Joseph’s neighbor, a woman in her 80s, is helping to guard the entrance to Zichron Ya’akov, the town in Israel about 20 miles south of Haifa in which she and Joseph live.
“Everybody’s doing something,” said Joseph, who has lived in Israel for over 30 years and asked that his full name not be used. “I went to give blood. We give food, we all gave from our paychecks this month to the military in order to bring stuff to the south, to the people who lost everything.”
These are examples of a community responding in the aftermath of an attack on Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7.
The Catholic Spirit spoke with Joseph via video call, facilitated by Eric Simon, mission promotions manager for the Center for Mission, which serves the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
“The great thing about Israel is when things happen, whether you’re left or right or middle (politically speaking), it doesn’t matter — we all pull together,” Joseph said.
Meanwhile, roughly 80 miles from Zichron Ya’akov in Bethlehem, Isam Asfour — a parishioner of St. Maron in Minneapolis — found an open road out of the West Bank.
While Asfour has lived in Minnesota for the past 30 years, he lived the first 19 years of his life in Jerusalem. His immediate and extended family members live there currently. His wife’s family lives in Bethlehem. Asfour said he returns to the Holy Land each year “to visit the family, to visit with friends, and to just be in the culture and to see the land.” Asfour and his wife arrived in mid-September for this trip.
The road Asfour found was cleared of cement blocks Israeli military had placed on several West Bank roads in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack. Driving at night, he made it to Jerusalem in time to say goodbye to his family before he and his wife faced their return through Jordan to the Twin Cities.
Asfour said in the first couple of days after Oct. 7, borders were only open to “a certain number of people, about 1,000 people, to go through each way from Israel to Jordan, from Jordan to Israel and Palestine. We had to make sure that we arrived at a certain time early in the morning so that we were below that 1,000 threshold.”
He and his wife left at 5 a.m. in a taxi, ultimately arriving at the Israel-Jordan border checkpoint. Ahead of them, they saw “close to 200 taxis waiting,” Asfour said. “They started distributing the ticket numbers and we were ticket numbers 749 and 750. So, we managed to make it below the 1,000 threshold and we went through the border,” staying in Jordan for two nights before flying back to the United States and arriving Oct. 17 in the Twin Cities.
“Our main worry, right now, is the family, the immediate family back home, whether in Jerusalem or in Bethlehem, because it’s only getting worse,” Asfour said.
The war’s effects in an area of such significance have gripped the hearts of many worldwide, including in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
‘A national trauma’ in Israel
Islamist militant group Hamas led an attack with missiles and a ground invasion in approximately 22 locations in southern Israel on Oct. 7, the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, which marks the completion of the annual cycle of reading the Torah scroll.
The Associated Press reports Hamas was founded in 1987 and rose to political power in 2006 before an armed takeover of the Gaza Strip the following year from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State, the European Union and other Western countries.
During its attack, Hamas militants killed civilians in their homes and vehicles. The Associated Press reported militants opened fire on thousands of young Israelis who had gathered for an outdoor music festival in Israel near the Gaza border. Hundreds of people taken hostage in the attack were brought to Gaza.
Ambassador Raphael Schutz, Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, told OSV News Oct. 9 that the number of men, women and children who have died is on “a scale that we have not known, I would say, since the beginning of the establishment of Israel.”
“I would say this is a catastrophe that I would describe in biblical dimensions,” Schutz told OSV News. “Total families were murdered — grandparents, parents and children, in villages, in kibbutzim, in the towns around Gaza. There is a feeling of a national trauma.”
Joseph said because of Israel’s size — at 8,550 square miles, it’s slightly smaller than New Jersey — “nobody is free from this, even if you haven’t been involved. You know somebody who was killed or family members who were killed.”
Joseph said a colleague of his “lost three people from her family down in the kibbutz. It’s close. I mean, we all know somebody, it’s just as simple as that. My wife — a friend of hers lost children.”
Reaching out to family, friends and colleagues and staying vigilant have been part of day-to-day life in recent weeks, Joseph said.
“I hear the planes all night long flying south, and north now, and that’s hard because we know what’s going on,” he said. In addition to what’s happening in Gaza, crossfire has taken place between Israeli military and militant group Hezbollah at the northern Israel-Lebanon border.
Joseph said sirens will sound to warn people to shelter in place. In Israel, houses and residential and industrial buildings are required to have bomb shelters, or access to bomb shelters, he said. It was a requirement in a civil defense law passed in Israel. The family shelter in Joseph’s house is a room encased in metal. It has metal shutters and an air filtration system “in case of gas.” It’s also stocked with food and water.
Pope Francis has condemned Hamas’ attacks on Israel, repeated calls for peace and prayers, and insisted that hostages be immediately released.
“I strongly ask that children, the sick, the elderly, women and all civilians not be made victims of the conflict,” the pope said, according to Catholic News Service (CNS).
Reflecting on prayer and calls for peace, Joseph said he has been “on the peace side of things, always have been.”
“I wouldn’t call myself religious, but I believe,” he said; he puts tefillin on, which are black leather boxes containing Hebrew scrolls that are traditionally strapped to the arms and forehead, worn during prayer.
“Do I want peace? Yeah, I’d like to live side by side with Palestinians and with all equal rights and equal everything,” Joseph said. “Unfortunately, there’s too many people on both sides who don’t want that.”
To date, roughly 1,400 people have been killed in Israel, mostly in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, the Associated Press reported.
A humanitarian crisis in Gaza
The fact that movement into, and out of, the Gaza Strip is restricted creates problems, said Chorbishop Sharbel Maroun, who has been leading St. Maron, a Maronite-rite Catholic church, since 1989.
“There are Palestinians who live in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip and there is nothing that connects them together as a community,” Chorbishop Maroun said. “That already there is a problem. … And then, they live there in poverty.”
Pope Francis expressed his concern about the impact Israel’s tightened restrictions on electricity, food, fuel and supplies to Gaza were having on civilians, “where there also have been many innocent victims,” the pope said. Israel halted deliveries while urging Hamas to release its hostages in Gaza.
“Terrorism and extremism will not help reach a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, but only increase hatred, violence and vengeance and only make each other suffer,” Pope Francis said.
Pope Francis urged that “humanitarian law is to be respected, especially in Gaza, where it is urgent and necessary to ensure humanitarian corridors and to come to the aid of the entire population.”
“Casualties are rising and the situation in Gaza is desperate,” the pope said Oct. 18. “Please, may everything possible be done to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.”
United Nations spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told the Associated Press the humanitarian situation in Gaza was becoming more dire “by the day, if not by the hour” amid a lack of essential supplies.
The Israeli government agreed Oct. 18 to allow Egypt to begin delivering limited aid to Gaza after 11 days of restrictions, the Associated Press reported.
During those 11 days, Israel had declared war and launched military-led airstrikes on locations across the Gaza Strip, including areas in which Palestinians were seeking safety. Dozens of U.N. installations in Gaza were hit by shelling from Israeli tanks in the week following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, causing fatalities, according to the Associated Press; Israeli military said it had been targeting Hamas hideouts, infrastructure and command centers.
To date, over 5,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, the Associated Press reported.
Ongoing conflict
Chorbishop Maroun, Simon and Father Erich Rutten all referenced the longstanding nature of the conflict in the Holy Land.
Israelis and Palestinians have clashed over land and independence for decades. The world’s three major monotheistic religions — Christianity, Islam and Judaism — have roots in the Holy Land.
“There is a deep conflict over the land and, of course, it goes deeper with religion,” Chorbishop Maroun said.
It’s “a conflict of two worlds coming together,” and includes questions of what human rights and land ownership means, said Simon.
“Israel has a whole different perspective on that, and Palestinians have a whole different perspective.” Simon said. “It’s just very complicated; I don’t think there are any easy answers. … The depth of feelings and ownership go (back) hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.”
“In particular with Israel and Palestine … each group has a very different perspective on this, and each of the two feel somehow aggrieved by the other; they’re different narratives,” said Father Rutten, who became pastor of the clustered parishes of St. Thomas the Apostle and Christ the King in Minneapolis in July.
Father Rutten, who has served as the chair of the Archdiocesan Commission for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs within the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, also worked in the public policy sphere with the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition and the Minnesota Catholic Conference, both based in St. Paul.
The ongoing conflict is a Christian concern, Father Rutten said. “All Christians should be concerned with violence and with the ways that we do violence to one another. Clearly, this is not how God made us to be, as brothers and sisters were called to be. Brothers and sisters are supposed to treat each other well. So, the question of how do things become violent is, I think, a concern for all of us, and potentially, it’s even within our own heart.”
With an understanding of his own rite’s persecution and displacement throughout history, Chorbishop Maroun said “for us Maronites, who are in the Middle East, we’re caught between a rock and a hard place, and we’ve been paying prices for thousands of years, paying the price of what’s happening around us.”
Chorbishop Maroun added that Cardinal Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, Maronite Patriarch of Antioch and head of the Maronite Church, has consistently urged the need for Lebanon, in which the Maronite Church is prominent, to be a neutral country.
Lebanon shares borders with Israel and Syria. There are roughly 210,000 Palestinian refugees currently living in Lebanon, according to UNICEF’s Lebanon office.
“We need to live naturally and to live in peace with everyone around us,” Chorbishop Maroun said.
It’s a sentiment he feels broadly applies to the conflict in the Holy Land.
“I think the human right is so important, the dignity of the human person, because everybody — Muslim, Christian, Jews, everyone else — they want freedom. They want to live in freedom, they want to have their dignity respected, and they want to have their children live in dignity and security. The Jewish child as well as the Palestinian child, they deserve good schooling, they deserve love, they deserve peace. They don’t deserve to live under fear.”
“The Palestinians, they deserve like the Israelis,” Chorbishop Maroun added. “They deserve to have land and they deserve to have a country. And the refugees who are in Lebanon and Syria and Jordan, they deserve to go back to their country.”
‘Opportunities for encounter’
Chorbishop Maroun said he encourages Catholics in the archdiocese to pray, learn about the conflict in the Holy Land, and seek ways to connect.
“And pray for conversion; I always pray that the Lord will work a miracle and open-heart surgery to change all the hearts of the Jews and all the hearts of the Muslims into Christian hearts,” Chorbishop Maroun said. “Love your enemies, pray for them, rather than to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” he said. “Unless they use that spirit, the spirit of love your enemies and pray for them, we’re never going to have peace in the Middle East.”
Simon echoed that sentiment: “I’m a big believer in prayer, as a Catholic. … (P)ray for peace, for people’s hearts to change.”
Father Rutten said it’s also important to “keep your eye out for opportunities” for encountering those who cross your path, to listen and to understand.
“Whether it’s in your neighborhood or whether it’s in your local town or city, or at a local university … there are just opportunities for encounter all around us.”
LOCAL INTERFAITH REACTION
The Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul and the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at St. John’s University in Collegeville issued a joint statement in response to the latest conflict.
The centers “affirm our solidarity with all those who in any way have been affected by the recent genocidal attack by Hamas terrorists on people in Israel — especially those who have loved ones who were killed, wounded or taken as hostages — and also with innocent civilians in Gaza and elsewhere who have been directly and indirectly affected by the Israeli government and military response to the Hamas attack. Along with millions of people in Israel and worldwide, we grieve the suffering and death on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We hope and pray that the Israelis and Palestinians who yearn for peace will be able to bring about a just solution to this conflict and thereby increase the collaboration and friendship that many of them have already fostered between their communities.”
The centers partner to “foster understanding, cooperation and friendship among people of diverse religious, spiritual, and secular identities, worldviews and lifeways through academic study and civic engagement,” the University of St. Thomas website states.
Learn more about the centers, including upcoming interfaith events
RESPONSE IN TWIN CITIES
Separate events in support of Israel and Palestine have been held throughout the Twin Cities.
A “Community Gathering in Solidarity with Israel” event was held the evening of Oct. 10 at Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park.
“This is going to be a difficult time; but it’s a time of clear moral clarity, of what needs to be done and what will be done,” Gov. Tim Walz said during the gathering. “This is a time to stand together, to stand on those basic human principles of decency.”
Minnesotans also gathered at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul to show support for Israel.
Meanwhile, hundreds gathered for a “Stand with Palestine” event Oct. 9 along Washington Avenue in Minneapolis, voicing their support of Palestine and holding flags and signs.
Other events in support of Palestine took place at parks and intersections in St. Paul and Minneapolis as well as at the State Capitol in the following weeks.
