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Bethel’s hands-on approach to steering politics is one of the features that aligns the Church with a growing and influential revivalist movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation. Churches identified by religious scholars as part of the NAR movement, share a common goal of uniting the nation under a religiously-motivated doctrine known as the Seven Mountains Mandate. Each “mountain” represents a pillar of society that observant Christians should take an active role in shaping, including the areas of government; religion; media; business; education; family; arts and entertainment. While it qualifies as a church under tax law, Bethel is more than a religious institution. From Bethel’s educational institutes and media channels to its outsized role in city politics, the Church’s sprawling enterprise has already begun to create a blueprint for what a Seven Mountains future might look like.
A certain telling of the Pandit story at the onset of India’s counterinsurgency in the 1990s has captured the imagination of Indians in the subcontinent and beyond–one in which Hindus were simply the victims of genocidal Muslims. But this version is alienated from the political context of the popular uprising, and vests significant responsibility in Muslim civilians rather than in India’s complete destabilization of Kashmiri society. What can be observed, often by Pandits themselves, is that their community’s tragic dissolution has been wielded by Indian politicians and media to garner public support for the military occupation of Kashmir. Whatever should come after–resettlement or reconciliation–is beside the point. For the purposes of India’s military occupation of Kashmir, eternally dispossessed Pandits are far more valuable than ones who could be meaningfully reintegrated into their homeland.
We would be remiss to think of any graveyard as a dead space. Perhaps the greatest threat to the Zionist state is sewn into the earth beneath the treads of a tank—a network of social, political, and historical relations that challenge an exclusively Jewish civilizational claim over the whole of Palestine in the form of the burial ground. The subterranean targets of the IDF are both Hamas guerrillas and the deceased that Israel alleges are being used as human shields, even in death. The violation of the Bani Suheila cemetery and others like it is not merely collateral damage wrought by this latest war: the destruction of Palestinian graves was part and parcel to the violent founding of the Israeli state, and its continued encroachment onto the lands where Palestinians live and die.
“At most of the events was a company called My Home in Israel, brought along to showcase available properties in both Israel and the Palestinian territories it occupies: multiple units in a building near Givat HaMatos in East Jerusalem, townhouses in near Ari’el University in the heart of the West Bank, and a five-bedroom villa with a pool in the luxury enclave of Efrat south of Bethlehem. The latter apparently ‘transcends mere housing; it embodies architectural brilliance. Conceived by the esteemed architects at Shahar Ben Hamo, this project graces the slopes of Fig Hill, promising a setting of unrivaled serenity.’”
“The physical infrastructure of Israel’s occupation offers numerous visual symbols to represent life—and death—in the Palestinian territories: the wall surrounding Gaza, military checkpoints, Palestinian identification cards, the black tanks that collect rainwater atop Palestinian homes, and as of recently, ashen bodies excavated from rubble. But the cage that encircles Palestine goes beyond the visible. It also exists as a matrix of policies designed to cripple the Palestinian economy.”
“Towers of Silence, called dakhma in Farsi, are the architectural structures where Zoroastrians traditionally perform their final rites and where corpses are left to decompose under the sun. Historically, dakhmas were erected in places with sizable Zoroastrian communities — Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. As dictated by the Vendidad, a central text of Zoroastrianism, burying or cremating a body defiles the earth with dead matter. Towers of Silence, however, align with a core principle of Zoroastrianism: leave no trace on the Earth.”
Even After Death
“The detention of Palestinians after their deaths is a decades-old practice. The contours of the law that defines postmortem detention have changed dramatically since 1964, when the first Palestinian was buried in an unnamed grave in Israel’s infamous “Cemetery of Numbers. While Israeli courts have enshrined this practice in the language of maintaining security, bereaved families feel that they are being collectively punished. Human rights organizations cite postmortem detention as just one of many ways that Israel’s military apparatus extends its complete control over Palestinians, from the time they’re born to beyond their deaths.”
“‘In a way, it is God telling us that no matter how difficult it is, the miracle is still happening,’ he said. For those whose movement is restricted by the occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, receiving the flame bears profound meaning, as it literally transcends the checkpoints, soldiers, and separation walls that comprise Israel’s military apparatus. In Bethlehem, many Christians welcome the Holy Fire at the Church of the Nativity, built around the grotto where Christ was born.”
“Bluebook Cities’ first project is Praxis, which defines itself as “a grassroots movement of modern pioneers building a new city.” More plainly put, the society aims to create a community of members who will live in an autonomous charter-state built on a decentralized crypto economy “somewhere in the Mediterranean,” as Brown often repeats. The foundation of Praxis’s city will be a shared set of spiritual principles: physical health, an appreciation of beauty, and, principally, ‘the intangible pull of the frontier.’”