Liturgies of Occupation
Come and See, Go and Tell Reflection #5
By, Conor Foley
Under constant colonial siege, through the slow-drip genocide of encroachment, enclosure, and asphyxiation, Palestinian Christians continue to worship as they have for thousands of years. They welcomed us this Sunday at the Church of Transfiguration in Ramallah, and they even slipped some English into the liturgy just for us!
Another liturgy was performed just inside the the walls of Bethlehem, as an armored personnel carrier jutted out of from the sidewalk, partially blocking a row of Palestinian men cuffed, kneeling, heads bowed, being searched by IDF soldiers with balaclavas and machine guns. This is the coercive rehearsal of Zionist domination, that farcical enforcement of an antichrist order. Forced to kneel, Palestinians refuse to worship.
At Wi’am: The Palestinian Conflict Transformation Center, our comrades were clear about their rejection of the imposition of the colonial reality of violence, antagonism, and injustice. They refuse victimhood and hopelessness. They fight for the possibility of conciliation where there has never been mutuality, because there never could be between colonizer and colonized. Yet even as 120,000 settlers bear down on them, protected by the full weight of Israel and its U.S. sponsor, these folks are choosing loving resistance. Scrawled across the apartheid wall that hems in the house of our hosts, is: “Challenging Empire: God, Faithfulness, and Resistance”.
In the evening we visited the Aida refugee camp, which has been the interim home for families displaced by the catastrophe of 1948. The gate to the camp is framed by a large makeshift keyhole with a massive key resting on top. Hope somehow lives there — the hope of return, of touching the old familiar things, of groundedness and belonging and safety. “The right of return is sacred,” Sam told us.
Food is history, it’s connection and belonging, and sacred in its own right. Noor Women’s Empowerment Group showed how to make a few traditional Palestinian dishes. Noor WEG hosts these classes as a means of preserving and sharing culture, and funding their work with disabled Palestinians. Surviving Israel is difficult enough, but the challenges of disability intensify the strain. These precious folks are faithfully intervening and doing incredible work. Please support them here! Noor Rehabilitation building 2023 - GlobalGiving
On our way out of town our guide showed us the village his family was displaced from in 1948. He asked us to witness to this injustice, to change our country’s policies, to get our leaders to respect international law and the right to return which it’s supposed to protect. He asked us, as so many have, to keep our government from sending Israel weapons. We passed through a giftshop that made jewelry out of tear gas canisters manufactured in Pennsylvania.
I don’t know where Palestinians find their resolve — their ṣumūd. How could this not break a people? Some have been, lost to disillusionment, to displacement, or death. But so many continue to struggle, and do so with such deep love in their hearts. What we have encountered in the people we’ve met is simply the triumph of an unconquerable human spirit that I believe is suffused with power from the Holy Spirit.
But our siblings in faith are not virtuous victims to be fawned over for their moral impeachability - they are people who deserve to be free, who must be free, at any cost to ourselves. They are the “living stones who must not become museums,” as our comrade at Wi’am warned us. We can’t admire their spirits while neglecting the safety of their bodies. We must follow their leadership on the way to liberation for us all.
Conor Foley
Conor Foley (they/them) is the Outreach Minister at the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn. Through and alongside their church work, they have been active in the movement for Palestinian liberation, and for the abolition of police and prisons in the U.S. They are currently writing an academic monograph titled The Bible and Police Violence in the United States.