Perhaps it’s her natural pattern. But then again, maybe the immense responsibility the Rev. Dr. Denise Yarbrough feels about peaceful co-existence for Israelis and Palestinians is what keeps the words and thoughts flowing at a rapid-fire pace as she describes her recent trip to the Middle East with Interfaith Peace Builders.

Yarbrough, a Penn Yan resident and prominent member of the Episcopal Diocese, has just returned from a unique delegation to Israel and Palestine.  She and 13 other participants from around the U.S. landed in Tel Aviv July 28 for a two-week trip through the conflict zone. The delegates investigated the question of apartheid in the Israeli-Palestinian context while meeting with representatives of Israeli and Palestinian civil society, religious leaders, politicians, businesspeople, farmers, students, human rights workers, former combatants and more. 

“This was no sight-seeing trip,” Yarbrough says, explaining many of the delegates considered the trip to be emotionally draining.

The delegation participated in four to five meetings each day and visited several important historic sites as well as walled-off sections of cities where Palestinians previously went about their daily routines freely, but where they now must pass through intimidating and unpredictable check-points.

While visiting some of the most significant sites in three major religions — Judaism, Muslim and Christianity — was an important part of the trip, Yarbrough says she truly felt she was walking in the footsteps of Jesus when they spent time with Palestinians.
“You know, Jesus was a Palestinian Jew,” she says.

Summarizing the experience, Yarbrough writes, “Until my visit to Israel and Palestine, I knew only one side of the story of this conflict. Through extensive conversations with both Israeli Jews and Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim, I have learned the Palestinian narrative and the contemporary Israeli reality. I have also learned that on both sides of this conflict there are dedicated people working for peace and reconciliation in the midst of desperate circumstances.  I return from this trip determined to continue to work towards peace with justice for everyone in Israel and Palestine.”
That determination has helped her focus on what she called a job description to “Create Hope” in an entry on a blog that she contributed to throughout the trip.
So she is working to get the word out about what she saw and learned during the trip because it is not the kind of information most Americans are getting through mainstream media.
“I know my religion has a huge role in this mess,” she says, laying the groundwork to summarize the experience and what she plans to do.
She says the organization that sponsored the trip, Interfaith Peace Builders (IFPB)  is hoping the delegates can communicate with the American public and members of Congress about what they learned.
She says she wants Americans to deliver a message that the United States can support Israel, but there should be conditions about human and civil rights.
She carefully explains, “The problem here is American Jews are very supportive of the State of Isreal. If you criticize, you will be labelled anti-semitic.  I can be critical of the State of Israel. I’m just not being critical of Jews.”
After meeting with Palestinians and Israelis, she’s convinced that the grassroots populations could find a way to live together, as much as anything, because they told her they could.
The conflict, segregation and oppression that the delegates saw are measures of the sometimes corrupt leaders of opposing groups, she says.
She says there are extremists on both sides of the conflict, and the average citizens are the ones who suffer in their day-to-day lives:
• Eviction: The delegates met a Palestinian family who lived in their home since 1956, but they recently received an eviction order from Israeli authorities. A group of supporters has been camping on the family’s porch to protect them from violence. The house, scheduled for destruction, is surrounded by Jewish settlers.
• Checkpoints: Palestinians must pass through checkpoints that are more thorough than airport security in order to go to work, medical appointments or simply to go about their daily business. They must carry specific identification with them, and even if their “papers” are in order, the Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint can arbitrarily decide to prohibit someone from passing. She says she heard stories of women giving birth at checkpoints because they were prohibited from passing through to get to a hospital. She also heard of the stress the checkpoints put on a woman who needed to pass through on a regular basis to get to a medical facility where she could receive chemotherapy for her cancer.
• Refugee Camps: Thousands of Palestinians have lived in refugee camps their entire lives, but still talk about being able to return to their homes. “Our land is like our mother,” explains one man. Another holds onto the key to a house that his family was evicted from 1948, in the hope that he will someday be able to return. But the house, and the community surrounding it — including a graveyard — were bulldozed over. “You don’t hear about that in the mainstream media,” Yarbrough says.

A woman told the group about being forced from her home one night in 1948 because it was being turned over to the Zionists. When she was allowed to return 10 years later, there were three Jewish families living there. The woman said before 1948 Christians, Muslims and Jews in Palestine lived peaceably with one another, and she believes it’s possible for that to happen again.

• Walls of Segregation: A wall that reaches 25 feet into the air separates Jerusalem. It reminds many of the walls that were built by the Nazis to create the ghettos in Poland to segregate the Jewish community. Another wall in the West Bank runs through a Palestinian neighborhood. Other barriers have been constructed to keep Palistinians from certain areas, even blocking off access to roads, in some cases.

• A history of conflict reaches more victims: The symbolism of the Israeli leaders imposing similar restrictions on the Palestinians as the Nazis imposed on their Jewish forefathers in Europe was not lost on any of the delegation, Yarbrough says. In fact, one of the delegates, an architect himself, remarked about the similarity between the architecture of the checkpoints and that of Auschwitz (Nazi Germany concentration camp where over one million people, mostly Jews, died).

• Settlement Sprawl: Jewish settlers are extending their suburban-looking developments far into the West Bank. The superhighways that lead to and from the developments are not accessible to the Palestinians, however.

• Control: Water and electricity to Palestinian communities are turned off every day except for short periods of time. When she wanted to communicate with the world through the blog during the end of their stay, she went to a Palestinian cave that had been wired for electricity and Internet. But she had only an hour’s worth of power to post her work.

“There is this misconception that all Palestinians are terrorists,” she says, adding, “But we’re looking at this as an apartheid situation.”

Jimmy Carter’s recent book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid (Simon & Schuster, 2006) makes the former U.S. President the latest in an extensive list of world leaders to apply the term apartheid to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Carter’s observations follow similar judgments by prominent South Africans such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and International Court Justice John Dugard.  More recently, strong rhetoric by U.S. presidential nominees regarding military aid to Israel and dialogue with Palestinian groups has raised important questions for U.S. foreign policy and heightened public concern over U.S. involvement in the conflict.

As Yarbrough ponders her summer experience, she is thinking about ways to make a difference. Perhaps she could return to the region during a Sabbatical and write a book about the situation from a theological perspective. “In 14 days we only scratched the surface,” she says.

The delegation was co-sponsored by Interfaith Peace-Builders (IFPB) and the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (USC).  This delegation is the 28th such experience organized by IFPB since 2001, successfully educating more than 400 North American citizens about the Middle East and deepening their understanding of its conflicts through eye-witness experiences.

The Rev. Dr. Denise Yarbrough is an Episcopal priest and seminary professor.  She works as the Ecumenical and Interreligious Officer for the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester and also serves as Canon to the Ordinary and Director of Theological Education for the Diocese.  In addition, Dr. Yarbrough is the Director of Life Long Learning and faculty associate in Interfaith Studies at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. She is active in many community-based interfaith organizations, serving as Chair of the Interfaith Forum of Rochester; a board member of the Interfaith Alliance of Rochester; an instructor at the Center for Interfaith Studies and Dialogue at Nazareth College in Rochester; and a board member Greater Rochester Community of Churches.  She is also a member of both the Commission on Christian Muslim Relations and the Commission on Christian Jewish Relations.

Here’s an excerpt from one of Yarbrough’s blog entries, which can be found, along with more information and photos, at www.ifpbdel.org.

All in all, this was an emotionally draining day. The sadness and grief at the perpetuation of violence from one generation to another is almost enough to make one want to give up and just live for the moment, forget about all this stuff and retreat into our cocoon of safety, which we privileged Americans can certainly do. But talking to people like those we met today is a reminder to me that God calls all of us to be better than that, to reach out to help bring healing and reconciliation to our world in whatever arena we happen to be living and working in. The work of “tikkun olam” calls us to work with God and for the brief time we have on this earth we have a job to do. In Christian terms it’s called “bringing in the kingdom” – or as the words of the Lord’s Prayer put it “your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” We have work to do for that “on earth” part. Along with my travel companions I hope for the courage and commitment to share in this struggle with the amazing people we are meeting over here. This land is the birthplace of three major world religions, including my own. We cannot allow it to simply disintegrate into a theater of violence and oppression.

Create hope. That’s the job description.