American Pilgrim Witness

Living Christian Witness

Father Peter Daly - St. John Vianney Church, Prince Frederick, Maryland. Printed in Al-Bushra, July 1997

When our parish pilgrimage left for the Holy Land (April 1997) most of us pilgrims had the average American viewpoint on the Middle East. What changed our minds were the many limitations on human rights imposed on the Palestinians, a kind of segregation reminiscent of the worst 1950's style of segregation in our own country.

In Bethlehem, we met a Catholic Palestinian, a civil engineer, who could not find work in his profession because he had not been permitted to travel to Jerusalem, only ten miles away, for six years. The most visible indignity Palestinians have suffered is the sight of new Israeli settlements, attractive housing built on Palestinian land. Meanwhile, Palestinians within sight of these developments lived in the most crowded and squalid conditions.

Kathryn Haddad - Arab American Christian from a speech delivered March 30, 1997, at St. George Syrian Orthodox Church, St. Paul, Minnesota

Today, once again, Christians are suffering in the same place where Christ suffered. They are not allowed to live freely, to travel, to worship in Jerusalem . Let us remember the people, pray for them and do what we can in our own lives to ease their suffering.

Reverend Garrie Stevens, Methodist - Central New York, from the Syracuse Herald Journal, Saturday, March 12, 1994

We wanted to see what life is like under occupation (February 1994). It is hell. I have never met a Palestinian family not directly affected by the occupation, having had family members arrested, tortured, and sometimes killed or permanently disabled.