This was also the scene of a mass slaughter during the battle—there are bullet holes in the door and you can see the marks of both swords and bullets on the tables.
And I had a hard time with that. I can understand wanting to memorialize what happened here, but this is still a working monastery. I imagine generations of monks eating at those tables, looking at the bullet holes, and it doesn't seem likely that they would have been filled with warm feelings for their fellow man.
It may be that I had been thinking too much about Gaza to feel comfortable with one more long-standing historical grudge, or to understand wanting to preserve every last bullet hole. Maybe how we remember is as important as what we remember.
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