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Hamas in Charge—What does this mean?
February 1, 2006
Democracy is breaking out in the Middle East as an oppressed people exercise their right to self-determination and…elect Hamas, a hard-line political party our government can’t stand! Lately, I’ve been fielding plenty of questions on campus regarding Hamas’ overwhelming victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections. It’s been a few years since I lived there in the thick of things, but I will try to offer a little insight to this situation.
Why were they elected?
I understand Hamas’ victory to be primarily an anti-corruption vote. Fatah, Arafat’s more secular party which has been in power for over a decade, is notorious for pocketing funds designated for infrastructure and relief of its citizens. Meanwhile, Hamas and most Arab political parties function like fraternal organizations or ‘burial societies’ as we used to have them here: If your street is full of potholes, Hamas collects money, hires workers, and fixes your road. If your neighborhood needs a park, they get things together and build it. If your kid is run over by a tank, they pay for the funeral, and so on. They’re fairly efficient at this, and tangible results do lead to political popularity. Curiously enough, each political party maintains its own militia. (Remember Sinn Fein and the IRA?) Usually, the militia is all we hear about here. It’s also curious that many Palestinians reported voting for Abu Mazen to replace Arafat because he was the candidate most favored as a ‘partner for peace’ by Israel and the U.S. As soon as he was elected, both countries changed their stance and the people felt tricked. This time, they weren’t going to make the same mistake.
What about the rhetoric?
Hamas has a reputation for claiming Israel has no right to exist, and for using violence as a method of resisting the military occupation of Palestinian lands. For this reason, the U.S. and other donors are considering withholding aid to Palestine, which keeps civil society afloat, until it renounces both these stances. It is worth noting that the other nation involved is not being asked to renounce violence or acknowledge the right of Palestine and its citizens to exist in order to continue qualifying for our aid, which is mostly military in nature. With U.S. dollars, we are largely responsible for making Israel the 4th largest military power in the world. This is despite its heavily documented human rights abuses. Violence is violence, and attacks on civilians are attacks on civilians. While both parties have participated in each, Israel has carried out a far higher proportion of both (see Human Rights Watch, www.hrw.org, Amnesty International, www.amnestyusa.org).
What’s worth worrying about?
I’m most concerned about women’s rights. NPR reported (Morning Edition,1/31/06) that legislation is already being proposed to mandate the headscarf and abaya for all women. Currently, Palestinians are one of the most secular Arab peoples, with customs varying by family and location. Curiously enough, in the same newscast, NPR reported that the Dutch government is considering legislation to ban the burqa. Do nations really have any business either mandating or banning women’s dress or faith practices?
What is responsible action on our part?
I don’t like the idea of cutting off Western funding because the citizens of a heavily aid-dependent country freely elected a political party we dislike. Political or religious extremism and economic freezes simply do not mix. Aid dollars that support education and communication with the outside world are what help nurture real democracy and moderation. Our commitment in dollars to a civilian population’s basic needs is also the only legitimacy we have in telling a suffering people how they should or should not resist military occupation.
While we should condemn all forms of violence in this conflict, particularly against civilians, we have a responsibility ourselves not to harm civilians in our response to this new arrangement of power in Palestine.
We can encourage the redemption of Hamas, providing adequate resources for them to begin meeting the daily life needs of the people, as well as incentives for peacemaking gestures. To shut them out completely can only lead to more disillusionment and violence. We must do the same for the Israeli government.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Friday, January 27, 2006
Rebuilding Hope in New Orleans
Rebuilding Hope in New Orleans
January 27, 2006
I never got to New Orleans before this service trip. Not even to the Lutheran Youth Gatherings, though they must have been amazing. This was one thought I had among many as we walked and drove around the streets of this devastated city.
During the first week of Christmas Break, Stephanie Friant, Joe Genau, Kathleen Owens (MTS) and I traveled to New Orleans to participate in cleanup and rebuilding, joining efforts coordinated by the St. Charles Area Presbyterian Church program known as RHINO—Rebuilding Hope in New Orleans. Our host congregation was in a less-damaged neighborhood with a former mansion-turned-education wing converted into housing for work groups.
We started by hauling relief and clean-up donations to Berean Presbyterian Church in the central city area, where people were just beginning to return to their homes. The congregation had not worshipped together from the time of the hurricane until the last Sunday in Advent. They were now also ready to resume their Head Start program and distribute donations out of their fellowship hall. In addition to floodwater, a recently-remodeled parsonage had to be partially gutted due to storm damage.
Most of the week, however, was devoted to hauling out damaged furniture and completely gutting two houses in the Gentilly neighborhood. This area experienced damage from the storm as well as 8-10 feet of water from levee breakage. Cars and even semi-trucks were completely damaged, and boats tilted against anything they happened to land on when the water subsided. After a month of being unable to enter the area, the combined effects of a muddy flash flood, high temperatures, and no electricity rapidly accelerated the mold growth and extent of damage to the houses. Food in refrigerators turned to toxic, leaking sludge.
The Brown family owns two houses next to each other in this area; the adult daughter and her children live next door to the parents and high-school aged son. The father recently had back surgery, and the whole family had little help to begin on their own. Of two houses’ worth of possessions, only a cupboard’s worth of glass keepsakes could be salvaged, and one photo album. A six-foot tall, thirty-foot long mountain of former belongings piled up in the street, waiting for the garbage truck. He told us the memories associated with each item as he watched us pulling them from the house. It was a life laid bare to strangers, and he was still a gracious host.
We learned from the Brown family that week what many people have struggled with: why would anyone want to return to these neighborhoods? It is the community, he said, built up over so many years, as much as it is having no other place to go. His house had been through seven floods and two fires and each time he rebuilt, just like his neighbors. They weren’t sure if they would even be allowed to rebuild this time, or if the city would condemn and bulldoze the area. Still, they chose to get started. Once torn out to the studs, the frame would be treated against mold and reconstructed. Just like before.
Later in the week we found ourselves in the now-famous Lower 9th Ward, which took the impact of the breaking levees hardest. The wreckage showed the force of the water: splintered house compressed against splintered house. Who could survive?
Elsewhere in town were relatively affluent patches of ‘normalcy.’ Here, it was a ghost town. In all the war-torn cities where I have worked before, no curfew-induced ghost town was ever like this. In Hebron, you hear children call to you from behind their shuttered windows. You see kites flying from ruins. Not here. Here there were no children.
In among the houses of this district were the churches. The impact of seeing so many destroyed churches on four seminary students is almost beyond words. How is it harder to witness these than even the thousands of houses destroyed? But there were dozens of them. These had been simple buildings, wood and brick; these had been the predominantly black and predominantly poor neighborhoods, the realities of structural racism surrounding us, made plain by the storms. These churches mostly did not say ‘ELCA’ or ‘PCUSA’ on the sides; they were names of Pentecostal, evangelical, or independent churches mostly. I wondered how they would be rebuilt. I wondered if our churches would be sharing our resources to help them rebuild. And I simply wondered where the churches’ people were, how many could have survived.
As we stood in the streets, I thought, the sky was fittingly dark for this. It felt like death.
Still, death is not forever for those of faith, and we were constantly reminded of this in the relationships we developed with people throughout the week. People were filtering in. Children would be coming back during Christmas break, volunteer groups were booked for weeks after our departure from RHINO, even a little night life was returning to the French Quarter. Berean would celebrate Christmas ‘at home,’ and our host church assembled its annual Christmas chorale, complete with orchestra.
None of us wanted to leave, but hope was bigger than us and would continue beyond us. I do not know what New Orleans will look like a few years in the future, just like I did not know it in the past. I have only known it for seven days in between. But I hope that I can know it, and heal it, more.
January 27, 2006
I never got to New Orleans before this service trip. Not even to the Lutheran Youth Gatherings, though they must have been amazing. This was one thought I had among many as we walked and drove around the streets of this devastated city.
During the first week of Christmas Break, Stephanie Friant, Joe Genau, Kathleen Owens (MTS) and I traveled to New Orleans to participate in cleanup and rebuilding, joining efforts coordinated by the St. Charles Area Presbyterian Church program known as RHINO—Rebuilding Hope in New Orleans. Our host congregation was in a less-damaged neighborhood with a former mansion-turned-education wing converted into housing for work groups.
We started by hauling relief and clean-up donations to Berean Presbyterian Church in the central city area, where people were just beginning to return to their homes. The congregation had not worshipped together from the time of the hurricane until the last Sunday in Advent. They were now also ready to resume their Head Start program and distribute donations out of their fellowship hall. In addition to floodwater, a recently-remodeled parsonage had to be partially gutted due to storm damage.
Most of the week, however, was devoted to hauling out damaged furniture and completely gutting two houses in the Gentilly neighborhood. This area experienced damage from the storm as well as 8-10 feet of water from levee breakage. Cars and even semi-trucks were completely damaged, and boats tilted against anything they happened to land on when the water subsided. After a month of being unable to enter the area, the combined effects of a muddy flash flood, high temperatures, and no electricity rapidly accelerated the mold growth and extent of damage to the houses. Food in refrigerators turned to toxic, leaking sludge.
The Brown family owns two houses next to each other in this area; the adult daughter and her children live next door to the parents and high-school aged son. The father recently had back surgery, and the whole family had little help to begin on their own. Of two houses’ worth of possessions, only a cupboard’s worth of glass keepsakes could be salvaged, and one photo album. A six-foot tall, thirty-foot long mountain of former belongings piled up in the street, waiting for the garbage truck. He told us the memories associated with each item as he watched us pulling them from the house. It was a life laid bare to strangers, and he was still a gracious host.
We learned from the Brown family that week what many people have struggled with: why would anyone want to return to these neighborhoods? It is the community, he said, built up over so many years, as much as it is having no other place to go. His house had been through seven floods and two fires and each time he rebuilt, just like his neighbors. They weren’t sure if they would even be allowed to rebuild this time, or if the city would condemn and bulldoze the area. Still, they chose to get started. Once torn out to the studs, the frame would be treated against mold and reconstructed. Just like before.
Later in the week we found ourselves in the now-famous Lower 9th Ward, which took the impact of the breaking levees hardest. The wreckage showed the force of the water: splintered house compressed against splintered house. Who could survive?
Elsewhere in town were relatively affluent patches of ‘normalcy.’ Here, it was a ghost town. In all the war-torn cities where I have worked before, no curfew-induced ghost town was ever like this. In Hebron, you hear children call to you from behind their shuttered windows. You see kites flying from ruins. Not here. Here there were no children.
In among the houses of this district were the churches. The impact of seeing so many destroyed churches on four seminary students is almost beyond words. How is it harder to witness these than even the thousands of houses destroyed? But there were dozens of them. These had been simple buildings, wood and brick; these had been the predominantly black and predominantly poor neighborhoods, the realities of structural racism surrounding us, made plain by the storms. These churches mostly did not say ‘ELCA’ or ‘PCUSA’ on the sides; they were names of Pentecostal, evangelical, or independent churches mostly. I wondered how they would be rebuilt. I wondered if our churches would be sharing our resources to help them rebuild. And I simply wondered where the churches’ people were, how many could have survived.
As we stood in the streets, I thought, the sky was fittingly dark for this. It felt like death.
Still, death is not forever for those of faith, and we were constantly reminded of this in the relationships we developed with people throughout the week. People were filtering in. Children would be coming back during Christmas break, volunteer groups were booked for weeks after our departure from RHINO, even a little night life was returning to the French Quarter. Berean would celebrate Christmas ‘at home,’ and our host church assembled its annual Christmas chorale, complete with orchestra.
None of us wanted to leave, but hope was bigger than us and would continue beyond us. I do not know what New Orleans will look like a few years in the future, just like I did not know it in the past. I have only known it for seven days in between. But I hope that I can know it, and heal it, more.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Sunday Afternoon With a Cat Named Niebuhr
(I wrote this after the adoption of a rather unusual kitten in need of a home, following the end of my January class on Reinhold Niebuhr)
In the end, it was the only name which seemed to fit.
We tried as many other possibilities as we could think of, names human and feline and traditional and unusual, but nothing seemed to match this strange creature that captured our attention and we felt compelled to bring home from the shelter last night. This morning, after close observation and failing to convince myself otherwise, I realized this name would simply have to do. She is neither all black nor white, but a combination somewhere in between; and the lines and patterns are not cleanly defined at all but a bit beyond our comprehension of what the Creator had in mind. She is somewhat gangly and her ears stick out a little too far in her young age, but perhaps she will outgrow that. I’m told she is verbose, and I see her extreme curiosity about the world around her. Clearly, in community with our other cat (named after the prophet Malachi), they are now both less moral than either appeared originally on each one’s own. Clearly, in cleaning up the houseplants they’ve dug into and moderating their squabbles, the progress in our household I had earlier envisioned was far from inevitable.
Meanwhile, as I move around the house I am surprised to find her everywhere I go. How did she get there? She has generated quite a stir and following from the other cat, always trying to get closer, helping himself out of her dish and prying constantly into her privacy, but so far falling just short of understanding all that she is or might be. Though shocked by her castigations of him, he is still encouraged enough by her invitations to keep trying.
All the metaphors with her namesake are not exact; she does still in our house seem a bit more guilty of the sin of hiding than the sin of pride—although our first cat does more than his part to compensate. With such a name as this, she has rather large ‘shoes’ to fill; in reality her feet are bigger than the rest of her, and despite her routine retreats just beneath my bed-skirt, there is a certain scrappiness and determination in her. This should not come as such a surprise, since we learned that she only weighed four pounds until recently, and had still raised two litters of kittens in her two years of existence!
Encountering this strange creature leaves more questions than answers, I am afraid, and I am wondering if I have done the right thing in bringing her into my own messy life. I am not sure if my brother James, knowing less of Reinhold’s legacy in our times, will find her new name as relevant as I do. And more seriously, neither James nor I are quite sure where our lives will take us after this year. So, I ask, just what is a seminary student who spent the past month having her head filled with Christian realism doing, taking on another pet? There are real questions in life, and one can only try to be faithful in response. Still, while we were told yesterday we could always take her back to the shelter, would I really want to? Despite all her troubles, she’s growing on me rapidly. I think in reality she is here for the long run, and life will never quite be the same
In the end, it was the only name which seemed to fit.
We tried as many other possibilities as we could think of, names human and feline and traditional and unusual, but nothing seemed to match this strange creature that captured our attention and we felt compelled to bring home from the shelter last night. This morning, after close observation and failing to convince myself otherwise, I realized this name would simply have to do. She is neither all black nor white, but a combination somewhere in between; and the lines and patterns are not cleanly defined at all but a bit beyond our comprehension of what the Creator had in mind. She is somewhat gangly and her ears stick out a little too far in her young age, but perhaps she will outgrow that. I’m told she is verbose, and I see her extreme curiosity about the world around her. Clearly, in community with our other cat (named after the prophet Malachi), they are now both less moral than either appeared originally on each one’s own. Clearly, in cleaning up the houseplants they’ve dug into and moderating their squabbles, the progress in our household I had earlier envisioned was far from inevitable.
Meanwhile, as I move around the house I am surprised to find her everywhere I go. How did she get there? She has generated quite a stir and following from the other cat, always trying to get closer, helping himself out of her dish and prying constantly into her privacy, but so far falling just short of understanding all that she is or might be. Though shocked by her castigations of him, he is still encouraged enough by her invitations to keep trying.
All the metaphors with her namesake are not exact; she does still in our house seem a bit more guilty of the sin of hiding than the sin of pride—although our first cat does more than his part to compensate. With such a name as this, she has rather large ‘shoes’ to fill; in reality her feet are bigger than the rest of her, and despite her routine retreats just beneath my bed-skirt, there is a certain scrappiness and determination in her. This should not come as such a surprise, since we learned that she only weighed four pounds until recently, and had still raised two litters of kittens in her two years of existence!
Encountering this strange creature leaves more questions than answers, I am afraid, and I am wondering if I have done the right thing in bringing her into my own messy life. I am not sure if my brother James, knowing less of Reinhold’s legacy in our times, will find her new name as relevant as I do. And more seriously, neither James nor I are quite sure where our lives will take us after this year. So, I ask, just what is a seminary student who spent the past month having her head filled with Christian realism doing, taking on another pet? There are real questions in life, and one can only try to be faithful in response. Still, while we were told yesterday we could always take her back to the shelter, would I really want to? Despite all her troubles, she’s growing on me rapidly. I think in reality she is here for the long run, and life will never quite be the same
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