Israel and Palestine

Well, I am back from my two months abroad. My first stop was Israel with a group of Jewish and Christian seminary students. Lots of thoughts, lots to say. Here’s a passage from Rowan Williams’ sermon: “The Poor Deserve the Best”: 

One of the most chilling things on this journey to the Holy Land was the almost total absence in both major communities of any belief that there was a political solution to hand. So step back from that for a moment and ask, ‘What do both the communities in the Holy Land ask from us – not just from that convenient abstraction, the “international community”, but from you and me?’ Both deserve the best; and the best we can give them in such circumstances is at least the assurance of friendship. Go and see, go and listen; let them know, Israelis and Palestinians alike, that they will be heard and not forgotten. Both communities in their different ways dread –with good reason – a future in which they will be allowed to disappear while the world looks elsewhere. The beginning of some confidence in the possibility of a future is the assurance that there are enough people in the world committed to not looking away and pretending it isn’t happening. It may not sound like a great deal, but it is open to all of us to do; and without friendship, it isn’t possible to ask of both communities the hard questions that have to be asked, the questions about the killing of the innocent and the brutal rejection of each other’s dignity and liberty.