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Full text of the petition:
During the Christmas just past, most of us will have sung:
“Oh, little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie” or
“o come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem”
But Bethlehem has not lain still for many years and few people want to go there anymore. Sadly, many of those who sang those lines prefer to think about a dreamy Christmas pageant Bethlehem over the stark reality that their holy land is a place besieged.
In today’s Bethlehem the most prominent landmark is not the Church of the Nativity or Shepherds’ Fields. It is the Wall - a 20 foot concrete barrier that separates the Palestinian territory of the West Bank from the state of Israel. The Wall is an obscene symbol of a brutal military occupation that invades and assaults the lives of 2.5 million Palestinian people and separates them from life.
We are people of the Episcopal Church who have learned some truths about Palestine and Israel and have tried to speak out about the decades of massive and egregious injustices thrown down upon Palestinians. We have learned these things from time spent in Bethlehem and Palestine, from contact and friendships with Palestinians, from shared meals and the hospitalities of their homes, churches, mosques and shops. We have wept with them and railed with them against the injustice.
But when we have come home from our time in Palestine and Israel and sought to share our understanding and experiences we realized that our understanding often differs from commonly held perceptions and misinformation about the region. Moreover, we have been too often rebuffed, put off, patronized, and scolded by our Church for our efforts. We perceive that the Church is reluctant to hear us because the truth we bring home from Palestine/Israel is an inconvenient one. It is not in line with the dominant narrative and it forces confrontation with a troubling reality: that the occupying power over Palestinians is a state of Israel that does not comport with their myth of Israel. This truth about the occupation disturbs the ecumenical expediency that some have chosen.
We write this today to widely share what we have learned in our time in Palestine/Israel, and to call people of the Church to rebuff what is merely convenient and stand with us against injustice.
We have learned that the occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza were imposed by military force without provocation from Palestinians. We know that the occupation and blockade are strangleholds on Palestinian lives maintained by massive military might over powerless and disenfranchised people. We understand that the occupation and blockade are not intended to establish either Israeli security or Palestinian independence, but are ruthlessly constructed to gain land and authority by disrupting and degrading Palestinian life and society. Our witness on the ground over many years and from many perspectives has shown us the tools of occupation and blockade:
We have learned that “negotiations” and “the peace process” are cynical charades intended to perpetuate the status quo. The only process going on is a rapacious diplomatic abuse of Palestinian integrity by powerful Israeli and US governments who pursue geopolitical gains at the cost of human life and dignity. The fine print of “generous offers” to Palestinians so touted in western media reveals that such offers are in fact attempts to institutionalize the occupation by creating a Palestinian state with no control of its air, sea or land borders, no control of its electronic telecommunications system, continued Israeli military presence on the borders and within the state, maintenance of settlements, and no sovereignty in its rightful capital Jerusalem. No responsible or right-thinking person would accept such a “generous” offer.
We have also seen that some Palestinians resist these crimes and atrocities with violence. We are unafraid to acknowledge that this episodic violence of resistance pales beside the brutal, relentless violence of the occupation -violence that is without limits and does not demure to slaughter hundreds of children in Gaza.
We have learned that the violence from the occupier is not intended to gain security or self defense but instead is the means to maintain the occupation. International law decrees that such violence by occupier toward the subject population is not self defense; indeed, the occupier is obligated to ensure the safety and well being of the subject population.
Furthermore, even when the resistance to occupation is armed, we have learned that United Nations resolutions affirm “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, particularly armed struggle.” We do not condone or support or wish to beget violence but we urge people of the church to realize that there is a context for events in Palestine and Israel that must be understood to find where justice lies.
These things we have witnessed and learned are the facts of life for Palestinians today, including the Christian Palestinians who are not exempted or privileged in any way. Yet we fear that our Church appears to find these facts inconvenient. We see a false piety seeping into our church that values a nice smile, a gentle voice, and “gracious” speech over difficult or troubling truth. We see church leaders who shy away from certain subjects that are “uncomfortable” to their own or parishioners’ held beliefs. We see a Church that values placid relations with community synagogues and Jewish leaders over speaking out for justice. We are told that this is the way of the world.
We proclaim that the ways of the world are not the ways of Jesus. And so we reach out to people of the church to join us in the following calls:
We call on people of the Church to recover the authentic Jesus - the Jesus who decried injustice, whose faith was action and not words, who spoke the truth as he knew it and stood boldly by it in the face of discomfort or displeasure of listeners.
We call on baptized people of the Church to recall that their covenant to strive for justice and respect dignity is for all people whether they are familiar to us or not. We will not participate in dismembering the body of Christ and we call on people of the Church to join us.
We call on deacons, priests, bishops and national leaders to prayerfully reflect on whether a community that stifles some voices and privileges others is truly a life-giving and fruitful community.
We call on people of the Church to honor our Jewish foundation and to affirm the great wrong of the Holocaust, but to also acknowledge that for Israel to carry that tragedy to punish Palestinians is maladaptive and destructive. Let those who yearn for “balance” come to terms with the hard truth that there is no balance in the face of injustice. Who would call for balance regarding slavery, segregation, or pogrom? In Palestine and Israel the injustice flows in only one direction.
We call on people to deplore violence but to refute the biased view that violent acts by Israelis are isolated bad-apple incidents but violence by Palestinians is typical and systemic.
We call on people to resist religious bullying that extorts silence against injustice for the sake of an ecumenical deal. We call on people of the church to deflect the unfounded and empty innuendo of anti-Semitism with resolute pursuit of the justice imperative. We call on people to face the truth that the goal of Zionism is to seek hegemony over the land and is not according to Judaic ideals.
We call on people of the Church to read, reflect, and study the Kairos Palestine Document supported by patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem in 2009 and the Call to Action: US Response to the Kairos Palestine Document:
As individuals and as church institutions, we have supported a system of control, inequality and oppression through misreading of our Holy Scriptures, flawed theology and distortions of history. We have allowed to go unchallenged theological and political ideas that have made us complicit in the oppression of the Palestinian people. Instead of speaking and acting boldly, we have chosen to offer careful statements designed to avoid controversy and leave cherished relationships undisturbed.
On a night in November 1947, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians went to sleep in their beds in their homes in traditional Palestine, in homes that had in some cases been theirs for dozens of generations. When they woke in the morning, they learned that they were no longer home, that their homes and land had been taken from them by the fledgling United Nations in New York to give to others. In the ensuing decades those Palestinians and their descendants have become refugees; been forced into exile; forced to live under military occupation; lost freedom, homes, jobs, education, opportunities; been beaten, imprisoned, murdered; been blamed for their own ordeal and accused of violence and terrorism; and most tragically, been abandoned by Christians whose Lord calls them to stand for justice and dignity.
It is time to end these injustices.
EPF Palestine Israel Network Steering Committee
(Diocese listed where signers live or work)
Shannon Berndt, Central Pennsylvania
Ann Coburn, California
Linda Gaither, Central New York
Brian Grieves, Hawaii
Donna Hicks, North Carolina
Allison Liles, Virginia
Mary Morris, Oregon
Cabell Tennis, Olympia
Will Wauters, West Texas
Founding members, former steering committee members, work group members
(Diocese listed where signers live or work)
Kathleen Christison, Rio Grande
Rebecca Fadil, New York
Bo Fauth, Massachusetts
Harry Gunkel, West Texas
Constance Hammond, Oregon
Kerith Harding, Hawaii
Edward LaMonte, Alabama & Central Gulf Coast
Ruth Bradbury LaMonte, Alabama & Central Gulf Coast
Jim Lewis, West Virginia
Ann Hume Loikow, Washington
Mary H. Miller, Maryland
Grace H. Said, Washington
Newland Smith, Chicago
Maurine Tobin, Maine
Robert W. Tobin, Maine
Richard Toll, Oregon
Thomas L.Trueblood, North Carolina
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This is an eloquently stated message that I hope all Episcopalians will read and respond to with enthusiasm. Having spent some time in the Aida Camp in Bethlehem, I've seen the truth that is spoken here, and it grieves me that our church avoids a clear statement in response to the oppression that continues.
The damage that Israel is doing to Palestine is unspeakable. The Zionists are also damaging the Judaic tradition and the souls of Israelis. God is grieving. It is a sin to grieve God.
The chasm between this narrative and the ever-so-cautiously crafted narrative adopted by our institutional church is breathtaking. It is witness, once again, of God's promise that He would raised up prophets from among the people. God did not and does not place much stock in institutions. Nor should we. But we should indeed be faithful in calling institutions (which, after all, are our own creation) to account when they fail to confront injustice, oppression, violence to any and all people.
A wonderfully clear and urgent statement that will, I hope, become a landmark. I would have welcomed an endosement of BDS. Also needed
is a plan of action to force attention to the statement (Kingean coercion) in our dioceses and at General Convention. Could such a plan enlist the participation of Jewish Voice for Peace? JVPhas itsnational meeting in Baltimore in a few weeks.
Steve France, EPF PIN and the EPF NEC have endorsed BDS. Here's the link: http://epfnational.org/PIN/epfpin-steering-committee-bds-endorsement/
There was a JVP presence at the 2012 General Convention and the GC2015 work group continues planning for GC2015 where we hope to have representation from organizations & colleagues who support BDS.
Check out other posts in the Community section on resolutions passed this round at diocesan conventions in California, Oregon and Hawaii.
Hi Donna,
The diocese of washington (dc) just passed a weak resolution, but we do have some staunch types here. I will keep you posted. Maybe i will go to the general convention. Wildman and farah are coming wed to the paleztine center to discuss church and bds....
A wonderfully clear and urgent statement that will, I hope, become a landmark. I would have welcomed an endosement of BDS. Also needed
is a plan of action to force attention to the statement (Kingean coercion) in our dioceses and at General Convention. Could such a plan enlist the participation of Jewish Voice for Peace? JVPhas itsnational meeting in Baltimore in a few weeks.
Thank you for this clear and powerful statement of the truth. Our church must address this injustice, as we must also confront the continuing effects of racism throughout the country.
Excellent statement. It is refreshing to see Episcopalians following God's leading--and leading the way for others.
Blessings of peace,
Paul
Congratulations on this statement! I wish the Australian Anglican Church, to which I belong, would follow your example.
This is a passionate and eloquent statement of the truth which we
have witnessed in almost annual visits to Palestine since 1991.
This is an excellent statment and provides striking contrast to the tepid response of Episcopal leadership to this issue.
Amen!!
This is such a well-written document--thank you! I just wish we'd had it before our recent Diocese of Virginia Council (soon to be renamed Convention!)
It’s nice that the Episcopalian-led interfaith group went to the Holy Land – just in time to avert failure to meet the mandate of Convention 2012’s Resolution B019. Unfortunately, on the basis of the ENS report on their tour, whatever the delegation members saw and heard failed to stir them to speak candidly -- let alone courageously – about what Israel’s occupation is doing to the people and land of Palestine. Particularly unfortunate is the apparent failure of our Church’s representatives to sense how their enabling of Israel’s behavior is demeaning our faith, turning it from a force for present justice to an instrument for future “salvation.”
In the Old Testament reading for Sunday, February 1, the Lectionary prescribed Deuteronomy 18:15-20, an excerpt from Moses’ final message to Israel, in which he quoted the Lord: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. . . .”
Moses’s words may have been chosen to foreshadow the future Jesus, the Prince of Peace. But in Biblical history, Moses’ successor was Joshua, who led the Israelites across the Jordan to the conquest presaged a few verses later in Deuteronomy 19:1-2: “When the Lord your God has cut off the nations whose land the Lord your God is giving you, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their towns and in their houses. . . .”
More than three millennia ago, Moses’ Lord directed just what Israelis of today have been doing to the Palestinians. The Lectionary doesn’t give us those words.
The starkness of the choice now before Israel – and before our Church – was stated by a latter-day Jewish prophet, Rabbi Judah Magnes, during the early days of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. Magnes, a world-class scholar and leader of the American Jewish community, emigrated to Palestine in 1923. He was a founder and first president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and while he was an ardent supporter of a Jewish home in Palestine (in days long before the Holocaust) he was an equally ardent advocate of full rights and comity between Jews and all other residents of the Holy Land.
In late 1929, at a time of rising tensions, Magnes was asked by Chaim Weizmann, the future first president of Israel, for his advice. Magnes, in a long letter of Sept. 7, 1929, put it in a nutshell: “The question is, do we want to conquer Palestine now as Joshua did in his day – with fire and sword? Or do we want to take cognizance of Jewish religious development since Joshua – our Prophets, Psalmists and Rabbis, and repeat the words: ‘Not by might, and not by violence, but by my spirit, saith the Lord.’”
Thank you for this sorely-needed petition to the National church and all Christians everywhere. We will support it 100% with our Companion Diocese Committee for Jerusalem activities in Washington DC and our many colleagues throughout the area and the nation.
A good letter. Where, however, is there mention of BDS? As James Michie pointed out, BDS are nonviolent tools for conflict resolution. As a member of EPF which is committed to nonviolence, I support BDS and practice boycott in my personal life already as well as support for Palestinian made goods, such as olive oil, although it is considerably more expensive than olive oil from other sources. Did I miss the reference to BDS? I also need to comment on the surprising fact that at least 2 members of the Palestinian Partnership did not support BDS at last month's diocesan convention. Without it, what is the point of this appeal by PIN?
Helma, both the EPF NEC and PIN endorsed Palestinian Civil Society's call to BDS several years ago (note the link in the reply to Steve France) and BDS is called for in the Kairos Palestine document. So it seems to me that the call to BDS is implicit in this letter which is a response coming out of the recent interfaith model pilgrimage organized by the Presiding Bishop and her staff.
[…] Peace Fellowship’s Palestine Israel Network argues that there needs to be more than interfaith pilgrimages if peace is to come to the Holy […]
Easily overlooked has been the fact that the seven members of the Episcopalian delegation on the recent interfaith pilgrimage included the PB, 4 members of her staff, and 2 others. That is hardly a group that can said to be representative of the Episcopal Church.