Three critical things happened during Obama’s visit to Irsael last week. First, some background information to emphasize the importance of these three events.
One hundred and seventy-two years ago this week, the newly established Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a pioneer Zionist organization, sent a small army into Palestine to occupy Jabal Zeitoun — the Mount of Olives. The warrior group and their Mormon leader, Orson Hyde, were the first violent and illegal settlers in historical Palestine.
The mount was peppered with small villages of indigenous Palestinian shepherds and their families. They were people referred to by Hyde as “darkness on the Earth,” referencing their “unnatural” brown skin. Palestinian bodies are still lying under the sprawling Mormon enigma that continues to occupy the Mount, known as the Center for Near East Studies, or what used to be the BYU Israel.
The Palestinian people have been occupied by various foreigners since then. However, indigenous Jews and Palestinians lived peacefully together for centuries until modern nationalism perpetuated by doomsday Christianity reared its ugly head.
During President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel last week, he addressed Israeli college students in the Jerusalem Convention Center, located within a couple of miles from the Mormon-occupied Mount. He spoke to an audience which was heavily diverse, and he was occasionally heckled by the separatist groups in the crowd.
In one area, there were the extreme right-wing Zionist Jews, closely located to the born-again Christians, Mormons and radical settler youth. That was the white supremacy section. Across the room was a group of young Palestinian males with angry faces, seated near a group of atheist anti-Zionist Jewish anarchists.
Missing from the Convention Center were the Haredim Jews, a population that rejects Zionism and refuses to serve in the Israeli military, citing religious reasons. Secular Jews consider them ultra-orthodox, as they want to segregate female secular Jews from their populations and public transportation.
Then again, the severe right-wing Israeli government just passed a law segregating Palestinians and Jews on public busses.
The good news is that the largest section of the Convention Center was filled with coed Jewish students, interlaced with their Palestinian friends, representing what a democratic college student gathering should look like.
Even so, the foreign-engineered divisions in Israel and the American wealthy interests driving illegal settlement expansion generate a looming Israeli implosion.
The crucial point of Obama’s time in the West Bank was his visit to the Church of the Nativity in occupied Bethlehem. Three significant things happened during his time there.
First, a sudden desert storm hit when he was preparing to helicopter to the Christian and Muslim holy site. It forced the presidential delegation to travel by ground, giving him a firsthand and first-time view of the nucleus of the insidious occupation.
It is only 23 kilometers from Ramallah to Bethlehem, yet because of 35-foot concrete separation barriers, built on Palestinian land, and 29 Israeli checkpoints, fences and road blockades, it took nearly two and a half hours to get there. That is daily life for the Palestinians.
Second, there was an American mainstream media blitz to divert viewers away from the president being in the occupied territories, primarily Bethlehem. Every corporate outlet followed Obama around Israel. The breaking news hit within minutes of Obama leaving for the West Bank.
For 17 hours, every American local and national news screen blasted a concocted story about Syria using chemical weapons, vaguely offering a denial from either side of the ongoing civil war there. CNN even showed bodies being carried. However, wrong country — they were from Iraq.
No such story hit the Arab media, because it was simply corporate sensationalism, just a mind fill to avert Americans from wondering why Palestinian footage with Obama was never shown.
Third, the president visited the Church of the Nativity itself. Most real Christians and Muslims believe that is where Jesus Christ, a savior to Christians and prophet to Muslims, was born. It is a place well preserved by diligent Palestinian care yet deplorably ignored by the Christian and Muslim global populations.
President Obama saw the concrete walls and pillars that not only repress and occupy the Palestinian stewards of this 2100-year-old sacred place but threaten its existence.
Perhaps Obama will ponder what he saw on his visit while on his long flight back to America. Perhaps real change will be effected.