Zoughbi Zoughbi, the founder and director of Wi’am, the Palestinian Conflict Transformation Center, said he wanted a visiting PC(USA) delegation to see what is happening to the people Wi’am serves.
“Justice is so important we almost forget what it means,” he said while hosting the six visitors. “We are glad to see you because you come from a great power, which is associated with great responsibility.”
“We need our ecumenical family,” he said. “Christians here [in and around Bethlehem] feel hopeless and helpless. You are a renewable source of hope for us to hear the voices of the marginalized, depressed and downtrodden.”
Wi’am’s work includes offering children’s programs, job creation, educational and cultural tours, nonviolent resistance, peer mediation and programs for women and children. A longtime partner of the PC(USA), Wi’am first spoke to the delegation and then fed them Qidreh with lamb.
“Wi’am’s is a message of collective responsibility. We shift from dwelling on victimhood to collective responsibility, the cure for every malady. We saw that end conflict in South Africa and Northern Ireland,” he said. “I’m sorry that is not working here.”
Zoughbi called the current age one of the most difficult times in history. Many Palestinians have no jobs. Some do, but don’t have salaries. “How can we deliver a message that it’s worth living a life in this area?”
He wondered if churches and church leaders “are doing their job.”
“What will we have — chaos or community building?” he asked. “How can we be like the first church, delivering good news for the entire Palestinian people?”
For Wi’am, “it’s a blessing to be next to the wall,” he said of the organization’s office space. “This entices us to do more work on the ground.” When staff or others are showered with tear gas, “we are armed from head to toe with onions and perfume [to deal with the tear gas] and hope and faith.”
“Nevertheless, we work, and more people are coming to our services,” he said. “The place we are in is a mixed blessing. Risk is a model of life, and we struggle equipped with our faith.”
Because people “feel unsafe at the moment,” Wi’am works with psychologists and social workers “around the clock.”
“After the conflict has stopped, it can take generations to heal,” he said. Clubs for women and youth have been established, and educational workshops are offered “because we believe in synergy.”
“Shame on us Arabs and Palestinians if we are unable to deliver a bottle of water to Gaza,” Zoughbi said.
The Rev. Jihyun Oh, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the PC(USA) and Executive Director of Presbyterian Life & Witness, wondered what renewable hope looks like for Palestinians. She asked: “How do we equip people so they don’t get tired?”
“I have known Douglas [Dicks, the PC(USA) global ecumenical liaison who organized the trip] for a long time, and he is not tired. He gives us hope,” Zoughbi said. “If you bring more groups — young people and people who are young at heart — you are sustaining people. You are telling us we are not alone, empowering the weak and bringing accountability.”
“Come and see,” Zoughbi advised anyone considering a journey to Israel-Palestine. “Come, see, reflect and act. We need to change our lenses sometimes, because the old lenses aren’t helpful anymore.”
He said that churches “have the moral ground to do a better job” working against injustice because “we have a rich heritage of solidarity with the oppressed.”
“If we want change, we have to go down to the streets. I have seen how Douglas does that,” he said, with a nod toward Dicks.
Wi’am put out a book called “Your Stories are My Stories,” where children interviewed their grandparents about living under occupation. He said he’d like to take young people to learn from others who have been strengthened by liberation theology in places including South Africa, Northern Ireland, South Korea and South America.
“In a time when so much is being systematically taken from the Palestinian people,” the book states, “we feel the need to light a small candle of hope instead of cursing the darkness, for we know the dawn is coming!”
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Eric Ayala, Spanish Translator, Administrative Services Group
Anna Torba, Multimedia Graphic Designer, Presbyterian Women, Inc.
Let us pray:
God of grace, we ask that you would give us creative ways to serve the people and that they would one day claim the hope and joy of abundant life in Christ. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment