Peace in the Middle East(?)

Interview with Abbot Nikodemus Schnabel OSB

After a month of confusing and extremely polarized discourse about the Israel-Palestine conflict, I decided to ask Abbot Nikodemus Schnabel OSB of the Abbeys of the Dormition and Tabgha in the Holy Land to share his experience living in the midst of it all, as well as to explain his complex yet earnest desire for peace.

You can listen to the interview on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, and you can read excerpts below.

On polarization and picking sides

If you like black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, this is not the right place for you here in Jerusalem. You have to taste the complexity. You need to enjoy that things are more complicated than to explain it in 3 minutes, because if people say “here the Jews, there the Muslims.'“ And you know, it's not only Jews and Muslims. We have here Christians, we have Druze…we have Samaritans, we have Baha’i. There's much more on the ground.

Also…what do you mean with when you say Israelis? Do you mean the Muslim Arabic speaking Israelis or the Jewish Hebrew speaking Israelis, or you mean the Druze Israelis…the Sephardic Jews, the Gemini Jews, the Ashkenazi? What do you mean with the Palestinians? You mean the Christians in Gaza, The Palestinian Christians or you mean the Sunni Muslims or you mean the very secular Palestinians or you mean the Islamists or…the picture is much more colorful…I know only people who are like a colorful mosaic of identities, who are not black and white, who in themselves have different identities.

…Now the Christians are between one and 2%. One partial 1 portion of these Christians are Catholics and they're a smaller part…So from the Roman Catholic perspective, it's very difficult. To have a clear stance and to say, '“Oh yeah, we know who are the perpetrators, who are the victims…” because in this war again we have deaths of Catholics on both sides. It started on the 7th of October…this really shocking massacre, this attack of the terrorist organization Hamas who killed on one day over 1300 people. It was not only Jewish people, they killed also 4 Catholics, migrant workers from the Philippines, caregivers. So as a Catholic I can say the 7th of October it was also a disaster. It was a shocking experience. It was really a lot of mourning…Four, three sisters, one brother who share the same baptism as I share were murdered. Caregivers, migrants from the Philippines, members of the vicariate I was in charge of as the patriarchal vicar for migrants and asylum seekers.

…Later, few days later, there was an air strike on the pastoral centre of the Greek Orthodox St. Porphirius Church. In that church there were not only Orthodox Christian but also Catholic Christians. So in this airstrike 17 Christian were killed, ecumenical Orthodox and Catholics…People who seek were seeking shelter in Gaza City were killed…And they hoped the most secure place for them, it's the church and was not secure enough. They were killed.

So look, this is my position. And now I I have, I have not started with the general thing of empathy and humanity and you know…So Catholics were killed. Were murdered on both sides. So we have to mourn for four migrants and we have to mourn for Palestinian Christians. And from this perspective, it's for me extremely difficult to understand if people say “now it's a time you have clear you have to change your profile on the social media to the Israeli flag or to the Palestinian flag. You have to speak out now. It's the time to say very clear who is the good guys or the bad guys.”

It's a war of emotions…And I am living here, my reaction with my community and our students where, you know, look, we have brothers and sisters who share the same baptism as we. They were killed on both sides and both were extremely innocent…They have no part in this conflict…And from that point we said, OK, I pray, I pray because what I see and now we can maybe go a step further because of course I moan also for Jewish murdered people, for Muslim killed people, for Bedouins who were killed. You know all you know you can find in every community you find biographies of people who were destroyed and they're still under destruction. People mourn, dreams for a better future were destroyed.

And you know, this Holy Land it's really a land full of wounds, full of hate, full of violence. Sometimes, our patriarchs or the Roman Catholic Bishop of Jerusalem said, “sometimes it seems the common language, it's violence.”

People ask, “who is guilty? Who is the perpetrators?” I'm not a political analyst. I'm not a defense expert. I'm first of all a human being. Then I'm a Christian, and then I'm a monk and a priest and Abbott. And in this case I said I can only pray. I can only say OK. We have our monasteries opened for everybody. We don't ask are you a Jewish, Christian or Muslim? Are you illegal or illegal here? It doesn't matter. If it helps you, come rest. We have our cafeteria open, we have the monks around. If one needs a listening ear, a listening heart, you always find a monk to talk. And we are praying more than ever. And we really, we will bring the suffering to our God and yes, and I hear so many horrible stories.

And thanks God. I have Jewish friends. I have Muslim friends, I have Christian friends. I know the people who were killed in Gaza, and I know the migrant workers. You know, it's for me, not abstract numbers. These are people I know.

And for me then it becomes really strange if people from Europe or United States reach me, “Hey Abbott, why you have not changed your profile picture on the flag, on this flag or this flag?” You know you are really sitting in your in your chair, I don't know, eating chips, drinking a Coke. And explain me the world, me, I'm living here in the midst of this…

What really my Jerusalem is, is the Jerusalem of 5:00 AM in the morning, because at this time there are only religious people in the streets. You have the Jews who, before their work, praying at the Western Wall. You have the Muslims who pray at the Haramah Sharif before the work. And you have the very first liturgies of the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Resurrection. And at this time, Jerusalem is so wonderful. It's so magnificent because it's full of peace. People smile to one another. And this is really the beauty of religion and this is my Jerusalem and I can say what I suffer.

So it's now the hooligans of religion, the people who really give religion a bad name…And the worst thing is from the verbal point, the dehumanization. This hurts me a lot…What we as religious people share as children of Abraham together…we believe that every human being is created in the image of God…Also a murderer is still a human being, and he has a dignity that is given. And we have no right as a human being to dehumanize another human being. To say you're not any more human, you're an animal or you're monster.

We're speaking about humans and we're speaking about human biographies and we're speaking about human desires and so on and so on. And this is really a difficult time for me, you know, because I feel very lonely.

…I know other people feel the same feelings…it's longer, but we have to go the way for reconciliation. We have no alternative.

On the political question

And if you allow me to give an analysis…as a political thinking person, because I was one year also advisor in the Federal Foreign Office of Germany for religion foreign policy. So I'm not totally naive. So I I understand nation’s and people's seeking for identity and…I understand there are two main desires I see…

I start, without priority, with the Israeli narrative. So the Israeli…desire, the big desire, it's security…and especially as I'm a German citizen…I totally understand and I really can support in every meaning the desire to say never again, the Shoa, never again Auschwitz, never be again victims.

And that they are very sensitive to criticism from outside. They said, yes, you can criticize in your state, you're surrounded by France, you have enough space. If we lose a war, we lose everything. And Hitler's plan was to extinguish our whole people. And now it's…really we have to resist. We have really never to be helpless, never to be victims and so on. They said it's not fair to criticize us because you cannot understand this very strong desire. And so this is the one thing I totally understand.

And this is for me also the best argument to explain the right for an Israeli status…it's like a safe haven…for every Jewish people if anti-Semitism it's rising too strong. As a Jew you can book a ticket, you can fly to Tel Aviv and you can without fear, live your Jewish life.

So this is 1 very strong desire and I can say I totally understand and support that.

On the other hand, the Palestinian side, you have the same very understandable. And again, I support this also from the bottom of my heart…It's their big desire of freedom, freedom and if you want also sovereignty…it’s the same argument as the other side…They have their passport, they have their own currency, They have freedom of economic thing, of movement, of clear borders. You have your own infrastructure, you know you're a sovereign state…

We are like the second victims of the Shoa because we haven't killed any Jews.

But you know, they they came here and now we're in this, in this situation we are in and we are not a sovereign state. We are longing for that. And really our big desire is freedom. And I can say also the Catholic, especially the Holy See believes very strongly in the right of self determination of every people.

So and this is the point now if you really come back to this perspective you have two very good desires and totally understandable and totally from the bottom of my heart I can say yes I agree. I'm with you and I support you in this desire…

And we have also to remember that the main the majority of the Christians are Palestinians here in the region also from that point.

So you have two big understandable desires and again, how should I choose now who I support and say these are the good guys and the bad guys…The problem is now, and I think this is in the war, the big problem, both are now wounded at the weakest point Israel faced. They are not secure, the 7th of October. It was a disaster for them because they were wounded at the most vulnerable point, because in my opinion their biggest dream is to be secure, to be safe.

And this was since 7th of October, not the case. And the Palestinians are now wounded on the weakest point, the freedom, because now they have to reduce the space in Gaza to the South. They have to leave their homes. They have to flee. So now they feel more like in like in a prison than ever before. So if you see now it's really traumatizing for both.

If you see you have two groups, one group is dreaming of security and one is dreaming of freedom. And now we are on a period, both lose. Exactly this. This is horrible for both.

I can only see a lose, lose situation. Both sides are losing now. There's no winner.

A peace that starts in the heart

…What's so horrible in this region is compromise has such a bad name…they're really happy not to make compromise and this is…with this attitude one is not able to live in in a marriage…One of the mysteries or secrets of a vocation…is to be able to make compromises. Because it's not about I, myself and me…This is what we learn in the monastery…

I'm not the dictator or the ruler of my monastery. We are especially in a monastic community. I can tell you we are very, very colorful characters. If it comes to politics, if it comes to theology, if it comes to many things. We are very diverse, but we live together and every day we gather around the altar. We eat from the same table of the Eucharist and we eat from the same table of the normal eating. And and this is one of the beauty because I could really say we are extremely diverse as a community.

But in front of God we say, OK, I'm not here because he's here or he's here. Now I'm here because I believe God called me in that community in that monastery. And I hope that together God will lead us into His Heavenly Father house and and the monastery. It's a good example because I'm not here because I'm a great fan of my brothers to say, Oh yes, this is exactly the dudes I like to hang. No, no, in normal life this would be not my friends so it's not but it's my it's my brothers and what connects us.

It's really the common desire seeking God and and for me I think yeah what's really our stance it's exactly to say if there is this hate, this misunderstanding, this black and white and this is what I love very much and the Rule of Saint Benedict Saint Benedict…

He wrote it in his rule not “If you want to become a monk, you should be very intelligent and clever and very faithful.’…He said ‘If one is knocking on the door and wants to become a monk, the novice master has only one big question: Is this human really seeking God? Searching for God.”

And this is not if he he's found God, if he knows who is God. No, it's a process of seeking and searching. It's a way because and this is what we have in all serious religions and I spoke a lot with my Jewish and Muslim friends. This is every really good high religion has this knowledge that we are poor sinners, that we are not perfect, that we really we have our dreams, we have our desires.

But then the reality we are sometimes too lazy, too arrogant…sometimes I have these good aspects. But sometimes really I think, oh, Nikodemus, why What have you done today? And then really to realize all of us and I'm the first, I need the mercy of God. I need the forgiveness of God. Because if God would be a just judge I could not…I'm, I'm lost. So really I need his mercy. I need that he starts every day from the new beginning with me and really helping me to to seeking him and so on and so on.

And this is we share with all religion and this gives you perspective of humbleness. And then if you know who you are, then who I am, that I play the judge over other humans and say, ah, you are good, you are bad. You are right, you're wrong. You are with dignity and you are an animal or monster…who I am?

…True religion is really if you have a prayer life, if you're really seeking God—and this is, again, I would say the people at 5:00 AM, it doesn't matter if Jew or Muslims or Christian. This prayer people, they really know that they are poor sinners. They know that they need the mercy of God, and they hope that God's mercy is bigger than our human acting.

…I would really want to mention this…The good thief so so the man who was crucified on the right hand of Jesus. And it's clear this was a heavy criminal. You're sure the Romans were not crucifying people who were pickpockets. So really I can guess maybe a murderer…who was canonized by Jesus himself who said “yes, today you will be with me in paradise” because he realized “oh I'm such a Sinner please have mercy with with me.”

…So people say, “Oh yes, thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers with the victims.”

I said OK, yes, you know, I am sure our God is full of mercy…But what, really, is in my thoughts? What about the murderers? What about the perpetrators? What about the people who kill now, who's praying for them? Because this is the most horrible thing you can do as a human being to end the life of another human being. And really, this is the moment you think, do you think he's really or she's really in heaven? You know how horrible is this sin? How horrible is this burden for your life when you realize you killed another human being?

And then I said, yes, let's really pray. And this I do every day now here in the monasteries community. Let's pray for the perpetrators, let's pray for the murderers. Because really that they find a merciful God. And first of all that they realize what they have done and that they really repent like the good thief, and that they befriend the merciful God.

Follow Abbot Nikodemus on Twitter and Instagram. Also check out our piece on the Impossible Yet Necessary Imperative to Make Peace.

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photo taken in the Holy Land.