Dr. Mark Braverman: Calling for Palestinian Justice
The call for peace in Israel/Palestine within interfaith dialogue is being waged by Dr. Mark Braverman, author of “Fatal Embrace: Christians, Jews, and the Search for Peace in the Holy Land” The book was “written as a result of my shock, my horror, my sadness, and my anger at what is happening in historic Palestine.”
Dr. Braverman is an American Jew who openly discusses his struggle with the difficult realities of modern Israel. “What I saw in the West Bank, was my people, in my name, dispossessing and humiliating another people.” What troubles Braverman is that this “was continuing and had been going on for generations” and that is why he believes there is no peace. “I knew that until we Jews looked in the mirror, saw what we were doing and decided to stop that, that there would never be peace for my family in Israel.”
Braverman’s roots are in the Holy Land. His grandfather, a fifth generation Palestinian Jew, was born in Jerusalem and emigrated to the U.S. as a young man. Growing up in the Philadelphia, Braverman was reared in the Jewish tradition, studying Bible, Hebrew literature, and Jewish history and traveling to Israel when he was 17 years old. Brought up on the Zionist dream, Braverman believes Jews are “stuck in the Holocaust” and that the real injury is spiritual and psychological. “We can’t build a society based on victims.”
Returning to the Holy Land in 2006, Braverman was transformed from a conservative religious Zionist to an advocate for universal human rights after witnessing the occupation of Palestine and encounters with peace activists from Sabeel, Christian Palestinians committed to liberation theology, as well as Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Hebron. Trained in clinical psychology and crisis management, Braverman’s love for the Jewish people forced him to break his silence and overcome his fear to speak out because the problem of ethnic cleansing threatens to destroy security. “I found myself questioning the very basis of Zionism and the whole Zionist project that I had grown up with,” he said.
In an attempt to understand what he has seen, Braverman’s quest is to connect with others who have confronted the same situation, compelling them to investigate, to search within, and to write. The values that he was brought up on as a Jew, he says, have served him well, allowing him to stand up for justice and apply it in the social world. While he considers himself religious, he says speaking before Christians is his synagogue. “Prayer has to lead to practice.”
His journey as an American Jew struggling with the realities of modern Israel lead him to conclude that it is not anti-Semitic to stand up for justice for the Palestinian people. The diplomatic process is not going to bring about peace, he says, because the parties are not capable. He predicts that partial justice measures aimed at maintaining an exclusive Jewish state and salvaging a “humanistic Zionism” will not work.
Since returning to the United States from his visit to the Holy Land in 2006, Mark Braverman has devoted his career to the Israel/Palestine conflict and believes the churches in America are crucial to the cause. That is why he travels extensively, urging Christians to make pilgrimage to the Holy Land to see for themselves. “Seeing is everything,” he said before a group at the Fort Street Presbyterian Church in Detroit this past weekend.
The event was sponsored by the Middle East Work Group, Justice and Peacemaking Committee, Presbytery of Detroit and Peace and Justice Committee. Braverman’s concern for change in Israel was echoed by members of the audience. David Finkel of Jewish Voice For Peace said times have changed and that we are in a different context, expressing pessimism as well as hope despite many young Jews walking away from organized events due to guilt related to the Holocaust. Members of the Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist work groups planned to focus their efforts on robust educational programs and pilgrimages.
Braverman, the co-founder and Executive Director of Friends of Tents of North America and member of the Board of Directors of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions-USA, is planning another pilgrimage in May/June of 2011. The author is also part of the advisory council of the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace and a member of American Jews for a Just Peace.
Despite the doors being shut in the Jewish community where he grew up, the “doors flung open” when he started to speak in front of Christian groups and in churches, he says. “Christians wanted to hear about it.” For the last 60 years, Braverman says, Christians have been involved in a purposeful, committed project to reconcile with the Jewish people. “As a Jew, I am coming to the church, and I’m saying: I love Israel. My grandfather was born in Israel. Half my family lives there.”
“Fatal Embrace” is about two groups, Braverman says. It is about Jews who feel that because of the history of oppression and dispossession they have the right to disposes another people and colonize historic Palestine. It is also about Christians, he says, who feel that because they are responsible for 2,000 years of anti-Semitism resulting in the Holocaust that they have no right to hold Israel accountable or to challenge the Jewish people about what the Jewish people may be doing wrong. “As long as both of those groups are locked into those attitudes and behave according to those believes, we will never fix the problem and find a way to peace in the Holy Land.”
That is why Braverman is calling on all Christians to address the issue of Palestinian justice in their churches, seminaries, and everyday relationships and activities. In his call for the church to take on the prophetic task of pursuing justice in the Holy Land, Braverman urges a return to the original values of social justice and nonviolent resistance to oppression that accompanied the birth of Christianity. Christian group leaders in the U.S. are being urged to tell the truth, to no allow ideologies to distract us, and to make contact with progressive Jews and Muslims. “The time has come for us to work together to bring justice to the Middle East.”
Sabah Fakhoury
Arab Detroit