Dan Rodricks: A hope and prayer for Bassam Nasser, Catholic Relief worker in Gaza | STAFF COMMENTARY

I had not expected rosary beads. They were made of dark wood, hand-carved by women in the Gaza Strip, where Sunni Islam is the major religion. While prayer beads are found in several faiths, the string Bassam Nasser handed me, in December 2018, was distinctly Catholic, with a wooden cross attached.

He called it “the rosary of Bethlehem,” and said, “I hope the rosary of Bethlehem will keep an eye on you.”

I do not accept gifts from people I write about, following a wise and time-honored industry rule. But Nasser, at the time the manager of operations in Gaza for Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services, politely insisted and — mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa — the image of poor women carving rosary beads to earn some money poked the Catholic in me. I later placed the beads on my car’s rear-view mirror and, to assuage secondary guilt about breaking the no-gifts rule, made a donation to CRS.

Nasser was a deeply committed, hands-on humanitarian who worked closely with the poorest Palestinians in Gaza. I met him at CRS headquarters on Lexington Street while he visited Baltimore for the relief agency’s 75th-anniversary celebration.

But Nasser was not in a celebratory mood.

He was distraught over something neither he nor officials of other international aid organizations had expected — the sudden cutoff of millions in humanitarian dollars for the people of Gaza from the people of the United States.

This happened during the Trump administration, when the president’s wealthy son-in-law pushed for the end of humanitarian aid to Gaza as part of his plan to broker Israel-Palestine peace.

Broker peace by harming one side’s poorest citizens.

Oh, yeah. Great idea.

Close to 70% of CRS funding for its work in Gaza, about $50 million in grants over five years, came from the U.S.

Nasser saw the stark result of Trump’s cutoff in a CRS food program: Monthly vouchers to as many as 10,000 Palestinian households, most of them headed by women, dropped to 400 households and then to zero.

Prior to the cutoff, Palestinians had been receiving a plastic card with four words in Arabic: “From the American people.” The cards could be loaded each month with up to $70 for food. The Trump administration put a stop to it.

The cutoff in funding also stopped a modest program to reduce Gaza’s high unemployment rate: CRS had made $900 grants to help about 170 people start small businesses. The program funded a hair salon, a chicken farm, seamstresses and women who baked pastries and made maftool, the Palestinian couscous. (I think the rosary beads came from the same program or one similar to it.)

“Somebody doesn’t understand the mandate of our [programs],” Nasser said, noting that CRS stayed out of thorny Palestinian-Israeli politics. “We help vulnerable people, poor people in Gaza. I have no idea how helping vulnerable and needy families is not helping peace.”

In a follow-up email, he added: “We all need to work together to change the world, [and] that starts from your country.”

That was the last time I saw Nasser, but not the last I heard from him. In July 2019, after Trump’s disparagement of Baltimore — specifically, the congressional district of the late Rep. Elijah Cummings — as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live,” Nasser sent me an email. He was disturbed by Trump’s ugly rhetoric.

“I can only express solidarity with you and the citizens of Baltimore,” Nasser wrote. “I know how it is to live in a place where outsiders only see the negative parts and never allow themselves to witness the wonderful parts of the place.”

After President Biden’s inauguration, it took only a few months for the new administration to reverse Trump’s policy. In May 2021, the Biden administration restored $235 million in U.S. aid to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. I assumed that CRS and Nasser resumed the work they had started in Gaza.

Then came the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel, followed by Israel’s military response. Of course, I wondered if Nasser was safe. I inquired about him.

In late October, Megan Gilbert, a media representative of CRS, said she was in regular contact with Nasser and that he was “physically unharmed but I don’t think you can say that anyone in Gaza is ‘safe.’”

The work of CRS in providing food continues, she said, and this week the agency’s website includes a report on the fear of famine as a result of the Israeli attacks.

I emailed Nasser, not expecting a reply. But a brief one arrived on Oct. 31. “I am still in Gaza,” he wrote. “Fighting for my family, relatives, friends, community and myself … I was forced to leave my home under bombardment and have no idea what happened to it. Now living together with 5 other families in one apartment, with no electricity and very little quantity of water. Not knowing how this is going to end. May God help.”

I wrote Nasser again early Tuesday, amid reports of more attacks by Israel and the vow of its far-right prime minister to “deepen” the fighting.

As I file this column, I have not heard back.

So I will keep the rosary beads he gave me close at hand and hope for Nasser, as he did for me, that the rosary of Bethlehem keeps an eye on him.