The Grandmother Effect

During our time on the West Bank of Israel/Palestine, I spent a day in the West Bank city of Hebron. Hebron is the site of the traditional tomb of Abraham and is therefore a holy place to all three monotheistic faiths. In many ways Hebron is a microcosm of the conflict in Israel/Palestine. This seems appropriate as this conflict is a conflict within the dysfunctional family of Abraham. It probably would have been better if he had had only one wife. Hebron is in the southern portion of the West Bank 30 minutes or two hours south of Bethlehem (depending on whether you are on the Jewish by-pass road or the Palestinian road). In Hebron there is a Jewish settlement of about 500 settlers (mostly American) in a city of 150,000 Arabs. (mostly Muslim) The settlers here represent the radical religious right of Jewish Israelis. David Wilder (an American from New Jersey), the spokesperson for this settlement, told us that his two state solution was Israel/Palestine for the Jews and Texas for the Palestinians. (I am not sure that he has consulted with George Bush on this.) Because the settlement is east, from an Israeli perspective “outside”, of the separation barrier/wall, the settlers are guarded by 2000 Israeli soldiers and security personnel. The result of this situation is a very unstable and sometimes violent relationship between the two populations. For this reason an organization called “Christian Peacemaker Teams” (CPT) has sent a group to monitor the situation and “get in the way of violence”. They call this “the grandmother effect”. There are some things that you won’t do when your grandmother is watching. (I think that our grandchildren could relate to this.) One of the things that they do is walk the Palestinian children to school in order to keep them from being hassled by the settlers or the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) at the checkpoints.
John Lynes, a lawyer and a grandfather from the UK, told a story of needing to go to the market in order to prepare dinner. In order to get there, he had to pass down a street where the IDF and Palestinian “militants” were fighting each other. When they saw him, they stopped fighting and allowed him to pass. By the time he returned from the market, they were fighting again. Once again they stopped fighting and allowed him to pass only to resume when he was gone. Our Gospel reading for last Sunday was from the Gospel known to the church as John 15:13 “…no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”. CPT seems to me to be the embodiment of this philosophy of unconditional love. Sometimes they lay down their lives literally as did Tom Fox in Iraq (if you don’t know this story, click here), but mostly they just lay down their normal lives, like yours and mine, to go where they are needed. (For more on CPT click here) Grandfathers and grandmothers encouraged to apply.