We had this really interesting speaker at church last night. He was a Palestinian christian living in Bethlehem. It was great, he was really funnyn and REALLY well educated. He basically gave us the entire backstory to the Palestine/Israel conflict - which is great for an uneducated person like me! - and talked about how it's not about who should get the land but that we should learn to love people on both sides of the fence.
Which is true because that's totally what Jesus talked about. You know, he loved the sinners and the prostitutes and the tax collectors. Not just because they were Jews either! He had no time for the self-righteous people of the day.
And to be fair I don't either.
Both the Israelis and the Palestinians have committed wrongs in this war. I don't think there's actually any point in playing "the blame game" it's gone on too long and every thing's so tangled up that it would be impossible to really make any sense of blaming anyone.
But the truth is we don't really hear about the Palestinian side of the story. All we hear is what the western media drip feeds us about how Israel is oppressed. The heavily biased western media I might add.
Israel has performed it's fair share of injustices but in the west we tend to herald them as God's chosen people and thus it is their right to have this land that they took by force anyway. And I'm not saying that they're NOT God's chosen people - the bible clearly states that they are. But the bible also says that we are ALL God's people; Jews AND Gentiles.
Let's face it, all of us who are NOT jews are Gentiles.
I just can't reconcile a LOVING God, a God who loves the WHOLE world (John 3:16!!!) and a just and fair God with what is going on with the Middle East. I don't reconcile that idea with us supporting the "relocation" of people from their homes into refugee camps.
We have a new covenant. It was written in Jesus' blood. It's not about land it's about loving other's as you would love yourself. It's about loving other's as Jesus would.
It just reminds me of the old testemant and how time and time again God warned the Israelites and he called them a "stiff-necked people" and how they were always proud and how he always had to take them down a peg or two.
I'm not anti-Israel. But I refuse to be anti-Palestine. Those people have as much of a right to be there as the Israelis do. I don't understand why they couldn't intergrate in the first place - because they sure as heck can't intergrate now. But I don't understand why they won't leave it alone either. They have their land, why should they continue to try and push their authority over the Palestinians?
I don't get it.
