Brian J. Grieves
All ten dioceses that considered this resolution adopted it. We believe we have this broad grassroots support because it is a thoughtful and even modest resolution. We deliberately wanted a resolution that would unify the Convention while, at the same time, recognize that our Church has engaged the pursuit of justice for all the peoples of the Holy Land for 33 years. Let me make some clarifying comments.
First: We know that our Church is deeply divided over the issue of Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions. That is why this resolution doesn’t even mention the word divestment but embraces the existing policy of corporate engagement and calls for greater implementation. We have a serious social responsibility as a Church to make sure that our significant equity investments do not contribute to the suffering of an oppressed people anywhere, including those living under the Occupation. That is our responsibility, no one else’s. That’s our money, no one else’s. We ask whatever happens at this Convention, we remain faithful to the stewardship of our financial investments. As stated, that policy is already in place, but what we are asking is not for reaffirmation of this and other advocacy policies, but rather we are asking for a deliberate plan of implementation of what already exists. Take away the development of such a plan and the Convention might as well not have spoken at all.
Secondly: Those who say that reading or studying Kairos Palestine amounts to an endorsement of BDS are floating a red herring. BDS is one paragraph of a 16 page document. Wordsmith this resolve anyway you like to make clear that reading or studying Kairos is not a call for divestment or an endorsement of its contents. But it is a call to hear the cry of 2,797 Palestinian Christians who have signed Kairos as of July 2. We show enormous disrespect by refusing to read what grassroots Palestinians have said. And doing so will cause a deep hurt amongst those 1,000’s of Palestinians. One of the authors wrote to us this week and said please tell us where we are at fault and we will respond. But how can we do that if we refuse to read it. We can argue the contents after we’ve read it. Let’s not ignore the baptized. Encourage the grassroots here to dialogue with the grassroots there.
Thirdly: In addition to developing a plan of advocacy, we believe the Church needs to engage this issue at every level through a program of study that will help us all move forward in an informed way. Steadfast Hope is one resource. But it is not meant to be exclusive. By all means, name additional resources. And let interfaith dialogue be a part of that process. But remember that Steadfast Hope consciously presents a Palestinian perspective, which is rarely heard in our nation’s discourse. This is a gift our Church can offer.
Fourthly: We support completely the wonderful humanitarian work of the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem and also economic investment as long as it can be demonstrated that such investments do not further entrench the Occupation.
Lastly: While C-067 avoids the issue of divestment, B010 outright rejects it. I appeal to you that this Church is too divided over this issue to either adopt or reject it. Either way we know there would be great pain. Let’s not hurt each other. Let’s honor one another and find a unifying way to move forward, boldly, on 33 years of faithful witness for justice by this Church on this tragic conflict. Thank you.
Mark Braverman
Thank you for welcoming me and allowing me to offer this testimony.
My name is Mark Braverman. I am an American Jew. I serve on the Advisory Board of Friends of Sabeel North America and the Board of The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions USA. I come in support of resolution CO64 and the resolutions that follow that template.
As a Jew I pray that by the grace of God that my people will someday come to understand, repent, and forgive ourselves for what we have done to the Palestinian people in our pursuit of a national homeland and refuge. But I have not come to talk about the challenge to the Jewish people. I have come to talk about the challenge to the church.
The church today is called to take a bold, prophetic stance for justice in Palestine, justice that alone will bring peace and security to all the peoples of the land. The Episcopal church has a proud history of taking such stands on a host of urgent human rights issues confronting our society in recent history. It was one of the first to do so in the struggle against South African Apartheid.
The resolution before you commends two documents for study by members of the Episcopal Church: the Kairos Palestine document, “A Moment of Truth: a cry of faith, hope and love from the hearth of Palestinian suffering,” and “Steadfast Hope: the Palestinian quest for a just peace.” Both documents provide a vivid and faithful witness to the facts on the ground in Israel and Palestine, and make reference to the Palestinian call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions as a legal and nonviolent method of resistance and change. To omit the reference to these documents, as the alternative resolution does, amounts to a silencing of the voices of the American Christian authors of Steadfast Hope and the Palestinian Christian authors of Kairos Palestine. Particularly in the case of the Palestinian document, this direct and explicit omission amounts to censorship. Given the urgency, eloquence, and theological beauty of their call, I consider that this direct and intentional omission to be a sin. I must also add that I challenge anyone to find anything in the Kairos document that attacks the existence of the state of Israel, questions the connection of the Jewish people to the land, or says that God no longer loves the Jewish people.
There is an elephant in the room and I want to name it. The reluctance to hear these voices and to advocate for even a hearing on the question of boycotts and divestment is not because of any question about the facts of the situation. It arises, rather, from fear about the impact on Christian-Jewish relations on both institutional and personal levels. This is the issue that has dominated the discussion, here as well as in the other denominations that have taken up the issue, notably the Presbyterian and Methodist churches. It is the elephant in the room.
We must name this issue because it stands in the way of the church’s faithful action here. This cause has nothing to do with the Christian project to reconcile with the Jewish people for centuries suffering at the hands of the church. It is, rather about being faithful Christians. It is about Jesus standing before the Temple and saying that this system of oppression must be replaced with God’s Kingdom of love, compassion, and equality. Vigilance against anti-Semitism, like fighting all forms of racism, continues to be important, and Christianity has much to answer for in this regard – but taking on the cause of justice in Palestine is not about loving the Jewish people. It is, rather, about putting your own house in order. It is, as those Christians who put their lives and fortunes on the line in the Anti-apartheid and Civil Rights struggles demonstrated, about being true to the fundamental values of their faith. Faced with injustice, they had to ask themselves, are we with Jesus or not? And if not, what must we do about that?
If you would love the Jewish people, then love us properly. Love us in the way you loved the people of South Africa, black and white both. Tough love is not easy, and it is not comfortable. Discipleship is not easy, and it is not comfortable. It is in times like these that we do well to call to mind the words of Martin Luther King Jr. from his jail cell in Birmingham Alabama:
The judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.
Michael Berg
Hello. My name is Michael Berg. I am a Jewish member of the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee and I have come here to testify in support of all C resolutions titled: Pursuing a Just Peace in the Palestine / Israeli Conflict.
Last summer I had the opportunity to visit Israel and the Occupied West Bank. What I saw was a shocking system where land, water and basic freedom of movement were distributed according to race. I stayed in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, literally in the shadow of a giant wall which separates the city from Jerusalem. Bethlehem is thirsty because its water has been stolen for use in Israeli settlements.
It is an Apartheid system in which Israeli Jews have privileges at the expense of the native Palestinian Christian and Muslim community. I am one of a large and growing number of American Jews who see it as my duty to speak resolutely against this unjust system that is perpetuated in our name.
This is why I support these resolutions that tackle the root causes of the conflict and promote the ideas of Palestinian Christians found in the Kairos document. The problems in the Holy Land are political. Investments and charity for Palestinians living under occupation at best helps a few people but does nothing to address these problems.
Palestinians need change, not charity. We need systematic change – this why I support of all C resolutions titled: Pursuing a Just Peace in the Palestine / Israeli Conflict.
Michael Davis
Shalom Aleichem, Peace to you from the Rabbinical Council of Jewish Voice for Peace. I am Cantor Michael Davis, clergy in the Jewish Reform synagogue. The Rabbinical Council of Jewish Voice for Peace is a growing community of Jewish clergy committed to the rabbinic tradition of peace.
To be a rabbinic Jew - to be a Jew - is to embrace the path of peace in our communities here in the U.S. as in the Holy Land. The Talmud teaches us to turn away from the wars of the Bible, from Joshua’s battles of conquest of the Land of Canaan. Jewish tradition spurns the warlike Maccabeans.
I speak as an Israeli. I did military service in Israeli army. I was stationed on a military base on the West Bank outside the Palestinian village of Anata and the Jewish settlement of Anatot on the West Bank. I guarded convoys in the Gaza Strip.
I was a settler. I grew up within walking distance of Jesus’s birthplace in Bethlehem.
As an Israeli soldier and as a settler, I know the occupation from within. I know as you know that it is evil. It is racist. It is not Jewish. And I call on you to proclaim today that it is not Christian.
At the request of Archbishop Theodosius of Jerusalem I translated Kairos Palestine document into Hebrew. I urge you to study this Christian message of peace and justice that unifies Palestinian Christians. I urge you as leaders of the Episcopal Church to join with Israelis and American Jews in standing in solidarity with Palestinians * Christians and Muslims * in their quest for justice and peace.
Jewish Voice for Peace calls on you to take the strongest position you can to align the Episcopal Church with the path of peace - to act in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Cotton Fite
My name is Cotton Fite. I am a priest associate at St. Luke’s Church, Evanston in the Diocese of Chicago. I am a strong supporter of the Diocese of Jerusalem’s missions and ministries and a passionate advocate for the courageous non-violent struggle for justice being waged by Israeli Jews and Palestinians, Palestinian Muslims and Christians. With them I believe this continuing Occupation of another people is sinful, and I believe we are complicit. I see support of the Diocese of Jerusalem's ministries and a robust advocacy for justice as entirely complimentary commitments.
My experience is that most Episcopalians lack a full understanding of the Palestinian narrative, the destructive nature of the Occupation and the reasons it persists.
The heart of this resolution is education -- to convey as full and complete a picture of the situation as possible -- so Episcopalians can make up their own minds about who and what to support financially and what strategies for advocacy will most effectively fulfill our baptismal vow to strive for justice and peace among all people.
There are many educational resources available. None are devoid of a “point of view”, and we should draw upon many. We commend the study of Steadfast Hope because it is honest, describes the strong presence of the Anglican church in the Middle East and presents a narrative few Episcopalians have heard. Upon reading it, a priest in the Diocese of Chicago testified at our diocesan convention, “the scales fell from my eyes.”
We commend the study of Kairos Palestine because it is the voice of Palestinian Christians devoted to justice and peace. In response to Kairos, Bishop Suheil and the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem formally acknowledged they heard “the cry of hope that our children have launched in these difficult times.” We should do no less.
We will not all share the same “point of view,” but, given the chance, Episcopalians will become a more effective witness with a fuller understanding of the injustice that grows more entrenched, more destructive every day.
Stephen Denny
I stand in favor of the resolution drafted by the Palestine Israel Network and passed in ten diocese of The Episcopal Church.
In January 2003, Desmond Tutu changed the course of my life saying “I want you all to know the Palestinian people have it far worse than we ever did under Apartheid in South Africa. If we don’t pay attention now, there will be no Palestinians, because they will have no place to call home.” I made my first trip to Israel and the Occupied Territories two months later. Since then, I have worked to understand the Palestinian Israeli conflict and bring it to a just, peaceful end.
At yesterday’s General Convention reception honoring Bishop Suheil Dawani, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said: “Our job is to be supportive of people on the ground there.”
I last visited the Holy Land in September 2011. As I traveled through the occupied territories and the Christian areas of Israel, I made a habit of asking the people on the ground how I, the church, or the People of the United States could help them. The vast majority asked me to educate the people as to what was happening to them and to get US policies changed. Some indicated they felt abandoned by US churches.
I have used both Kairos Palestine and Steadfast Hope as educational tools and found the information contained in them to be accurate, verifiable and affective. The grass roots Palestinian Christian community that prayerfully wrote Kairos is depending on us to study their work in order to hear their cry for hope. Doing less would be an injustice. Jesus worked for justice for the oppressed and so must we.
Grace Saïd
I speak to you today as a Palestinian Christian born into a Jerusalem family with deep ties to the Anglican Church in Jerusalem.
It is not an illuminating observation to state that the Palestinian narrative has little place in the US public sphere. Palestinians are generally regarded as suspect and perpetually seen either through the prism of terrorism or from the perspective of Israel. Take the word nakba - it translates as catastrophe and is used by Palestinians – young and old, rich and poor, Muslim and Christian – to explain the single most important event in our collective past, the displacement that followed the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, when Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes. Until very recently nakba was not a term commonly known in the US. Now when it is used it is defined, more often than not, as the Palestinian reaction to the creation of Israel rather than the reaction to our dispossession.
I mention this because these resolutions -- by highlighting the Kairos document and Steadfast Hope – acknowledge Palestinian voices, providing them with a context obscured by the din of American politics and media inadequacies. By including such voices we are also accomplishing what my brother Edward Said referred to as a “permission to narrate.”
Robert Tobin
My wife and I have been traveling to Palestine for more than 17 years. We have led 20 groups to see the realities on the ground. We have taken two groups of Bishops, three groups of college students, and international and U.S. groups. We lived in Jerusalem for nine months in 2005. We have watched the noose around the Palestinian people tighten year by year.
Often when we returned and reported our observations we were called liars. “Israel would not do those things you report.”
I beg to differ.
We have seen the settlements steal more and more land while Israeli governments have systematically squeezed the life out of Palestinian communities.
We have visited many of the destroyed villages that deprived hundreds of thousands of their homes.
We sat with families on the rubble of their just-destroyed homes.
We sat with families on the street who were driven by gunpoint from their homes by settlers and the military in East Jerusalem.
We watched the building of the 25-foot wall that destroyed families, schools and hopes.
We have seen the destruction and pollution of wells and streams in villages leaving them to buying their own water from the Israelis at 4 times what Israelis pay.
We stood with farmers who watched their olive trees cut down leaving them with no income.
We saw the poison pellets the settlers used to poison sheep in a south Hebron village.
We have been gassed along with villagers who tried to reach their own fields and have been killed and beaten for trying.
I could go on. Many of you know about these things. If you don’t you need to know. But more importantly our Church needs to know.
The resolutions we offer simply provide a way to know about the realities through two study documents. The Kairos document is plea for us to hear the realities and listen to the Palestinian Christian perspective on the Occupation and how it affects both the Palestinian and Israeli communities. Steadfast Hope offers a glimpse of what many of us here have seen and prayed over.
Not to hold up these documents before the Church is to keep from our people knowing and considering for themselves what the Palestinian people want us to know and consider. We should not insult their intelligence by denying what they should study.
Tom Trueblood
My name is Tom Trueblood. I’m a member of Church of the Advocate in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the Diocese of North Carolina. I’m a member of the Palestine-Israel Network of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship and one of those who conspired to write that wicked resolution. I’m 68 years old, and I’ve been an Episcopalian all my life.
At this point I’m going to set aside what I had intended to say to you in my prepared testimony, because others before me have said what I was going to say much better than I can. Instead, I’d like to address some of the outrageous things I have heard some people say today, things I don’t want to let go unchallenged.
The first thing is the underlying assumption by some of the speakers that we are dealing with a situation where there are two sides with equal power, so all we need to do is to get them to sit down together and talk. This is preposterous. The plain reality is that Israel holds all the power in this situation, and the Palestinians are completely powerless.
The second thing I heard was that we need to put our priority on helping the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem. Well, this is a no-brainer. Of course, we should help our brothers and sisters in the Church. But Anglicans in the Holy Land are only a small percentage not only of Christians, but of all Palestinians. What about helping other Palestinian Christians? What about Palestinian Muslims? They are begging us for justice. Don’t we care about them too?
The third thing I heard was that we have to acknowledge the suffering of the Israelis alongside the suffering of the Palestinians. Again, this is ludicrous. Americans and Episcopalians are inundated daily with stories of Israeli suffering by our news media and by our politicians. But we never hear about what’s happening to Palestinians.
Finally, I heard talk today about being “hard-edged.” In fact, a BISHOP stood up here and criticized Steadfast Hope and Kairos Palestine for being “hard-edged.” So what does “hard-edged” mean? Was Martin Luther King “hard-edged”? Is Desmond Tutu “hard-edged”? And what about Jesus?
Sandra Tamari
I am a Palestinian Christian, a Quaker, a pacifist, the mother of two and passionate advocate of nonviolent direct action as the only legitimate means of social change. Six weeks ago I attempted to join an interfaith peace delegation to Israel and Palestine. I arrived to the airport in Tel Aviv with 30 other US citizens. At passport control, because of my Palestinian name, I was pulled away from my travel group and questioned for eight hours by Israel authorities. When I refused to grant the Israeli interrogators access to my email account, I was accused of being a terrorist. I was forced to spend the night in a jail cell and deported back to the US the next morning.
I am not the first member of my family to experience Israeli policies of discrimination and racism against Palestinians. My family can count the decades by incidents of dispossession, denial of entry, and deportation. Our story starts with the expulsion of my father-in-law and his family from their native Jaffa in 1948 during the Palestinian Nakba.
My father from the West Bank town of Ramallah happened to be in the U.S. during the 1967 War. Since he was not present when Israel conducted a census immediately following its occupation of the West Bank, he lost his residency status in his own country. Today he can only return for brief periods on a tourist visa.
During the 1970s, two close relatives fared even worse. Israeli soldiers forcibly removed one, our cousin Hanna, from his home in the West Bank, separated him from his family, and deposited him on the Lebanese side of the border. He spent the next 17 years in exile.
Another, our cousin Vladimir who was living in Japan, wanted to introduce his two young children to their cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. At the crossing on the bridge separating Jordan from the West Bank, he was summarily arrested, hooded, and held incommunicado for three days before his family knew of his whereabouts.
Every Palestinian carries a store of similar—in most cases much more dire—accounts of abuse. I have privileges as a US citizen that allow me to speak freely to you today about the injustices of the Israeli occupation. Palestinians living under occupation face a real and dangerous fear of retribution by the Israeli government for speaking out against the horrors of the Israeli regime.
Palestinian Christians have issued a statement to the world churches called the Kairos Palestine document that declares the Israeli occupation of our land to be a sin, not only against us, but against God and all humanity. The Kairos Document is a statement of love and compassion in the face of great suffering. We Palestinians appeal to this Church to engage in a serious effort to understand the tragedy in the Holy Land with the intention of moving from words of peace to actions of peace and justice. Do not make the mistake of thinking this is a conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. It is a struggle between injustice and justice.
Donna Hicks
Shuhada Street in Hebron today is an example of what positive investment looks like. It was rehabbed in the last 90s through a USAID grant coming out of the Oslo peace process and Hebron Protocols. Today it is a street in a ghost town except when Israeli military and law enforcement and settlers go up and down on foot or in their vehicles.
It illustrates why it’s important for The Episcopal Church to act on its corporate engagement policy enacted in an Executive Council resolution in 2005.
Earlier that year, as a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams in AlKhalil/Hebron, I briefed representatives of the Executive Council’s Committee on Social Responsibility in Investments and members of the Standing Commission on Anglican International Peace with Justice Concerns. The CSR Committee recommended to Executive Council later that year a plan of corporate engagement with companies whose products support the infrastructure of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. It’s that policy which these resolutions call on the Church to more consistently implement.
Given Shuhada Street as it exists today, it is clear that positive investment is much less likely to be sustained until there is peace and justice for the peoples of the Land of the Holy One.
Corporate engagement is one of the tools the Church can use. Let’s act on it.
Cabell Tennis
The resolution that we are considering affirms the Church’s consistent position of opposing the occupation and settlements, holding fast to nonviolence on all sides, and supporting a two state solution. It does not take a position for or against boycott, divestiture and sanctions. That would be a giant step into politics. Rather it leaves those nonviolent options to the conscience of individuals and institutions. The resolution is positive and asks the Episcopal Church to enter into an educational process with an initial focus on two documents; Kairos Palestine and Steadfast Hope, both of which have been furnished to deputies and bishops.
Kairos Palestine is not only an echo of Kairos South Africa, which was a Christian response to oppression, but also a reprise of the Letter from Birmingham Jail. In that important document from our history, Martin Luther King, Jr., a Christian pastor writing to fellow Christians, called a disengaged and silent Church to cast off its fear of reaction and disapproval that had held it prisoner, and embrace the ministry of overcoming injustice by non violent action. Kairos Palestine is asking us to do the same.
Steadfast Hope, the other document, is the witness and belief of a growing body of people who have seen the wall; the checkpoints; the bulldozing of homes; the fearful laws which divide people and diminish humanity; the military occupation which violates international law and is the boot of oppression that masks under the illusion of Israeli security. Not only are the Palestinian people enslaved and degraded by this continuing conflict, but so also are the Jewish people in Israel and beyond who are trapped in an inglorious policy and are denied the peace, justice and real security that they deserve.
Months ago I was in the process of paying a bill for lunch at a bistro when a voice called me by name. I turned to find a young woman who astonished and delighted me with the assertion that she had heard me give one of the most important talks she had ever heard. She mentioned the venue at the club and the professor who was with me. I replied by asking her a question that I knew how she would answer. “What in the talk most engaged you?”, I said. She quickly mentioned the slide from our power point that showed the Palestinian loss of land from 1946 to 2011. I know from experience that when people for the first time see the vast extent of the land takeover the air goes out of the room.
It was then that she turned my self important inflation into a harsh question. She looked me in the eye and said, “I didn’t know. I was never told. All through my church life, my schooling, my University education, the news I have read and listen to, I was never shown this. Why? Why?
The resolution that we are considering seeks to respond to that question with education that takes into careful consideration the experience of the Palestinian and Jewish people who are living in this dark night of hostility and fear. Give it your faithful support.
Hedy Epstein
My name is Hedy Epstein. I am a German-born Jewish American. I was 8 years old when Hitler came to power in 1933. My parents quickly realized that Germany under the Nazi regime was not a good place to raise a family. Their efforts to leave Germany became increasingly more desperate. They were willing to go anywhere and do anything, just to get out. But there was one country they were not willing to go to -- Palestine. Why? Because they were anti-Zionists. As a young child I didn't completely understand what Zionism or anti-Zionism was, but if my parents were anti-Zionists, so was I.
Due to my parents' great love for me, I left Germany on a Kindertransport (children's transport) to England in May 1939.
My parents and other family members were deported in October 1940 and ultimately perished in Auschwitz in the summer of 1942.
Since 1982 I have become more involved in the Israel/Palestine issue, have visited the Israeli Occupied West Bank five times to witness on the ground what occupation means. Palestinians have asked me to tell the American people what I saw and experienced, because the media does not do so. I made this commitment and have spoken to churches, schools and community groups all over the U.S. and Germany. It is a labor of love.
Though I have been criticized and maligned by members of the Jewish community, I will not be silenced. And so I hope you will join me in not being afraid to criticize Israel's occupation.
Your criticism is not anti-Semitic. It is an act of love for Israel and Jews and justice.
