Art exposes harsh realities

At Dar Al Kaima University in Bethlehem, resistance to the Occupation is played out in visual arts, film, performing arts and other creative fields of expression. This beautifully designed campus is filled with young Palestinians expressing their lived experience, as well as their lively hope through the arts. The artwork we saw was both hard to look at and yet vibrant and filled with the promise of something better. Some of their films have gone on to receive international awards. Our conversation with the school’s founder, the Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, challenged us as Church, suggesting that we “missed a curve” somewhere in the past and have failed to live up to Jesus’ concern for the oppressed. Can we find our way back?

The environmental devastation of Palestine – one of the little-discussed but major impacts of the Occupation – is front and centre at the Environmental Education Centre. The Jordan River is now not much more than a stream. The Dead Sea will be pretty much gone in 20 years. The wetlands of the north have been drained for settler housing. Deforestation around the settlements, and then reforestation with invasive species, is acidifying the soil and creating a monoculture. Like Mitri Raheb at Dar Al Kaima, Mazin Qumsiyeh, the founder of the centre, spoke passionately about the issues with great wisdom, gentleness and humour – instead of the anger and rage one might expect. In their efforts to restore biodiversity, they lovingly nurture native plants for future dispersion. They work one orchid at a time at the slow pace of God’s Kairos time.

The brutality of the artwork we saw at the university and the staggering destruction of the Palestinian environment (multiplied in Gaza by the equivalent of 11 times the bombing destruction of Hiroshima) was enough for one day. But then we encountered the wall blocking Bethlehem from Jerusalem: part of an 810-km structure that runs between Palestinian towns across the West Bank, cutting each community off with armed checkpoints and random road access closings. Where we were standing, it was three storeys of ugly cement, capped by razor wire and covered in graffiti – some very clever, all of it expressing the rage over the unnecessary disruption of people’s lives. It makes getting to work or medical appointments challenging and at times even impossible; and because of the military permits required to visit other towns, families are also cut off from each other.

Across the road from the wall is the “Walled Off Hotel,” a parody of an old-style Waldorf Astoria hotel created by British artist Banksy. His cutting and dark humour brings out the reality of life behind the wall. The entrance lounge contains a caged dove of peace, mantelpiece decorations consisting of CCTV cameras and slingshots, to name just a couple of the “artistic” touches. The nine-room hotel also includes a museum to the wall and the Occupation. One of the final exhibits, relating to the ongoing war in Gaza, is a simple ringing telephone. When you answer it, you hear a recorded message saying (to the best of my recollection): “The Israeli Defence Force will be bombing your building in five minutes. Please evacuate immediately.” With his gift for “cutting through the crap,” Banksy sums up the insanity, brutality, absurdity and Kafkaesque reality of life behind the wall quite succinctly.

And yet, this “little town of Bethlehem” (not actually so little) is the same town, occupied then as now, where our faith story tells us Jesus was born. Banksy has nothing on God when it comes to irony: God becoming flesh in an occupied town, in a barn, to ordinary people, to give life and dignity to those who “live behind the wall.” Talk about a dark sense of humour! Brutal insanity, sadly, yes – but also resilient hope in the promise of that Bethlehem birth. On this day, we saw them both clearly.