By Linda Edwards
December 22, 2006

A Two Thousand Year Search For Peace gets no closer to actuality as 2006 comes to a close. Daily, the dead bodies pile up in the Middle East. In Gaza, where the Israelis (not the Children of Israel) continue to slaughter Palestinians and take their land, while such atrocities continue to be funded by American taxpayers, of whom I am one. Further to the east, in Iraq, children and grandmothers die daily as violence of brother against brother, as well as American death incursions continue to take their toll on humanity.

I found relief last week in teaching the story of the expected Messiah to twenty nine Hispanic twelve and thirteen year olds, growing up in America; one of whom repeatedly states that he wants to go out there and kill Bin Laden. I disappointed him, I think by pointing out the truth; that we armed Bin Laden in the first case, to go against the Russians in another proxy war.

We began by looking at maps. The map of Canaan is reproduced in the King James version of the Bible, one I bought forty two years ago, to celebrate the safe birth of my first son. It shows such ancient cities as Gaza, Jericho, Tyre and Sidon, and the troubled river of history – the Jordan. Then we looked at the map of Palestine in the time of Christ, also reproduced from the King James version. Many new towns had been added, Beer Sheba had disappeared, and so had Mt. Gilead, and the Sea of Chinnereth (Genasareth) was now the Sea of Galilee. Bethlehem and Jerusalem remained constant. Japho was now Joppa. The Salt Sea of The Plain was now the Dead Sea.

We stopped and talked about the constant turmoil in the region, conquest by King Antiochus the 4th, and his defeat by Judah, Roman Conquest and the yoke of Pax Romana, imposed by the sword or by crucifixion, and of the dream of a messiah who would be called the Prince Of Peace. We talked of a census that sent people back to their home towns to be counted, and compared it to all Hispanics in Texas having to go home again to Central America, to be counted, before being allowed to return. They would not trust the U.S. to honor that.

And we talked of that Special Child born to Mary and Joseph, and of the fear it put in the mind of Herod Antipas. We worked on Anti- for a bit, meaning against, as in the Anti-Christ, of which Herod was the first.

What puzzled them was how Christ’s birthday, which was about April 14th, came to be on Christmas Day, Dec. 25. The Romans again, this time an Emperor who had embraced Christianity, and was trying to put a spike in the wheel of the pagans celebrating the Winter Solstice; so he moved the official birthday to Dec. 25 by administrative fiat.

The Queen of England, Her Majesty Elizabeth II, is also born on April 14th, but celebrates hers on June 21st because its better weather for a parade. Royal prerogative used as an example.

So how do you know he was born in April? Always a doubting Thomas in every class. “Because the shepherds were watching their flocks. It was lambing time, and they stay out in the fields in case the ewes need help giving birth. That is why He is also referred to as the Good Shepherd and the Lamb of God” compare to a novel, And Now Miguel, that they read, that talked of lambing time. Mmmhhhmm.

The next map was a University of Oxford publication of 1951, which shows the new state of Israel, freshly formed and busily running blockades to bring in new citizens. Citizens need land. The only way to get land in a non-expanding universe, is to take it from somebody who already has it. The Palestinians had it, the new State of Israel wants it. Bit by slow bit, war by war, it expands, and the Palestinians have been in retreat for more than fifty years.

We talk of the magical find called the Dead Sea Scrolls, and how they ended up in Israel’s hands. Who has the right to treasured artifacts, the finder or the people who think its their history and no one else’s? We wonder how much the Palestinian shepherd boy who found the first set, was compensated for it.

Looking at that map of 1951, and the present map of the region downloaded from Microsoft, the children could see why there is no peace. If you force me off my land, how long will it take my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to forget what we had? If a small boy throws rocks in anger at a police car, and the result is that they go wherever the grandmother lives, not the mother, only grandmother, and break down her house, and put her out in the street or she risks being bulldozed, does one make friends or enemies? Small boys are being made enemies every day in the Middle East, for a conflict that can last for ever.

We read President Jimmy Carter’s letter in the LA Times, about his book, and attempts to shut out debate on it, on college campuses. I lament for them, that free speech in the land of their birth – most of them were born in America, is no more. What is apartheid? They ask, and I give them the most graphic mental pictures: Winnie Mandela’s house being broken down, she evicted, and walking away with a door from the house balanced on her head, and her possessions in bundles on top of it. Old women forced off the sidewalk into muddy streets so that little white boys can pass to play, and finally that picture I cannot get out of my mind, of four police officers snatching a Black activist, taking him out to a deserted beach and killing him, then barbecuing his flesh and burning his bones which they will later throw into the ocean; and on another barbecue spit, a few feet away, they grill the meat for their dinner at sunset (Testimony of the Truth And Reconciliation Commission). President Carter says the situation in Palestine is worse than Aparthied in South Africa. He has been there many times. The book is a factual account of what he saw.

Now they can understand the search for a Messiah, a Prince of Peace, one who will bring peace to the region, not only for the Jews but also for the Palestinians and for the Lebanese, most recent victims of Israel’s horror bombs that barely scar the outside skin, but fries the internal organs. Israel denies this, but it also denied having the Nuclear Bomb, until Mr. Olmert’s slip of truth recently.

So will there be peace? I am afraid not, I say, to their disappointment, their sorrow. They are quiet. You see, I explain, peace can only exist between equals. Israel has nuclear technology, and Mr. Bush has said he will not hesitate to use the Nuclear Option in the Middle East, if he has to. And so, you have people on the one side fighting for the right to live on land they have lived on for four thousand years, and émigrés, religious émigrés, moving from Russia, America England, France and other parts of Europe, who claim that they are the children of Jacob, and so have a right of return, and this right tramples on the rights of the people who never left. It is, I say, as if all the millions of Africans born in the New World over the last four hundred years of forced separation, went home to Africa, from Canada, the USA, Central America, the Caribbean-English, French, Spanish and Dutch, and South America, and claimed West Africa from Mali to Congo as their ancestral homeland, and the West equipped us to take it by force, including nuclear technology; and then subsidized us to the tune of billions of dollars annually.

When will the Africans who never left cease to fight? No one says anything. I answer for them. When there is not one of them left standing.

I throw in oil as an additional factor, and they understand that peace may not be achieved in their grandchildren’s lifetimes.

I give them hope, for hope is important. I tell them about the Afghanis, who defeated the British at the Khyber Pass, then defeated the Russians after eleven long years of wearying war, and now, are taking back their land bit by bit from American occupation. The western media call them all Taliban, but even the Iraqis are now beginning to say they were better off under Saddam.

For three years, at Christmas, I have not put up exterior lights in my yard. It is my personal statement of sorrow about the state of things. This year, I am not doing an indoor tree either. People of goodwill need to make some small gesture to say all is NOT RIGHT with the world.

But we live on hope.