That terrible morning in June 1967, not even the purported tomb of Jesus Christ could keep them safe.
Solomon John Mattar, a Palestinian Christian, had been caretaker of the Garden Tomb in East Jerusalem since 1953. Owned and maintained by British Anglicans, it is thought by some, especially evangelicals, to have been the site of Jesus’s resurrection. Most say it actually happened at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, inside the current walls of Old City. None of us, besides the risen Christ, knows for sure.
The Six-Day War, between Israel and its Arab neighbors, began on June 5. The shelling lasted all night. Solomon, his wife, Minerva, and a colleague hid in the holy cave itself. I’ve been there, as have many pilgrim readers, I’m sure. I took the second photo during my visit four years ago.
The next morning, June 6, 1967, the shells’ pounding abated. Instead, Solomon heard someone banging on the gate. When he opened it, Israeli soldiers, busy securing East Jerusalem from Jordanian control, shot him in the face. His last words were a polite “good morning.” Born in Cana of Galilee, educated in the U.S. and England, Solomon spoke in a thick British accent that Minerva loved when they first met in Haifa. When guests came from England, he loved to serve high tea. Minerva said later that he was friend to Jew and Arab alike.
I heard the story from the youngest of Solomon and Minerva’s eight children, Florence Mattar, a respected west side Realtor and member of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills. Sensing that war was coming, in 1966 Solomon had sent Florence and an elder sister to live in the U.S. They settled in Pasadena.
Florence was 16 when, on Father’s Day, the call came that their father was dead. After the war, the Israelis took the family home in Jerusalem. It took a decade of lawsuits to get it back. Florence majored in political science at Cal State University in Los Angeles and worked as a private investigator before finding her way to real estate. Her husband, Oscar, who died in 2018, was a lighting consultant at CBS who worked on “The Price Is Right” and other shows.
It was not easy being Palestinian in the sixties and seventies. Even now, Florence doesn’t always lead with it in conversation. She continues to be understandably troubled by the way most Americans and the media devalue or overlook the cause of Palestinian statehood.
Visiting a friend recently in Istanbul, although still a practicing Christian, she felt at home when she heard the Muslim call to prayer. It reminded her of Jerusalem, where the sound often mixes with church bells. It’s comforting when two or three faiths manage to live together for the sake of peace and justice. It may not be the way the politicians and warmongers want it. But it’s the way God wants it, even as the bombs fall again in the land of the holy one, drenching it with Jesus’s tears.