Facing the Canon with Justin Butcher

[Music] just in a warm welcome to facing the cannon thank you so much for having me Jay John great to be here delight it now who are you you're a playwright you're an actor you're a director you're a producer you're a musician what are you a bit of all of those things a jack of all trades master of none I'm all of those things I'm someone that has managed to keep the wolf from the door for 25 years or so doing a bit of all of the above and which is your favorite oh gosh which is my favorite so the church times asked me this recently and a back page interview which do you prefer more acting or or writing and I've kind of think they're all part of each other really in a way you know the actors job is to become the person who would say those words and the writers job is to write words which actors are able to say yes you know so it's kind of all part of the same thing in a way it's also a bit like being a parent you know as a writer or a producer or a director you're kind of it's about empowering and giving life - sure the words the voice the the performance of other people and sort of stepping back in a way getting getting out of the way but in a funny kind of way the truth same is true of writing that it's sort of yes you use yourself all the time you're using your imagination your voice your words your wit hopefully or your empathy but the the imperative all the time is to get that picture that you remember into the heads of your readers to get that a portrait of that person that you met yes so affected you into the mind and the imagination of your readers and in a way it's about sort of getting yourself out of the way sure so I think I mean this is when I occasionally I teach young acting students at drama schools and things I sort of say this is the kind of conundrum about creative work creative arts that you're you're using yourself all the time you're drawing on your own resources but in a curious way at the coalface of creative work self disappears yes when you went off to university you went to Oxford you studied the great yes and did you know then what you wanted to end up doing well if you'd asked me when I was 8 what you want to be when you grow up I would have said a writer so the acting thing came along a bit later at school and then big time at university so I did a degree in classics Latin and Greek literature and philosophy in between 17 undergraduate productions and you can speak ancient Greek and Latin well in theory yes yes while ago most mostly written as your modern Greek how's the modern Greek Alamelu of course this journey to Jerusalem we sure been quite a few weeks walking across a group and one of my Jobs was to organize restaurants every night for the for the walkers with an interesting concoction of vegan how many vegans how much pastor Terry ins how many you know whatever all of that in Greek you know translate just piece together like quickly from graduation team from Longford how did the little links in the chain come about in your life well after us as I was mad keen on acting by that stage and so I I went on to do a year's postgraduate training at Drama Studio in in in West London and launched myself into the theatre world as an actor and after a very short time the writing started to take over had far too many ideas of my own just to remain an actor just to remain a mouthpiece for other people so and I had a few successes then as a writer and so the writing started to take over there was a play called scaramouche Jones which first Warren Mitchell did on the radio and then the great Pete Postlethwaite the cornyn did on stage for a number of years you know mm 1 0 2 O 3 and so on which was an amazing opportunity and sort of put me on the map as a writer and all of this time I've been involved in the greenbelt Arts Festival a Christian festival of the arts and in all the sort of links that one makes through extraordinary networks of that kind so it was at Greenbelt that I first met the singer priest and activist Garth Hewitt for example founder of the Amos trust which is a small human rights charity based in the UK which supports partner projects all over the world it was Garth Hewlett that first started bringing peacemakers from Palestine and Israel to the UK of all the leaders in the in the UK churches Garth was there first as a pioneer engaging with the the indigenous Church of the Holy Land or Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem and in the West Bank and in Jerusalem and bringing remarkable representatives of of of that community to the UK and so that's what I probably sort of sparked my interest yes in Israel Palestine my my lovely godmother Karla was a German Jew who had been born in Palestine her father was one of the early Zionists settlers in the early part of the 20th century and then they moved subsequently to the UK and I grew up in North London in an area with huge German Jewish community in it sort of West Hampstead Swiss Cottage Golders Green that kind of area our family GP was German Jewish my wife's first employer in the flower shop in Golders Green was German Jewish my school was 40% Jewish and so on so so a bit of the Middle East has always been swimming around in the in the atmosphere so as an actor a writer produce somebody a lifelong Christian believer as someone engaged in that sort of meeting point of faith and the arts and the kind of peace and justice movement I found myself being drawn into the work of Amos trusts a Christian human rights charity working in Nicaragua South Africa Tanzania in India and Palestine in 2003 I got very involved in the anti-war movement and wrote a very angry vulgar satire called the madness of George w which was produced in in in on the fringe in London early on in 2003 before the american-led invasion of Iraq but then transferred to the West End and ran all through that year all through the the formal period of hostilities and Beyond and was was a big big success and there was a natural confluence between the anti-war movement and the movement for Palestinian rights and so over the years I've been increasingly drawn to lend my creative efforts to human rights campaigning and I think the vision of my my faith you know as a teenager going to the Greenbelt arts first of all and growing up to find a kind of a creative vocation and trying to forge these things together for me I suppose the image that springs to mind is this idea of a crossroads where where the arts and faith and justice meet and that's where a lot of my work has flourished well your book walking to Jerusalem okay when did it when did that thought come to your mind that I'm gonna walk to Jerusalem from London well I suppose the in citement the with the the the when I look to what that the first spark the first kind of catalyst was standing in the ruins of a demolished Palestinian home in the village of our cutter near Bethlehem in 2014 I took a trip with a moss trust to the the first ever Bethlehem live festival yes in Bethlehem in 2014 this is a Palestinian Christian organization the Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem run by the amazing visionary Sami r-word someone who I often refer to by way of shorthand as the sort of Palestinian Gandhi and his inspiration was to create something equivalent to the Greenbelt festival in the occupied West Bank and so this was the first-ever Bethlehem live festival and we were there a group of artists from the UK performing at and supporting this festival and in that very week that we were there June 2014 three teenage Israeli settlers disappeared they were hitchhiking from the settlement of gush etsion near Hebron in the West Bank to their homes in central Israel they disappeared as it transpired subsequently they'd been kidnapped and in fact murdered but all of that week of the festival and while we were there we saw the first sort of spate of collective punishment being handed out by the Israelis up and down the West Bank house demolitions refugee camps being invaded and tear gassed mass arrests rubber bullets and live ammunition fired on crowds even by the end of that week five Palestinian children had been shot dead all in the name of a a supposed police action to try and find these missing teenagers now that very soon escalated into well there was the discovery of their bodies and the circumstances in which they had been killed and then the the third attack on Gaza the third Gaza war which which raged all throughout that summer with horrific consequences and so we had this bizarre experience of attending concerts and street performances in the beautiful old streets of Bethlehem in the evening and this wonderful Street called star Street one of an old Ottoman street from me from the ottoman era stretching from the top of Bethlehem all the way down to to manger square all the closed shops being opened up and turned into venues little cafes puppet theaters music venues art exhibitions and so on and crowds of Palestinians Christians and Muslims together and internationals engaging and enjoying these wonderful creative events celebration of the sort of spirit and culture of Bethlehem and then during the day we were going out to Nablus Janene Hebron and seeing firsthand the impact of this appalling wave of violence including a visit to this village al Qaeda near Bethlehem our cada means the green man in arabic and it's their name for st. George st. George is an extraordinary figure in the Middle East revered by all three faiths and so there's a legend that Sir George was imprisoned in the village of al Qaeda shortly before his martyrdom the true story of San Jorge is that he was a Roman soldier a native of Palestine who refused to take part in the persecution of Christians under Diocletian and then was martyred for his for his faith and we visited this family his house had been demolished two days before and they were pulling chairs out of the rubble yes hospitality in the shade of their fig tree and they insisted that we all sat they wouldn't allow any of us to stand and there was their house - awful piles of rubble bristling with iron rods and smashed linkle's and children's toys and domestic utensils and they were kissing us on the cheek and saying thank you for coming so we were deeply affected by this you can tell and move just for cause by telling the story and we said our hearts are broken for you we understand that your voice is silenced and we promise to use our voices to tell your stories yeah and that's in a way what I've been trying to do no i-i've got you know huge empathy I'm greekcypriot and there was an invasion in Cyprus and my parents lost their home my grandmother lost her home we lost relatives in fact my only recently many of my family were discovered in a mass grave and identified say I know I've got a real empathy for when someone else comes you know that pain and I I feel it I as you're speaking now you know my own people yes in Cyprus and I I went back to Cyprus not so long ago and I went back to my home where I lived as a child and obviously Turkish people are living there who was very lovely invite us to dinner and it felt a little bit awkward because it was like one of the ladies who joined us in Jordan - to walk across into the West Bank for the last part of the pilgrimage was Carol and Palestinian lady who had grown up in a refugee camp in Lebanon so she had never never known her her parents home in Palestine in Yaffa as Palestinians call it but but and she this was the first time she'd ever attempted to go back and she said I don't know whether they'll discover that I'm Palestinian and stop me at the border I don't know but I have to try and part of that time while we were there in the West Bank she made a trip across you know through Israel into two to two Jaffer or yucca to see the street where her parents live and and she said it was very very painful to see this is an entirely Jewish area now and and none of the refugees of 1948 have ever been allowed to go back no cannon Andrew white and I have ministered together in the Middle East for about 30 years now and we've been to Garza and I I was shocked at the state of it we went over to take medicines to sick children and babies and and it was you know I've been to a lot of developing countries over the years I don't think I've ever seen anything as bad as that no it is it's a living hell it is isn't it I mean they must trust the human rights charity that was my partner in in mounting the walk to Jerusalem supports the Al Ali Hospital in Gaza City which is a Christian foundation yeah you know it and and and one of the programs they support his breast cancer screening because the equipment which is needed for rady radiotherapy is embargoed by the Israelis Israel's blockade and so if breast cancer is detected they're performing full double mastectomies which we have not done in this country for four decades two miles up the coast there in in Ashkelon in Israel there is a state-of-the-art cancer therapy clinic you know and there in in in in Gaza City they're working on the conditions that we probably had here in the 1950s or add to that of course the cancer rates have soared through the roof in Gaza of all the depleted uranium in all the munitions which Israel has dumped on Gaza over the last ten years in three wars the fact that no building materials are allowed into Gaza and so when people rebuild their houses they're using rubble which is contaminated with radioactive materials so they're actually contaminate bringing contaminated material into their houses so you have two million people now living in a strip of land five miles wide by twenty five miles long the most densely populated patch of Earth on the planet and it's a vast open-air prison camp 95% of the water in Gaza is undrinkable 80% of people dependent on food aid 30% of children with acute anemia and of course since the the great march of return in May of this year which they the 70th anniversary of what Palestinians call the knuck by the catastrophe of 1948 what Israel celebrates as the 70th anniversary of its creation thousands and thousands of Palestinians massed on the the bart the border fence of Gaza walking in the direction of Jerusalem in what they called the great march of return and and were shot at indiscriminately by by Israeli soldiers and well more than more than 200 now have died as a result of that and many many many more wounded with a predominance of injuries in the kneecap and the groin area you know there is a really desperate situation in Gaza monks all of that emotion hmm you decide to go on a ward this London to Jerusalem right so gone how did you plan this walk well as the year 2017 approached we had a kind of perfect storm of Palestinian anniversaries coalescing it was going to be the tenth year of the blockade of Gaza the 50th year of Israel's military occupation and the centenary a the Balfour Declaration so the Balfour Declaration was when the British government a hundred years ago made its promise to establish a national homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine it had a caveat this promise it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done to compromise or prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-jewish communities in Palestine by which he meant the Palestinians 90 percent of the population so they were relegated to the status of non-jews they didn't have a name and they didn't have political rights they had civil and religious rights but in any case the second half of that promise was never kept the Hungarian Jewish writer Arthur Koestler writing from Israel in 1949 described the Balfour Declaration as probably one of the most improbable political political documents of all time in which one nation solemnly promised a second the country of a third yes a time that the Balfour Declaration was published Britain was fighting the Ottoman Empire for possession of Gaza of Palestine but for battles of Gaza Lawrence of Arabia all of that stuff and so we weren't even the governing power in Palestine but we'd already promised it to create the Jewish homeland and there's a story in the book which I recount where when my dear friend Ahmed Massoud is a Gaza and Palestinian who lives in London had brought his mum over for a visit to the UK very unusually the border between Gaza and Egypt was open for a short while in 2011 because the the Morsi government in in Egypt you know had opened that border and Fatima his mum had been able to get a visa and incredibly come to the UK to meet his wife for the first time to meet her grandson for the first time and there she was in my kitchen larger than life and it was an amazing experience having her and I asked her at one point I said how how do you cope day-to-day with the anger you must feel because of the siege because of the occupation the loss of your your home in 1948 and she grinned a rather mischievously and pointed at me and so well actually the anger goes further back to you and your Balfour Declaration of 1917 and I said to Ahmed is that right do Palestinians still still think about that talk about yes every Palestinian yeah he said if you go to Gaza one day as a Brit you'll find kids on the street chanting bow for Balfour like that you know it for us in the West it's forgotten history for Palestinians they're still living with the consequences of it what what is so what would you say just into that the Jewish people who believe that God gave them the land goodness me I mean it's such a difficult question that isn't it the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof God gave all the lands to all of us didn't he but they believe they believe in a unique claim to the holy yes yes well I suppose taking it one step further back all I all I would say in response to that is that if you believe in God and you believe in a God of love and then you go and visit Palestinian communities in the West Bank or Gaza and and if you if you believe that God wants people to be subjected to those conditions and that you know the the the the necessary corollary of your divine divinely authorized claim to the land is to reduce the indigenous inhabitants of that land to a state of virtual slavery to dispossessed some of their homes to drive out you know the 700,000 Palestinians who were driven out in 1948 and been never allowed to return and and and now have been living in refugee camps in Lebanon Syria Jordan for for 70 years you know if this is all the will of God then it's not the God that I believe then I'm sorry yeah yeah that's what I say yes so with this perfect storm of anniversaries approaching we got our thinking caps on and as to what you could do it we could do that would be a grand crazy stunt or symbolic gesture that would be a an appropriate response as as people campaigning for for peace and justice in the Middle East as British people and thinking about what Fatima had said to me the anger the primary betrayal for Palestinians starts with the British 100 yeah yeah so we thought well people have been traveling to the Holy Land for 2,000 years as conquerors Crusaders colonialists penitence as well what about you know a pilgrimage of penance a pilgrimage as British people to walk from London to Jerusalem to say sorry for the actions of our country a hundred years ago which has subjected the Palestinian people to a century of dispossession injustice and suffering how mad would that be to walk from London to Jerusalem it could also be an incredible expression of freedom of movement the same friend Ahmed Massoud described when he first came to the UK he came as an undergraduate through the British Consulate scheme in in Gaza to you know to come and study at the UK and he described taking a train journey from London to Edinburgh and he said I just couldn't believe it sitting for hours in the Train row green countryside hundreds and hundreds of miles no checkpoints no walls no barriers they said it was the most wonderful journey I'd ever experienced yes coming from Gaza yes and I thought well we would be excessive take it for granted freedom of movement across Europe and sure it's yeah maybe not for much longer possible yeah but we have but that you know to walk unimpeded across 11 countries across Europe so enacting the Palestinians right of return which is denied celebrating freedom of movement a walk of penance and the third element we just said was that it was a walk of hope that we walk in hope that one day all peoples in the Holy Land will live in peace as neighbors with full equal rights yeah you know there are some very moving moments in the book and some very amusing moments within the book I I was just very intrigued that you asked a friend of yours about doing the wall come what did he think of the walk and the friend that you asked was pen had Oh a polar explorer and he said to you well he said I said are we mad thinking we can do this walk from London to Jerusalem he said no no course not well you say yes you are yeah but but but no you can do it and I said what do we need to train for months and months and he said no no just do it you'll get started and you'll build up your stamina as you go which was very encouraging had you have done a long walk before quite a few quite a few but not this not this fun no this this involved eleven countries eleven countries so that's right but you didn't walk on water no we know we crossed three seas practice and you didn't go to my homeland we didn't go to Cyprus no this you didn't you could have got a boat from Cyprus but you didn't want to do that that's right because you really wanted to go the route have to travel yeah okay what was what was some hard about the walk chaffing body parts oh now where did you where did you pick up this old wives tale that you have to wear to to someone's first week walking through Kent you know the the received wisdom is sort of fundamentalist wisdom amongst walkers serious walkers is two pairs of socks you know to avoid blisters it's not true no it was it wasn't Jo like Italy the end of Italy that I made the idiotically simple discovery they it's one pair of socks yes - two pairs of socks make your feet hot yes and then you get blisters singing and so you know there's lots of gruesome disasters so you had blisters your first night people snoring lots of snoring I know how did you cope with that well I evolved this method of of closing my ears to the snoring where it was very it took weeks obviously to evolve this where I got you know one ear embedded into the pillow like that and then I worked out a way of putting my finger over there and then using my other hand to wait down the other hand like that and sometimes putting a book on top you know so that so this was closed as well you know then they eventually sort of it worked and and also obviously working out who didn't snore yeah and make me sure I got to share the leaders you know one of the organizers of it absolutely how many people walked with you for various parts of the walk took an age range from eighteen well and then fourteen because my boy Jacob and in fact my youngest son Joey who was who was joined you way up to seventy yeah yeah so just give us a rough idea you started in London started in London we were following two ancient routes the via francigena or the way through France which is a pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome that was established around the ninth century something like that and that takes you well obviously London tube to Canterbury and then and then across northeastern France from Calais down through the pas-de-calais through the battlefields of World War one into the Champagne region and then heading towards the French Alps crossing into Switzerland and then we crossed out when we climbed the Alps and cross the Alps at the greats and Bernhard pass which was an incredible experience the Hospice of st. Bernard has been opened for a thousand years at the pass without ever closing and you there's still the canons as they called them I mean they're not monks they cannons cannon j-job yeah still they're still providing hospitality they still have some bonus dogs and that was an extraordinary experience and my older three today welcome to all of you they did they did wonderfully they know that you were passing by well yes because there there there there's a canon airy which provides monastic style sort of accommodation and because that's they have there so oversubscribed they have a sort of hotel attached to that and we and we had a booking this you know we were they knew we were coming and and then over the Great's of Bern down into Italy into the our star Valley and following the via francigena Venice Farah spear chenza and because we weren't going to Rome we diverted eastwards at that point down towards ancona so they're picking up the via emilia one of the roman roads and the Via Flaminia down the coast the sort of Adriatic Riviera of the Italian coast which was amazing very very hot at this time of year going through June July so very early starts in the morning sometimes getting up you know at 5:30 and leaving at 6:00 or 6:30 in the morning to try and beat the heat and walking 3035 kilometers a day sometimes as much as forty a day so then we got the ferry across the Adriatic to DES in Albania and we picked up a Roman Road called the via Ignatia which was built first in about a hundred and fifty hundred and sixty BC to link Rome with Constantinople and that became the road linking the two capitals of the Roman Empire and incredibly there are still flag stones in places through Greece and Turkey from the original Roman Road it was repaired over the centuries by the Romans and then subsequently by the by the Ottoman Empire and so it was kind of still in use right up until you know comparatively recently and-and-and long stretches of motorway through East and Greece and and and through western Turkey are simply called egg nation after the road so we walk to to Istanbul following broadly speaking the the the Via Ignatia and and we visited many refugee camps and refugee projects on the way in Greece and that was very moving very challenging and very very touching and and also provoking experience one of our Walker's a wonderful lady Jude retired doctor from Western Australia met a young Iraqi boy in our camp refugee camp in Kavala in eastern Greece his mother had just been detained in Turkey she had been part of the group that had been accepted into Greece as refugees and then she had been seemingly well arrested RIA RIA rested by Greek police had all her money and all her papers taken from her and kicked over the border into no-man's land been picked up by Turkish police and then in that putting in the detention center in Turkey and this fifteen-year-old lad was was having to look after his younger siblings in this refugee camp and Jude was very very profoundly upset by this and wanted to intervene and so she along with the help but we were emailing lawyer friends back home I have a very good friend in my church is a asylum lawyer you know specializes in Asylum law and making representations to the Greek consulate an idea in there and so on and so while we were still continuing the walk there was a sort of Independence going on to try and get this lady Russia released and and and eventually some months later we found out that she had been released and that Jude along with Arthur one of the walkers visited the Greek consulate in Edina and made representations to them and said you know all her paperwork's in order she's been received as an asylum seeker into Greece why is she being kicked back into Turkey why is she separated from her family please get on with it you know and so on and eventually it worked yes so you know that was a an interesting it was a very interesting episode or series of episodes because in I suppose it was in microcosm it was it was a I empathize with Jude's feeling of being so provoked so moved and challenged by a particular situation where you felt you couldn't not do anything you had to get involved somehow and do something yeah yeah the what I find fascinating is as I read your book and you know reading the story of the journey you you you then kind of throw kind of a curve ball a curve ball comes at you you think you're where did that come from and one of those being that you just mentioned randomly as you began the walk you went to sleep you had a dream about your father mmm and your father and your brother actually died tragically yeah that's right yeah well when did that happen that happened in 1988 well I was nineteen I lost my father and my brother in a tragic accident of three of us were fishing together off the north coast of Cornwall and they were both drowned and I was a survivor and and you saw this yes yeah yeah so well of course all of my life has been marked by that has been has been you know Bill has grown around that you know this is part of who I am this is it never never leaves you it never goes away and but you had that dream and I did that's right I found I found you know dreams and and strong experiences visiting me you know about my dad and my brother along the wall along the wall yes Lord you had a dream about your father before yes sometimes that was very interesting it was I think if my memory serves me right it was the first night of your walk you had that dream or early on it was early on in the block and it was in Aris and and and I have this dream it's very peculiar of my father and I was cradling my father in my lap so it was a sort of PIAT are kind of image you know of the Sun I was going for cradling the father and that it was as if this kind of whole century like this whole hundred years of grief was kind of flowing out of him my father was a a very strong robust man ads of outdoors man a farmer and a gardener and and but also a man of letters and warm you know a really wonderful wonderful father wonderful man and and it was as if he'd sort of surrendered finally to sorrow sadness and grief and and allowed himself to become the one who was weak and that was sort of I was cradling him in my lap and all of the griefs of of my family's history his uncle's death in World War one aged 17 and the death of a younger brother in infancy the murder of his my father's niece the the his own death and the death of my brother and and and there's so many tragedies in our family it's all in the book yes and and I woke up and I suddenly thought eros eros was that where my great uncle Claire or Clarence was was was was killed in in in and I I got in touch with my cousin who's sort of the fount of all family you know folklore cousin David and I said I'm in eros is that where Uncle Claire was killed and he said yes he said you're it's almost exactly a hundred years ago he was killed at the Battle of Arras in May 1917 and there you are your verb there and and I was absolutely certain that he died at the Somme in 1916 but it wasn't it was there and it was as if I don't know that the like the the hundred years of my own families kind of struggles and suffering and tragedies and so on through many wars and and and somehow power came in parallel with the hundred years of the personal story yeah collide yes yes all came together came together you know and and and uncle Claire's body was never found and so his name is on the memorial wall of the Arras Memorial which is quite overwhelming is one of these very very beautiful British Empire memorials by Edwin Lutyens you know and in in sort of red red red brown brown and blonde stone and you know with the great field of white gravestones and the memorial wall and my grandfather remember saying him saying how angry he was that the recruiting office had accepted Claire when he lied about his age there's so many of them did official records say second left tenant Clarence Edward butch had died you know macer and so no 17 aged 19 and my grandfather was adamant that he wasn't he was 17 yes on your journey on this wall where there's some scary moments yeah wild dogs in Greece in Greece we got quite kind of really so we they run after you yeah the the the the villagers would greet us with smiles and bring fruit out for us and you know even coffee or whatever my dogs would greet us snarling yeah and come running at our ankles yeah you know so we used to fill our pockets with pebbles yeah and I mean in all seriously yes and there was actually a it might remember the story on the news it was a British woman actually killed by wild dogs a week or so before in that part of Greece that we were walking through she was very very unfortunate we were in reasonable size groups you know and we were able to stick together when that happened even worse in in Turkey and and the dogs absolutely kind of fearless even though even you know if you're driving they launch themselves at the vehicle so wild dogs in Greece yeah tear gas in Bethlehem what else settler violence in Hebron you know walking slap-bang into a confrontation with very very angry and aggressive settlers in in her block there were some hair repair but each day you have this little liturgy yeah that you all said it would that be it right at the beginning of the day the beginning of the variable you many of you are very very biblically literate so you will we will recognize it's you know the the sort of biblical antecedents of of the liturgy and and so we begin each day gathered in a little circle outside the Ibis budget or the you know the convent or the the campsite or wherever we were and often someone would come up with a little reflection it might be a poem or a thought or something you know and and and and we would invite different people to you know make that contribution and then we'd say this liturgy another world is not only possible she is on her way words of Arundhati Roy another world is not only possible she's on her way on a quiet day I can hear her breathing you have been shown what is good to act justly to love mercy and to walk humbly we walk this day with those whose freedom is denied we walk with those who have fled war torture and despair we walk in penance for broken promises and political fixes we walk the long road with all those who strive for peace justice and Reconciliation we walk with those who long to return to home we walk in hope that one day all people in the Holy Land will live in peace as neighbors with full equal rights walk softly upon the earth may its beauty surround you may it's wisdom delight you it's music invite you may you love and loved may you know peace and practice compassion rejoice in the earth and in all of creation rejoice in life and bailando Salvatore it will be solved at the beginning of that you quote a verse from Micah chapter 6 verse 8 where the question is put what does God want us to do and the answer is he wants us to love mercy love mercy walk humbly and act just act justly yea and as that kind of inspired you yeah on your journey absolutely and and the prophet Micah comes into the end of the story as well yeah because when we're perhaps jumping around in the in the timeline here but when we when we did arrive at last in Jerusalem the final event on the day of the balfour centenary was a wonderful celebratory service in st. George's Cathedral in Jerusalem yes and the preacher was the great Canon named a TKE yeah the father of palestinian liberation theology and the founder of the Sabeel ecumenical Liberation Center in Jerusalem and he spoke wonderfully movingly and of his vision of a shared holy land of a shared Jerusalem and and and of the words of the prophet Micah you know in the last days the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as the highest of the mountains it will be exalted above the hills and peoples will stream to it many nations will come and say come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord to the temple of the God of Jacob he will teach us his ways so that me we may walk in his paths the law will go out from Zion the word of the Lord from Jerusalem he will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hook nation will not take up sword against nation nor will they train for war anymore everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree and no one will make them afraid for the Lord Almighty has spoken and it took me back to that moment where Ali's Salim and his family were pulling chairs to give last rites to seat us in the shade of their fig tree and that was in the village of Al Queda st. George in Arabic and this was instant George's Cathedral in Jerusalem at the end of the journey and there was the prophet Micah again and we were supposed to have this wonderful Palestinian choir acquired Bethlehem singing to us at the service and they they were late because they could they were held at a checkpoint and they couldn't get through from Bethlehem to Jerusalem and then at the very last minute of this service they rushed in absolutely breathless having having made it through the checkpoint and made it to the event and pelted their way to the front to sing these fabulous Arabic melodies to us and this in a sense spoke eloquently about the whole venture that we had walked unimpeded for 3,400 kilometers over a hundred and forty seven days from London to Jerusalem to be there and they coming from Bethlehem which is a five minute drive away were held and one weren't able to get through so just tell us about that last day it was mad it was absolutely crazy the final day at the balfour centenary the I mean the the the the day began with our visit to the British consul general in East Jerusalem so this is the the diplomatic mission Her Majesty's representative in in the Palestinian territory our ambassador to Israel has an embassy in Tel Aviv the Consul General is in East Jerusalem in Nashes she B Street and we his guests very early in the morning for a coffee and pastries in this beautifully civilized sort of colonial enclaves of the British Consulate where we made wewe we sort of delivered our representation to him of the the new Balfour Declaration which our trustee Robert Cohen had been written taking the same 67 words of Arthur James Balfour a hundred years before and rewriting them to speak about equal rights in the land and that the nations of the world should use their best endeavours to essentially support the project of a safe and secure home for all who live in the holy land and we delivered this and an open letter to the prime minister - Philip Hall the British consul general now Theresa May had decided to announce in Parliament the week before that she would be celebrating the centennial of the Balfour Declaration at a festive dinner with Netanyahu the Israeli prime minister in London with the current Lord Balfour and Lord Rothschild and she said Britain we will be celebrating the centenary with pride Britain is proud of our role in creating the State of Israel and the the impact of her words up and down the West Bank was felt in every single school refugee camp village Bedouin tent city hall everywhere we went Palestinians were asking us with bewilderment and dismay why is your Prime Minister celebrating why is she proud why'd she's celebrating a hundred years of our suffering the mayor of the village of say 'ya in near Braun made a beautiful speech where he said Britain is a country we look to as a great country a country that can teach history teach civilization teach poetry she is a great nation to hear from the Prime Minister of Britain such a thing is very shameful and so by contrast our mission our pilgrimage to visit so many Palestinian communities up and down the West Bank with this message of solidarity to say we've walked over all this time and so many miles to to say sorry for the actions of our government a hundred years ago for the century of suffering injustice and dispossession which the British government visited on the Palestinian people to stand with you in solidarity and to express our hope we were treated like superstars yes that wasn't the idea of going there that was what happened it's impossible to overstate the extraordinary overflow of generosity and warmth and love which our mission brought and President Mahmoud Abbas saw me on a television interview in Ramallah and phoned friends from Holy Land Trust immediately and said I want to meet Justin and all the walkers and bring them to luncheon and Ramallah please give our greetings to them we're so so pleased with what they're doing and the Palestinian media and all the Arabic media from across the Middle East followed our every step and we became this kind superstar our mission and so on the centenary from from from Jerusalem we went to Ramallah to the - to the vast demonstration in the streets of Ramallah with with Palestinian marching bands palette Boy Scouts and Girl Guides and every flag Under the Sun and every you know of a vast demonstration in the city centre and the world's media there then we went to this banquet in the president or compound and then finally in the afternoon back to the Mount of Olives to complete the wall into Jerusalem we said our liturgy for the last time on the Mount of Olives overlooking from the place where according to legend or according to tradition I should say Jesus is meant to have looked down on the city and wept and then we walked down the Mount of Olives and entered the old city through the Lions Gate which is also believed to be the site of the martyrdom of Saint Stephen now we're Israelis 50 years ago and the Ottomans 500 years ago conquered the old city and and Palestinian drivers tooted their horns have clapped and cheered us and all of our companions lined the streets and cheered us in through the lion's gate and this great tide of joy and hope surged and and and and and we sort of whipped our way scandalously down the Via Dolorosa which is Cathedral absolutely sort of overflowing with with euphoria with with with hope having completed the journey and and had such an incredible an incredible welcome and that what we what we'd hope for which was to offer some love and some empathy and something healing to our people our Forgotten people yes that that had been received as something as something meaningful and and of value she was was beyond what we could hope for and that you didn't walk back got back and had a nice bath and your cuppa tea in your own cup that's what I love when I I go away come back my tea cup my own consume yeah all those things all those things so the story Justin is in detail in this book with lots of stories within stories and you know what what is it that you're hoping as you know people of faith people of no faith might read this book well what are you hoping there was the reader would respond to I suppose the best thing I can hope for is that I can through this book I can help help to communicate a sense of of the extraordinary courage and beauty of the humanity of the Palestinian people that are for 50 years of occupation 70 years of dispossession and a century of the denial of their rights Palestinian people maintain an astonishing dignity an astonishing warmth and vitality and hope that the tiny tiny Palestinian Christian population now dwindled to just 1% of the West Bank have not given up on being the living stones of the Holy Land the indigenous Church of the Holy Land relations between Christians and Muslims are very good in in in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Gaza and so the Palestinian community is in in one sense a model or a beacon for coexistence in the in the Middle East where so many places in Iraq and Syria ancient age-old Christian communities have been destroyed or driven into exile there's still for the most part very very peaceful coexistence there between Christians and Muslims and of course for centuries Jews have lived alongside Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land Sephardic Jews known at one time as Arab Jews who spoke Arabic who dressed like our of people and practiced their Jewish faith who were exiled from the Spanish Kingdom you know in the fifteenth century when the Catholic rulers of Spain kicked out all the Jews and kicked out all the Moorish Muslims where did they find sanctuary in the Ottoman Empire in the East where Jews Christians and Muslims have always lived together so there is there is hope I hope that I could communicate some of the dignity and beauty of spirit the vitality the love of life of people in the Holy Land and thereby some of my Israeli friends as well they're working for peace and justice there I was asked earlier today in an interview I think it was the church times about solutions and I do think the British people have been offering solutions for a long time and you know it's actually for Palestinians and Israelis to solve to work out what they want the future to look like their friends people who want to support them around the world can keep calling for equal rights what that will look like in the end whether it's one state or two states or 15 States whether it's some kind of binational state is that for the people who live there to decide but it's not that there aren't a number of solutions available there are any number of solutions available it's about the political will and and and maybe maybe some moving and touching and an evocative and possibly funny stories from that part of the world can help to contribute a little a little droplet to the to the groundswell of of zeitgeist that will contribute to that to that to that will walking to Jerusalem published by Hodder & Stoughton and available where available where yes well in water stones and through the hadas website and through the the of course and through Amos trust as well my partner in this whole venture and and other bookshops as well from today just in it you're a very fascinating person actually and you know it's someone who's who's an actor a playwright director a producer who has compassion and passion for a particular cause that you've actually made time in the midst of your primary vocation to respond to this particular need and and I think that's very challenging for all of us who've listened into your conversation that in the midst of our own vocations and our own commitments and you know primary focus it doesn't mean that we can't ignore people and needs that around us you know we can't help everyone but we can help someone and that's very admirable and I think it's admirable you know you as a Christian care both for the Jews and the Palestinians and that you're working towards the Peace of Israel which inshallah well Justin butcher thank you very much [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Facing the Canon

Views: 4,929

Rating: 4.652174 out of 5

Keywords: facing the canon, j.john, interview, jjohn, j john, philo trust, philo, trust, christianity, Jesus, Lord, God, Holy Spirit

Id: fmAPkiy-23s

Length: 61min 58sec (3718 seconds)

Published: Tue May 28 2019