Regarding Russians, Ukrainians, and zombies

   Source.  

The eyes of the world continue to be on Ukraine and its relationship with Russia.

Russia's government says that there are no plans to invade Ukraine, that the concentration of forces near Ukraine are not a threat, and that those who speak of Russia's threats are alarmists with an aggressive agenda.

If there is indeed an alarm, Russia's government arguably provoked it by urgently demanding satisfactory guarantees from NATO and the USA, limiting and rolling back NATO's presence in former Warsaw Pact countries. This demand for written guarantees came at the same time that major movements of soldiers, supplies, and weapons were being moved into place. Were we really supposed to think this was a coincidence? Were we to ignore Vladimir Putin's comment to Russia's diplomats that this period of heightened tensions should be prolonged?

Ukraine's representatives, including its president, are not happy with all these alarms, including the streams of forecasts from Washington, DC, about the possibility of Russian attack. On the other hand, Ukrainians would prefer that the West impose sanctions on Russia now, rather than waiting for an attack. Imposing them after an attack would simply be too late, they say.

Almost all the public voices in the current crisis speak according to the logic of power politics, and they are all (Russian, Ukrainian, NATO) correct to one degree or another according to that logic. 

• With imperial logic, Russia declares that Ukraine does not have the same rights as other independent nations (for example, Russia), and that the decisions Ukraine makes to secure its own sovereignty could endanger Russia. The fact that Russia has been the actual source of danger, sponsoring and equipping the Donbass separatists and seizing Crimea, at the cost of thousands of dead and displaced Ukrainians, does not factor in official Russian reasoning.
• The USA has its own imperialist mentality. We assume that the Western hemisphere is Monroe-doctrine territory, off limits to Old-World powers, but we have the right to station forces on military bases in over 80 countries. Russia, in contrast, has bases in ten countries, only two of which are not in Russia’s own neighborhood. The USA rightly supports lofty ideals of human rights and civil society, except where to do so would be awkward for our own authoritarian allies.

In both Russia and the USA, domestic politics are involved in this confrontation:

During 22 years of Vladimir Putin's leadership, the space in Russia for effective public opposition to the government has practically vanished. In more recent years, persistent corruption and the deteriorating economic situation have reduced Putin's popularity, but not his impunity. Corruption is also a huge problem in Ukraine, but the public space for protest and reform there is vastly larger. It would not be a happy contrast for Putin and Russia's elites to have a democratic, Western-oriented Ukraine just over the border.

Meanwhile, the USA's leadership has a very unappetizing menu of options, as does NATO. Neither the USA nor NATO members have any obligation to defend Ukraine by force, and the NATO countries are not in unity over the alternative options for supporting Ukraine. Part of NATO is nervous about the diplomatic and economic repercussions of a catastrophic confrontation with Russia, and part of NATO is looking to see whether the organization is still a credible force for deterrence.

The situation is just as complex in the USA: Biden is criticized for belligerent talk, on the one hand, and for his weak and symbolic actions on the other hand. Much of that criticism comes from the Republican party, whose operatives seem to pursue two strangely clashing lines: urging far-reaching sanctions against Russia, and praising authoritarian leaders in the mold of Putin.

Today, the U.S. government charged that Russian operatives are preparing to stage a fake Ukrainian attack as a pretext for intervention. It is impossible to verify this charge -- is this alarmism, part of a bluster campaign to cover a lack of actual options, or is it based on any sort of evidence? -- but incendiary propaganda is a well-honed weapon for Russia, reaching a peak in 2014 and 2015 in the case of Ukraine, but continuing to the present.

To sum up: almost all the public voices in the current crisis speak according to the logic of power politics, and they are all (Russian, Ukrainian, NATO) correct to one degree or another according to that logic. The leaders involved -- Biden, Putin, Zelenskyy, Stoltenberg -- all seemed to be trapped in that logic; they rarely if ever speak out on behalf of a vision of the future that goes beyond it. They seem limited to the familiar rhetoric of grievances and threats and ancient glory. Putin, interestingly enough, once held up a vaguely attractive vision of a multipolar world to replace American hegemony, but now it takes the shape of spheres of influence rather than a world community of mutual care and shared prosperity. 

(Presumably, in their sliced-up world of the future, Russian elites could still park their assets in the rotting West's banks and real estate, even as they continued to impose a stylized patriotism on the people at home whose substance they'd continue harvesting. And a significant part of the USA seems more and more committed to our own compulsory patriotism, scoured of any hint of racial honesty and made more repugnant by the odor of perverted Christianity.)

Ironically, both Putin and Biden claim to be Christian. I wonder what they'd think if significant numbers of us in the body of Christ rose up and rejected the logic of power politics in favor of the power of love. Not just the abstract power of the idea of love, but a love that mobilizes us to stake our tents on both sides of the Ukrainian-Russian border. How can we mobilize and amplify our testimony of peace so that, at the very least, it challenges the grip of power politics on the world's imagination, and also ministers to those who are now trapped in it?

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Back in 2014, during the days following Viktor Yanukovych's departure from Kyiv to asylum in Russia, I happened to stay in Moscow overnight. That evening, I had tea in the kitchen of the workers' hostel where I was staying. A Muslim man from Dagestan joined me at the kitchen table. We began talking about events in Ukraine, where his grandmother lived. She had told him about the chaos she herself was witnessing there.

"In any revolution, people lose their human face," he said. "It's always this way. The cycle repeats itself. The rich people know which way to twist to gain from the new situation, and the poor people can only depend on themselves."

He paused for a moment, and then asked me: "Do you have any sort of faith inside your soul? If God isn't there, something else will fill that space. Just look at what's happening in Ukraine; the zombies are coming out."

I'm not saying that our political leaders are zombies! But if all we hear is rhetorical games, red lines and "signals" and one-upmanship, it may seem that there is no place for faith that is full of power and blessing, without a trace of triumphalism. People of faith, let's take up more space.

(Previously: An artificial crisis, 20 January.)

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An overview of leftists in support of Ukraine (from the same author, Simon Pirani, as the earlier Putin's little helpers).

Russia's Novaya gazeta and other media are ordered not to publish Navalny's organization's exposes.

Some bright spots in the stream of sad reporting on the repression of Russia's Jehovah's Witnesses: The Russian Supreme Court recently ruled that simply gathering for worship, without actions that can be identified as extremist, does not constitute a crime, even though the denomination has been ruled extremist and liquidated. Consequently, convictions were reversed or rejected in Kamchatka and the Komi republic.

In an example of (among other things) incredibly unfortunate timing, from my viewpoint, Christian Peacemaker Teams just changed its name to Community Peacemaker Teams. Here's their reasoning. What do you think?

Amnesty International analyzes Israel's treatment of Palestinians, controversially labeling it apartheid (which objectively it is, whatever the supposed justifications). Mondoweiss looks at the reactions in Washington, DC, and among a range of Israel-oriented influencers.

The Newberg, Oregon, school board -- a micro-sample of a country splitting apart. (My summary, not the author's.)

Bob Henry urges Friends to develop a more deliberate approach to pastoral transitions.

The James Webb Space Telescope is not the only new observatory in the heavens: IXPE begins science operations.

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King Solomon Hicks and Samantha Fish at the Lorain Palace in Ohio, USA.

Digesting 2005—and reader survey

The year 2005 was the first full year of this blog. As I catch up with my self-imposed task of choosing twelve posts from every year I've been writing here, this is probably my last digest of old material.

Yes, old in some ways. I'm struck by how angry George Bush's presidency made me at times. Little did I know what was awaiting us a little more than a decade later. I think I was more bitter and argumentative in these older posts. Is increasing mildness a virtue? You're a better judge than I am.

On the other hand, sometimes when I read these older posts of mine, I notice how often I revisit the same themes, and basically repeat myself. I comfort myself by reasoning that hardly anyone remembers these old posts!

As I said when I assembled my 2006 digest, most comments on my blog came on the blog itself in the olden days. Nowadays, most comments are made on Facebook. I always appreciate comments, wherever I get them.

Thank you for reading.

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January 2005: Jolting Islam Forward

Herbert E. Meyer has just issued "an open letter to opponents of the war in Iraq," arguing that, given the stakes involved (winning a war for the future of Western civilization), the least we opponents can do is be responsible and get with the program, stop whining, and actually do something to shore up the areas where we think the program is weak. To do anything else is aiding the enemy.

A Northwest Yearly Meeting Friend posted this open letter on several Yearly Meeting e-mail lists, saying that "I found this interesting, and thought it worth sharing. While I am against war, Herb has many interesting points to think about."

He was right on several counts. The letter is interesting on its own merits, and gives insights on the ways people in and near power justify the Iraqi war intellectually. Judging by those who link to Herb Meyer's writings, however, he appears to be a hero to many who utterly dismiss us opponents of the war, who celebrate the apparent ascendancy of the neoconservative vision in Washington, and whose rhetoric ranges from sober and intellectual thinking to complete and idiotic nonsense. Some of the latter is sprayed with a repulsive christian deodorant.

(read full post)

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February 2005: Quiet ecstasy

On his Web site, musician Derek Trucks quotes a question he received about his onstage style:

How can you play such soulful music without expressing it physically in your body language. In other words how can you channel all that energy JUST through your playing without cracking more than a grin. Does this help your expressiveness with the instrument or is it just natural?

Derek replies:

I think early on all the musicians that I respected the most just stood or sat there and played (John Coltrane, Ali Akbar Kahn, Duane Allman). It just depends on the musician but for me it feels more natural. As long as I have been on the road people have told me that they thought I wasn't enjoying playing because I looked so bored, but it's actually when I am most aware and engaged.

... It was one of the best concerts I have ever attended. The word "concert" was made for evenings like this: the musicians were completely in concert with themselves and each other. Sure enough, Derek barely moved; often his eyes were closed; he smiled just three times that I could see. But the coordination among the musicians was palpable.

(read full post)

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March 2005: The Return and the cult of the patient woman

On the film The Return:

Referring to the mother as played by Natalia Vdovina, the director Andrei Zvyagintsev says, "My ideal woman? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's close to what was shown in the film. Because for me this woman embodied [femininity] ... for me, this is Woman with a capital W. A woman who knows how to be patient, to wait, and is wise. It is like in Russian fairy tales, where there is Vasilisa the Beautiful and Vasilisa the Wise."

Mikhail Krichman, the cinematographer, adds, "I really like the scene in the house. I like very much how Natalia looks there. I like this shot, where she pours wine and dilutes it with water for the kids. How she obediently carries this out and doesn't say anything."

I don't disagree at all with the extraordinary beauty of this scene and of the bedtime scene that follows. Her bearing reflects dignity and endurance ... and extraordinary acting. But I have no context from the story to evaluate whether her response to her husband's absence is from nobility, or strength, or fear, or pathological dependence, or perhaps it represents the calm before the storm. Perhaps the storm (or whatever form the accountability of husband to wife might have taken) happened while the boys were still away from the house.

(read full post)

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April 2005: Leaving Quakers

Here's a great example of a perennial theme, especially in the earlier years of my blog:

About eight years ago, a weighty Friend in Iowa Yearly Meeting (FUM) came to me with a question. He had found a congregation in Iowa that was actually more in accord with what he thought Friends stood for than his Friends meeting. However, he was torn by loyalties to that meeting and to the Yearly Meeting he had served for so long, and to Friends United Meeting. What did I think he should do?

... When I first joined Friends, shortly after my Christian conversion, the joy of finding a church home where a New Testament faith found prophetic social expression carried me blissfully along past the point where a more discerning person might have noticed some gaps along the way. We still find these major gaps among Friends--meetings that specialize in quakerishness and marginalize the living Gospel from which our peculiar discipleship sprang OR meetings that, on the contrary, talk Christian language with enthusiasm but have allowed that precious and still-needed discipleship to atrophy--and eventually these incongruities became the central ingredients in FUM's civil war.

(read full post)

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May 2005: Creative discontent

[Referring to Martin Kelley's blog] -- In Martin's May 16 posting, ... he asks, "If we could get a message out to larger Quakerdom, what we want it to be?" I read with great appreciation the responses that have been accumulating as comments to that May 16 item. I am happy that important issues are being raised by Martin and the readers of his blog. I am happy that I don't know most of these people (beyond their familiarity to me as a reader of Martin's blog/forum for over a year) -- this means that a whole new generation of prophetic and creative voices is in the Friends movement, no thanks to previous generations, whose lack of vision and encouragement is frightening. And I am shocked at how many of the diagnoses articulated by these Friends and ex-Friends have arisen in my generation and earlier, remaining unaddressed.

(read full post)

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June 2005: Mississippi mellowing?

I have been following the coverage of the trial of former KKK-man Edgar Ray Killen for his involvement in the deaths of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, the three Freedom Summer civil rights campaigners murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964.

I spent most of the summer of 1975 in Mendenhall, Mississippi, working with Voice of Calvary, founded by John Perkins to promote "Black Christian leadership development" and alternative economic structures. Back then it seemed as if the era of civil rights violence was in the distant past; from my current time horizon, of course, things look different. Eleven years between the Freedom Summer campaign and my first visit to Mississippi doesn't seem long now.

Mendenhall looked like many of the stereotypes I'd received of small-town Mississippi—right down to the railroad tracks dividing the races. We summer volunteers (all but one were white) were not popular downtown, with the exception of the Post Office, where we were treated with almost startling courtesy.

(read full post)

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July 2005: Chaos and community, 2005

Recently, London's mayor Ken Livingstone and an Israeli spokesperson had an exchange typical for modern public discourse: Livingstone suggested that the way the West treats the Arab world was a cause of terrorism, and that our past miscalculations were coming home to roost; and the spokesperson, along with many others, charged that Livingstone was apologizing for terrorism. We are apparently not allowed to reflect on root causes (no matter how obvious) without being counted among the enemy. "Don't think, just use our message." (See New Statesman, "The Politics of Delusion.")

My first response was to remember a book about dealing with difficult personalities. Sometimes you just have to calmly repeat your truth over and over in the face of such blasts.

I also remembered these words by Yakov Krotov, which I also quoted somewhere in my Evangelism and the Friends Testimonies forum. His advice concerns bearing a courteous Christian witness across lines of faith, but I think his disciplines are useful for general discourse as well. In my mind, I combine these principles with the one from the book on difficult people: keep calmly repeating what you believe, over and over.

... I have formulated five principles which aid me in my efforts not to proselytize, and still bear Christian witness. They are: ...

(read full post)

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August 2005: The Quaker voice

In several parts of the world, not just the USA, the dignified Quakers and the restless Quakers are once again struggling over the issue of "freedom in the Spirit" vs long-standing cautions against emotionalism and manipulation. It's an issue that split second-generation African Friends and continues to cause stress in both Africa and Latin America. The issue is understood differently in different places: articulate, liberal, urban Friends may not recognize that they are under any sort of bondage whatsoever, but let someone speak in tongues or speak twice in the same meeting for worship (setting aside theological allergies for a moment) and the limits of freedom may appear.

One doesn't even have to open one's mouth: the late Fred Boots, a very experienced and well-traveled Evangelical Friend (who used to sell copies of Elias Hicks's journal at Evangelical Friends Church Eastern Region book tables, but that's another story), told of the cold shoulder he and his wife received at one unprogrammed meeting simply for being dressed too well.

One of my own relatives, most of whose experiences had been in unprogrammed Friends but who was a member of a pastoral meeting, visited a meeting in the Philadelphia area. After she introduced herself as a Friend from Richmond, Indiana, a local Friend hastened to explain to the others that "That's a very different kind of Friend."

(read full post)

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September 2005: Books and crosscultural hunger

Judy and I have been attending a Hispanic Mennonite congregation that has been a huge blessing to me. This has been my most sustained exposure to the Spanish-speaking dimension of today's United States. To help me reflect on what I'm learning through that experience, I was eager to read Hector Tobar's Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005). As recently as a decade or two ago, the "Spanish-speaking United States" could have been principally defined as a few specific regions within the USA. Now all that has changed. If the Bloomington-Muscatine Friends Church in Iowa can have a significant Hispanic outreach, our reliance on regional assumptions is shaky. It is this reality that Tobar's book presents clearly and engagingly. This excerpt is a great example:

I am in a two-stoplight town in the Alabama hill country, in the heart of the Bible Belt and Crimson Tide football mania, listening to an old-fashioned, heated argument between Cubans like the ones I've heard in Little Havana in Miami, but the moment very quickly loses its sense of strangeness and cultural dissonance. This is what America is like now—North America, I mean, the United States. The craziness of cubanos and mexicanos and guatemaltecos can find you just about anywhere. Juan's smile turns a little mischievous as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet, searching for something stuck between his driver's license and his Alabama gun license. It is picture slightly larger than a postage stamp of a line of marching rebels on horseback, the portrait of Che Guevara looming behind them.

(read full post)

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October 2005: Evil and Islamo-fascism

Evil is back in the news, thanks to President Bush's latest rationale for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

At the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush outlined an analysis of Islamo-fascism (one of the names for the "evil, but not insane" phenomenon he's describing). This is an important speech. It is as close as I've seen him come to a detailed description of the assumptions behind his lethal adventure in Iraq. It is important for the administration's critics to read and respond to such material, because at the very least, the President is absolutely right concerning the global importance of the issues and trends he's addressing. Just to work the Christian angle for a second: we can neither love nor confront our enemies if we are not willing to look at them straight in the eyes and take in the full measure of their actions, motives, and capabilities.

Unfortunately, the speech does not measure up to what I'd hoped and yearned for—an intelligent, respectful engagement with the claims and grievances (justified and unjustified) and assertions of the presumed enemy. It is a rhetorical hatchet job—frankly, low-grade demagoguery—that does not respect the intelligence of observers either in America or in the rest of the world. Why can't our leaders manage better? Surely Bush and his speechwriters are more intelligent than this—do they think that a more dispassionate, thoughtful, self-reflective analysis would signal weakness? In my mind, this sort of sloganeering presented as leadership is far more damaging.

Some examples: ...

(read full post)

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November 2005: Nancy's questions

We live in an age of consumer spirituality, where people love to display their sophistication by saying that they're spiritual, not religious. People seem to want just enough spiritualness to be cozy, but not enough to overcome the twin idols of affluence and autonomy. These poisons are by no means unique to Quakers, but we have a peculiarly attractive version of them: a sort of delicious antiquarian progressiveness that can deceive us into think we're going deeper than we really are. This cultish quakerishness adulterates the spiritual power of both evangelicals and liberals, and has led to the near-extinction of the precious conservative witness among Friends.

By making our choices a matter of enhancing our own spirituality, and by becoming ultra-squeamish about our corporate biblical roots and our Puritan-era apostolic revival history, we have left GOD out. God desires joy and liberation for us and, through us (as in the early days of Israel), for our neighbors throughout the world.

The way that this joy is shared and liberation accomplished is not by our subtle cleverness, our middle-class politics, by carefully-calibrated "outreach" and transfers of wealth from us to those others lucky enough to know us. It is by relationship: first of all, our relationship with God, then our relationship with each other, and the way we provide access to that relational community by our physical and attitudinal open doors ... for example, adequate meeting space in your [Nancy's] case.

But to get there, we have to give up our cool, our autonomy, our intellectual pride, and confront the twin experiences of conversion and convincement.

(read full post) 

(read R.W. Tucker's "Revolutionary Faithfulness," which inspired much of this post.)

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December 2005: All of me

A couple of Sundays ago, back in Portland, at Reedwood Friends Church, we sang a chorus that went more or less like this:

I want to be a servant, Lord
Please take all of me
I want to be a servant, Lord
Please take all of me....

When programmed meetings and Protestant congregations in general get into the full swing of Advent and Christmas programming, it feels very hard for a prophetic word to wedge its way in. For one thing, a lot of the church culture is riding on the glow of Christmas, the cuteness of kids, the familiar warmth of all the Advent paraphernalia, all of which has undoubted community-building power. But on this particular Sunday, this particular chorus, and this particular sermon, gave my spirit a nudge to stand up during open worship and speak.

The opening was there, but that didn't make speaking easy. What struck me about the chorus (I said) was how little it matched my life. I should rather sing

I'd like to have the reputation of being a servant, Lord,
Please take 10% of me.

Musically, the chorus (as originally written!) swings very nicely. I could usually sing it, with at least an aspirational spin, quite enthusiastically. But as I told Friends that Sunday, the Christian Peacemaker Team members in Baghdad were not 10% servants or witnesses, and now they were certainly not 10% hostages. Their commitment as servants was 100%. We do not yet know what level of sacrifice will be required, and I would rather pray than speculate.

(read full post)

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Russia's Jehovah's Witnesses are not extremists.

Neither are the Memorial organizations. In defense of Memory. And: An attempt to erase my memory...

Seven Russian bloggers who will introduce you to their vast country.

How to make comics: a four-part series from the Museum of Modern Art, via openculture.com.

Christopher Stern finds a way to peace. (With thanks to quakerranter.org for the link.)

Saint Paul Meets a Quaker Lady.

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Ronnie Baker Brooks and Stacy Brooks -- thanks to 1AnitrasDance.

"The unity of the city of Hebron"

Checkpoint turnstile. Hebron, Palestine. (My photo.)

Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State. (Article 13, Universal Declaration of Human Rights.)

Many years ago my father told me stories of what it was like to grow up in an occupied city -- Oslo, under German occupation. Those stories came back to me during my three months' stay with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron's Old City -- in the district known as H2, where the Israeli military exercises direct control.

Source. Credit.

In 1997, when these zones were created, the majority of Hebron was designated as H1. In this zone, Israeli control is nearly as absolute as in H2, but usually exercised indirectly. Most of the signs of occupation that I saw daily were within H2 or at the boundaries between the two zones. At the fixed checkpoints controlling those boundaries, soldiers or border police forces assess each person entering the zone. The worst that happened to me at a checkpoint was being asked to submit my passport for inspection, or being told that my camera and I were located too close to the checkpoint.

My magic didn't extend to Palestinians I might be walking with. Sometimes they got no more attention than I did. But sometimes, especially if they were young men, they were required to empty their pockets, submit their ID, take off any headgear, hand over their bags, raise up their shirts, and lift up their pantlegs.

Those fixed checkpoints were just the beginning of the story. Flying checkpoints and unannounced patrols, home searches, and car searches by Israeli forces -- inside and outside H2 -- also reminded me of my father's stories. On one occasion, I photographed a young man being body-searched. A few minutes later, my CPT partner and I encountered another goup of soldiers near the old municipal square just outside the Old City. I had not even raised my camera before an officer told me to turn around and get lost. "I could arrest you," he warned. My companion asked, "Even if he doesn't use the camera?" "Yes!" confirmed the officer. In our files we had a legal document specifying the two occasions on which Israeli forces were entitled to prohibit photography: in the presence of military secrets, or if photographers would hinder a military operation. We decided not to press the point.

Both the fixed checkpoints and the spontaneous blockages seemed to me to violate the Israeli/PLO agreement that had had set up the two zones -- the 1997 Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron. According to Article 9 of that document,

Both sides reiterate their commitment to the unity of the City of Hebron, and their understanding that the division of security responsibility will not divide the city… [B]oth sides share the mutual goal that movement of people, goods and vehicles within and in and out of the city will be smooth and normal, without obstacles or barriers.

What follows is part of the commentary I drafted for a "restriction of movement report" that was edited and published by Christian Peacemaker Teams. "Restriction of movement" is just one category of human rights documentation by CPT and similar groups -- others include arrests, use of violence against civilians, home demolitions, the effect of occupation on education, and harassment of human rights observers. I was interested in this specific topic, the restriction of civilian movement in their own city, because it was the most routine, constant, everyday aspect of living under occupation that I personally witnessed and experienced, while remembering what my father told me about life under the Germans.

Report: Palestinians today do not experience “the unity of the City of Hebron.”

Of the 200,000 residents of al-Khalil (Hebron), over 99.5% are Palestinian, including the 33,000 Palestinian residents of the H2 district that remains under direct Israeli control. Despite the commitments of the 1997 Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron, the movements of Palestinian people, goods, and vehicles within H2, and between H2 and the rest of the city, are not “smooth and normal.”

Body search, Old City. (My photo.)

To secure the several hundred Israelis living in settlements within H2, and to provide for their convenience in entering and leaving H2 and touring Palestinian streets and markets at will, Israelis have constructed a system of barriers, heavily-armed checkpoints, supplemented by temporary choke-points during armed operations. These arrangements present Palestinians with constant and unpredictable challenges ranging from minor delays to a complete inability to reach home or work. Each Palestinian contact with an Israeli checkpoint or barrier or tour or police action also represents a risk of search, detention, arrest, or violent incident. Cumulatively the Israeli controls take an enormous economic toll as Palestinian residents, merchants, customers, and their guests, are discouraged from building, trading, or raising children in H2.

Ideally, CPT and partners would be able to monitor all of those potential points of contact, to verify freedom of Palestinian movement and document its denial or delay. The examples of interference presented below must be regarded as a sample -- occurrences CPT has documented -- but Palestinian community members vouch for the constant interference, indignity, and the psychological burden of living under armed occupation, to which these samples bear witness.

* * *

Restriction of movement can take many forms. CPT documents them as follows:

• ID checks
• Body searches
• Vehicle stops / searches
• Delays at checkpoints
• Checkpoint closures
• Religious restrictions

Any given incident, of course, can combine several of these infractions of freedom of movement. Here are extracts from the statistics CPT gathered during the first half of 2019, followed by examples of the incidents that generated these numbers.

These statistics do not include the incidents that we observed during school hours, involving the movement of schoolchildren, teachers, and others through specific checkpoints. [CPT publishes separate reports on incidents occuring on the way to and from schools, or during school hours.]

ID checks, January-June, by location

• Abed store checkpoint (at the entrance to the sidestreet leading to the Ibrahimi Mosque): 36 men, 6 women - 42
• Ibrahimi Mosque checkpoint: 228 men, 4 women, 2 boys - 234
• Court checkpoint: 1 man - 1
• Old City: 6 men - 6
• Shuhada Street / Checkpoint 56: 4 men - 4
• Bab al-Baladiyeh (old municipal square): 154 men, 1 boy - 155
• Checkpoint near the kindergarten (Mosque complex): 2 boys - 2
• Checkpoint 55: 8 women, 6 men - 14
• Mafia checkpoint: 2 men, 2 women - 4
• Salaymeh checkpoint 209: 5 men, 5 women - 10

Body Searches, January-June, by location

• Ibrahimi Mosque checkpoint: 446 men, 9 boys - 455
• Abed checkpoint: 17 men - 17
• Shuhada Street / Checkpoint 56: 2 men - 2
• Checkpoint near the kindergarten: 2 boys - 2
• Bab al-Baladiyeh: 40 men, 1 woman, 5 boys - 46
• Mafia checkpoint: 4 men, 1 girl - 5

Incidents that illustrate these statistics:

Freedom of Religious Movement

22 March, en route to Ibrahimi Mosque:

Waiting to exit the Old City at the mosque checkpoint.
(My photo.)

Owing to the Purim holiday, Israeli settlers were moving freely about the streets leading to the Mosque checkpoint. All Palestinian adults going to the mosque for Friday prayers were subjected to ID checks. Israeli forces conducted many bag searches and body searches. Palestinian men spoke of up to a two-hour delay getting from their homes in H1 to the Ibrahimi Mosque and up to three checks at three separate checkpoints before entering the mosque for worship.

Vehicle Stops / Searches

8 January, Old City

Five Israeli soldiers stopped and searched Palestinian cars in the area up the hill from the Al Natsheh Olive Press. Soldiers stopped every car that drove along the street in both directions, opening the drivers’ doors, looking inside the cars and making the drivers open the trunks of their cars so the soldiers could search inside. Soldiers also frisked and searched Palestinian men who tried to pass the soldiers to reach their destinations.

11 March, Old City

Soldiers conducting a shop-to-shop ID check blocked stairwells and held back Palestinian pedestrians. Palestinian vehicles were stopped until each man could be checked one by one and released. Questioned by a CPTer, a soldier explained, “This is a routine check, normal day.”

Bab-al-Baladiyeh blocked. (My photo.)

22 April, Bab al-Baladiyeh (old municipal square), north entrance to Old City

All Palestinian movement -- pedestrians and cars -- was called to a halt by ten soldiers from the base at Bab al-Baladiyeh. After five minutes, pedestrian traffic was permitted to resume, but vehicles continued to be blocked for another hour and a half.

Checkpoint Closures

22 April, Bab az-Zawiyeh, Checkpoint 56 (controlling a large intersection between Shuhada Street and Hebron's commercial center)

Eighty Israeli soldiers and border police, and four armored cars, blocked all Palestinian traffic for six hours to give settlers exclusive acess to the area. During Passover Festival activities. Palestinians living in the area, and in the Tal Rumeida community, were not allowed to access their neighborhoods. On three separate occasions Palestinian men were violently grabbed and detained by Israeli soldiers by the road barrier.

Checkpoint Delays

18 March, Mosque Checkpoint

Around 40 tourists and shoppers from the old market were stopped at the mosque checkpoint without explanation. Two rumors were circulating: “One man was arrested for having a knife in his backpack which resulted in his arrest and subsequent full checks for each person one by one” and “There was a school group of boys on a field trip to the mosque which needed to checked one by one so the CP was closed until they were all cleared.” More than 20 minutes.

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These statistics dated from the first half of 2019, so I drafted these examples from data collected by others. However, I saw examples of each of these blockages myself. Whoever writes the reports for the last half of 2019 will use some of my documentation.

Not every Israeli military operation at the zone boundaries resulted in total restrictions of movement. For example, during the Day of Rage clashes at the major Bab-az-Zawiye intersection, with stones flying through the air at soldiers, those soldiers firing tear gas and percussion grenades at the kids throwing stones, the smoke of burning tires dramatically reducing visibility, I was amazed to see vehicle traffic flowing more or less normally on the H1 side. Taxis sped their way around obstacles, stone-throwers, journalists, and gawkers, somehow managing to avoid hitting anyone. (However, pedestrian traffic through checkpoint 56 was blocked in both directions.)

(More about the Day of Rage, November 26, on CPT Palestine's Web site.)

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The Israeli justification for the checkpoint and other enforcement measures is simple: to protect the Jewish population from terrorism. It's a fact that both sides in the long-standing conflicts over control of the Holy Land have used terrorism. However, as a present-day justification for the restrictions of civilian movement, I have problems with this reasoning.

First of all, there's the very fact of occupation. Whatever its legal status, the situation is clear: there are two sides with conflicting claims to a territory, but one side exercises coercive control over the whole territory, even though the residents of that territory nearly all identify with the other side. This reality can only be maintained through constant threat and application of violence. All possibility of negotiations (for example, to resolve the status of disputed claims to specific properties once belonging to Israeli Jews) are adjudicated by that superior force. Naturally, representaves of that force (such as those provocative checkpoints) end up serving as natural targets for anyone in the occupied population whose rage boils over, thus constantly "proving" that the force is needed, even when that boiling rage consists of nothing more than children throwing stones.

If Hebron and the rest of occupied Palestine were under some kind of normal administration (whether within Israel or in its own country), violent crime and terrorism would still be a threat, as it is elsewhere in the world. However, its control would be a police matter. Police forces in any democracy are accountable for their methods and proportionality. They arrest actual suspects; they don't shoot tear gas at children; they don't punish families and whole neighborhoods for the actions of a few; their every action is subject to independent court review. The exact same laws apply regardless of religion or birthplace. Except in catastrophes, riots, insurrections, and invasions, military forces have no role in policing the population.

Not so in Palestine ... and for a clear reason: This highly irregular situation works to the evident advantage of the occupying power. The violent face of occupation makes life difficult for a population that a significant part of Israel's leadership actually wants to remove from its ethnically cleansed vision of Judea and Samaria. Many Israeli Jews have a different vision -- some kind of mutually respectful coexistence with Palestinians, whether Muslim or Christian -- but those voters are far from gaining power in today's Israel. In the meantime, as long as the occupation grinds on, those in power in Israel can nibble away at Hebron and other places with no incentive, either internal or external (at least in the current state of USA politics) to conclude a just peace.

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One of the iconic images of the occupation in Hebron that lingers in my mind is Shuhada Street, once part of the commercial core of the city, now off limits to most Palestinians. This article is a typical description of the situation from an Israeli viewpoint -- Shuhada Street is (1) not as closed as Palestinian sympathizers say; (2) restricted as a result of Arab violence and Palestinian terrorism; (3) really no big deal -- Palestinians' new commercial center is just a short distance away anyway; (4) ... and, anyway, the real apartheid is against Jews.

1. In practical terms, most Palestinians, whether or not they live in H2, are turned away by soldiers at both ends of the street. A few who live in a neighborhood for which Shuhada Street is the only access road are allowed through, but their guests often cannot enter. Those Palestinians who actually live on the street must use back or roof entrances to get into their homes.

2. Accounts of who attacked whom are usually biased in favor of the speaker. In Steve Frank's article, the complicated history of the first contemporary Jewish settlement in Hebron is completely passed over as if there had never been a raging dispute.

3. The closure of Palestinian shops on Shuhada Street is a big thing for those hundreds of shopkeepers and for the whole area that benefited from visits by shoppers and tourists. Kathleen Kern's history of CPT, In Harm's Way, documents the efforts Hebron's citizens and their allies made to keep Shuhada Street alive and viable. While I was in Hebron, we were part of an international team that helped restore Hebron's historic Turkish bath, which had been closed since its entrance on Shuhada Street was sealed off.

All of this is separate from the more general harm to the Palestinian economy caused by the occupation.

4. It is Israeli law that bans Israeli citizens from Palestinian towns. In Hebron, there are no controls -- at least no Palestinian controls -- preventing Jews from leaving Shuhada Street and passing into Hebron's commercial area. Israeli activists routinely show up in Hebron, Ramallah, and other places where Israeli citizens are supposedly prohibited by law.

Given the decades of tension, it's sad and true that Israelis who are not traveling with Palestinians may run into hostility in Hebron's H1 zone or in other parts of Palestine. Each side has built up enemy images of the other, which is part of the tragedy of enforced separation. But I never saw any evidence of Palestinian authorities blocking Jewish visitors.

The opposite, of course, is not true: Israeli authorities do block Palestinians from entering any place under direct Israeli administration without approval. For example, Palestinians from Hebron cannot visit Jerusalem, 20 miles away, without getting permits first.

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More on Hebron and its Shuhada Street:

The Story of Shuhada Street (from EAPPI, another organization that monitors human rights in Hebron; The Shame of Shuhada Street (in The Atlantic); Hebron Is Still Hurting (in Times of Israel).

An interactive map of Hebron's occupation infrastructure.

And a couple of sources on occupation in international law: Medecines sans Frontieres; International Committee of the Red Cross.

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In confronting Trump's supporters, what do you do when there's absolutely no shame?

New Year's resolutions for pastors from Brian McLaren. (Hmm, number 3 is "get political.") Thanks to Bob Henry for the link.

At the very time the Russian government threatens to withdraw accreditation from seminaries, it's interesting to see what's going on in another university.

Ron Sider is still evangelizing the evangelicals.

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Hans Theesinck and the Valentinos in Austria ...

Praying without ceasing in Hebron

Ten days after the end of my three-month service with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Al-Khalil (Hebron), Palestine, I still struggle with conflicting urgencies in choosing what to report.

I want to report accurately about how, day after day, you can unexpectedly run into squads of soldiers with their fingers near their triggers, or clouds of tear gas, or someone being searched from head to toes, or checkpoints closed with no explanation. At the same time, you can expect daily encounters with playful children, helpful strangers, cries of "welcome to Hebron" on all sides, delicious food, parties with fireworks nearly every evening,

In other words, I want to convey a situation that is, all at once, both outrageously abnormal (the conditions of occupation) and persistently normal (the life that the people of Hebron make for themselves despite the occupation). Whatever I say, I don't want to discourage you from visiting this lively and friendly city, and seeing for yourself.

Furthermore, I want to report in my own voice -- that's my sole channel, and I want to draw on whatever credibility and connection with readers that I might already have. At the same time, I don't want to exaggerate my voice or my role. Every day CPT observers, and others in similar teams, are on the streets monitoring the interactions of citizens and soldiers, documenting irregularities, and sending our observations to a variety of agencies ... but it would be hard to prove that we have made a huge difference.

In any case, CPT's writers are encouraged to keep in mind a "balancing act between humility and presence." CPT and others are there in common cause with Palestinians working nonviolently for justice rather than claiming superior knowledge or attempting to be freelance heroes.

Personally, I didn't go to Palestine with any heroic illusions. All I hoped to do was to learn more about praying without ceasing. In that sense my three months were a success.

On most days, I woke up at 5 a.m. to have time for prayer, Bible reading, and a brief video chat with Judy before beginning the day's activities. Usually we started the day with an hour at each of two checkpoints through which hundreds of people pass during that one hour -- including around two hundred children. Two of us monitored each checkpoint.

The checkpoints were for me a perfect occasion for prayer. For example, I used a counter app on my mobile phone to keep track of people passing through the checkpoints in both directions. Each click of the counter prompted me to pray a blessing on that person ... although when they were coming through in larger bunches, I would fall behind and miss some blessings. I doubt this practice would measure up to the great Christian mystics, but it reminded me frequently of my commitment to pray without ceasing.

Breakfast and a team meeting followed the school arrival hour. During the team meeting, we took turns providing a devotional reflection before we reviewed plans for the rest of the day. We also made sure that people were signed up to take care of dinner and dishes. Our practice of checking in with each other about how we were doing also helped me stay oriented to prayer.

In the afternoon, I was often one member of the pairs assigned to accompany the kindergarten children whose path home was parallel to a path used by Israeli settlers. It was a very natural exercise to pray a blessing on their path home. On my last day on duty, I made a video of this walk, to remind myself of the experience and honor of accompanying those children.

There were other regular occasions of street monitoring -- some weekly, some annually. Each Friday we watched as Palestinians passed through checkpoints (at least two) to worship at the Ibrahimi mosque. On Saturdays, Israeli settlers often toured sites in the Old City. Each tour group was guarded by several squads of Israeli soldiers, and their passage through the markets and passageways of the Old City put them in immediate contact with Palestinian shopkeepers, customers, and pedestrians.

Annually, such events as Sukkot and Sarah's Day brought thousands of visiting Israelis to these same crowded streets, along with additional soldiers to provide security for the visitors and impose additional restrictions on the local Palestinian population. The tensions raised by each of these potential flashpoints was an occasion for prayer. Even when I wasn't on the street during one of those occasions, we coordinated continuously via social media.

Last week I reported on another seasonal event, the olive harvest.

The most stressful monitoring assignments were the ones not on the calendar -- for example, responding to reports of arrests, temporary road blocks and checkpoints, or the use of tear gas and other munitions. Sometimes these occasions would lead to stone-throwing by Palestinian young people, aimed at the checkpoints or at the vehicles doing the blocking, with a response of varying (but always disproportionate) severity from Israeli forces.

Part of the stress for me was finding vantage points to observe as closely as possible while not getting directly in the line of fire. On the "Day of Rage," my teammate and I were temporarily right in the middle, finding percussion grenades landing nearby (one hitting the metal awning over my head with a shower of sparks, while I was trying to cope with tear gas). As smoke from burning tires made it hard to see farther than a half block, things quieted down for a while, but resumed later in the evening. Prayer was never far from my mind.

For me, the most difficult assignment was the home demolitions on November 28 in Beit Kahil town near Hebron. After being part of an interview team with the families whose homes were to be destroyed (the conversation resulted in this article), we were all waiting for the seemingly inevitable conclusion. Even so it was a shock to be awakened at about 1 a.m. on November 28 and told "the demolitions have begun." By the time we were able to organize transportation, get to the town, climb over walls and fences with our heavy cameras, meet up with journalists, and find a vantage point, it was nearly 2 a.m. and the destruction was in full swing.



One of my prayer concerns during that hellish scene was for the souls of the equipment operators. who could not have been in any doubt that they were destroying homes of innocent people, regardless of the guilt or innocence (as yet undetermined in court) of the suspects in custody.

My school of prayer for those three months included, as you might expect, pleas for safety, intercessions and blessings for others, and sheer inarticulate lament. Sometimes it boiled down to just one word: "Why?"

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Christianity Today editorial: Trump should be removed from office. (Related observations from the Washington Post's Sarah Pulliam Bailey, and Emma Green in The Atlantic.)

 Josh Marshall's three essential points on impeachment.

This process has been so clotted with tantrums, goalpost-moving and dissimulation that it can be hard to keep one’s bearings. For me, those three essential points clarify the matter and drown out the yelling and stomping.

Thanks to Danny Coleman for this timely reminder: Dietrich Bonhoeffer on stupidity.

 A photo-essay on winter in Murmansk, Russia.

An update on Hebron from Curt Bell.

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Steve Guyger Band:

 

Olive harvest

Dialogue Quilt at Ramallah Friends Meeting (see explanation panels at end of this post)

As my family knows, I have the opposite of a green thumb. (Red thumb? Blue?) I seem to have no affinity for plants. When I mow the lawn, Judy carefully places wooden stakes to mark anywhere I might otherwise (despite all efforts at vigilance) cut down a newly-planted treasure.

Olive harvesting in Palestine gave me a chance for a more positive relationship with plants -- specifically, with the majestic olive trees who occupy a central place in the economy as well as the culture of the region.

When our Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron planned our participation in this fall's olive harvest, we coordinated with several other Palestinian, Israeli, and international teams and offices. We were also in direct touch with several olive-growing families whose groves were adjacent to Israeli settlements or roadways, making them vulnerable to settler harassment. Some of the families needed Israeli permits to access their trees -- permits that only gave a short time to complete their harvests, rain or shine.

We participated in seven families' harvests ourselves. My share of the work seemed safe enough for a city boy -- I would draft an article about the harvest. No way I could hurt a tree with words! At three of the actual sites, I would be part of the accompanying team monitoring potential harassment and making photos for CPT use.

That's all I did at my first site. We had two team members who loved climbing the trees, and who worked very competently alongside the growers and their families, pulling or shaking the olives off the branches. Several settlers walked across their property peaceably, along with nearly two dozen Israeli soldiers, over the course of the afternoon. The single ladder at that site was used by a grower, and I couldn't reach any olives from the ground at that site. The only actual labor I did there was carry a heavy sack full of olives about 300 meters to a roadside taxi stand.

When we arrived at our second assignment, a group of volunteers was already hard at work helping the local Palestinian family, which included a retired educator who had known CPT for most or all of our 24 years in Hebron. Among the helpers was a group of Israeli volunteers who worked at one side of the property, and several Palestinian college students and faculty members were picking olives at a second site. One of the Israelis met us at the entrance to the property. She asked with a smile, "Do you want to work where there are Jews or where there are no Jews?" A bit startled, I replied that this was the first time in my life I'd been asked such a question! As it turned out, by the time we'd finished our interview with the retired educator inside her home, most of the hard work had already been done.

My third experience was with the grower shown in this Facebook video. Finally I had a chance to do some harvesting myself! Once again the only ladder was in use by a more qualified person, and I didn't quite dare climb up into the trees myself, but in this case there were hundreds and hundreds of olives within reach from the ground. By the time my arms gave out, I think I had done a more or less decent job for a first-time picker. Best of all, I don't think I did the trees any harm.

We had heard some distressing reports about recent settler harassment of olive harvesters in various parts of the West Bank, including an incident in which an elderly member of Rabbis for Human Rights was injured. In the three locations where I participated, the harvests were completed without incident.

You can find the CPT report here.

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This past Monday I returned from a three-month period of volunteer service with Christian Peacemaker Teams. I'll write about some of my experiences with the team in Hebron in the next few weeks. I'll also be looking for opportunities to speak with your church or meeting, or with other audiences as way opens.

In the meantime, here is a glimpse of my final moments with my kitty companions. Of course they didn't know that I would soon disappear from their lives, but I knew it.

I would also post any number of photos of the wonderful team with whom I served, but posting each other's personal photos on public Web sites is something that can cause complications, so we don't do it.

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Nancy Thomas's book on Bolivian Quaker history has been published! I ordered my copy at Wipf and Stock's special Web price from this site. (UPDATE: My review is here.)

News from another writing friend: Bill Yoder has put his archive of religious journalism in one convenient location: wyoder.de.

Does the Christian right in the USA worship a false idol?

Leon Aron on Russian political humor. (My own tribute from last year. And an earlier post comparing Quaker and Russian humor, plus Mike Royko on corruption in Chicago.)

God and Stephen King.

Netanyahu wags the dog ... again.

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Gino Matteo and Jason Ricci ... "I need Jesus to walk with me."

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Information about the Middle East Dialogue Quilt and its imagery (photo at top of post):