Nazareth: The People

The town is heavily populated with Palestinian Christians, and many of them were at mass we attended at 10:00 this morning at The Church of the Annunciation in “downtown” Nazareth.

These people are Israeli citizens of Palestinian descent (differing from the Palestinians who live on the West Bank, in that those folks are not citizens and more likely to be Muslims), and as modern as any Westerners you would meet. Mass was in Arabic, which is very different to the ear to listen to, and very different when put to music. As in America, a lot of people linger to visit and chat with friends and neighbors afterwards. I did not notice any donuts or coffee, for those of you about to ask.

In terms of the Mideast conflict, they would find themselves having conflicted alliances, based on an interesting overview our Rabbi David Sandmel provided. They are Israeli citizens living in the land of Israel, and have all the privileges and protections and responsibilities of the government of Israel. They would have a strong reason to support the State of Israel. At the same time, they are Palestinians, many of them having relatives or friends that are residents of the West Bank or Gaza, and they would have a strong allegiance to and sympathy for their own people. They would understand racism and perhaps have experienced it firsthand, and possibly have the experience of feeling less than welcomed or accepted as full-fledged citizens of a Jewish state. But as Christians, they would not be supportive of Muslims extremists in the slightest, and even see them as their enemy. And while broad generalizations cannot capture all of the different individual attitudes and positions, these people might find themselves in a difficult middle ground.