The Spirit Goes for a Swim

Palestinian women at the beach in Israel

The New York Times recently posted an article, reposted by the Herald Tribune, entitled, "Where Politics Are Complex, Simple Joys at the Beach," which reports on a modest social protest movement in Israel. A group of Israeli women have been secretly taking Palestinian women from the southern part of the West Bank for trips to the beach. For security reasons, the Israeli government has banned Palestinians from leaving their West Bank enclave for such jaunts.  These illegal excursions began out of the friendship between an Israeli woman, Ilana Hammerman, and a Palestinian teenager, Aya, who wanted to get out of her West Bank village home and see the world outside. Ilana smuggled Aya and two cousins into Israel and took them to Tel Aviv where they eventually ended up at the beach. It was an amazing experience for the young Palestinian women, documented by Hammerman in a long articled posted by Haaretz.com and appropriately titled, "If there is a heaven."

A woman's movement, called "Civil Disobedience," has risen from that initial clandestine visit, and its purpose is to smuggle Palestinian women into Israel so that they can spend a day at the beach.  Civil Disobedience has begun to publish advertisements about what its members are doing, and their efforts have garnered some support, especially in academic circles (here), and the group even has its own Hebrew language website (here).

It seems a small, almost trivial thing, for a group of Israeli women to take some Palestinian women into Israel so they can spend a day at the beach—trivial in the face of an ongoing Arab-Jewish conflict that has repeatedly plunged the Middle East into armed conflict and continues to infect it with violence, prejudice, and hatred.  But, this is how the Spirit works.  It inspires friendships across the things that divide us.  It infects us with the courage to disobey unjust laws.  It encourages us to bring joy into troubled lives and provide moments of freedom to those who aren't free.  It transforms a Mediterranean beach into a temporary piece of the Kingdom of God, removing that beach from the jurisdiction of a state police apparatus and delivering it into the hands of women who have never been to the beach before.  The Spirit quietly works on our hearts to such ends as these.  Amen.