I was reading some serious reports on poverty in the USA a few days ago. Some 15% of American population live below poverty line and 10.5 million people were considered 'working poor' in 2010. This is a report worth reading (click here to go to Economist and read the full article and be sure to read the graphs carefully!). In a country where over 50 million people have no access to healthcare system, the number, 10.5 million working poor (let alone people living below poverty line), makes me sigh. That is almost 1.5 times bigger than the entire population of Israel and 3 times higher than the number of people in Gaza Strip and West Bank. This number (people living in poverty in the West) will only grow in the short term, though we do not know what the long term future might look like. Poverty, especially in societies where there are rapidly growing gaps between the poor and the rich, is a silent, slow killing of humanity compared to wars that make bigger headlines and louder noises in media news.
The growing poverty and economic decline (and other associated cultural changes) in the West is something I thought worth paying attention to, in this new decade, century, and millennium as we enter yet another civilization, which is still undefined to us. I wanted to look at these things from non-western standpoint, and thought the Middle East might be a better place to do just that than any other parts of the world. That (changing my location to view the reality of life) has been proved to be working for a completely different reason and so quickly!
After the news on Wednesday night that Israel killed the leader of Hamas in Gaza, my gmail inbox started filling with friends' emails with concerns for me because of the growing concerns over the conflict between Israel and Palestine - a decades old problem. Having arrived in Haifa only six days prior to that news, I realized how little I knew about the region and the history of the conflict. I quickly started reading various news sites and learned how many different views portrait not only different political positions, but different emotional languages (of course with visual images to stimulate our minds)! Nothing new that I need to remind you about these media play.
I found interesting to read to compare different views and the choice of language by different media was very interesting. Here are a few links I read/watched:
First, Haaretz, the most widely read daily news in Israel with a centre-left view (according to Wikipedia), has stories of somewhat balanced position, including one on the new military technology, Iron Dome, and how much it costs to have one in this war!
Al Jazeera has always interesting views coming from the Middle East. I found this 25 minute interview with three prominent leaders from Israel, Hamas and Egypt very helpful. Toward the end of the clip, it reports on how the Israeli Army is using Twitter to spread the news updates!
The New York Times has a series of five video clips on 'Challenges in defining Israeli-Palestinian Border' and the historical development of the conflict with views from the both sides.
After being here in the country just for 10 days, what do I say about this conflict?
Go with the local wisdom.
This is something I learned and found to be priceless in any country especially in times of crises. I saw that during the big floods in 1998, and after 9/11 in 2001 in Bangladesh, and during South Asian tsunami relief in 2004-05 and the military Coup d'etat in 2006 in Thailand.
Yesterday at the Shabbat Service, the worship songs were all quiet, meditative and slow compared to the festive music we had last week to celebrate the Bat Mitzvah. It was because of this war going on in the south and 75,000 reservists were called. That means someone's husband, son, brother, nephew, or friend is called for duty. Several men in the congregation had to leave for the south this weekend. We stood and prayed for those loved ones to be safe and protected and that the peace of the Lord shall be declared in this land.
I wanted to hear more from local people, and their wisdom of living through conflicts like this and still call Israel a home they have chosen to return to. So after the Shabbat Service yesterday, I spent some time with my new friends, German wife and Russian-born Israeli husband (I won't disclose their names here). And I found his comments remarkably insightful and helpful for me to hear.
"The devil's strategy is to steal our attention to wars and fighting from the real issues of life. That (wars and fightings at the borders) is a very small problem compared to what we are facing in the Israeli culture today. We have a silent war going on here that is much more serious and larger. It is the growing problem of drug addiction and this is now killing many more people in Israel than the number of deaths by rockets in both Gaza and Israel together. We have to get our perspectives straight."
He's been serving at the drug rehabilitation centre run by his congregation for several years now. He's met many people, young and old, who are giving up hopes for living and giving into the battle of slow killing of self destruction.
After lunch, he read to me some of the Facebook discussion posts on the Israel-Gaza conflict issue and one particular post stood out to me:
Love your neighbour and bless the enemy. Vengeance belongs to the Lord (Rom 12:19).
Being part of Messianic congregation and having faith in Yeshua makes all the difference in the land of deep conflicts because of different faiths. Another day of Shabbat ended and I really learned what the traditional Jewish prayer meant.
"Shabbat Shalom, Yerushalyim!"
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