There Are Stories Behind Every Story

It’s 5:28 in the morning right now. The sun is slowly getting out of bed to warm up Tel Aviv and soon the people will rise to do the same. At this point, however, only Daniel and I are awake as we sort through the different croissant options and swap stories over coffee. He hands me a chocolate bun with some purple object that awkwardly rests on the top. He assures me it’s edible, I decline all the same.

Daniel is running the show here at the Blue Sea Marble Hotel, managing the phone and the pastries and the customers who come in with bed heads full of complaints. I’ve only known him for the past 15 minutes, but I’m already convinced that he’s completely fascinating—a rare blend of charisma and composure, extraverted enough to execute a conversation and yet disciplined enough to maintain a mystery.

“What have you guys been doing with your time here in Israel?”

In a cliff notes kind of fashion I share with him the nature of our trip. I tell him about how together we have embarked on a study of the conflict, meeting with people from all over the place in hopes of trying to learn what it means to be peacemakers in a violent world. Throughout the week when other Israelis have asked me a similar sounding question, I’ve been less forthright, withholding from them the details of our time spent with a wounded father in the Balata Refugee Camp or the late night dancing and drinking with Palestinian friends in the West Bank. I’ve held up the veil of secrecy out of respect for them—I didn’t want to offend or hurt their feelings. Or maybe it was just a case of fear. Either way, this morning I’ve grown fatigued from this facade; these cards are getting too heavy to hold so close. I let it all come out.

He nods his head as I walk through him our itinerary. I can tell that his mind is spinning. 

“That’s very interesting, very interesting. You are a good people. This is then some kind of lefty American operation?"

I smile and laugh behind my teethe, as certain faces come to mind of people in our group who would despise being labeled as lefty.

“From your vantage point—as an everyday Israeli and not just a visitor like us, what do you make of all of this madness?” I asked, wincing from trying to choke down the Turkish coffee that Daniel has brewed (he swears that the Turkish have “taken coffee to the next level.” I've yet to be convinced.)

“You have to remember that everything has a history to it—there are stories behind every story. The story behind every Israeli’s story is a history of being hated, with the Holocaust as the exclamation mark on this history. We are scared of the Arabs because the Arabs are angry about the stories behind their stories. People in poverty and hard situations can do desperate things. We’ve seen them do desperate things. And that’s scary…."

Daniel keeps talking but between the Turkish coffee and his opening words, I’ve lost pace with him.

There are stories behind every story.

This is my second time in Israel studying the conflict. I remember leaving Israel last time feeling so tangled and frustrated by the incongruent narratives that everyone seemed to hold up as the Truth, that for them, explains why peace is fictitious in the land and far from being established. While there hasn’t been a smooth synthesizing of these stories to send me on my way this time, I’ll be less burdened by the tangled complications of it all and will leave this trip remembering that there are stories behind every story. 

As lucrative and perhaps soothing as it would be to live in a world filled with absolute rights and wrongs and blacks and whites, Israel and Palestine remind us that such a simplistic world doesn’t exist and to behave as if it does is damning of the world that actually does exist, the world that paints with grey more often than black or white. For the Israeli Jew, they obsess over security because they have a history of insecurity—of being brutalized and vulnerable with no one coming to their rescue. For the Palestinian, they have lost their dreams for tomorrow as 1948’s Nakba (“catastrophe”) still reminds them that life is fragile and only to be enjoyed by a few. This is a land stacked tall with stories—nothing is as it seems.

Clearly a morning person, Daniel rarely pauses and wraps up his words by letting me see his fear and his resolve to rise above it.

“I am afraid every morning when I am the first one up in the hotel and I see all of these trucks go past with Arabs behind the wheel. How do I know that they won’t come out and start stabbing? My father used to tell me that if I wanted money and a good life, I should come live in America. But if I want to have a fulfilled life and to feel good inside, then I should stay in Israel. Israel is not just a place for me, this land is my home. I love this Israel like a father loves a son."

And there it is. This is the the story that has a consensus voice to it—shared between both the Palestinians and the Israelis. The parental bond of love between the people and the land is intensely strong, a paradigm that the western world will struggle to understand. As a father who loves his son very much, through this angle I can begin to empathize further, recognizing that in many ways, this conflict is a conflict over parental rights. It’s a custody battle filled with many parents who want to live in the same house as their child. For the Palestinians, they feel like their child was stolen from them. For the Israelis, they feel like their child has returned to them. Is shared custody a possibility between the kidnappers and the family?

I thank Daniel for the coffee and the conversation, grateful that he’s let me get a glimpse into his world. 

“Keep working for peace,” he says as I finally cave and eat the purple object that he offered me earlier.

I nodded, grateful to be a part of a team and a community at home that will continue to wage peace in the world.

Matt

Love your neighbor as yourself.

This is my first blog post so hopefully you can stay with me as I stumble through trying to tell a story that needs to be told. A couple days ago I spent the day with one of the most impressive people I have ever met. Her name is Amal and she is a Palestinian women who lives in the West Bank. She is a woman whose bravery you can see in her eyes, her hard work on her hands and her love in her actions.

Here is a brief look into her story which I will surely not do justice. She was born on a piece of land that her family has owned since the Ottoman Empire. This land is precious, this land is holy, this land is her land and she has had to defend it for the last 30 years. Amal’s grandfather had the wisdom to get legal documents from the Ottoman Empire, which stated that they had legally purchased this land, which unfortunately many Palestinians did not do. In the early 90’s Israelis began flooding Palestine to take what God had deemed theirs, claiming that while the Palestinians didn’t have the papers for their land, the scriptures would stand as evidence for this to be Israel’s land. They began pushing Amal’s neighbors out of the area with bulldozers and the Israeli Army at their back. They set up settlements around her family’s land that covered the hills in every direction. The Israelis soon set their eyes on Amal’s land, which lied in the center.

When we pulled up to her families land we couldn’t drive all the way up to her house because there were huge boulders that blocked her driveway. I thought they were put there to keep Israelis out but then was informed that Israeli “Settlers” had put the boulders there to make their life difficult. They went out of their way to move thousand pound stones to block their driveway in hopes that it would break them into leaving. To be honest, when they told me this, I wasn’t very surprised. I thought to myself, “Of course they would”. We walked the long driveway up to her farmstead and were met there by her brother Daher who unlocked the large gate that entered to their family’s paradise. I wish I could describe this land to you in words but that would be stupid to attempt, but let me tell you that this land is beautiful and dangerous. The beauty is in the valleys it overlooks and the danger is in the “Settlers” mansions that salivate over their land.

We met with Amal in a cave that had a large wooden table that sat all 25 of us. As soon as she opened her mouth she broke us with her story and inspired us with her response to the injustice. She told us stories of spending her days pleading with both Israeli judges and Israelis bulldozers that attempt to prey over her land. As stories rolled off her tongue I got angry, full of hate and tears filled my eyes. I cringed as she told us about the time when the “Settlers” came down from their hilltops to surround her land with guns to inform them that they had to leave. She brought her legal documents to the Israelis to show the proof of purchase from the Ottoman Empire and they told her it didn’t matter because God had given them ownership. She didn’t budge. The Israelis left which meant they survived another day but the worst was yet to come. She went on to explain how a week later the “Settlers” came in the middle of the night to bulldoze 1500 fruitful 30-100 year old olive trees while they slept. What did she do when they did this? She planted 3000 trees… They made the decision to love their neighbor, regardless of their actions. She told us how Jesus called us to love our neighbor and that Jesus did not specify on what type of neighbor.

What did I take away from these stories? How can I become more like Amal? My hope is that I don’t react to conflict but act in a positive way. I hope to love as Amal loves. 

So grateful for being able to hear her story. 

In His grip,

Jordan