It’s Getting Worse
The “apartheid wall” in Bethlehem, a 30-foot barrier preventing movement and caging Palestinians. (Courtesy of Allison Tanner)
Greetings from Bethlehem! My delegation and I arrived safely on Tuesday, after a lovely evening in Amman, Jordan. Our days have been filled with meeting people, hearing their stories, receiving extravagant hospitality, visiting sacred sites, bearing witness to apartheid and ethnic cleansing, processing election results, and delighting in Palestinian food, joy, and culture.
On our first afternoon, we visited the wall in Bethlehem—a 30-foot barrier preventing movement and caging Palestinians, where the graffitied words “it’s getting worse”—struck a deep chord. These words ring true for both Palestinians and the U.S.
We got news of election results as we were on our way to visit a man whose home had been demolished the day before. The weight of events local and afar intermingled to fill us with grief. We sat with our host outside the rubble of the home that his grandparents had lived in, he was born in, and his children’s families called home. He was still in shock, and we all sat silently for some time. Over time, we heard how his grandchildren came home from school to rubble where their home stood, how his son and daughter-in-law were beaten for asking to go inside to rescue a few family heirlooms before the demolition, and how his home was targeted because he was an activist against home demolitions, now reaching 7–8 daily in his neighborhood alone. When it was time to leave, we could barely express our words of condolence before walking by the ruins one more time.
The Friendship Tour delegation arrived in Amman, Jordan, on Tuesday. Since then they’ve been listening and learning from Palestinians, sharing love and longing for an end to the madness. (Courtesy of Allison Tanner)
Unfortunately, this emotional visit was just the first of a series of visits to see the remains of destroyed homes, destroyed communities, and a destroyed village, and sit with many more who are enduring ongoing attacks against their livelihoods, dignity, culture and land. All while knowing, only three days in, that things are indeed getting worse. (And who can begin to fathom the depths of destruction taking place a mere 50 miles away, in the ruins of Gaza.)
But the Bethlehem wall is filled with all kinds of words of truth, and the ones stenciled in right below the declaration that things are getting worse are also instructive:
Forget not the tyranny of the wall,
Nor the love of freedom that made it fall.
This was a reminder that tyranny exists, but it is never eternal.
Tyranny is scary—and we are indeed living in scary times. Yet it is into places where tyranny rules that people of conscience are rising up to bear witness to inhumanity, join together to disrupt tyranny’s grasp, and work through love for freedom that will see us through, whatever lies ahead.
May we bear witness to the tyranny around us, insisting on love and freedom as our compass in navigating the unknown days ahead, days that promise to get worse, until the day when tyranny topples and all but love and freedom remain.
