wfn.org | Israeli Journalist Describes Easter Miracle at Nativity Church

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Defenders Protect Wooden Roof of Nativity Church from Flares

By Israel Shamir

(Mr. Shamir is an Israeli journalist based in Jaffa, Israel.*)

BETHLEHEM, May 8, 2002--The East celebrated Easter in May, long time after 
the West this year. 

There was little of festive spirit, as the Nativity Church of Bethlehem had 
been besieged for a month.  Starved priests and laity had laid in the grotto 
where the Virgin gave birth to Christ; bodies of policemen slain by Israeli 
sharpshooters were piled under the golden Tree of Jesse mosaic.  From time to 
time, the attackers propelled flares to the wooden roof of the basilica and 
watched the weakened-by-long-fast defenders putting the fires off. 

But Easter brought its miracle, and it was called ISM.

What is ISM?  For the reply, go a few hundred yards away from the church, on 
the broad terrace overlooking the gentle descent of the hills towards the 
Dead Sea, above the road's double bend; there is a small Byzantine sanctuary 
adjacent to a water cistern. 

Eastern wind blew a layer of desert dust over its floor mosaics, and 
proverbial thorns broke through their red crosses.  It has an aquatic 
character like many shrines of the Holy Land and it is called Bir Daoud 
(David's Well), in memory of a legendary exploit.

Once, the conquering army from the cities of the plain declared War on Terror 
and sealed this hilly village in an effort to catch a local man, a 
Palestinian terrorist leader Daoud who had attacked the conquerors' 
settlements.  But his companions, a motley band of men, challenged the 
invaders' order. They dared the road checks, defied security measures, 
sneaked into the village and, against enormous odds, had brought a draught of 
water from the Bethlehem village well to Daoud, or King David as we call him 
now.

Millennia passed by, and this exploit was repeated by the new version of the 
King David's companions, the International Solidarity Movement, or ISM, as 
the land of Palestine has become the scene of most dramatic confrontation and 
international involvement for decades, if not centuries. 

Young European and American men and women, who were born too late to join the 
International Brigades in Republican Spain 1936, have joined the ISM and came 
to the green hills of Bethlehem and Hebron.  They came in troublesome time: 
Israeli leaders carefully laid a plan to expel and exterminate Palestinians 
and create a country as Jewish as Germany was Aryan. 

The ISM volunteers by their very presence derail this plan and save local 
peasants from destruction and expulsion.  They live dangerously: play the 
cat-and-mouse game with Israeli mechaslim ("exterminators"), dodge snipers' 
bullets, stay in defenseless villages with the peasants.  If King David is 
too far for you, think of them as the Last Action Heroes, of Schwarzenegger's 
fame.

Though some of them have Jewish parents, they rejected separatist frameworks 
"for Jews only", perpetuated by Peacenik Zionists. They stand for equality, 
for the 'International of Good People', as Isaac Babel would say.  They came 
from the land of Folke Bernadotte, and the land of Abe Lincoln, and the land 
of T.E. Lawrence.  Some of the ISM volunteers saw action in non-violent 
protests of Seattle, Gothenburg and Genoa, confronting the two-headed dragon 
of Globalisation and Zionism. 

Others came to the Holy Land in April 2002, just in time for Israel's Easter 
Offensive, as Sharon's willing executioners demolished houses, uprooted olive 
trees, deported thousands of Palestinians into concentration camps, 
slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children in Jenin refugee camp and 
Nablus. When Israel's Juggernaut rolled into Bethlehem, over two hundred 
local people sought refuge in the church.

The tradition of refuge actually precedes Christianity and was known to 
mankind from the dawn of civilisation.  Churches always provided the place of 
refuge, and Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame supplies immediate 
reference.  In Latin America persecuted people, illegal immigrants and labour 
leaders often were saved by hiding in churches, while during World War II, 
many thousands of Jews found refuge in Christian churches and monasteries. 

That is why people of Bethlehem believed they will be safe beyond the thick 
walls of the oldest church in Christendom.

The Nativity church of Bethlehem was built in A.D. 325, one of the first 
three grand Christian edifices of the Holy Land, and the only survivor.  Its 
turbulent history was, on a balance, rather lucky one: the invading Persians 
refused orders of their Jewish commissars to destroy it in A.D. 614, and the 
Saracens refused similar orders of Hakim, the mad Caliph of Egypt in A.D. 
1009, while on both occasions its sister church, the Holy Sepulchre of 
Jerusalem, was burned and destroyed. 

In A.D. 1099, Tancred, the future Prince of Galilee, received at Latrun, 
thirty miles of hostile territory away, the reports on enemy plans to destroy 
Nativity, and he rode through the night in the head of his knights and 
relieved it.

Crusader Kings of Jerusalem chose to be crowned in Nativity, and kings of 
England and France sent to its see their precious gifts. In A.D. 1145, most 
beautiful mosaic adorned its walls, still showing the Tree of Jesse, and the 
Tree of Life, and Doubting Thomas touching the wounds of Christ Resurrected. 

In 1932, the British uncovered gorgeous floor mosaic of 4th century, and in 
A.D. 2000, Yasser Arafat rebuilt the Manger Square in front of the basilica.  
The church was adored by millions of believers through the centuries, and 
that is why the people believed they will remain safe in its protection.

But the Jews do not care for sanctity of churches.  Granted, there are 
differences of opinion: Zionist disciples of Rabbi Kook, the main religious 
denomination in Israel, believe all churches must be destroyed soonest, even 
before the mosques.  For them, eradication of Christianity is a more 
important task than elimination of Palestinians.  

Their traditionalist opponents think there is no rush, and it should be done 
by the Jewish Messiah of Vengeance, whenever he will arrive.  Secular Jews 
just do not care. That is why the Jewish army had no mental difficulty to 
surround the church and to begin the cruelest siege in its long history.

Forty monks and priests remained on duty in the church, together with 200 
refugees.  For a month, the Israelis did not allow to bring food or water to 
the besieged.  As in the medieval sieges, people starved and died, trying to 
survive on rainwater boiled with lemon leaves and grass.  Stench of corpses 
and of infected wounds filled the old church.

State-of-art cameras assisted sharpshooters who hung outside and shot at 
every moving figure.  They killed monks and priests as well as refugees.  
Even before the siege, they shot dead a choir boy Johnny, and as I write it, 
on Easter Saturday May 4, they murdered another churchman on duty.  They did 
it with impunity, as they had allies in the media of the West. 

The Danish fairy tale writer, Hans Christian Andersen, wrote of the Snow 
Queen's magic mirror that distorts reality and changes beautiful things
into ugly ones, and vice versa.  In the magic mirror of CNN, this oldest 
church became 'a place where some Christians believe Jesus was born'.  The 
refugees were described as 'terrorists'.  The monks and priests became 
'hostages' in the magic mirror of the Snow Queen.  Cries of the besieged 
would not come through the Israeli-managed western media.

In this dark hour, ISM rode in.  As the Holy Land had prepared for Good 
Friday (a majority of Palestinian Christians belongs to the Greek Orthodox 
Church of Jerusalem), two dozen volunteers divided into two groups: one of 
them staged a diversion in the best tradition of Alistair McLean's "Guns of 
Navarone." 

While Israeli soldiers were taken aback by their foolhardy bravery and 
proceeded to capture them, the second group rushed forward, and entered the 
gates of the church.  They brought with them some food and water to the 
starving beleaguered refugees, something to look forward for Easter Sunday. 
Probably in the history books, their breakthrough will be called the Easter 
Rescue.

When Zionism will be laid to rest, names of these daring men and women would 
be carved on the walls of the church.  In the sacristy, next to the sword of 
Godfrey de Bouillon, the Defender of the Holy Sepulchre (the leader of the 
First Crusade refused the crown, but accepted the title) there will be 
baseball hats and sneakers of the Defenders of Nativity, those who got into 
the church, to share hunger and danger of the siege: Alistair Hillman (UK), 
Allan Lindgaard (Denmark), Erik Algers (Sweden), Jacqueline Soohen (Canada), 
Kristen Schurr (USA), Larry Hales (USA), Mary Kelly (Ireland), Nauman Zaidi 
(USA), Stefan Coster (Sweden), and Robert O'Neill (USA), and those who 
sacrificed their freedom, created diversion and were jailed: Jeff Kingham 
(USA), Jo Harrison (UK), Johannes Wahlstrom (Sweden), James Hanna (USA), Kate 
Thomas (UK), Marcia Tubbs (UK), John Caruso (USA), Nathan Musselman (USA), 
Nathan Mauger (USA), Trevor Baumgartner (USA), Thomas Kootsoukos (USA), Ida 
Fasten (Sweden), Huwaida Arraf (USA).

The diversionary group was arrested for the dreadful crime of bringing food 
to the starving refugees in the Church on Easter:  At first, men were 
separated from women and taken to jail in an illegal Jewish settlement of 
Etzion.  Women were sent to Jerusalem, and brought to court, where they were 
sentenced to be deported.  

While on the way to the jail transport, the English girls jumped off and 
escaped their guards.  One of them was caught by an Israeli civilian, who did 
not hesitate to pull a knife on a girl.  Other two are on the run, together 
with the Swedish girl, Ida.  They showed what is real civil disobedience, how 
a non-violent and humanitarian action could make difference even in the 
brutal circumstances of the Israeli occupation.  Now, the men are still in 
jail in the occupied Hebron, in the hands of its fanatical settlers.

Though they committed no offence in the territory of Israel, they have been 
sentenced to be deported and forbidden to enter Israel for ten years.  One 
hopes the apartheid 'state of Israel' would not last that long.  Their 
sentence proved that for Israelis, "Palestinian territories" are just a legal 
fiction, to be applied or discarded whenever needed.  We could do the same 
and demand equality for all, Jew and Gentile alike, in the whole of 
Palestine.

As a professional journalist, I regret that this tense drama of siege, 
breakthrough, diversion, relief, salvation, arrest, escape and confrontation 
at Easter, in the shadow of the great church, the best stuff there is, did 
not reach the mass audience of Europe and America, that it was not 
broadcasted by all TV stations and reprinted by all newspapers.

But the regret does not diminish my joy, as one of the kids who broke the 
siege was my own son.

---
* Israel Shamir's articles can be found at www.israelshamir.net  In order to 
subscribe to this list or to be removed from it, write to 
info@israelshamir.net .  No copyright for electronic transmission, but ask 
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