Farewell speech for Professor Wolfram Reiss (University of Vienna)

I was born and raised in a conservative Christian Reformed family with beliefs such as the current state of Israel is the promised land for the Jews, negative perspectives on Islam, reading the Qur’an was wrong, the Catholic church had destroyed the true understanding of the Bible and the Catholic pope may be the anti-Christ. Thus, it was not strange for me to travel to Israel, the land favored by God, in 1974. I knew nothing of the country. After arrival, I felt lost at Tel Aviv airport which was seen by an elderly Jewish Israeli lady who took me to her home. I could stay here a week or so before I went to Kibbutz Gazit that I had signed up for.

In Israel, I discovered Palestinians and even Christian Palestinians, descendants of a church with roots in the first century. I came to know Fr. Elias Chacour, today Greek Catholic Archbishop of Galilee, who I invited to lecture about Jewish-Israeli-Palestinian peace in the Netherlands. Catholics were after all not as bad as I was taught. I visited the West Bank. My determination to work on peace-building was set.