Onward Christian Ethnic Cleansers

Crosses, flags, and murdered children by Dianne Roe

Most people in Hebron have TVs. The last few days the images on the screen have been unbearable. At one home I saw a mother try to distract her eight-year old son but she was too late. He had already seen the carnage of the boys playing soccer, stopped cold by an Israeli air strike. Mothers watching the screen sobbed uncontrollably as they saw Israeli bombs slaughtering babies, one only two days old. Gaza is in every home in the West Bank, on the faces of people in the market, and in the children throwing stones at the soldiers.

The Gaza images boiled over today in Hebron, even as Khalili's (Hebronites) try to resume daily activities. Our neighbor Zleekha came over with the bad news. "The Israelis killed a twelve-year old here today," she said. When I returned an hour later to see if she had an update, she was listening to Martha Stewart, borrowing ideas for her Hebron Old City kindergarten children's projects, or perhaps for the gardening tips she uses to turn Khan Shaheen where we live into a greenhouse.

The bottom of the screen had the news that the death toll in Gaza had reached 100 in five days of air strikes. As Zleekha flipped the channels again to get more news, the images from Gaza were interspersed with US presidential candidates, someone from the PKK, and a suicide attack in Pakistan. Then, she settled on a news story I did not want anyone in Palestine to see. American flags were flying next to Israeli flags and Zleekha's mother was reading the Arabic captions below. I could tell from the pictures on the screen that this was a story about an organization called CUFI (Christians United For Israel).

Zleekha's mother rubbed her index fingers together in the same motion she had often used to show me that two women were sisters, or two men brothers, or that two people were in a very close relationship. "Christians and Israel like this," she said, repeating the finger movement.

The American flag and the Christian cross are my symbols. I am an American (USonian). I am a Christian. CUFI is an organization that is helping Israel with the ethnic cleansing of the city where Zleekha and her mother live. My government and the presidential candidates have repeatedly given the green light to Israel to massacre Palestinians. Now the Deputy Israeli Defense Minister is threatening a holocaust in Gaza (his words). How will our presidential candidates respond? What will our churches do to counter the images in the Muslim world of slaughtered children interspersed with American flags and Christian symbols?

Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical initiative to support violence reduction efforts around the world. To learn more about CPT's peacemaking work, visit our website www.cpt.org   Photos of our projects are at www.cpt.org/gallery