By Karen McCowan

The morning of Oct. 7, 2023, I sat with a small group of Eugene-Springfield residents at Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank. We were preparing to depart on Day 2 of what our Palestinian Christian trip leader Alex Awad called our Holy Lands — plural — tour

Millions of people from the U.S. and around the world take “Holy Land” trips — typically pilgrimages to important religious sites from the Jewish Torah and the Christian Bible. 

But my husband and I were among 16 local Christians who accepted Awad’s invitation to take a different kind of trip to the land of his birth. Not only would we see the “The Old Stones” — historic sites in places such as Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem. We would also meet what he calls “The Living Stones,” people still living and working for peace and justice in that violent region.

As we discussed our plans for that fateful day, we heard an explosion. It sounded to me like a car bomb scene from a movie. Awad apologized and tried to reassure us, saying, “Unfortunately, sometimes these things happen here.”

But then, a minute or two later, we heard a much louder and deeper sound, one that shook the earth beneath us. My first thought was, “I think we just heard the start of World War III.”

Now, a full year later, I still think that may have been true.

When we heard no more explosions, Awad and his wife, Brenda, both Eugene residents, checked with our tour company. No one yet knew much about what was happening, as Hamas had disabled security cameras in the sites it struck. I tried calling the U.S. Embassy for information and guidance. But it was a Saturday. All I got was a recording telling me it was closed and to call back during its weekday business hours.

Our tour company advised us to go ahead with our plans to visit Herodium, a West Bank archeological site where Judean King Herod the Great built a fortress and lavish palace about 15 BCE.

We got our first hint of the gravity of what was unfolding when we arrived there. Our van was the only vehicle in a vast parking lot normally jammed with tour buses. Once we walked to the top of the ruined fortress, we were able to look back toward Bethlehem and Jerusalem to see Israel’s Iron Dome defense system intercepting Hamas rockets.

We pieced together information from our tour company, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) news feed, and — when The New York Times had little information in what was still the middle of the night there — Al-Jazeera’s website. We learned that Hamas had fired rockets into Israel and an unknown number of Hamas fighters had breached the wall between Gaza and nearby Israeli towns.

I contacted U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle’s office and was able to get an emergency contact number for the U.S. Embassy. Again, I didn’t get through, but this time the recording was far from mundane. It said I had reached their emergency line but to call back later unless someone in my party had been “killed, kidnapped or seriously injured.”

We decided to leave the West Bank as planned that afternoon for our next destination — far from Gaza in Tiberius near the Sea of Galilee. But when we drove to a checkpoint at the West Bank-Israel border, we saw a young IDF soldier with a machine gun pointed in our direction. A different soldier boarded our van, looked at our U.S. passports, and told us we couldn’t leave the West Bank.

For privileged white Americans, this was a shock — but just a small taste of the curtailed freedom Palestinians have endured in their homeland since Israel began occupying the West Bank in 1967.

The first day of our tour, Oct. 6, we had traveled in and around Bethlehem, visiting people engaged in peacemaking work. We visited House of Hope, a Christian facility which takes in and cares for blind and developmentally disabled Palestinian children. Many have stayed on in adulthood, helping support their community by carving olive wood Nativity sets or making push brooms for sale. We were struck by the contagious joy exhibited by some of the young men we met there.

We also visited a Christian school which educates Palestinian girls right alongside boys — a rare thing given that public schools are not co-ed.

Finally, we visited the Tent of Nations, a West Bank farm operated for more than a century by a Lutheran Palestinian family that has fought in the Israeli courts — successfully so far — to retain and continue working the land to which they hold a deed. They established the Tent of Nations as a way to non-violently resist encroachment and harassment — such as burning of their olive groves — by Jewish neighbors who now surround them after building settlements illegal under international and even Israeli law.

A stone marker at the farm declares, “WE REFUSE TO BE ENEMIES,” and “Religion must bring people together, not separate people from each other.” Key to the nonviolent resistance is welcoming volunteers of all faiths who come to live and work on the farm and serve as witnesses to any settler aggression. During our visit, we met a young Jewish volunteer from Italy.

There are now more than 150 Jewish settlements in territory deemed Palestinian in the 1993 Oslo Accord signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Seeing them in the West Bank was a real education. “Settlements” had conjured images in my mind of ragtag encampments. No. These looked as if someone had picked up luxurious, Scottsdale-style subdivisions complete with red tile roofs and plopped them down in the middle of a poor desert country. 

Not only are these settlements walled off — so are both sides of the roads leading to them from a walled-off expressway which Palestinian vehicles are not permitted to use.

In fact, it is the Palestinian villages that look like settlements. Their roofs are covered with water storage tanks, not fancy tiles, because Israel controls the water flowing to their homes, and cuts it off for days at a time.

One of the most profound moments of the trip for me was standing on a ridge at the Tent of Nations farm, looking out toward the prosperous new Israeli settlements and hearing the Muslim call to prayer from a Palestinian village below.

Unlike the Palestinians, we were eventually able to leave the West Bank on the evening of Oct. 7. Our tour driver took us to a different checkpoint. For unclear reasons, an Israeli soldier there let us through without even examining the passports we offered.

We drove through the desert night to Tiberius, where we finally had wi-fi and learned more of what had transpired that terrible day. We were horrified by the Hamas murder of 1,200 people and the kidnap of hundreds more. Most were innocent civilians. They included babies, elderly grandparents and — ironically — many Israelis who had advocated for Palestinian civil rights.

Our group was also horrified to learn that Israel had begun dropping bombs on heavily populated areas of Hamas-controlled Gaza, where more than 2 million Palestinian refugees live in an area smaller than Portland. This campaign continues to this day, with more than 41,000 Palestinians killed so far.

Some will justify the bombing of these civilians by noting that Gaza voters elected Hamas to lead its government in 2006. But the Hamas party did not win a majority of votes even then. And most of today’s Gazans were not old enough to vote — many not even born — at that time. No elections have been permitted since by what the U.S. and other countries label a terrorist organization.

The next morning, we woke up in our Israeli kibbutz hotel to see a stack of Jerusalem Post newspapers in the dining room. A headline in enormous, red, Hebrew letters proclaimed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration of war.

Many other U.S. Christian groups on Holy Land trips were staying in the hotel, and I felt sick to my stomach as I heard some of them gleefully discussing the bombings in Gaza. “Yeah!” one man said. “That’s what you get when you mess with Israel.”

“Bomb them back to the Middle Ages!” agreed another. Others excitedly speculated that the war would hasten their longed-for return of Jesus, giving no thought to the violence and suffering their Israeli and Palestinian brothers and sisters were facing in that moment.

I wonder if anyone at that table knew that most Gazans are from families trapped there as refugees since 1947, when Israel seized the land where they had lived for generations after winning its war of independence. Conditions in Gaza have been particularly grim — residents call it an open-air prison — since Israel imposed a 16-year land, sea and air blockade because of Hamas’ militant resistance to the occupation and pledge to destroy Israel.

The remainder of our time in Israel we constantly heard the drone of military aircraft in the sky, and there were no international flights out of the country. By the evening of Oct. 9, most of the other tourists were gone from our hotel, replaced by new guests: shockingly young IDF reservists. I talked to one soldier so young she still giggled and covered her mouth with her hand when  she spoke. Later, I spotted her and her fellow reservists going through the hotel buffet line with their automatic weapons across their chests. 

My husband and I decided to get out of Israel as quickly as possible, fearing the violence would escalate and feeling uncomfortable remaining there as tourists in light of all the casualties. With two other members of our local tour group, we were able to get out by walking across a land border with Jordan four days after the war began.

The rest of our group had opted to remain behind, hoping things would get better and they could complete their tour. Instead, sirens twice summoned them to the hotel’s bomb shelter the night after our departure, due to reports of possible drone strikes from Hezbollah in nearby Lebanon. They ended up crossing into Jordan one day later.

Now, after a year of Israeli bombings, most Gaza buildings and infrastructure have been destroyed. The people trapped there lack food, clean drinking water and medical care. Starvation and disease are killing the most vulnerable, including children.

I know how complicated and historic the conflicts are there. But Netanyahu’s vow to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed is an impossible goal. For each innocent person slaughtered, how many others become future militants?

My once reflexive support for Israel has evaporated. I have written to President Joe Biden and my congressional delegation, urging them to halt U.S. aid to Israel until it stops dropping bombs in civilian areas. Netanyahu has reportedly blocked a deal to get remaining Israeli hostages released. Instead, Israel assassinated Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, killing more innocent civilians in the process. Iran retaliated on behalf of its proxy militants by firing missiles into Israel. By the time this is published, Israel may have delivered its promised retaliation on Iran. 

So much pain and suffering. 

I am haunted by the words of a Gaza mother interviewed by NPR. She and her children had been repeatedly displaced by Israeli bombs. She told the reporter she had no food for her children and that the best she could hope for now was that a bomb would kill them all in their sleep. That was what hope looked like to her. 

Her story broke my heart, and reminded me of the words of Sami Awad, Alex Awad’s nephew. He founded Holy Land Trust, a nonprofit Palestinian organization to foster peace, justice and understanding among Christians, Jews and Muslims in a region sacred to all. We sat down with Sami last Oct. 6, when he told us his group is unique in focusing on healing the spiritual trauma caused by injustice and violence.

“We will never have peace,” he told us, “Until we can truly hear one another’s trauma.”

Karen McCowan of Springfield was a 20-year reporter and columnist at The Register-Guard.