke.  O, I might make fun of him and his propensity to dress up like the Empress Maria Teresa (always one of my favorite people in history, and, like the Cardinal, a devout Catholic), but I have no doubt that he is sincere in his faith.  The problem is the construct of that faith. I understand him because I once saw things very much as he did.  I had very clear concepts of moral right and moral wrong and expected people—including myself—to conform to those constructs.  I am approximately of the same age as the Cardinal, but I have been fortunate, however, through the years to come to know people in ways that Cardinal Burke and others seem not to have.  I have come to realize that while there are clear boundaries of right and wrong in the world of abstractions, in the reality of people’s lives there are immense complexities that cast shadow and/or light on our moral structures.  I have met people who have made difficult—very difficult—decisions in their lives and not always the right ones.  I have met people who have made wrong decisions—sometimes seriously wrong decisions—and yet remained essentially good people.  I have seen that certain decisions—objectively wrong—have not deprived individuals from great graces in their prayer (sanctifying grace) or in their actions (actual grace).  In my career as an educator, I have been to 12 step meetings for people with addictions to drugs, with addiction to alcohol, with addictions to sexual behaviors—and I have heard some of the greatest stories of God’s grace and favor that have ever been told.  I have met divorced and remarried; I have met active homosexuals; I have met unmarried couples whose capacity to empty themselves for others in profound acts of charity motivated by their faith in Christ and their love of God and nourished by their participation in the sacramental life of the Church and their confidence in the gospel has stunned me into understanding that I simply cannot judge the state of another’s soul no matter the external circumstances of their lives.  I am deeply sorry that Cardinal Burke and those who have rallied to his side in opposing the hopes of Pope Francis for a more welcoming Church have not had this same grace.  It is sad that Raymond Burke sought office in the Church and it is the failure of the Church that she (the Church) rewarded his quest for power.  Perhaps had he stayed a country priest, faithful to the confessional and the hungers of his flock, he might see things somewhat differently. 

The story is that Francis too, when Provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina, was known to be hardassed and rigid in his administration of the rules of the Society over the priests and brothers entrusted to his care.  The plight of those same priests during the Argentine “Dirty War” seems to have been the shock that Bergoglio needed to view the challenges of life from a different perspective.  Two of the Jesuits under his care were arrested by the Argentine military and were tortured, but many of the Jesuits were in great danger because of their identification with the poorest and most abused in Argentine Society.  Bergoglio became involved with the underground, helping several flee the country and giving up his own passport to one journalist to use to escape.    It seems that the “Dirty War” was the agent of Bergoglio’s radicalization. 

It is difficult for those who have not experienced the sort of personal conversion that Jorge Bergoglio underwent to understand the direction he has taken since becoming Pope last year.  We can only pray for the grace for our hearts to be opened and to see the world with the compassion that fills the Sacred Heart of Jesus rather than the judgment of the scribes and the Pharisees.  Scribes and Pharisees, and even rogue Cardinals, can be as good people as martyred nuns and tortured priests or even as maligned and misunderstood Popes, it is all a matter of allowing God to replace the stony heart with one of flesh.  

Renovations for the Basilica of the Nativity

The Armenian Altar in the Basilica

of the Nativity in Bethlehem

I see that they are about to undertake a twenty million dollar renovation of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.  The current basilica was built by the Emperor Justinian in 565 to replace the original basilica built by the Emperor Constantine and his mother, Helena, in 327.  The Constantinian Basilica had been destroyed in the Samaritan Revolt of 529.   The Samaritan revolts were a series of rebellions in the late fifth and early sixth centuries against the Byzantine Empire by the Samaritan community in Palestine.  The Samaritans are the descendants of the Jews of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, which separated from the Davidic Monarchy in the southern Kingdom of Judah after the death of Solomon.  They rejected the authority of the Davidic Monarchy and, even more important, the Jerusalem Temple which was allied with the House of David.  They built their own temple on Mount Gerazim, near modern day Nablus in the West Bank.  When the Jews were expelled from the Roman province of Syria-Palestine at the end of the Bar Kokhba  Revolt in 135, the Samaritans were allowed to remain.  As the Roman Empire morphed into the Byzantine Empire, the Samaritans gained a great measure of political autonomy and reached a “golden age.”  Some scholars estimate that the Samaritan population may have reached one million in this time.  (They are less than a thousand today.)  Their temple on Mount Gerazim was rebuilt and the High Priest, Baba Rabbah, established liturgical patterns that are still followed today.  Given this renaissance of Samaritan political and religious power, the Samaritans were used to a certain measure of control over their region, but the Emperor Zeno (ruled 474-491) saw them as a political threat and tried to force them to accept Christianity.  The attempts of the Emperors to reassert control and suppress Samaritan religion and culture in favor of Byzantine Christianity, triggered a series of revolts between 484 and 556.  In the 529 uprising the Basilica of the Nativity was burned to the ground. It was rebuilt by Justinian and that is the structure that still stands.  A fifteen-centuries old building needs some care. 

In 2008 the World Monuments Fund placed the Basilica on the list of the 100 most endangered sites.  Their report read

The present state of the church is worrying. Many roof timbers are rotting, and have not been replaced since the 19th century. The rainwater that seeps into the building not only accelerates the rotting of the wood and damages the structural integrity of the building, but also damages the 12th-century wall mosaics and paintings. The influx of water also means that there is an ever-present chance of an electrical fire. If another earthquake were to occur on the scale of the one of 1834, the result would most likely be catastrophic. ... It is hoped that the listing will encourage its preservation, including getting the three custodians of the church – the Greek Orthodox Church, the Armenian Orthodox Church, and the Franciscan order – to work together, which has not happened for hundreds of years. The Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority would also have to work together to protect it.

It was only in 2012 that the Church was declared to be a world heritage site. Israel had blocked this designation for years and the United States supported the Israeli position that had to do no so much with religious issues as that the Church stands in Palestinian territory and Israel has consistently resisted any action that would recognize Palestinian sovereignty.  Fortunately saner heads prevailed and in a vote of 13-6 (conducted by secret ballot to make it easier to support the designation) UNESCO marked the ancient church as a World Heritage Site. 

If you think working around Israeli intransigence towards the Palestinians is tough, try getting the three Christian Churches who have title to the basilica to agree on a project.  The main nave of the Basilica is controlled by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.  The Armenian Apostolic Church has an altar in the transept north of the main sanctuary.  The Catholic Church has an adjoining Church of Saint Catherine which is an 1881 rebuilding of a Crusader monastic chapter house as well as several outlaying chapels.  Catholics and Armenians share with the Greeks access to the Grotto of the Nativity which is beneath the main sanctuary of Justinian’s basilica. While the complex is divided among the three, the ownership is shared and any decision regarding its repair must be agreed upon by all three groups.  The Greeks have been particularly hostile to Catholics and Armenians over the years—and I have seen this myself—even physically attacking clergy from the other denominations as they go to pray in the Grotto. 

The danger of the church actually falling down is what has persuaded the Greeks to go along with the plan for the restoration.  The main task will be replacing the rotten beams in the roof and this will cost almost two million dollars.  The roof will be further weatherized to prevent future rot.  That is only the beginning of the work however as the entire building needs to be stabilized and this also presents the opportunity for safer electrical wiring to be installed.  The appearance of the church will not be altered in any way.  Funding is coming from the Palestinan Authority as well as from the Holy See, Russia, France, Greece, and Hungary.  Hopefully the effort will improve relations among the three denominations as well.