Faris O'deh, 14, Standing Alone

 {Google: Faris O'deh)

Picture of Copyright tapestry:  Palestine History Tapestry Project, published 2025 - Tatreez embroidery.   Embroiderer: Nawal Ibrahim al Ahmed [Tabariyeh], Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon.   This and many other tapestries in the project express "summud" (steadfastness) and solidarity, drawing attention to the history and heritage of the Palestinian people and their land, and to their internationally confirmed right to reparations and the return  to their homes from which Israeli forces expelled them in  the1948 Nakba - Catastrophe .   www.palestinetapestry.org.  

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This Pilgrim Praxis post invites you to meditate on the photo (above) of a tapestry in the Palestine History Tapestry Project. 

If you've read any modern history of western Asia and especially of Palestine since 1900, the iconic meaning of this particular tapestry image may be easy to recognize. 

Biblical Precedents

And if you know bible stories then two may come to mind.   First, think of David and Goliath (1Samuel 17), who became champions for their warring peoples.  David, "but a lad" volunteered to do battle with Goliath, a giant of a Philistine man, who frightened Israel's warriors.   It was however the lad who defeated the giant with but one smooth stone from a slingshot.  A model for Faris? 

Go back in time in the Bible  to the story in Genesis' chapters 16 and 21.   Hagar, the Egyptian slave-girl, second wife of Abraham gives birth to Ishmael.  But when Sarah at age 92! also gives birth to a son, Isaac, tensions rise in the household.   At Sarah's urging, Abraham - the powerful clan patriarch - expels Hagar and her boy from the family, banishing them into the wilderness.   They drink their water bag dry.  Death looms.  The howling thirsty child is placed under a shady bush and his mother, awaiting his death, grieves at a distance - alone.   

But God hears the cries of mother and son.   The Compassionate One responds calling Hagar to lift up   the child and promising "to make a great nation of him."  God opens Hagar's eyes to see a well with life-saving water.   "And God was with the boy" - the father of the Arab nation.

Modern day Ishmael and David - namely Faris O'deh - is no less a beloved child of the Holy One. He  serves as an iconic representation of the Palestinian people's  experience facing vastly superior Israeli military force.   Faris' stones were no match for the armoured Israeli tank and its canon munitions supplied by Western allies, threatening him.    Against all odds, he persisted in both his human duty and legal right to resist Israeli Zionist occupation.  Armed with his stone, he braved taking on the tank, revealing both his courage and deep-seated determination to seek liberation - without counting the self-giving cost.   

Faris faced the tank alone.   An Associated Press photojournalist recorded his desperately faithful, fearless act confronting that giant Israeli tank during the Second Intifada against Israeli subjugation.  His peer buddies were not far away, but Faris was usually to be found at the forefront with a stone in his hand resisting Israeli armour.  Gazan youths and other resisters have continued Faris' lead.  And today the Palestine Youth Movement continues the lonely effort of gathering intelligence on Western nations' role in supplying Israel with  sophisticated powerful, murderous armaments. 

Battling Alone?

Where was God or God's faithful people as the ruthless Israeli military mowed down hundreds of thousands of children and adults of Palestine?

We can't list the many people, organizations, governments, churches who failed to stand in solidarity with Faris - it's endless.   His lonely battle with the tank was a dramatic iconic representation of the dreadful isolation  Palestinians experienced for the past century.  The ill-conceived Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the United Nations' Partition Resolution of 1948 were imposed without serious consultation with indigenous Palestinians and violently implemented  by Zionist Israeli terrorist forces and settlers.  The voices of Palestine were disdained, suppressed, and systematically annihilated.

Reality is, Faris graphically represents the immoral isolation imposed on Palestine by the Western nations.   Palestinians were treated as if they didn't exist - perhaps in anticipation of the goal being pursued by its colonizers.   Everything was done to undermine their power and impact on world opinion.  Advocates for justice in Palestine were soon threatened,  silenced, smeared, or defamed.  In the United Church of Canada, Al Forrest was one prophetic voice of truth about Palestine silenced in 1973.

Any individuals (including anti-Zionist Jews), groups (e.g. PLO or Hezbolah) or nation (Yemen's Houthy) daring to be in solidarity with Palestinians and critical of Israel were soon deemed  "antisemites" or "self-hating Jews" or "terrorists" or "communists" or "proxies for Iran" and demonized in various other costly ways by the Israeli lobby and its willing Zionist supporters. sra There was never a suggestion that the USA was a proxy for Israel, or Israel was a vassal of USA (except today?).  

International Legal Framework

After World War II, a new world order was launched with the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders responsible for the Holocaust.   The order was institutionalized by the creation of the United Nations with its Charter and various  Conventions / Treaties to provide Earth with international laws and orderly peace.   The peace regretably did not last long - not in Palestine nor in too many other countries.   Nevertheless, the laws were recorded and promulgated - more or less.  International courts issued judgements in The Hague.   Peace keepers mediated between warring nations. 

In the case of Palestine, laws were enforced less rather than more.   United Nations' decisions were obeyed when they benefited Israel and rejected by Israel when it got in the way of their intention to implement Plan Dalet:  take as much of Palestine's land and reduce the number of Palestinians as possible.  Backed by its veto in the UN Security Council, the USA and NATO allies, like the United Kingdom, France, and Canada, willingly accorded Israel impunity - effectively making it a rogue state getting away with murder.

No single smooth stone will end Israel's settler colonial project nor end Palestine's lonely struggle for liberation.  But there are hopeful signs.   Massive crowds of Palestinian justice supporters demonstrate around the world.  They are astounded at the evil perpetrated by Israel and its complicit ally the USA.  Still too few  Western nations isolate the Zionist regime as a scofflaw nation, but there are signs that more nations are unwilling to tolerate its threat to world peace and order and genocide of Palestine.   

Some faith communities, especially Western churches are finally discovering that justice is a higher priority than appeasing autocratic states or befriending persistent Zionist lobbyists for Israel's crimes. 

Where is God?

Is God dead?   I believe that like the billions of drops needed to fill the ocean, the Spirit is moving in the hearts and souls of many of the world's eight billion people.   Their conscience tells them that Palestine has suffered too much injustice.  The evil perpetrated against Palestinians contradicts their humanity and  like any dangerous virus must be resisted.  Through local, regional, national and international collaboration  there is reason to be hopeful.

Increasingly, truthful witness is shining light on the lies, the greed, the negation of the sacred.   Truth opens the Way to what God intends for the ONE human family - even for the Abrahamic/Hagar/Sarah families, who must finally learn to act like beloved children of a common Parent.  Around the world people realize that what the world needs is for each human to treat each other human as they want to be treated.  Ultimately there is  foundational law  that must be honoured if life on Earth is to be sustained:   love or care for one another  .

R.I.P Faris O'deh

On the 8th of November 2000 at Karmi Crossing, an Israeli sniper shot Faris in the neck close to an Israeli tank. The proximity prevented his friends from dragging him to safety and his blood poured into the land of his ancestors.   He was dead on arrival in the hospital.   His blood is now mixed among that of countless other Palestinian relations also martyred by Israel's century-long genocide project. 

Some day the martyrs'  seeds of justice & peace will germinate and God's jubilee of liberation will dawn on all of Palestine's diverse peoples in the Holy Land.   

Persistently pray, witness, and work that Faris' lonely work may be rewarded by many as swords transformed into  ploughshares; lies transformed into truths; criminals prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to time for meditation and repentance;  those grieving and wounded in soul and body    comforted by the Creator of all.   Let peace, salaam, shalom, mir, Friede, vrede, paix flow like a river of life.