october 2004

Primarily
An excerpt from Prof.Illan pappe

Peace activists?

There are two agendas that should be put forward by activists around the world, and also inside Israel. I don't want to confuse the two agendas.

The first agenda is not a peace agenda. If you are in the business of protecting the cause of Palestine you are not just on the business of peace — you have a much more urgent agenda, which is saving the Palestinians in Palestine. I'm not sure that you can prevent the Israeli government from taking its next steps in its policies of destruction and expulsion by talking about dialogues for peace.  

I think you should start thinking about what an activist group can do to create an atmosphere in which Israel is a pariah state as long as these policies continue. Talk about sanctions, talk about boycotts, talk about anything that drives home the message that enough is enough, that such behaviour cannot be tolerated from a state that claims to be part of the family of civilized countries.

This is an agenda that requires a lot of coordination and thinking. There is an impressive movement of disinvestment now in the US that has been gathering momentum and which should be looked at as one possible model. The boycott on South Africa started in an Irish supermarket, where [an employee] refused to do the bill for shoppers who had South African goods in their trolleys.

The second agenda is the agenda of the long-term solution in Palestine. It is important to rethink the whole idea. Whether we like the idea of a two-state solution, or whether we don't like the idea, I think the reality on the ground in a few months is going to prove that the two-state solution is not feasible anymore.

What does it mean? How do we go forward? We need to work on the right of return [for Palestinian refugees to Israel] as a symbolic idea and as a practical idea. You cannot have a solution to the question of Palestine if the refugees are not part of it. And you cannot have a solution if the Palestinians in Israel are not part of it.

PUNCH-UP AT TOMB OF JESUS

Fistfights broke out yesterday between Christians gathered on the site of the Crucifixion
of Jesus Christ.

There was a lot of hitting going on. Police were hit. Monks were hit.......there were people with bloodied faces, said a witness in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, reputed to be Golgotha, where Christ was crucified, also the site of the tomb where he was buried.

The punch-up occurred during a procession to mark the discovery in 327AD by Helena, mother of Constantine, of the true Cross.

A Greek Orthodox cleric said the Saint Franciscans had left open their chapel door in what was taken as disrespect.Priests and worshippers hit one another at the doorway dividing Orthodox and Franciscans. Arrests were made but nobody was seriously hurt.

This is supposed to be a festive time said Pandelemos, an Orthodox cleric, afterwards at the site of the tomb. We are all Christians, and there is nothing to fight about, said David Khoury a Franciscan.

The row was the latest in a series of disputes at the Church, where six Christian denominations guard rights laid down in an Ottoman Law of 1757 to separate parts of the Romanesque building, built by Crusaders in 1149. Two years ago, Ethiopian and Copt monks threw stones at each other over Rights to the Church roof

MARK TWAIN IN THE SAME CHURCH IN THE 1860s.
One naturally goes first to the Holy Sepulchre...it, and the place of the Crucifixion and, in fact, every other place intimately connected with that tremendous event, are ingeniously massed together and covered by one roof, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Entering... one sees on the left a few Turkish Guards - for Christians of different sects will not only quarrel, but fight also in this sacred place.....All sects of Christians (except Protestants) have chapels under the roof of the Church and each must keep to itself and not venture upon another's ground. ......Here also, a marble slab marks the place where st. Helena found the crosses about three hundred years after the crucifixion According to legend this discovery elicited extravagant demonstrations of joy. But they were of short duration. The question intruded itself: Which bore the blessed Saviour and which the thieves? To be in doubt, in so mighty a matter as this - to be uncertain which one to adore was a grievous misfortune.It turned the public joy to sorrow.

Follows a delightful fanciful story of the dispatch of this problem which I advise anyone who wants to listen to a priests advice and solution to so grave a problem to read in Twain's The New Pilgrims Progress.
One last delicacy: Not far from here was a niche where they used to preserve a piece of the True Cross, but it is gone now. The Latin priests say it was stolen away long ago by priests of another sect. that seems like a hard statement to make, but we know very well that it was stollen, because we have seen it ourselves in several of the cathedrals of Italy and France.

I certainly dare not tell you in detail about his text on the Greek Orthodox chapel where under a pillar the first dust that created Adam was found, the explanation being that the column marks the centre of the earth. But I recommend perusal of these descriptions of this Church as they are probably more fulsome than any available tourist guide.