Palestinian Faith Quotes

I went to interview some of these early Jewish colonial zealots—written off in those days as mere 'fringe' elements—and found that they called themselves Gush Emunim or—it sounded just as bad in English—'The Bloc of the Faithful.' Why not just say 'Party of God' and have done with it? At least they didn't have the nerve to say that they stole other people's land because their own home in Poland or Belarus had been taken from them. They said they took the land because god had given it to them from time immemorial. In the noisome town of Hebron, where all of life is focused on a supposedly sacred boneyard in a dank local cave, one of the world's less pretty sights is that of supposed yeshivah students toting submachine guns and humbling the Arab inhabitants. When I asked one of these charmers where he got his legal authority to be a squatter, he flung his hand, index finger outstretched, toward the sky.

When someone asks if one supports “Israel’s right to exist,” they are tacitly asking if one agrees that Israel’s elevation of Jewish rights above those of Palestinians in the land they all inhabit is acceptable. The question, in fact, is whether it was legitimate—after many centuries of Palestinians of numerous faiths, including Jews, living in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River—for Jews from Europe (and later Jews from around the world) to emigrate there with the express purpose of creating a state in which Jewish people would be privileged above others, especially the indigenous inhabitants.

I never carried a rifle on my shoulder, Nor did I pull a trigger. All I have is a flute’s melody. A brush to paint my dreams, A bottle of ink. All I have is unshakeable faith, And an infinite love for my people in pain. Mahmoud Darwish

Hope doesn’t wait for vision to appear. Hope is vision in action today.

Hope is the power to keep focusing on the larger vision while taking the small, often undramatic, steps toward that future.

Without faith, there is no imagination; without imagination, there is no innovation; and without innovation, there is no future.

every uncompromising ideology reduces faith to an idolatry,

Hope is living the reality and yet investing in a different one.

A major problem for victims of all empires is to identify so strongly with this role that they become double victims: victims of the empire, and victims of themselves.

Berman observes, for instance, that much of the world now blames Israel for the suicidal derangement of the Palestinians.

Today, though, each faith community suffers from a decline of one or the other aspect of religious vitality. Modernity has not been kind to Jewish spirituality: Large parts of the Jewish people have become severed from basic faith and devotion. The Muslim world has the opposite problem: an erosion of open inquiry and self-critique.

Today, though, we live in the aftermath of the shattering of Jewish faith, brought on in part by Western secularism and the Holocaust. Whatever faith has managed to survive our experiences in the modern world would be tested to the breaking point by the destruction of Israel. Few Jews, I suspect, would accept another narrative of Divine punishment. Even for many religious Jews, this would be one punishment too many.

The Israelis have shown a degree of restraint in their use of violence that the Nazis never contemplated and that, more to the point, no Muslim society would contemplate today. Ask yourself, what are the chances that the Palestinians would show the same restraint in killing Jews if the Jews were a powerless minority living under their occupation and disposed to acts of suicidal terrorism? It would be no more likely than Muhammad’s flying to heaven on a winged horse.35

People of faith can read the Bible so that almost any perspective on a current issue will find some support in the Bible. That rich and multivoiced offering in the Bible is what makes appeals to it so tempting—and yet so tricky and hazardous, because much of our reading of the Bible turns out to be an echo of what we thought anyway. THE ISSUE OF LAND The dispute between Palestinians and Israelis is elementally about land and secondarily about security and human rights.

Are the religious individuals in a society more moral than the secular ones? Many researchers have looked into this, and the main finding is that there are few interesting findings. There are subtle effects here and there: some studies find, for instance, that the religious are slightly more prejudiced, but this effect is weak when one factors out other considerations, such as age and political attitudes, and exists only when religious belief is measured in certain ways. The only large effect is that religious Americans give more to charity (including nonreligious charities) than atheists do. This holds even when one controls for demographics (religious Americans are more likely than average to be older, female, southern, and African American). To explore why this relationship exists, the political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell asked people about life after death, the importance of God to morality, and various other facets of religious belief. It turns out that none of their answers to such questions were related to behaviors having to do with volunteering and charitable giving. Rather, participation in the religious community was everything. As Putnam and Campbell put it, “Once we know how observant a person is in terms of church attendance, nothing that we can discover about the content of her religious faith adds anything to our understanding or prediction of her good neighborliness.… In fact, the statistics suggest that even an atheist who happened to become involved in the social life of the congregation (perhaps through a spouse) is much more likely to volunteer in a soup kitchen than the most fervent believer who prays alone. It is religious belongingness that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing.” This importance of community, and the irrelevance of belief, extends as well to the nastier effects of religion. The psychologist Jeremy Ginges and his colleagues found a strong relationship between religiosity and support for suicide bombing among Palestinian Muslims, and, again, the key factor was religious community, not religious belief: mosque attendance predicted support for suicide attacks; frequency of prayer did not. Among Indonesian Muslims, Mexican Catholics, British Protestants, Russian Orthodox in Russia, Israeli Jews, and Indian Hindus, frequency of religious attendance (but again, not frequency of prayer) predicts responses to questions such as “I blame people of other religions for much of the trouble in this world.

When Ghada, the beautiful 78 year old Palestinian woman, offered me the bread she had just conjured up on the makeshift and primitive cast iron lid balanced upon a rocky fire outside of her sparse UNRWA tent in 2015 it was precisely then that I decided that my life had to change. No longer could I justify vulgar material possessions and unnecessary finances. I returned home, sold my house,moved into a modest but adequate abode and gave a lot of time and funds to helping those with nothing. Some of us aren't destined to feel rapturous love...find deep faith...have a sense of belonging in this world but thanks to Ghada and the many like her, both young and old,that I encountered in Gaza and the West Bank I finally realized and truly understood what it meant to be a human being and what the real purpose of this life is....to help,to give,to speak out,to speak up,to right the many wrongs...to do all of those things without ever once expecting a single thing in return. After all, it is neither heroic or special to do what is just.

I can no more understand Jesus apart from his Jewishness than I can understand Gandhi apart from his Indianness. I need to go way back, and picture Jesus as a first-century Jew with a phylactery on his wrist and Palestinian dust on his sandals.

It is my contention that Israel’s worst enemies, those who hurt her the most, are by far the ‘unJews’ -these are Jewish men and women known for their inferiority complex who crave for the world’s approval and who express loudly and sometimes violently their contempt against Israel and the Jewish identity. The reasons for this pathological behavior are complex. Their behavior seems to be driven by self-hatred and possibly has more to do with their rejection of God and traditional Judaism than their ‘passionate quest for justice’ and the support of the Palestinian cause. It is important to note that not all Arabs agree with the Muslim contention that Israel has no right to exist. Many Arabs are Christians, and most certainly do not accept the Islamists’ point of view. Many of the people incorrectly branded as Arabs, are actually Druze and Kurds, and most would also disagree with the anti-Israel stand held by the majority of the Muslim factions of the world. Furthermore, some Israeli-Arabs, even Muslims by faith, see themselves as regular Israeli citizens, and do not identify with the Palestinian people or their cause.

Of all the Islamic organizations in America, CAIR has risen to the top as the most visible, most outspoken defender of Muslims in the United States. Masquerading as a civil rights organization, CAIR has had a hidden agenda to Islamize America from the start. Its cofounder and chairman, Omar Ahmad, a Palestinian American, told a Muslim audience in Fremont, California, in 1998: ‘Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.’ Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s national spokesman, is on record stating: ‘I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic.’ Three of CAIR’s officials have already been convicted of terror-related crimes. One even worked for Hooper. He’s now in prison for conspiring to kill Americans.

Sometimes our mountains are not removed. It may be the wisdom of God that we climb those mountains and pass through those rocky, difficult roads. The faith needed to climb our mountains is actually greater than the faith needed to remove them. I often had to climb hills, mountains, and walls in order to get to church. My faith did not enable me to remove those obstacles or trials from my path. But Heavenly Father has given me the courage and strength to pass through them. Because I have done so, my faith has grown stronger.

I also testify that charity is essential for our spiritual well-being. It is essential not only because it is a commandment from God to love others but also because letting go of anger and hate is liberating… [My friend asked] How can you deal with this injustice and not get angry?” I told her that if I let myself get angry each time something like this happened, I would be angry all my life. As I have learned to love my enemies, I have also realized that at some point in your life, you have to learn to let go. Being angry and hateful toward others only hurts you. My faith and feelings of peace intensified by learning to love and forgive as exemplified by our Savior Jesus Christ.

When I taught at the Arab American University and lived in Zababdeh, I had a neighbor who was a shepherd. Each morning, he would take his sheep out to the fields. His sheep followed him, sticking close together. One day, the shepherd forgot something and had to go home to get it. He left his sheep by my house and went back home. The sheep stood still and waited for the return of their shepherd. There was a field full of long, green grass by the side of the road, but the sheep did not go there. They waited patiently for their shepherd to return. They trusted that their shepherd would lead them to a much better place. Our Savior is the Good Shepherd, and if we trust Him, He will lead us to green fields, where we will find happiness and peace. As tempting as the grass may seem on the side of the road, I know that if I keep my eyes on my Shepherd and follow Him always, I will be fed spiritually and physically.

In the Old City of Jerusalem, the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish quarters are home to some of the holiest sites of the three major Abrahamic faiths. There’s the Western Wall, sacred to the Jewish people; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which Christians believe to be the site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus; and the sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, where the Prophet Muhammad prayed with the souls of all the other prophets and ascended to heaven. Jerusalem is the third-holiest city in Islam and preceded Mecca as the first qibla, the direction toward which the Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslim community faced to pray. Beyond that, the city is central to the Palestinian struggle and integral to the soul of every Palestinian, Muslim and Christian alike. It’s our eternal capital.

As with Nazism, the conspiracy theory needed Jews. The Iranian interior minister said that Zionists had ‘direct involvement’ in publishing the book. The Iranian president said that ‘Zionist-controlled news agencies’ had made Rushdie famous. In Syria, the Ba’athist dictatorship said that the novel was part of a plot to distract the world’s attention from Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. In Pakistan, religious leaders talked of an ‘American Jewish conspiracy’. Across the planet, the drums shuddered to the same beat: ‘It’s the Jews, it’s the Jews, it’s the Jews.’ The demonstrations against Rushdie were not confined to the poor world. The faithful marched in Bradford and London as well as Tehran and Lahore. They inspired a fear in the West that went almost unnoticed during the elation the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe produced.

Ultimately, though, neither refocusing on the Holocaust nor reenergizing Tikkun Olam could dilute the lure of the melting pot. Assimilation, according to surveys, soared, with as many as 70 percent of all non-Orthodox Jews marrying outside the faith. The younger the Jews, statistics showed, the shallower their religious roots. The supreme question asked by post–World War II Jewish writers such as Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth, “How can I reconcile being Jewish and American?” was no longer even intelligible to young American Jews. None would feel the need to begin a book, as Saul Bellow did in The Adventures of Augie March, with “I am an American, Chicago born.” Bred on that literature, I saw no contradiction between love for America and loyalty to my people and its nation-state. But that was not the case of the Jewish twenty-somethings, members of a liberal congregation I visited in Washington, who declined to discuss issues, such as intermarriage and peoplehood, that they considered borderline racist. Israel was virtually taboo. For Israel had also changed. From the spunky, intrepid frontier state that once exhilarated American Jews, Israel was increasingly portrayed by the press as a warlike and intolerant state. That discomfiting image, however skewed, could not camouflage the fact that Israel ruled over more than two million Palestinians and settled what virtually the entire world regarded as their land. The country that was supposed to normalize Jews and instill them with pride was making many American Jews feel more isolated and embarrassed. I shared their discomfort and even their pain. Yet I also wrestled with the inability of those same American Jews to understand Israel’s existential quandary, that creating a Palestinian state that refused to make genuine peace with us and was likely to devolve into a terrorist chaos was at least as dangerous as not creating one. I was frustrated by their lack of anguish in demanding Israel’s withdrawal from land sacred to their forebears for nearly four millennia. “Disagree with the settlers,” I wanted to tell them, “denounce them if you must, but do not disown them, for they—like you—are part of our people.

Oh For God Almighty Let’s scrape away those Palestinian Muslim Arab scums To rightly make room for the Jews, God’s chosen ones. In the name of God, King and Country, always to trust To slaughter the innocent children, too die if we must You sword wielding followers of the prophet Mohamed With hatred forever the creed of your Shia Sunni divide To bring destruction one to the other, so millions have died In the name of God, King and Country, always to trust To slaughter the innocent children, too die if we must Be gone you Popeless protestant English bastards For us Fenians will always carry the true cross of Jesus In the name of God, King and Country, always to trust To slaughter the innocent children, too die if we must If oil be the quest let war drums begin and bombs be the rain So onward Christian soldiers, to Iraq and away with Hussain In the name of God, King and Country, always to trust To slaughter the innocent children, too die if we must Millions made homeless, endless suffering without pause Civil war be the call, with Syrians fighting their hopeless cause In the name of God, King and Country, always to trust To slaughter the innocent children, too die if we must And so to the future, a blond king is born, his war ships to sea Yet concern there must be as he doesn’t even know his ABC In the name of God, King and Country, always to trust To slaughter the innocent children, too die if we must There are lessons to learn, yet as history so often does show None will take heed, not even with nukes that are ready to throw. In the name of God, King and Country, always to trust To slaughter the innocent children, too die if we must What’s to lose, as black frocked men offer promise of life ever after Whilst appointed men of another faith the promise of 72 waiting virgins In the name of God, King and Country, always to trust To slaughter the innocent children, too die if we must

The truth seems to be that both Jesus and Paul had their roots in Palestinian Judaism. Neither was introducing concepts from the Hellenistic diaspora. Both were preaching a new theology, and it was essentially the same theology. Jesus prophesied a new testament by the shedding of his blood ‘for many’ and his resurrection.96 Paul taught that the prophecy had been accomplished, that the Christ had become incarnate in Jesus, and that a New Covenant had thereby come into existence and was offered to those who had faith in it.

the world and said, “Look, we want you to come to Palestine, but you had better understand that there is another legitimate nation there, the Palestinians, who claim it as theirs and will fight you to the death,” many Jews might never have come. So the Zionists had to believe, as the saying at the time went, that they were “a people without a land” coming to “a land without a people.” Arafat wasn’t the only political leader in the area who understood that at times the optimal way to achieve things—sometimes the only way—is by ignoring the facts and living instead by myths. Myths are precisely what give people the faith to undertake projects which rational calculation or common sense would reject.

have finally figured out why so many people here have become more religious.” She was eager to hear my reasoning. “Because no one can control the degree of devotion they have to their faith. No one can stop them from believing, or from practicing their faith. It is the most intimate relationship there is. No checkpoint, and no Wall, can come in the way of your relationship with God. It is personal; it is private; it is intimate. And Israel certainly cannot control it.

I grew up close to Bethlehem and the only branch where I could attend church was the BYU Jerusalem Center. Palestinians living in the West Bank are not allowed into Jerusalem, so for years, I had to sneak into Jerusalem, getting shot at sometimes and risking being arrested so I could attend church services. The trip would take three hours and would involve me climbing hills and walls and hiding from soldiers. I felt that each Sabbath I was given the strength and protection I needed to get to church. I remember one Sabbath in particular. I was asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting that week. However, the day before, we had curfew imposed on us by the Israeli soldiers. Curfew in Bethlehem is not something you want to break. It is an all-day long curfew and lasts for weeks sometimes. You are not allowed to leave your house for any reason. Anyone who leaves their house risks getting shot. For some reason, I felt that Heavenly Father wanted me to give that talk, but I wondered how He expected me to get to church! I mean, even if I were to manage to leave my house without getting shot, I did not have a car then. How would I find public transportation to get to Jerusalem? There was no one on the roads except soldiers. I decided to do all that I could. I knelt down and basically told Heavenly Father that all I can do is walk outside. That was the extent of what I could do. He had to do the rest. I did just that. I got dressed in my Sunday clothes, got out of our house and down the few steps out of our porch, and walked on to the road. Amazingly enough, there was a taxi right in front of my house! Now, we live on a small street. We never see taxis pass by our street, even during normal days. I approached the taxi driver and asked him where he was going. Guess where was he going? To Jerusalem, of course. Right where I wanted to go! He had others with him in the taxi, but he had room for one more person. The taxi driver knew exactly which roads had soldiers on them and avoided those roads. Then we eventually got to where there was only one road leading out of town, and that road had soldiers on it. The taxi driver decided to go off the road to avoid the soldiers. He went into a hay field. We drove in hay fields for about half an hour. It was very bumpy, dusty, and rocky. Finally, we found a dirt road. I was so thrilled to not be in a field! However, a few short minutes later, we saw a pile of rocks blocking that dirt road. I thought we would have to turn around and go back. Luckily, the taxi driver had more hope and courage than I did. He went off the dirt road and into an olive tree field. He maneuvered around the olive trees until he got us to the other side of the pile of rocks. I made it to church that day. As I entered the Jerusalem Center I reflected on my journey and thought, “That was impossible!” There was no way I could have made it to church by my efforts alone. The effort I made, just walking outside, was so small compared to the miracle the Lord provided. Brothers and sisters, we give up too easily, especially when something seems impossible or hard. In last week’s devotional, Brother Doug Thompson said that in order to complete our journey, we must avoid the urge to quit. We do this by seeking spiritual nutrients and seeking a celestial life. [5] If we continue trying, we will reach our goal. In your classes, make sure do your best! In your job, do your best! In your callings, in your home and in everything you do, do the best you can. The Lord will sanctify your efforts and make them enough if you approach Him in faith and ask for His power from on high.

Sometimes I have gotten a little help from a first-century Palestinian rabbi who expanded the famous Shema prayer to include a second biblical instruction. When asked by a biblical scholar to name the most important command of Scripture, Jesus, like any good Jew, responded with an embellishment of the Shema, the colloquial title for the prayer, which is taken from its first word, the Hebrew word for "heart": "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." Then he added that a second command is "like it": "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

If they come and burn your hut and chase you away, of course you suffer, but if you know how to go back to your true home, you will not lose your faith.

Like a shepherd and sheep, its principle is simple, redirection towards the obligatory path, and speaking of Ozcan, he is the most proficient in this game. Watch the professionals do it in the reorientation of functional organizations. There is no need to recruit them all, it is enough for them to do what a shepherd does with a flock of sheep; blocking the roads in front of them, putting a dog in one place, standing and waving his stick in another place, to force them to take the path he wants, towards the barn. And if you spoke to one of them, it would swear to you that it is going the way it wants, which it chose with its full will, or chosen for them by their leader at the forefront of the herd, who knows the secrets of the ways, believing that they go the way they want. He decided that he should play the game according to its laws since they are sheep, so do not try to address them or convince them, but rather direct them to where you want. He did not know anything about deterministic algorithms at the time, his decision was based on his innate, something inside him. He succeeded, however, by making a butterfly flutter, far away. Some straying out of the Shepherd’s path, then another artificial flutter associated with the first to accelerate the process, and then a third, and a fourth, then the chaos ensued, and the hurricanes blew up all the inevitable of Alpha Headquarters. A butterfly fluttered where no one was watching, he studied and planned it carefully. Words by a revolutionary Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, summarized the whole story… Throw a stone into the stagnant water, rivers will break out Ring your bells in the kingdom of silence and sing your anthem And let the wall of fear break into dust like pottery

Our excitement at living in “the last days” has led us to overlook some devastating facts about our faith, the Middle East, and what God would have us do. In some cases, we have not been told things, important things, about life as it really is in the Middle East.

You don’t know whether this is, this is it. We don’t deserve this. We’re not animals like the Israelis think. Our kids deserve better. Israel knows that they want to punish the kids, the civilians. And I have always said this, even before, even from the nineties when young Palestinians praised those valiant fighters. They are to be praised. But if you know them in real life, when you see the pictures of those fighters, they’re very simple people. They’re lightly armed, modestly trained, but they have a weapon that Israel does not have: the weapon of the belief, the faith, that this is your land, that you are fighting a brutal European colonial enterprise that has been brutalizing Palestinians for over seven decades.