And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice: "Eli, Eli, lama sabach-tha'ni?", that is, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
(Matthew 27:46)
Our delegation of eight American clergy and Christian relief specialists was already 30 minutes late for a 3 p.m. appointment in west Beirut, Lebanon, on June 4,1982. The itinerary called for us to visit a Palestinian orphanage in the densely populated Sabra refugee camp (one of three major camps ringing Beirut near the International Airport).
We pulled into the Beau Rivage Hotel at 3:05, realizing that our Palestinian guide had suggested we depart from the hotel at 2:30.1 urged everyone to change clothes and be prepared to leave within five minutes as I rushed throughout the lobby in search of our guide. Suddenly our hotel was violently shaken by a series of explosions. Even the Lebanese and Palestinian waiters, who had lived through much violence during the past seven years of the Lebanese Civil War and successive Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, looked bewildered as they encouraged everyone to take cover in the basement to avoid flying glass. One waiter yelled, "The Israelis are bombing, and it's very close! Hurry up!"
Standing in a crowded hallway in the hotel basement, I looked around and took note of the people. A Palestinian mother held two daughters by her side, and the three winced with each massive explosion. A young Palestinian woman, late in her pregnancy, sat on the bottom step of the stairway holding a small child at her bosom. Tears streamed down their faces, and the mother hugged the child even closer. Approximately 30-women of varying ages, having left their conference in the hotel, were scattered in various basement rooms as well as in the hallway. Finally, our American contingent stood motionless against the walls with their heads bowed, in a mixture of shock and disbelief. We all knew that Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon had been warning the world since last November that they would invade Lebanon, but many of us were ill-prepared for actually experiencing the nightmare of it firsthand.
I paused to reflect. This was the "ninth hour," on a Friday afternoon. Our spirits were dark with the sounds of death as U.S.-made F-16 jets rained terror around us with our own tax dollars, now converted into 2,000-pound block-buster bombs, cluster bombs, and incendiary phosphorus bombs. My inner spirit struggled to overcome the violence outside and the anxiety it produced inside me. I earnestly searched for a center within, a stillpoint to cope with the bombing which had lasted well over one hour. God gave me that stillpoint in a deep sense of solidarity with the suffering of Jesus on a Friday afternoon, on a Jerusalem hillside not far from where I was standing. With my Palestinian, Lebanese, and American sisters and brothers, whether in the hotel or in the refugee camp hit repeatedly by the F-16s, I was totally vulnerable to death.
Suddenly, there was a lull in the bombing. The F-16s had departed, at least for the moment. The Palestinian anti-aircraft guns, which are totally useless against the high-altitude jets, had also hushed. An audible sigh of relief could be heard up and down the hallway.
I rushed outside the hotel to see where the Israelis had struck. I peered over the wall of the hotel patio, and one of the waiters directed my eyes to the Sports Arena, and the refugee camps adjacent to it. Black clouds of smoke and flames billowed toward the heavens from these sites. I ran upstairs for a better vantage point and found four of our group, looking out an eighth-story window, photographing the bombed areas just seven blocks from where we stood. We could see flames belch forth from the stadium and camps, as ambulances raced toward the destroyed areas and medical teams pulled bodies from the wreckage.
But once again the demonic screech of F-16s could be heard as they raced in from the Mediterranean. Massive explosions resumed, as bombs hit directly upon medical personnel, journalists, and those who had either entered or had not yet abandoned the stadium. Someone commented, "When will they ever remember that the Israelis often strike again when the crowds gather?"
The second attack was more intense than the first, but shorter in duration. From our hotel we witnessed the incendiary phosphorus bombs which ignited just prior to hitting their targets. Bomb after bomb fell on the stadium, the adjacent camps, and the apartment buildings. I later learned the term "carpet bombing" for this type of an operation, which systematically levels a section of the city block by block.
Early the next morning, I met our Palestinian who was unusually downcast. He shared with overwhelming concern that the long-awaited Israeli invasion had begun. There had been massive Israeli bombing raids throughout the night in south Lebanon, and the PLO had shelled the northern settlements in retaliation.
Pondering these concerns in our hearts, we headed for two Red Crescent Society hospitals. As we entered Gaza Hospital in Sabra refugee camp, we were met by a group of men, all of whom had wives or children in the hospital. I will never forget the face of an elderly man who stopped our group and asked the embarrassing question: "Are you Americans?" With sadness, someone in our group admitted, "Yes, we are." He responded, "I have a message for your President Reagan. Tell him he is killing innocent civilians. Tell him one of his bombs wounded my wife. Tell your government they are giving bombs to Begin who is a murderer. Doesn't your government know any better?"
His wrinkled face reflected a mixture of anger and despair. God only knows what he had suffered. Like most Palestinians in Lebanon, he was becoming a refugee for the third time, having lost his home in Palestine in 1948, and having again been uprooted during the Lebanese Civil War.
We entered the hospital and visited many victims of the previous day's bombing. The nurses then pointed to a tiny baby who they estimated was two months old. Her parents had not been located. The nurse pointed out that her arm had been broken and was in a tiny cast. Then her blanket was pulled back, and we were told that a portion of her back and rump had been blown off.
Our next stop was Akka Hospital, the primary medical center for the refugee camps. As we pulled up to the hospital's gates, another bombing raid commenced, within a half mile of where we stood. Medics rushed us into the basement as the walls shook from the bombs. Several premature babies and the most serious cases were wheeled downstairs in a flurry of activity, which had undoubtedly been repeated on innumerable occasions.
Somebody directed us to follow, and he took us to the main emergency receiving area where the initial victims were arriving by ambulance. We remained in the emergency area for three hours. Rather than describe each case, I will mention only the tragedy of the United Nations bus. The bus had been traveling south on the coastal road, which was jammed with the usual Saturday morning traffic. At 11:50 a.m., the bus received nearly a direct hit. Nineteen teenage girls were killed instantly. The remaining 16 began to arrive in successive ambulances.
An ambulance screeched to a halt, and three stretchers were rushed down the stairs carrying the girls. Their charred and mangled bodies moved quickly past us, and our heads dropped in grief. A lump filled my throat, and tears came to my eyes. Our medical team was pressed into service to lend whatever skills they could offer in this desperate situation.
Another ambulance arrived, and four or five teenagers were carried in on stretchers. The first girl appeared so mangled that I am not certain all of her extremities were present. Another lay limp, with a dusty look of death on her face, her eyes wide open. Two others were carried in at a slower pace; the blankets were pulled over their heads, as they had died en route to the hospital.
By this time, several family members had arrived and were sitting directly across from us. Two teenage boys sat with their heads buried in their hands, crying: they had just learned that their sister was one of the girls who died en route to the hospital.
But the most painful moments of the afternoon were still to come: three mothers had arrived with family members, following the next ambulance. Three of the four bodies in the ambulance arrived with the blankets pulled over their faces. One of the three was 16-year-old Saidi Sayed. As long as I live, I will be haunted by the piercing screams and wailing of her mother and eldest sister.
The sister, a beautiful young woman, cried and yelled out to the heavens, and then tried to break through the medics at the doorway. She wanted to see Saidi. The more they restrained her, the more intense her struggle. The medics were gentle with her, but held their ground. She was taken to her mother and people who appeared to be her aunts: they held her as she lay across the laps of three women. All were crying and wailing laments as they caressed her.
Then it hit the mother, who jumped to the ground and wailed in Arabic: "Saidi, my baby Saidi. Saidi, my baby. Saidi." She screamed, "Why, oh why, Allah!" Her hands repeated a rapid clapping above her head after each piercing lament. She also attempted to reach Saidi in the second room to my left, which was now filled with the bodies of dead girls from the bus.
The sister, now overcome with emotion and grief, ran to the stairs and screamed the high-pitched, rapid staccato yell one hears in Arab funerals or celebrations. My stomach was in knots. A clergyman from Seattle was crying his eyes out, while another became ill.
The young woman collapsed from exhaustion, and friends held her gently. The mother, still crying, was now in a sitting position beneath the steps. She was lifted quickly as the next ambulance arrived, and five dead bodies were carried out before us in bloody bags made from sewn sheets.
The descent of the Palestinian people into the hell which has been west Beirut marks the crucifixion of a people. As a Christian I must remain open for a note of hope and grace where there is nothing but darkness and carnage. I have found these words from Thomas Merton to be a ray of light during these tragic days:
Hope then is a gift. Like life, it is a gift from God, total, unexpected, incomprehensible, undeserved. It springs out of nothingness, completely free. But to meet it, we have to descend into nothingness. And there we meet hope most perfectly, when we are stripped of our own confidence, our own strength, when we almost no longer exist. "A hope that is seen, "says St. Paul, "is no hope." The Christian hope that is "not seen " is in the agony of Christ.
(The New Man)
Jesus Christ, a Palestinian Jew, calls us into his agony, to travel a road of compassionate justice with both Palestinian Arab and Jewish people today.
Donald Wagner was a Presbyterian minister and national director of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign when this article appeared.
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