On Friday the 10th of January, a group of young adults, in the Christmas spirit, visited Christian families in need in the northern area in Palestine.

Visiting families is a way of telling them that we are here, that we are united, and that we have solidarity with the few Christian families left in these villages. The message is more than just materialistic and getting them supplies. It is also to make them feel united and know that even if distance keeps us apart, they are always in our thoughts prayers.

We were three groups who came together from Beit Sahour (Bethlehem area), Ramallah, and Jerusalem.

We met the eight participants from Bethlehem at the checkpoint at 7:00 a.m., continued to pick up four participants from Jerusalem, and then on our way to Nablus stopped in Ramallah to be joined with another thirteen participants. We arrived in Rafidia (Nablus) where we met Father Yousef Saadeh, the Melkite Parish Priest. This meeting gave a chance for the group to get to know each other over Arabic coffee at Fr. Yousef’s Church.

We then left to visit surrounding villages in Nablus and Jenin. We started at Sabastya, and visited the sites of John the Baptist Church, now called Yehya Mosque. We then continued up north to the village of Beit Imrin, where we visited an elderly woman. She is the only Christian left in the village. We exchanged Christmas wishes and offered a Christmas parcel. After that we went to Kufr Qud, where we visited seven families that live in the same neighborhood around the only church in the village.

On our way to another village we stopped at Burqin, a village with eighty Christian families and a church, where we had sandwiches for lunch in the beautiful garden. We headed later on to Der Ghazaleh Village, where we visited two families, and then to the last village called Jalameh. Here, we visited two families.

All the families were so kind and appreciative; it was hard for us to leave after such a short visit. The Christmas presents we gave them included flour, rice, oil, and sugar. Each person participating in the Sabeel event made a personal financial contribution earlier in the day. This money was split amongst the families who indeed needed them. It was not just giving them supplies and saying “Merry Christmas”; it was more than that. It was reaching out to our Christian community, meeting them, talking with them, feeling connected, and reminding them that we all belong here together. We also played with their children and shared candy! They were hospitable and treated us as if they have known us for years. With each family we prayed and sang hymns. The spirit of Christ was felt in each humble household.

To conclude our fruitful day, Fr. Yousef invited us for the famous Knafe dessert at his church in Rafidia, where we exchanged our goodbyes and gratitude. Hopefully God will give us the same strength to do the same event again – visiting even more families.

“In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke2:8).

“…after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem…” (Matthew 2:1).

The fact that the Christmas story mentions only two groups of visitors to the Christ child in Bethlehem, has, I believe, a theological significance. The shepherds in first century Palestine represented one of the lowest social strata in society. Religious tradition of Jesus’ day labeled them as unclean. They were marginalized, poor, and considered as the scum of society; while the wise men represented the well to do, the educated, and the scholars of their day. The theological implication is clear: God’s love for all people was expressed in and through the coming of Jesus Christ. This love welcomed both the shepherds and the wise men. True love does not differentiate between God’s children. In Christ, the evil of discrimination and bigotry is obliterated … Read More

Check the Arabic Christmas Message رسالة عيد الميلاد

“Christmas, my child, is love in action. … Every time we love, every time we give, it’s Christmas.” – Dale Evans Rogers

On Saturday 7th of Dec. 2013 we took around 11 young adults to Jericho for the Advent. There, we were hosted by Fr. Mario Hadshiti and his church, and we were re-united with the young adults of Nazareth after several months of not seeing them.

In total, we were 25 participants; including 3 people who joined us from the youth group of Jericho. Fr. Mario gave us a short introduction about Christmas and its importance, which led to a conversation about how we as young adults can make a difference and have stronger faith.

Later on, we played a couple of ice-breakers and discussed the future of young adults with Sabeel, and how we can strengthen it. We also talked about the areas that we need to fill for the youth in Jerusalem. We at Sabeel were glad that we have planned most of our programs based on their needs. We are very much looking forward to working with them, as they are with us.

We worked together to prepare lunch, which was barbeque, and the nice weather also helped. We had a lovely meal and good conversation.

We look forward to meeting again for a great activity together, and we will be exchanging our Christmas wishes at our annual Sabeel Christmas dinner on December 19th.

Have a Merry Christmas!

“It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.”- W.T.Ellis

On a Friday afternoon, we took a group of 36 participants to Bethlehem for the Advent. We left the Sabeel offices to Beit Al-Tifil (Children’s Home) where we met Fr. Marwan D’ides, who explained to us the establishment of the home. He said that it’s not an orphanage, but a warm home for children who come from an unstable environment (household violence, addictive parents, broken families, etc.). Some of them sleep there during weekdays and go back to their families during the weekend; and some other children go after school, do their homework and have lunch before going home. It’s amazing that the home still keeps in touch with the children who graduate high school, when they are young adults and not children anymore. They provide them with a warm, cozy home.

The group had discussions with Fr. Marwan about Christmas and read verses from the Bible. They discussed what is important in our lives, what determines the importance or the necessity of something we ask for from God, and the relativity of the matter and where this need or want comes in the ladder of priorities. After a good discussion with the participation of most of the group, the home offered us refreshments, homemade pastries and cookies. We met the children and had a tour around the house.

It was a short meeting; nevertheless, it was very fruitful! Every one enjoyed the quality time and looking at the decorations in Bethlehem, including the lighted Christmas tree. Joy was spread and pictures were taken.

Merry Christmas from the Community at Sabeel!

Palestinian Liberation Theology – 25 years on

It is a great privilege to be asked to reflect on the achievements of Palestinian Liberation Theology 25 years on. Like Professor Rosemary Ruether who has spoken about her involvement since the earliest days, I have also been deeply influenced by Dr Naim Ateek’s theology and the work of all his colleagues in Sabeel, and have personally found all of Sabeel’s Conferences transformative… read more

The young women gathered again on November 29th, 2013; they were so excited after Sabeel’s first young women’s meeting that they agreed promptly when they heard about it. As many as fourteen young women showed up at St. George’s Guest House.

At the beginning our speaker, Mrs. Abla Nasir, who is also one of the board members of Sabeel, introduced herself and the purpose of the meeting. Then she asked each of the women to introduce herself.

They discussed their difficulties in life as women and the tasks they do and how they can overcome these issues. Mrs. Nasir then gave them some tips on how to deal with these things and also reminded them how sometimes through these difficulties they have to look on the bright side of things that take place within families. She also shared some of her own personal family issues.

She explained that the initiative starts within us in order to make the changes in our life. More time is needed to go into ways and tools for changing, so we promised them to do it in another meeting.

We finished the one-and-a-half hour meeting and then had dinner together, where the women expressed their gratitude for the program and interest in participating in more.

The most important thing about this group was that the women trusted Sabeel because they were open to talk and share their personal experiences. This showed they are in need for such gatherings and activities.

Samia Khoury’s book, `Reflections from Palestine’
is launched at Sabeel anniversary

Jerusalem – The twenty-fifth anniversary of Palestinian liberation theology was the setting for the launch of Reflections from Palestine – A Journey of Hope, a memoir by Samia Nasir Khoury. The celebration in Jericho was part of the Sabeel International Conference.

About 350 people from Jerusalem and the West Bank, Nazareth and the Galilee area of Israel, and 15 other countries took part in the celebration. Khoury, a Christian, was a founding member of Sabeel, the ecumenical liberation theology center in Jerusalem.

Reflections from Palestine tells the story of life under occupation. It is a story that Khoury¸ who celebrated her 80th birthday on the day of the book launch, has told for many years. The book opens at the outset of 1967 “Six-Day War” and describes the relentless series of temporary measures that became the binding, suffocating reality of occupation following the Oslo Accords.
Khoury explains the wide-ranging social and political problems facing Palestinians through the sweet and sorrowful experiences of family and community life under occupation.

The Rev. Naim Ateek, founder of Sabeel, said that Khoury “makes her reader live with her the anxiety of a mother and grandmother, yet she never sounds bitter and never loses hope because she strongly believes in the justice of the cause of her people, the Palestinians.”

Khoury is a founding member of the Board of Trustees of Birzeit University in the West Bank. She was for many years a leader in the East Jerusalem YWCA. Khoury wrote for more than five years for The Witness magazine, a publication of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company.
Reflections from Palestine – A Journey of Hope is published by Rimal Publications.

Jerusalem – Today 179 children are incarcerated in Israel’s Ofer Prison, Gerard Horton told participants in the Sabeel International Conference here. The whole conference moved from the Notre Dame Center to Ofer Prison, near Ramallah, to offer prayers and song for the Palestinian youngsters held there. Sabeel is the ecumenical liberation theology center in Jerusalem. About 200 people are taking part in the conference
Horton outlined how and why so many children are prosecuted in the Israeli military court system. From 750,000 to 800,000 men, women and children have been prosecuted in these courts since 1967, he said. In most cases the purpose of these arrests is to gain intelligence and subdue the population through intimidation.

Horton is a founder of Military Court Watch, which monitors the treatment of children in Israeli military detention in light of rights and protections guaranteed under international law.

“During interrogation attempts are made to recruit the child as collaborator. The interrogator tries to scare the child, usually a boy. And this interrogation can be quite coercive,” Horton said. This is an effective tool for intelligence, he said. If the child has no concrete information, they will ask which kids in the neighborhood have been bragging about throwing stones at Israelis.

Horton relentlessly walked his audience through the harrowing events a child (usually 15-16 years old) might experience. “You have turned off the lights in your house and gone to bed. About 2:00 A.M. a military convoy enters the village or refugee camp. They know where the people are whom they have come to arrest. They might shout from the street or storm right into your house,” he said.

“The soldiers approach the father and ask for everyone’s identity cards. They compare these names with their list and identify. They take that child, bind his wrists behind him with a plastic zip tie, blindfold him and lead him out of the house. The soldiers have no documents; they say that the child will be returned home the next day,” Horton said.

“These soldiers are 19 years old, and they have been told that what they are doing is dangerous,” Horton explained. “They are scared and moving fast. They pinch the zip tie on the child’s wrists and pull it tight, too tight” causing swelling and sometimes bleeding. “They force the screaming family back into house and drive to the police station at one of the settlements,” he said.

“The child most often lies on the metal floor of the truck that bumps over the rough roads of the West Bank. He is terrified, cold, sometimes injured. He may have wet his pants, from fear or not having been allowed to use a toilet,” Horton said.

According to international law, each arrested child has the right to a lawyer, “but he usually does not see one until he is in court and has already signed a confession, printed in Hebrew, which he cannot read,” Horton said. “He has a right to silence, but he does not know this. He has the right to have his parents with him, but this does not happen,” he said.

“Under interrogation, the allegation is made: stone throwing. When the child denies that he has thrown stones he is yelled at, at close range, with and without the blindfold. If he does not confess, the interrogator threatens him based on information they already have (his father might lose his work permit, for example), Horton said. In most cases the child is denied bail. If he makes no confession, bail is denied and his imprisonment will be longer. He is most likely to confess to ensure a shorter prison term.

Israel’s conviction rate is 99.4 percent, Horton said. The convicted child is usually transferred to a prison inside Israel, contrary to international law that says he should be kept in the occupied territory.

“Having looked at this for six years, I see no other way for the Israeli military to do it. It’s effective. These children come out of prison with PTSD,” Horton said. “Their mothers know: they wet their beds, they have nightmares and isolate themselves away from their friends. They say they never want to see a soldier again, never want to go near a point of friction, a checkpoint,” he said. People who shut themselves away do not want to confront the army. This psychological intimidation works better for occupation than boots on the ground, he said.

Six changes would transform this system, Horton said.
1. End night raids that cause massive trauma. Stop binding children’s’ wrists. Instead issue summonses that allow the child to come in to the police with his parents.
2. Inform the children of their right to silence. Provide a written document, in Arabic, upon arrest, before interrogation.
3. Inform them of their right to a lawyer and provide one if they need. It is unlawful to discriminate on this; both Israelis and Palestinians have this right.
4. Allow the child to be accompanied by parent; this is the right that Israeli children have.
5 Every interrogation should be audio/video recorded. This practice would protect interrogators from false witness of human rights violations or wrongdoing.
6. Release the child if any of the above have not been observed. Military judges are critical of the violations they continually warn against, but they still let in the “evidence.”

Mads Fredrick Gilbert stuns Sabeel Conference
with Stories, Pictures from Gaza Under Siege

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Jerusalem — Participants were “stunned” by Dr. Mads Fredrik Gilbert’s presentation to the Ninth International Sabeel Conference here. Gilbert talked about his experiences working at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza during the 2008-2009 and 2013 bombardments. He is a specialist in anesthesiology and emergency medicine.

Gilbert’s slides and descriptions of the effects of attacks on Gaza’s population were “devastating” one participant said. “Everyone was stunned,” said another.

Gilbert spoke of Israel’s siege and bombing of the over 1.7 million people, who are trapped within Gaza. The bombardments included the 22-day “Operation Cast Lead” during which 13 Israelis and more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed. Gilbert stressed, “No Israeli should be killed, and no Palestinian should be killed.”

Israel targets Gaza in a regular three-year cycle, Gilbert said, with impunity. This “impunity is our primary obstacle to Peace,” he said.

Gilbert described crises he has encountered during and following each attack, his struggles to treat hideously injured patients in buildings without electrical power, flooded with sewage. In “Cast Lead” alone, more than 5,000 Gazans were injured, 400,000 left without running water, and 4,000 homes were destroyed, rendering tens of thousands homeless. According to the UN Human Rights Council report, Israel targeted schools, hospitals, streets, water wells, sewage system, farms, police stations and UN buildings.

“The main factor for Palestinian ill health is not food, not water (…) it is the Israeli occupation of Palestine,” Gilbert said. He criticized both Israel and the United States: “If Israeli treatment of Gaza is not state terrorism, I do not know what terrorism is. The key sponsor is the United States.”
Gilbert asked, “Why is President Obama allowing this to happen, ongoing?” He said “This [the condition of Gaza] is a 100-percent man-made disaster, supported by the government of the United States.”
“The Nakba, (the catastrophic displacement of the Palestinian people that began in 1948 ) continues in Gaza,” Gilbert said.

BRAZILIAN LIBERATION THEOLOGIAN:
BELIEVE IN A FREE PALESTINE

Jerusalem

Speakers addressed “The Occupation of the Bible” today at the Ninth SabeeL International conference. The gathering of more than 200 participants is meeting here 19-25 Nov. 2013.

In a session on biblical authority Dr. Nancy Cardoso Pereira, Porto Alegre, Brazil called biblical fundamentalism and Christian Zionism “defenders of western political domination of the world.” She said, “Biblical authority provides reinforcement of the capitalistic, imperialistic tactic and works against any searching for another possible world outside of capitalism.”

In this sense, biblical authority, like capitalism, supports what is “not normal, not necessary, for example, war, global warming, degradation of the environments, etc.,” Cardoso said.

“Israel, supported by us, as an ideal of white Europeans invading a country far from home, emptying it of its inhabitants, and saying `It’s all God’s will,’” she said. Cardoso is a Methodist pastor, Professor of Ancient History at the Porto Alegre Institute, and community organizer.
Cardoso called on conference participants to denounce the “powerful and painful combination of Western North Atlantic theology with Western North Atlantic socio-economic capitalism.” The tasks of Christians, she said, are: “breaking spiritually from capitalism, denouncing all worship of capital, understanding ourselves as one religion among others, and trusting in God’s liberating grace.”

She said, “Believe in a free Palestine. Deep in my heart I do believe, we shall overcome.”