By Mazin Qumsiyeh
I gave a talk at the NATO Defence College in Rome to some 82 officers and
civilians from many NATO countries and affiliated or partner countries
(including Egypt, UAE, Jordan, etc). An Israeli colleague who lives in
London also presented his point of view and read on things and then we took
questions. We also participated in small group meetings and discussions. I
was pleased with the level of sophistication, excellent questions asked, and
hospitality we received. The commanding officers and all others were very
kind to us. We will not forget this visit. While in Rome for three days we
got to visit the Vatican including seeing the magnificent Sistine Chapel
paintings. We got to tour the museums and also visit the Roman Forum and
the Palatine. There, I was interested to see for the first time Titus arch
which was built after the death of this emperor. On one of its panels it
celebrates its victory over the Jewish rebels in Jerusalem.
Most people today identify with the Jewish rebels and not with the Romans.
Even the guidebook to the ruins we were using referred to “destruction of
Jerusalem” (actually careful and unbiased historians disagree with such a
description since the rebellion was rather small and narrow and its was
contained rather quickly with Jerusalem flourishing later except for limited
access by the Jewish community which was then still a minority of the
population of Palestine). Historians also tell us that Jews continued to
live in small communities throughout Palestine (later many of them
converting to Christianity or to Islam). Before this rebellion, Jews in
Palestine had full autonomy with their own King (e.g. King Herod who
condemned Jesus). The Roman administration was until this armed rebellion
rather liberal in its dealings with ethnic and religious minorities. Before
and after the rebellion, Palestine remained a multi-ethnic and
multi-religious community despite many efforts of many rulers who failed to
change it by military force sometimes succeeding for a few decades )one of
the crusader kingdoms lasted 110 years before Palestine was restored to have
Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities living side by side). Let us hope
that this is the last failed attempt to create a homogenous Palestine (aka
Eretz Yisrael). I for one can never understand the desire to live in a
homogenous state since variety is the spice of life.
Like Jesus who identified with and preached to Jew and gentile, I find
myself identifying with both the Romans and the Jews of Palestine of that
first century AD as I identify today with all communities in Palestine.
This is first because they were human beings like all of us caught in a set
of historical structures and machinations that left them in the situation
they faced. I identified especially with the Jews who resisted Roman
occupation non-violently. Jesus was to become the symbol of such power of
such resistance. That the armed resisters ultimately failed (they ere
called saccari because they hid their assassination knives in their cloths)
while eventually the philosophy of Jesus spread like wild fire in the Roman
Empire should be telling to us. It was three plus centuries and hundreds of
thousands of martyrs before finally the Roman Empire decided itself to adopt
Christianity rather than keep fighting it. Yet unfortunately as the Jewish
theologian Marc Ellis articulated effectively, such a Constantinian
(transformation of) Christianity in the form of state power would inevitably
lead to the atrocities of the Crusades and far more (e.g. use of
Christianity to justify colonization). Ellis further argues that the new
Constantinian Judaism in the form of Zionism is equally damaging to
Prophetic Judaism. One day I would like to write more on this but for now,
the sight of ruins of great empires AND visiting with great people
descendent of oppressors and oppressed and getting along in equality always
remind me that we all die someday and that great stone edifices, palaces,
and statues are all equally ephemeral while people remain and in many cases
improve. And as the song goes, “in the end only kindness matters.”
Sure enough, I saw so much kindness, so much human beauty in Italy that
trumps all other beauty. The last 24 hours we spent time in rural Italy
among kind and generous farmers who remind me so much of Palestine (in the
areas of Offida. San Benedetto, Ascoli). I think to myself that the hundreds
of Palestinian villages (including my own of Beit Sahour) would have been
just as nice, just as peaceful and tranquil as those villages if it was not
for that Constantinian form of Judaism that decided to take on the crazy
project of transforming a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society into a
Jewish state (maximum geography and minimum demography). Instead, hundreds
of villages, most dating to millennia (2-4 thousand years old) were
destroyed and those like mine that remained lost so much land and received
so many displaced people that their character is no longer what it used to
be or would have been.
While we were here we followed closely the travails of the Gaza Freedom
March (finally denied entry to Gaza) and the Viva Palestina Convoy to Gaza
(finally allowed entry after detours and clashes). It is an honor to call
many of the people in both groups friends. Actually we might miss seeing
some of our Italian friends who are still in Gaza. I spoke tonight at San
Benedetto to 50 people. Tomorrow, I speak in Milano, then in Turino on the
9th, possibly Bologna on the 10th then in Roma again on the 11th. I will
then travel to Amman on the 12th. But as always, you are welcome to visit us
in Palestine-
PS: Just to be clear, thanks to Israeli restrictions, less than 3% of
Palestinians are able to travel like I do and a smaller fraction can
actually do it financially or logistically and the numbers in Gaza are
closer to 0.001%.
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