Jerusalem Nun Speaks About Terror in Holy Land
By Sophia Apessos
Special to The National Herald
NEW YORK - The Cathedral fellowship of The Holy Trinity Church in New York City hosted a presentation last Sunday by Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos, a member of the Orthodox Monastic community of St. Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane, Jerusalem, and administrator of the Orthodox School of Bethany.
Following the Divine Liturgy, Mother Agapia spoke about the state of Christianity in the Holy Land and how it can survive, at the Cathedral center in Manhattan.
"Christians are suffering in the Holy Land," said Mother Agapia.
She said the Israeli government is making life so difficult for people to eventually force them out. She said the fear in the Holy Land is that Christian churches and religious sites will become nothing more than museums under Israeli rule, if Christians are driven away. She painted a picture that can be linked more to Nazi Germany than to a modem-day democracy, with military rule, checkpoints, arbitrary curfews, random destruction and siege of property.
"Really what's going on is genocide under the radar gun," said Mother Agapia. She said from what she sees there everyday, it is clear that the Israelis do not want a peaceful resolution, but to control the entire area.
She said she saw a deaf, mute Palestinian man beaten by Israeli soldiers and shot in the back of the head because he was going to the local bakery for bread off curfew hours. He survived, but lost his eye.
"It has never been darker in the Holy Land than today following two years of state-sponsored terrorism against the Palestinian people who are desperately seeking a homeland, freedom and independence from Israeli occupation and brutality that has almost totally destroyed the land of Christ's birth along with several precious Christian sites," Maria Khoury, Ed.D., a Greek American author who lives in the West Bank, wrote in a paper entitled "Struggling One Day at a Time in the Holy Land."
Israeli soldiers stand in towers and on mountaintops in full gear with their American paid wepons, Khoury writes.
Mother Agapia explained that Israelis have yellow plates on their vehicles and are free to pass certain areas , while Palestinians have green plates on their vehicles and cannot pass freely from place to place.
"It's impossible to create a Palestinian state with the [Israeli] settlements being built," said Mother Agapia.
Mother Agapia said the Palestinians in Israel are treated like third-class citizens. "Even basic services are denied to Palestinians," said Nick Khoury a Palestinian Orthodox Christian, who comes from Nazareth.
He said until the Roman catholic Pope's visit in 2000, open sewage ran through the streets in Palestinian occupied areas.
"It's about the occupation,"said Mother Agapia. "Americans shouldn't look at it as an issue of terrorism but occupation."
Mother Agapia said what the Israeli military put people through at checkpoints, is more about harassment and humiliation than security. She said clerics, including herself, are required to do what they term "the dance" at Israeli soldier's demands: they have to raise their arms and turn slowly to show that they are not wearing a bomb or other weapon. "These are clerics, bishops and nuns, these people are not armed," said Mother Agapia, recalling another occasion when catholic and Orthodox bishops had to undergo such inspections of their luggage and their bodies that they refused to get on an airplane to attend an international inter-denominational religious conference on the occupation in Israel.
"The Palestinian Moslems are not there to push the Israelis into the ocean," said Mother Agapia. "I think we have to erase the idea that they are terrorists."
She said press reports never tell the full story behind suicide bombers. One Palestinian became a suicide bomber after his brother was gunned downed [sic] by Israeli soldiers on his way home from a wedding.
She does not agree with the measures they take, the Palestinians who have lost all hope and resort to suicide bombings, but the world does not hear them.
She said peaceful protests are nearly impossible and never make it into the press. A group of bishops and nuns were stopped by Israeli soldiers, who pointed their guns and tanks right at them as they tried to proceed. She said they were stopped so as not to attract media attention.
"Nobody had a weapon, nobody had rocks, these were peaceful, middle aged people," said Mother Agapia. Soldiers allowed a protest BY Israeli citizens for the rights of Palestinians until it began to get some media attention. At that point, the protest was squelched with teargas.
Mother Agapia said Israel is not a democracy or a place of religious freedom. Palestinians have no voting rights and live in second world conditions, while the Israelis live with modern-day amenities. She said they are not free to worship in the holy places when strict curfews are enforced.
She said Israeli checkpoints make it impossible to maintain a Palestinian economy. People must wait for hours before anyone can pass through, often sitting there an entire afternoon. People have become prisoners in their own villages, she said.
"Many times I return home to the village to find the same road I used in the morning completely blocked and can't get back home after a very tiring and hot day. Thus the children get out of the car and walk over the dirt piles with those heavy back packs that feel like rocks and I call my husband to meet me at the checkpoint and drive the car through the valley because he will hit fewer rocks than me," Khoury writes about the blocked roads.
"The Palestinians are losing all of their land and their faith," said Mother I Agapla.
Americans decry human rights violations across the world, yet support, with tens of billions of dollars a year the Israeli government.
"The politicians here support them regardless of these issues, and they're not even an ally hardly, they spy on us," said one audience member.
Mother Agapia explained that the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate is in danger of losing its land to the Israeli government as well. She said the Jerusalem patriarchate has much land there, and Israel's refusal to recognize the patriarchate is a way to pressure the patriarchate to share their views.
The patriarchate owns land in Beit Sahour, a predominantly Christian town of about 13,000 that is being used as housing for 100 Orthodox Christian families. The Israelis are building tunnels and roadways around Palestinian occupied areas and these Orthodox homes are in the way of the Israeli tunnels, so the government wants to take over this land and build tunnels in their place.
The dispute is now in the Israeli courts. Israel claims that the seven four-story apartments built on Greek Orthodox Church-owned land is under their jurisdiction and no building permits were obtained to construct them. Beit Sahour officials say the buildings are in their jurisdiction and should not be demolished.
"Why as we, United States taxpayers, why is our money going into these territories, into building these settlements," Mother Agapia said Americans must ask themselves.
"Israel is basically a welfare state funded by the United States," said Mother Agapia.
She said the Greek Orthodox territories are occupied by Israelis, and that they have confiscated all of the land surrounding Nazareth. "The aim is to take over the territory completely," said Mother Agapia
She said there is fear that with a war against Iraq, in the ensuing chaos of war, people will be forced out of Israel
into Jordan and other surrounding areas. Jordan has blocked its borders and has told Israel that it will not accept any Palestinians into the country.
She said when you leave the Jordan River, you are forced to enter a bookstore run by the Kibbutz stocked with books speaking out against Christianity. She also talked about the 'walk-on-water' amusement park type ride at the site that she said makes a mockery of Christianity.
"I feel, unfortunately, that Orthodox Christians are too small a group to make a difference," said another audience member.
Mother Agapia, however, said anybody can help, and like water trickling down a rock, every little bit can make a difference. She said helping the people in the area economically is one way people can help fight the economic constraints these people are under and their inability to move freely has made it nearly impossible for people there to make a living.
"It's impossible for people to work," said Mother Agapia.
She said farmers who sell their goods often end up with spoiled produce that they are unable to sell, due to having to wait in long lines. She said they stand in lines that do not move, that soldiers just sit there, blocking the checkpoints, not allowing people through.
The Cathedral fellowship gave Mother Agapia a check for $500 to put toward her charitable works in Israel. "Some of these Christians are too proud to say they are in a desperate sitauation," said Mother Agapia.
One audience member said Americans are good-hearted people who just don't know about what really goes on in Israel. He asked Mother Agapia what would have to happen to have a more balanced media account of events in Israel. Mother Agapia said reporters are filing the stories, but many never make it to print. "A lot of times their stories are edited out," said Mother Agapia.
"A lot of what you have said seems to validate what we here thought was going on there in Israel, despite the one-sided media reports," said one audience member.
Another audience member asked why Patriarch Bartholomaios doesn't take a stronger stand on the issue and why Mother Agapia doesn't use her brother's (George Stephanopoulos) prominent position in the media to get the truth out about the human rights violations in Israel.
"There's tremendous pressure on the media," said Mother Agapia. "We don't need to be afraid," she said, adding that people should write to their church leaders about taking a stand on the issue, and to their elected officials as well. "I'm here today to ask you to help them carry their cross," said Mother Agapia. "Each of us in our own way can help to change the situation. Find your own way to help the Palestinian people carry their own cross," she added. "For those of you who've been saving up to go for the first time, now is not the time to go, but to those of you who have been before, it would help to take solidarity visits, let them know you support them," said Mother Agapia.
"We have to speak up," she said, "by silence God is betrayed."
She said people can also sponsor children in Israel to help them afford the cost of an education.
"Nobody is going into these towns, so these people can't sell their items, so we're shipping them out," said Mother Agapia. She explained that they will sell their items outside of Palestine through the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation, www.hcef.org, to help the people there maintain an income.
“Christ came for the poor and the neglected,” said Father Robert Stephanopoulos, dean of the Cathedral and father of Mother Agapia. “I believe God has brought her here.”
For more information go to www.hcf.org or www.pepm.org.
