The Last Action Heroes
By Israel Shamir
The East celebrated Easter in May, long time after the West this
year. There was little of festive spirit, as the Nativity Church
of Bethlehem had been besieged for a month. Starved priests and
laity had laid in the grotto where the Virgin gave birth to
Christ; bodies of policemen slain by Israeli sharpshooters were
piled under the golden Tree of Jesse mosaic. From time to time,
the attackers propelled flares to the wooden roof of the
basilica and watched the weakened by long fast defenders putting
the fires off. But Easter brought its miracle, and it was called
ISM.
What is ISM? For the reply, go a few hundred yards away from the
church, on the broad terrace overlooking the gentle descent of
the hills towards the Dead Sea, above the road’s double bend;
there is a small Byzantine sanctuary adjacent to a water
cistern. Eastern wind blew a layer of desert dust over its floor
mosaics, and proverbial thorns broke through their red crosses.
It has an aquatic character like many shrines of the Holy Land
and it is called Bir Daoud (David’s Well), in memory of a
legendary exploit. Once, the conquering army from the cities of
the plain declared War on Terror and sealed this hilly village
in an effort to catch a local man, a Palestinian terrorist
leader Daoud who had attacked the conquerors’
settlements. But his companions, a motley band of men,
challenged the invaders’ order. They dared the road checks,
defied security measures, sneaked into the village and, against
enormous odds, had brought a draught of water from the Bethlehem
village well to Daoud, or King David as we call him now.
Millennia passed by, and this exploit was repeated by the new
version of the King David’s companions, the International
Solidarity Movement, or ISM, as the land of Palestine has become
the scene of most dramatic confrontation and international
involvement for decades, if not centuries. Young European and
American men and women, who were born too late to join the
International Brigades in Republican Spain 1936, have joined the
ISM and came to the green hills of Bethlehem and Hebron. They
came in troublesome time: Israeli leaders carefully laid a plan
to expel and exterminate Palestinians and create a country as
Jewish as Germany was Aryan. The ISM volunteers by their very
presence derail this plan and save local peasants from
destruction and expulsion. They live dangerously: play the
cat-and-mouse game with Israeli mechaslim (“exterminators”),
dodge snipers’ bullets, stay in defenceless villages with the
peasants. If King David is too far for you, think of them as the
Last Action Heroes, of Schwarzenegger’s fame.
Though some of them have Jewish parents, they rejected
separatist frameworks “for Jews only”, perpetuated by Peacenik
Zionists. They stand for equality, for the ‘International of
Good People’, as Isaac Babel would say. They came from the land
of Folke Bernadotte, and the land of Abe Lincoln, and the land
of T.E. Lawrence. Some of the ISM volunteers saw action in
non-violent protests of Seattle, Gothenburg and Genoa,
confronting the two-headed dragon of Globalisation and Zionism.
Others came to the Holy Land in April 2002, just in time for
Israel’s Easter Offensive, as Sharon’s willing executioners
demolished houses, uprooted olive trees, deported thousands of
Palestinians into concentration camps, slaughtered hundreds of
men, women and children in Jenin refugee camp and Nablus. When
Israel’s Juggernaut rolled into Bethlehem, over two hundred
local people sought refuge in the church.
The tradition of refuge actually precedes Christianity and was
known to mankind from the dawn of civilisation. Churches always
provided the place of refuge, and Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of
Notre Dame supplies immediate reference. In Latin America
persecuted people, illegal immigrants and labour leaders often
were saved by hiding in churches, while during WWII, many
thousands of Jews found refuge in Christian churches and
monasteries. That is why people of Bethlehem believed they will
be safe beyond the thick walls of the oldest church in
Christendom.
The Nativity church of Bethlehem was built in AD 325, one of the
first three grand Christian edifices of the Holy Land, and the
only survivor. Its turbulent history was, on a balance, rather
lucky one: the invading Persians refused orders of their Jewish
commissars to destroy it in AD 614, and the Saracens refused
similar orders of Hakim, the mad Caliph of Egypt in AD 1009,
while on both occasions its sister church, the Holy Sepulchre of
Jerusalem, was burned and destroyed. In AD 1099, Tancred, the
future Prince of Galilee, received at Latrun, thirty miles of
hostile territory away, the reports on enemy plans to destroy
Nativity, and he rode through the night in the head of his
knights and relieved it.
Crusader Kings of Jerusalem chose to be crowned in Nativity, and
kings of England and France sent to its see their precious
gifts. In AD 1145, most beautiful mosaic adorned its walls,
still showing the Tree of Jesse, and the Tree of Life, and
Doubting Thomas touching the wounds of Christ Resurrected. In
1932, the British uncovered gorgeous floor mosaic of 4th
century, and in AD 2000, Yasser Arafat rebuilt the Manger Square
in front of the basilica. The church was adored by millions of
believers through the centuries, and that is why the people
believed they will remain safe in its protection.
But the Jews do not care for sanctity of churches. Granted,
there are differences of opinion: Zionist disciples of Rabbi
Kook, the main religious denomination in Israel, believe all
churches must be destroyed soonest, even before the mosques. For
them, eradication of Christianity is a more important task than
elimination of Palestinians. Their traditionalist opponents
think there is no rush, and it should be done by the Jewish
Messiah of Vengeance, whenever he will arrive. Secular Jews just
do not care. That is why the Jewish army had no mental
difficulty to surround the church and to begin the cruellest
siege in its long history.
Forty monks and priests remained on duty in the church, together
with 200 refugees. For a month, the Israelis did not allow to
bring food or water to the besieged. As in the medieval sieges,
people starved and died, trying to survive on rainwater boiled
with lemon leaves and grass. Stench of corpses and of infected
wounds filled the old church. State-of-art cameras assisted
sharpshooters who hung outside and shot at every moving figure.
They killed monks and priests as well as refugees. Even before
the siege, they shot dead a choir boy Johnny, and as I write it,
on Easter Saturday May 4, they murdered another churchman on
duty. They did it with impunity, as they had allies in the media
of the West. The Danish fairy tale writer, Hans Christian
Andersen, wrote of the Snow Queen’s magic mirror that distorts
reality and changes beautiful things into ugly ones, and vice
versa. In the magic mirror of CNN, this oldest church became ‘a
place where some Christians believe Jesus was born’. The
refugees were described as ‘terrorists’. The monks and priests
became ‘hostages’ in the magic mirror of the Snow Queen. Cries
of the besieged would not come through the Israeli-managed
western media.
In this dark hour, ISM rode in. As the Holy Land had prepared
for Good Friday (majority of Palestinian Christians belongs to
the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem), two dozen volunteers
divided into two groups: one of them staged a diversion in the
best tradition of Alistair McLean’s Guns of Navarone. While
Israeli soldiers were taken aback by their foolhardy bravery and
proceeded to capture them, the second group rushed forward, and
entered the gates of the church. They brought with them some
food and water to the starving beleaguered refugees, something
to look forward for Easter Sunday. Probably in the history
books, their breakthrough will be called the Easter Rescue.
When Zionism will be laid to rest, names of these daring men and
women would be carved on the walls of the church. In the
sacristy, next to the sword of Godfrey de Bouillon, the Defender
of the Holy Sepulchre (the leader of the First Crusade refused
the crown, but accepted the title) there will be baseball hats
and sneakers of the Defenders of Nativity, those who got into
the church, to share hunger and danger of the siege: Alistair
Hillman (UK), Allan Lindgaard (Denmark), Erik Algers (Sweden),
Jacqueline Soohen (Canada) Kristen Schurr (USA), Larry Hales
(USA), Mary Kelly (Ireland), Nauman Zaidi (USA), Stefan Coster
(Sweden), and Robert O'Neill (USA), and those who sacrificed
their freedom, created diversion and were jailed: Jeff Kingham
(USA), Jo Harrison (UK), Johannes Wahlstrom (Sweden), James
Hanna (USA), Kate Thomas (UK), Marcia Tubbs (UK), John Caruso
(USA), Nathan Musselman (USA), Nathan Mauger (USA), Trevor
Baumgartner (USA), Thomas Kootsoukos (USA), Ida Fasten (Sweden),
Huwaida Arraf (USA).
The diversionary group was arrested for the dreadful crime of
bringing food to the starving refugees in the Church on Easter:
At first, men were separated from women and taken to jail in an
illegal Jewish settlement of Etzion. Women were sent to
Jerusalem, and brought to court, where they were sentenced to be
deported. While on the way to the jail transport, the English
girls jumped off and escaped their guards. One of them was
caught by an Israeli civilian, who did not hesitate to pull a
knife on a girl. Other two are on the run, together with the
Swedish girl, Ida. They showed what is real civil disobedience,
how a non-violent and humanitarian action could make difference
even in the brutal circumstances of the Israeli occupation. Now,
the men are still in jail in the occupied Hebron, in the hands
of its fanatical settlers.
Though they committed no offence in the territory of Israel,
they have been sentenced to be deported and forbidden to enter
Israel for ten years. One hopes the apartheid ‘state of Israel’
would not last that
long. Their sentence proved that for Israelis, “Palestinian
territories” are just a legal fiction, to be applied or
discarded whenever needed. We could do the same and demand
equality for all, Jew and Gentile alike, in the whole of
Palestine.
As a professional journalist, I regret that this tense drama of
siege, breakthrough, diversion, relief, salvation, arrest,
escape and confrontation at Easter, in the shadow of the great
church, the best stuff there is, did not reach the mass audience
of Europe and America, that it was not broadcasted by all TV
stations and reprinted by all newspapers. But the regret does
not diminish my joy, as one of the kids who broke the siege was
my own son.
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