Silent Night

I met some incredible people in Israel and the West Bank, but one person I will never forget is Jonny. He is a Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem and I met him in the foyer of his family’s hotel. He was weeping. He was weeping over the hundreds of olive trees that had been destroyed the day before in a village near Ramallah. The olive trees – the Palestinian pride and joy, livelihood and passion. Ancient, beautiful life giving trees, ripped from the ground. Jonny wept over them, and for the destruction of his precious West Bank that had gone before, and that he knew would continue.

Jonny is 74, and he has skin cancer. His family have saved meticulously to ensure he gets the treatment he needs and can’t get under his insurance as because the hospital in Bethlehem hasn’t the resources, he needs to go to Jerusalem. He has to pay and apply for a permit to pass through the checkpoint to Jerusalem, he doesn’t always get the permit, and when he does, he isn’t always allowed through. When he stays overnight in hospital his family can scarcely afford the permit to visit him, and when they can they cannot guarantee their purchased permission will be accepted.

Early this year in the cold of spring and at the peak of his illness, Jonny travelled once again to hospital. At the checkpoint he was ordered to strip and be searched in the open air in front of the queue and the young soldiers. Jonny has every reason to weep. He is regularly humiliated, his hometown is an open prison and he knows his story won’t make the news.

Jonny has every reason to weep. And so do I. This is my world too. And these things are happening under my nose and in my lifetime and in my chapter of history. A time for action and a time for talking. There is a time to listen and a time to stand for truth. There is a time for shouting, and a time for weeping.