BETHLEHEM, West Bank — It stings when people think he’s a
terrorist.
Esa* is a follower of the Messiah who was born in his
hometown — Bethlehem — 2,000 years ago.
“When I was in America, my wife and I visited different
churches, Esa recounted. “I met a lady and she started to shake my hand.” But
when she found out Esa was Palestinian, she snatched her hand away before he
could shake it, and she left. “It really hurt,” he said.
“Christian” and “Palestinian” just don’t go together
sometimes for people, Esa said. “But we have Palestinians here who love Jesus.
We pray for our brothers in Christ.”
A Dutch photographer plastered portraits of Palestinians across a 30-foot wall that divides Bethlehem from the rest of Israel in an attempt to make light of the otherwise tension-laden coexistence of Jews and Palestinians. |
That includes those on the other side of the dividing wall
that separates Bethlehem, where so many have yet to know Jesus as Savior, from
nearby Jewish communities adrift in spiritual emptiness.
“God is at work in my heart,” Esa said. “It’s very hard when
you grow up and someone hits you … it is very hard to give them forgiveness.
Growing up in this land, I saw blood — the Arabs and the Jews were always
killing each other, no peace, no love, nothing.”
It is a reality he has seen up close and personal amid the
ongoing Israeli-Palestinian tensions. When he was 10 years old, Israeli
soldiers occupied his home, dictated when his family could leave the house and
took his brother to jail after breaking three of his ribs, Esa said.
Then one turned to him and told him he was a terrorist.
“I could not understand what he was talking about — I was 10
years old. And I’m crying and shaking and scared with five soldiers with guns
coming into my home,” he said.
It wasn’t the last time he heard that accusation.
But years later after he’d become a believer, when he felt
that hurt again in an American church, he said God began to work on his heart
and the way he felt toward the Jews.
“I said, ‘God, in the name of Jesus I give forgiveness to
the Jewish people with all my heart and I don’t need anything from them. I love
them, and I believe you heal me and you work in my heart to love Jewish people,’”
Esa said. “And I heard Him say, ‘You have to make peace.’”
After that, in addition to his passion for reaching his own
people in Bethlehem, his heart burned to reach out and love his Jewish
neighbors across the way. Every Christmas and Easter he gets permission to
cross into Jerusalem, and when he does, he goes straight to the Western Wall.
“I go there to meet Jewish people and build relationships
with them,” Esa said. “I want to be able to take our (ministry) teams to work
with them, too, and for us to work alongside Jewish (Messianic believers). For
us to work as a group … it’s still my vision, and I never give up.”
*Name changed.
(EDITOR’S NOTE — Thomas is an International Mission Board
writer/editor based in Europe.)
Related story
Israelis, Palestinians in never-ending battle
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