I attended the lecture sponsored by the International Society at the Hinckley Building at 3 PM on Monday, April 2, 2012. I had been quite excited to attend the lecture when I first heard about it—a lecture given by the relief society president in Jerusalem just sounds interesting, especially since she was from Bethlehem originally. I had also heard a little about Sahar Qumsiyeh from Professor Emmett, who said she had written about her difficulties with attending church as a Palestinian in Jerusalem.
However, I was able to hear her story firsthand. She described how her trip to church became more and more difficult as time went on. At first, she just climbed a hill to sneak around the checkpoint in Jerusalem. As more of the wall went up, her trip became longer and more roundabout. She explained that she was “only” shot at twice by Israeli soldiers, but “they missed.” At one point, she had to squeeze through a tiny hole in the outer wall after waiting for the changing of the Israeli guards. Next, she climbed over the 10-foot wall inside. She explained that the Israeli security was not meant to make it impossible for Palestinians to enter Jerusalem, just difficult, but those days (now, she has a job with the UN, so she has a special permit to enter Jerusalem) were some of her happiest because she was doing the best she could to follow Heavenly Father’s commandments and get her three hours of spiritual recharging at church.
I was very interested in her conversion story—she was a master’s student at BYU, but she began investigating the Church after she heard President Hunter refer to her homeland as “Palestine.” She said she really appreciated the fact that a Church leader was “acknowledging her right to exist.” My general policy has been to refer to the land in general as Israel and differentiate between Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and so on. Of course Palestinians exist, but since they are not nor ever have been a state of their own, I have avoided using the word otherwise. I had not thought about how they might feel about it, especially in a culture so heavily based on land and belonging. Perhaps, in terms of building bridges of understanding among people, there is power in simply “acknowledging someone’s right to exist.”
The cultural transitions that Sahar Qumsiyeh made in order to join the Church were incredible, and they also revealed a great deal about her home culture. She explained that most Palestinian Christians would be termed “inactive” Christians, and Muslims often consider “Christian” to be synonymous with “liberal,” partly for this reason. She said that her mother continued to be dismayed at the amount of time that her calling requires. She also received constant pressure from her family about drinking tea and coffee, which everyone does in the Arab world for social reasons. When she first joined the Church, her parents warned her that she would not be able to get married, which has been the case. Yet the theme she chose for her address was that sometimes being a good example of the believers is all that you can do, and it is the only thing that has enabled her to make any headway at all with her family in terms of finding understanding across religions.
In terms of solving conflict, she spoke of finding the charity and peace that only Christ can give. She was also hopeful that Palestine would soon become open to the Church.
