Footwashing Love

Holy Week
Maundy Thursday, April 9, 2009
John 13.1-17, 31b-35

“Just at I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

Today we commemorate Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. April 9 is also the commemoration of the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the commemoration of the massacre at Deir Yassin in 1948, just before the end of the British Mandate. Deir Yassin was an Arab town west of Jerusalem, which happened to be in the way of the Israeli militias as they removed Arabs to make way for the state of Israel.

If you have 33 minutes, watch the video—with pictures of Deir Yassin today, written accounts from 1948, and survivors, historians and researchers telling the story: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=341600202419569830

The Deir Yassin web site also tells the story:

“Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover.

In all over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by Miss Hind Husseini and brought behind the American Colony Hotel to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage.

Part of the struggle for self-determination by Palestinians has been to tell the truth about Palestinians as victims of Zionism. For too long their history has been denied, and this denial has only served to further oppress and deliberately dehumanize Palestinians in Israel, inside the occupied territories, and outside in their diaspora.

Some progress has been made. Westerners now realize that Palestinians, as a people, do exist. And they have come to acknowledge that during the creation of the state of Israel, thousands of Palestinians were killed and over 700,000 were driven or frightened from their homes and lands on which they had lived for centuries.”

Deir Yassin is regarded as the turning point—the beginning of the Nakba, the “catastrophe”—the massacre created a panic and terrified Palestinians fled from villages all over the land that was to become Israel. Between 1947 and 1951, more than 400 Arab villages were vacated and/or demolished. The Nakba continues today, as Palestinians are still losing their homes and lands.

To read a more detailed account of what happened at Deir Yassin, see: http://www.deiryassin.org/shimontzabar.html, an account of what happened at Deir Yassin from Dr. Me'ir Pa'ill who was a member of the Knesset in the 1970s, representing the Meretz party. In April 1948, he was known as Colonel Me'ir Pilavski, a liaison officer representing the Palmach in the headquarters of the Haganah Israeli forces in Jerusalem.

A year later, the Jewish town of Givat Shaul Beth was built partially over the ruins of Deir Yassin. Today the site of Deir Yassin lies in suburban Jerusalem, 1500 meters north of Yad Vashem, the Israeli holocaust museum.

Read an article by Anis Hamadeh about the Deir Yassin massacre, comparing it to the attack on Gaza in December. About the author: http://www.anis-online.de/1/cv.htm

O Lord God, your Christ tied an apron around his waist and washed the feet of his followers, showing them his way of love and peace for the world. Help us, who profess to be Christ’s followers, to show your way of love to the world with acts of servanthood. Amen.