For this first episode of ‘Open Conversations’ we will explore a richly provocative book by the Palestinian human rights lawyer and author, Raja Shehadeh, entitled ‘Palestinian Walks: Forays Into a Vanishing Landscape.’
Through his recounting of his intermittent walks over four decades Raja Shehadeh vividly and evocatively details the rich landscapes and geographic features of the central plateau of the West Bank around Ramallah, as well as how they have been tragically altered through rampant Israeli settlement construction, revealing the human and ecological consequences upon the fruitfulness, beauty, and sacredness of the land that generations have called home and who’s very identity have been shaped by it. Though published in 2008 this is a timeless story of a gradually vanishing landscape and its effects upon those who have called it home. This is a story of the material, psychological, spiritual, and ecological effects of the Israeli settlements upon the land of Palestine and its inhabitants.
To help us better appreciate this social and ecological impact I have invited Dafer Kassis to join me in conversation. Dafer is a recent newcomer to Canada from Palestine who I met earlier this year at a Conference at St. Paul’s University in Ottawa focusing upon the silence of faith communities on the actions of the Israeli military in Gaza. Dafer is very much engaged with and articulate upon the many tragic realities Palestinian peoples face, particularly both in the West Bank and Gaza… just the person to help us engage more deeply with Raja Shehadeh’s own stories and experience growing up upon the land that is gradually being surrounded by gradual settlement constructions… one that Dafer himself knows fully well.
As we began our conversation Dafer reminded me… this conversation is going to get political. It’s not just a conversation on ecological effects. Our topic of conversation is truly one of integral ecology… how the political and ecological are intertwined.
If I may say a few words in anticipation of my conversation with Dafer, given its political nature in these politically and morally charged times … Though this coming conversation focuses upon the plight of Palestinians, the Jesuit Forum deeply respects Jewish voices, perspectives, fears, and their own humanity and aspirations for peace. Linda Grant wrote in the Guardian on the late Israeli author, Amos Oz, for instance, that he sought to cultivate friendships and alliances with those from the “other side”… while maintaining his deep love for Israel. She noted that the immigrant parents to Israel of Amos Oz’s generation after WWII were so haunted by genocide in Europe that they paid no attention to the population already there in Palestine. It was their children, Amos Oz’s generation, who worked for peace and questioned more the Zionist assumptions. Many Israelis’, such as Amos Oz, were cleared eyed about Israel's growing aspirations upon the West Bank and Gaza through illegal occupation…
‘how it gradually blinded Israelis to the humanity of millions of Palestinians… how it has made the oppression and humiliation of another people somehow acceptable.’ Amos Oz said in a N.Y. Times interview in 2019 shortly before he passed away: “Building settlements in occupied territories was the single most grave error and sin in the history of modern Zionism, because it was based on a refusal to accept the simple fact that we are not alone in this country.” (Jan. 4, 2019, Roger Cohen). Palestinian translator of Amos Oz’s works said,
“Isn’t this inability to imagine the lives of the ‘other’ at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?” (N.Y. Times, Ethan Bronner, March 2010).
After October 7th political and social analyst Ezra Klein, on his podcast series, interviewed Rabbi Sharon Brous about the enduring conflict between Israel and the Palestinian peoples… a conversation he entitled ‘The Sermons I Needed to Hear Right Now.’ In this interview with Rabbi Brous he played a clip from a sermon of her forcefully saying on the plight of the Palestinian peoples:
“We must tell the truth about what is happening, where we are, and how we got here. We must take a serious effort to set aside our cognitive biases and see what is truly before us, rather than what our implicit bias orients us toward…. 56 years of too many people allowing our own trauma and fear to justify the denial of basic rights, dignities, and dreams for millions of Palestinian people living under Israeli rule.” In this interview with Ezra Klein she said that Jewish peoples “have to fight against Jewish ideological extremism with as much passion and fervour as our grandparents fought for the establishment of the state. We have to fight for Palestinian rights with as much passion and fervour as we fight for our own rights… how can we, who desperately cry out for the world to take Jewish suffering seriously, not also have our own hearts break when Palestinians are suffering?”
Reflection QuestionsIn the spirit of personal and communal discernment, as you listen to my conversation with Dafer Kassis upon Raja Shehadeh’s ‘Palestinian Walks: Forays Into a Vanishing Landscape’ we invite you to reflect upon these following questions:
- What most resonated with you in this conversation with Dafer?
- From this conversation, in the context of Pope Francis’ sense of Integral Ecology as articulated in his encyclical ‘Laudato Si’, do you have a better sense of the ecological destruction taking place through settlement construction of the West Bank and Gaza? Do you have a better sense in how this ecological destruction is inevitably related to the disappearance of the Palestinian people's culture, livelihoods, and dignity?
- Reflect upon the ecological beauty of the land you have called home, either in the past or presently. What has been its essential role in your own formation as a human being? How has it contributed towards your own sense of identity and relationship with God our Creator? What would be missing within yourself if you were forced and separated from it?
We hope you enjoy and find fruitful this inaugural episode of ‘Open Conversations’.
* Note... Apologies for the some of the audio quality. We are learning as we go!
Jesuit Forum for Social Faith and Justice70 St. Mary StreetToronto, ON.Canada M5S 1J3(416) 927-7787Website: https://jesuitforum.caE-mail: [email protected]
