Lecture May 1, 2009
Discovering the Face of the Other –
The view of an insider/outsider
Simon Schoon
I do not pretend to be objective in this lecture. I shall speak in a personal way. Excuse me when I say a lot of times ‘Í’. The reason is that I do not speak in the name of anybody. I speak only on own account.
Let me start with a part of my biography: I lived for many years in Israel with my family. In Nes Ammim, here in the Galilee, from 1974 till 1981. Also for half a year in Jerusalem, writing my PhD. And the last one and a half year I lived again in Nes Ammim, as coordinator of the Centre for Meeting and Dialogue.
I feel an insider in the complexities of this country. In the social and political and cultural and psychological complexities. I have a strange, emotional and inexplicable relation to this land. This very beautiful land, but also very difficult land. I follow the news of this country every day, sometimes even more than the news of my own country. Wherever I travel, I read Israeli newspapers in the internet. It is an understatement when I say: This makes me not always happy. It is quite often news about conflict, war, violence, oppression and bloodshed. But I know that there is more to tell about this land, what is mostly not recorded in the media: Stories about beautiful and brave people, who choose for life and peace and justice and co-existence. I regard it as a privilege that I am invited many, many times into the houses of the Galilee and into the hearts of its people. I feel an insider in the narritives of Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the Galilee. I got to know their pain and trauma’s, but also their joy of life and hope for a better future.
An insider, but at the same time an outsider. I am born in the Netherlands. In Israel I come and go since 1972, already for 37 years. I live in Israel on visa, not as a citizen. I have no right to vote in elections. I am not Jewish, and not Palestinian Arab. That makes my context in the Galilee different, also during this conference, also delivering this lecture. I recognize my context and I do not as if I am an Israeli citizen. I come from afar. From Western Europe, from the Netherlands. I am a Dutch Christian, and a theologian, although now retired from my functions as pastor and professor of theology. So, now I can even more freely say whatever I like to say; what my conscience dictates to me.
I am an insider/outsider. That means for me: To speak with modesty. I shared in the dangers and problems of this land, but my home is in Holland, where my children and grandchilderen live. Modesty means for me also: I have no solutions for the problems of this country. Yes, I had solutions in the past, but I lost them all. By the way, modesty does not mean to me that I do not dare to speak out. I can never forget that my context is European. More exactly: Dutch. I am part of the history of a continent where there was no real safe place for the Jewish People. Frightening names of Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor are till today reminders of that what happened in so-called ‘Christian Europe’. I feel ashamed for that collective history. Not that I am personally guilty of that past. I am born at the end of the war, in the hungerwinter of 1944. It is a miracle that I survived that first period of my life. My grandfather, a member of the Dutch resistance movement, did not survive. He died in 1945, after being prisoner for 3 years in the Vernichtungslager (destruction-part) of Dachau concentrationcamp. I was raised up with this memory, honoring a grandfather who saved Jews and stood up for justice.
So, there were ambivalent sentiments in me: On the one hand feeling ashamed for the fact that most of the Dutch Jews were murdered in the Shoah; even the highest percentage in Europe. And on the other hand, being proud of the memory of my brave grandfather. A same kind of ambivalence I experienced in my relation to my church in the Netherlands. On the one hand I felt shocked because of the anti-Judaism and even anti-Semitism that I discovered in the course of years amongst Christians. On the other hand I was glad for the developments in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, that stated in its charter: “The Church is called to express its indissoluble bond with the People of Israel [= the Jewish People].”
I must confess that my views about Israel after the war of 1967 were too romantic. That had a lot to do with my feelings of shame about the European past. The same is true for most of the pioneers of Nes Ammim in the initial period of this project. But soon, when I lived in Israel from 1974 on, I discovered the reality of this country. I listened to the stories of the people. The stories of our neighbours, the survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto in Lochamei Hagettaot, but also the stories of Arab neighbours in the Galilee - about destroyed villages and expropriations of land. It did not change my attachement to this land, and even love for this country, but these feelings were widened to all the inhabitants of this land. In the seventies we cooperated a lot in Nes Ammim with the Jewish-Arab movement Partnership, with pioneers like Rachel Rosenzweig and Ibrahim Sim’an. I was involved in finding funds for the building of community centres in Arab villages, like Me’ylia, Mazra’a and Fassouta. We received thousands of students, pelgrims and tourists, who wanted to encounter the real people in this land, and not visit only excavations and holy sites. We established warm relations with our Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters in the Galilee. But we also took up many contacts with Muslim friends in the surrounding, and favoured dialogue between Jews, Muslims and Christians.
More than in the seventies of the last century I discovered in the last one and a half year the harsh reality of this land and all its inhabitants. In the past I was here during several wars, but now also during the last Gaza war. I experienced the political turn to the right in the last Israeli elections and heard from our Arab friends about their feelings of estrangement and their anxieties about the future. But I listened also to the stories of fear of my Jewish friends, about Hezbollah and Hamas, and about the nuclear capabilities of Iran. I tried to communicate to Holland these experiences in many articles, more than 40 in the last year. Both narritives - conflicting narritives - I tried to represent as honest as possible. Also in a TV documentary with two of my friends from the Galilee, an Arab and a Jewish friend, Elias Jabbour and Zahava Neuberger-Keller, members of our Local Dialogue Committee. It had a great impact in Holland, when it was broadcasted in October 2008.
It is not easy to listen equally open to both sides. We all have our prejudices and our preconceived ideas. It is almost impossible to try to unmask the myths on both sides of the conflict. It is extremely difficult to resist the strong pressures to choose totally and radically for one side in the conflct. Many people in the West tend to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict only black and white. They are 100% pro-Jewish or 100% pro-Palestinian. Easily they switch totally from one side to the other. They come to this land with solutions on so-called ‘fact finding missions’, and are angry when they discover that people on both sides of the conflict do not accept their solutions.
I still try to be a listener in this land, even after so many years of involvement. To listen to the stories of the Jewish and Arab participants, who come for seminars to Nes Ammim in the framework of our Centre for Meeting and Dialogue. Student groups from high schools, women empowerment seminars, interfaith discussions, - always mixed groups of both Jews and Arab Israeli’s. This endeavour in Nes Ammim is not replacing our inspiration of the past, but is the continuation of that same inspiration, now in the context of the 21st century. The same inspiration of working for peace and justice, for understanding and reconciliation.
I came to these convictions by listening in this land, listening to all sides and to very different people. It would have been much easier to lend my ear only to one side, like many do. But that is impossible for me. It would mean a betrayal of the memory of my grandfather. It would be also a betrayal to my deepest faith commitment. For me personal as Christian that means following Jesus. A few weeks ago I was meditating on a hill near the Lake of Galilee, called the Mount of Beatitudes. I was there many, many times. I love that place because of the words that Jesus spoke there, somewhere at this Lake. One word of Jesus is especially dear to me: “Happy are those who are humble, because they will inherit the land”. This word is not invented by him. He just quoted as a Jew a text from Psalm 37: “Those who trust the Lord will possess the land”. For me this way of non-violence resistance is not soft. I am not a pacifist. But in the imitation of Jesus, and of people like Mahatma Ghandi, non-violence is a powerful way of living, that opens the future to a world where people can live together. Where people accept the compromise of living as two peoples in one and the same land.
I have to come to a conclusion. I like to end in the same way as I began. With the statement: ‘I am an insider/outsider’. I love this land with all its different inhabitants. Not because this land is holy, as it is so often called ‘the Holy Land’. Not because its inhabitants are holy or perfect. But because human life is holy. Because I discovered in this land the faces of my Jewish and Palestinian Arab neighbours, my brothers and sisters as human beings.
I never tried to convince others of my Christian faith. I favour dialogue and respect as the way to reconciliation and co-existence. I pray every day for this land and its inhabitants. I try to keep apathy and cynicism away from my heart. That is not always easy. But I have discovered signs of hope in encountering unique people who dare to speak out, both Jews and Palestinians, who have dedicated their life to the dream of peace and justice, equality and human rights. So I keep hope that the day will come - if not for us, then for our children and grandchildren – that the very different people of this land will live in equality and recognize each other as created after the image of Adonai, as creatures of Allah the Merciful, all children of our God and Father in heaven.