Israeli-Palestian conflict

The 1948 Israeli War of Independence, and the subsequent flight of refugees, became central formative events
that characterized both Israelis as well as Palestinians as well as define the current conflict.
In 1947 The UN voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, which the Palestinians heavily opposed.
This led to riots, from the blockade of Jewish Jerusalem, to the ambush of buses and other public transports.
There are currently about 4.6 million displaced 4.6 million displaced persons, as well as about 3.7 million refugees
registered with the UNRWA, a drastic increase from the estimated 726,000 refugees directly following the war.
Since 1949 the Palestinian refugee crisis has been at the heart of peace negotiations in the middle east, though refugees
find camp conditions poverty stricken and overcrowded. The UN General Assembly Resolution 194 stated that the
refugees that wished to return to their homes and live peacefully amongst their neighbors would be permitted to do so.
However, this has not been informed, and though they have international legal claim to return home, many Palestinians
have not been allowed to return home as these are part of the General Assembly and no binding in the international law.

Many Arab states are unwilling to accept refugees. with the exception of Jordan, they are largely unwilling to give refugees
citizenship. There has been a proposition to allow for a Palestinian state, however many argue that the delegated land
would be too small to properly house the refugees. The other issue is that Palestinians have a claim to the land they have
been removed from, and they should be allowed to return to their homeland. The issue is vastly more complex and neither
side is right nor wrong, and therefore finding a happy equal for both sides to negotiate will be near impossible.

http://www.mideastweb.org/refugees1.htm

Refugee mother and Child (Palestinian) 

https://www.thenational.ae/world/nakba-day-un-documents-palestinian-exodus-1.246294

Palestinian refugees http://www.thejournal.ie/palestinian-refugees-how-statehood-bid-at-un-affects-us-234647-Sep2011/

Anti-Refugee Groups--Fallacy at its Finest

It is incredible to see the juxtaposition between groups who open-heartedly welcome refugees and the organizations that hold anti-refugee/immigrant sentiment, especially those who claim the name of Jesus Christ or identify themselves as Christians. This targets at the root of my personal worldview regarding the nature of humanity, therefore I will at least in part discuss the subject matter from this perspective.

The former (the welcoming group) is a reflection of a personal belief that runs deep, namely, that all are created in the image of God, therefore all should be treated with dignity and esteemed as valuable. The latter (anti-refugee groups) is deeply repulsive and woven with entangled threads of ignorance, hatred, and bigotry. One example of such a group is the Aryan Nations/Church of Jesus Christ Christian.

Fundamentally and very importantly, the fact that they claim Jesus Christ as an identifier of their white supremacist group is heretical and totally against the biblical command to self-sacrificially love your neighbor, despite race or ethnicity; and that Jesus Christ (specifically) “..is our peace…and tore down, in His flesh the dividing walls of hostility” between races (Ephesians 2:14). The Christian worldview holds that ultimately, people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation will be together in true and perfect unity. The Aryan Nations Church of Jesus Christ group is both anti-Christ and anti-people who are not like them.

Photo credit: Quora

To move past what I perceive as most fundamentally wrong about this group’s identity, I see an incredibly dangerous outworking of what they believe, including their support of Adolf Hitler as a modern neo-Nazi outpost. Some of their ‘precepts’ that directly assault the practice of welcoming multiple races/cultures include:

·             “Religion in its most beneficial form is the symbology of a People and their culture. A multi- racial religion destroys the senses of uniqueness, exclusivity and value necessary to the survival of a race.”

·             “The White race has suffered invasions and brutality from Africa and Asia for thousands of years…”

·             “People who allow others not of their race to live among them will perish, because the inevitable result of a racial integration is racial inter-breeding which destroys the characteristics and existence of a race. Forced integration is deliberate and malicious genocide, particularly for a People like the White race, who are now a small minority in the world.”

·             “These are sure signs of a sick or dying Nation. If you see any of them, your guardians are committing treason: Mixing and destruction of the founding race…” (Lane, 2013)

Photo credit: CTV Barrie-CTV News

This group’s thoughts and doctrines are logically fallacious in themselves, and that is even before we begin to talk about how morally reprehensible it is. Racism in general is increasingly on the foreground of current problems we see in America and throughout the world, but to see the frame of mind so explicitly portrayed is astounding.

On the other hand, as we know, there are many who counter these vain efforts to extinguish ‘other races’. They shine light in the dark margins of hatred by lovingly welcoming the stranger, despite race, religion, or background. This video from the UNHCR demonstrates the immeasurable good that comes from this as a group of such individuals do so in the video here.

Photo Credit: Pünkösdi Teológiai Föiskola

 

References

Lane, D. (2013). 88 Precepts by David Lane (P.O.W.): Member of the order. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20130327003354/http://web.archive.org/web/20070202231101/http://www.aryan-nations.org/88_precepts.htm

A News Article on Refugees (one that you will actually be glad you read)

https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/cover-story/article/20852845/refugees-are-people-six-stories-of-refugees-in-nashville 

The search for what to discuss in this blog post began with a somewhat belated and disconcerting realization that President Trump’s initial travel ban took place over a year ago now. And yet, in my fairly limited news consumption, I was still seeing it mentioned pretty regularly and come to find out the latest version has been coined travel ban 3.0 in the news. Additionally, our class had the opportunity to hear from Katie Willocks who works at Bridge Refugee Services in Knoxville. She described the initial resettlement process and assistance refugees receive from Bridge, as well as, highlighted some new challenges Bridge has faced since President Trump’s election, the travel ban, and the lowered quota for resettlement (the new quotas are less than half of those from the Obama administration and even the approx. 45,000 are not on track to be achieved). In addition, to a changing political environment, resettled refugees are also introduced into new and sometimes less than ideal economic environments. Currently our class is reading ‘Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine’ and had questions about Somali refugees’ current situation, as it turns out Katie told us there is a community of Somali refugees resettled in my home city of Nashville, TN. 

This brings us to the topic of this blog post. The Nashville Scene is a newspaper that I have seen millions of time back home and it is usually a good spot to find local art and music. Well in my search I found the article “Refugees are People,” written by Jennifer Justus and published Feb. 23, 2017, only weeks after the original travel ban took effect. The piece leads of with the news of the ‘Muslim’ travel ban then moves into what the resettlement process looked like at the time it took effect. Jennifer discusses many of the same challenges that Katie described to our class including the time waiting for resettlement and the financial and time expectations placed on refugees upon arrival. I chose to feature this article in this blog post because on one hand it challenges the current mainstream media portrayal of refugees in a negative light, and on the other hand it actively demonstrates how the life trajectory of refugees is not one size fits all. Jennifer interviewed six refugee families from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East who come from a range of religious, economic, and educational backgrounds. Some are more recent arrivals while others have been in the U.S. or Nashville for years. Their stories demonstrate many of the same dynamics found in Catherine Besteman’s book (Making Refuge) concerning interactions with the local population, the significance of community, and most importantly that there is no common trajectory for assimilation. Lastly, it highlights the variety of ways refugees are deciding to navigate the current political and economic climate in the U.S. by engaging at the local level to combat stereotypes and bring about positive change.

P.S. to fellow Nashvillians: This article shows us a picture of the future of Nashville as an inclusive city, and I for one would consider the presence of a Somali owned coffee shop next door to a meat and three café a positive improvement for the character of the city.