the other weekend a group of friends and i made a long awaited pilgrimage of sorts to palestine’s only brewery! taybeh beer is brewed in taybeh, near ramallah. taybeh happens to be the only 100% christian town in the west bank. the friendly koury family runs the place. after leaving palestine and making it big in america, they were filled with optimism after the signing of the oslo peace accords in the early 90s, and decided to return to their homeland to start its first brewery. alas, retrospectively their political optimism may have been misplaced, but they’re not giving up.
mr. koury learned how to brew beer from americans who did it “in their bathtubs.” now his daughter is taking over the business. peaceful and pragmatic resistance, they like to call it. we got a personal tour of the brewery, and heard about the plethora of struggles presented by the occupation. things like only having access to running water two days each week, though the surrounding illegal israeli settlements get all the water they want 24/7. and the bureaucratic challenges in exporting palestinian product through israeli borders and ports, which is the only way to get anything out of the west bank. a popular beer from palestine clearly does not help israel’s rightist leadership propagate their preferred and disturbed narrative – which is that the west bank is economically stagnant and would be even worse off than it is without israeli “help,” and that pretty much everyone in the west bank is a fundamentalist islamist.
of course, a brewery in the west bank does face some resistance from the muslim majority in palestine, who aren’t exactly big beer fans. but the koury’s are adamant that the israeli occupation poses much bigger obstacles than does the muslim majority in the west bank, a sentiment shared by every palestinian christian i’ve ever spoken to. actually, there are significant numbers of relatively secular muslims who do enjoy the beer, and the palestinian authority even promotes the brewery as a tourist destination. it is also predictably popular among the international crowd – the one and only tony blair visited just a few days before us! due to the challenges of exporting beyond israel, most of the beer is sold in upscale establishments in tel aviv where it is purchased by leftist israelis who support the palestinian cause. we got to sample some product and chat about hops and occupation and boston, which is where the kourys lived in america before returning to palestine.
then we went to peter’s place, an atmospheric restaurant positioned at the highest point on the west bank. one can look out over amman, jerusalem and the dead sea as the sun is setting. and the food was amazing, it took us about five hours to eat! a must visit place if you ever find yourself in the area. taybeh also has an ancient church called st. georges that was built by the byzantines in the fifth century and rebuilt by crusaders in the twelfth. it is said that Christ spent some time there after raising lazarus from the dead. fascinatingly, this church is one of the few in the world where blood sacrifices continue on a regular basis. it is a syncretistic ritual that has its roots in ancient canaanite and pagan religions. they slaughter a sheep in the church and wipe the blood on the walls with their hands. 70-80 lambs per year, apparently.
we then hung out in ramallah for a while before heading back to israel. a day in the west bank never disappoints! a few weeks later we returned to partake in taybeh’s oktoberfest!
