… Will the veiled sister pray
for children at the gate
who will not go away and cannot pray:
pray for those who chose and oppose
O my people, what have I done unto thee.

T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

I write, heavy-hearted, after returning from Israel/Palestine after a brief visit for research purposes, a visit overshadowed by events in Gaza. I stayed at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, only two minutes from the Bethlehem checkpoint, and with a panoramic view of surrounding Israeli settlements crowning the hilltops, as well as of the Security Wall surrounding Bethlehem, making it in effect a giant prison. What kind of future could there be for these “children at the gate”—or Wall, in this case—kicking their balls or discarded car tires around the decaying streets of the city?

How to make sense of this tragic separation and enmity of two peoples? Walking around the streets of Jerusalem I rejoiced that the Jewish people now have a homeland. To be able to put behind them the humiliation of the ghettos, the interminable sorrow of having no abiding home, the unforgettable memories of the Camps, the sense of being despised by humanity and even being abandoned by God—this is now a situation to be rejoiced over, and to hope there will be no going back. Israel is a nation, and holds its head up vis-a-vis the world.

I entered Jerusalem at the beginning of Shabbat: to watch scholars, rabbis and ordinary families walking around the city in anticipation, claiming the city for Shabbat, its culture and faith, was quite overwhelming. I am overcome by the sheer majesty of Jerusalem. There is no comparable city in the world where sacred sites of three faiths are so intertwined. I wanted Israel to succeed, to have a future, to overcome the current impasse. I joined the prayers and listened to the tears at the Western (wailing) Wall, hoping that this sense of the redemption of the past oppression would engender some mercy in the present.

But this is not happening: many people fear that Israel has achieved so much at the expense of losing its soul. Pray for those who chose and oppose… who chose to inflict the very merciless policies that they had endured for two thousand years on the indigenous Palestinians of the Bible Lands. I think to myself of the famous philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, for whom gazing on “the face of the other” meant being opened up to the transcendence of God. But the reality of occupation, settlements, security wall, confiscated land and demolished houses, prohibits this opening up, as then Israel would feel compassion for its neighbor, and be compelled on moral grounds to take different actions.

O my people, what have I done to you? The words of the prophet Micah (via T.S. Eliot) ring through my ears, as I stand on a rooftop in Hebron, facing (Israeli) soldiers standing on another rooftop, guns pointed in my direction. I gaze at the main street, forbidden to Palestinians and upward past the Mosque to the settlement, Kirya Arbat, where another generation of Israeli children are growing up, learning to hate the indigenous Palestinians of the area. The children who cannot pray—these are mostly secular Jews—and who will not go away.

And yet, and yet... there is still hope. I met so many Peace Groups who longed for peace, a peace that did justice to both countries. I recalled the efforts of the philosopher Martin Buber—still famous today for his views on mutuality and I-Thou relationships—who, at the founding of the State of Israel, pleaded for the needs of the Palestinians to be taken seriously. They were not. The Psalmist’s vision is that justice and mercy will embrace—I pray that this is still a possibility: for that is the only way that the state of Israel will recover its lost soul.