Tag Archives: Palestine

Christ in the Rubble: A Liturgy of Lament

The Revd Dr Munther Isaac, is the vicar of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. Munther delivered a prophetic message during the Christ in the Rubble Liturgy of Lament service today. It was a powerful message challenging Western Churches to demonstrate solidarity with the suffering church in Palestine and repudiate the genocide occurring in Gaza, because silence is complicity.

View the video here
Read Munther’s text below:

Christ in the Rubble
A Liturgy of Lament

“We are angry…
We are broken…
This should have been a time of joy; instead, we are mourning. We are fearful.

20,000 killed. Thousands under the rubble still. Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways. Day after day after day. 1.9 million displaced! Hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed. Gaza as we know it no longer exists. This is an annihilation. A genocide.

The world is watching; Churches are watching. Gazans are sending live images of their own execution. Maybe the world cares? But it goes on…

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Jesus of Palestine: Gulf Cultural Club Christmas Seminar

Jesus of Palestine: A Christmas presentation given at the Gulf Cultural Club, Abrar House, London

The Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem are commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ differently this year. They have created a nativity scene resembling the situation in Gaza amid Israel’s brutal onslaught. The nativity scene shows a baby wrapped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh and placed in debris and rubble. While the keffiyeh symbolises Palestinian identity, history, and struggle, the debris represents destruction in Gaza, where at least 20,000 people have already been killed by Israel’s indiscriminate war, and thousands more are missing under the rubble, most of them children and women. The baby Jesus represents the thousands of children buried beneath the rubble in Gaza. The vicar of the Nativity Church, the Revd Dr Munther Isaac, said: “If Jesus were born today, he would be born in Gaza under the rubble.” The municipalities and churches in Bethlehem and Ramallah have announced that Christmas celebrations have been cancelled in the occupied West Bank in solidarity with Gaza, calling on parishes instead to collect donations to help the victims.[1]

As we reflect on Christmas at the Gulf Cultural Club, we have been asked to consider two questions this evening.  First, how would Jesus deal with the current situation in Palestine? Second, how can peace be promoted today? The hope is that this seminar will contribute to the promotion of justice and peace as we mark the festive season linked to Jesus and Mary. Let’s consider these two questions one at a time. 

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Jesus of Palestine: In Conversation with Chris Williamson

Jesus of Palestine: In conversation with Chris Williamson and David Miller on Palestine Declassified for Press TV. View the interview here:

What’s your view on Jesus’ politics?

In his first sermon Jesus announced his political agenda. 

 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:18-21; Isaiah 61:1-2)

The prophet Isaiah is referring to the coming of the Messiah to announce the Year of Jubilee (which occurred every 50 years). When debts were cancelled, all slaves were freed and any property sold was returned to each family. It was intended to avoid extremes of wealth and poverty, and ensure justice, liberty, and equality. Jesus insists the Jubilee had come because the Sovereign King had now arrived.  Jesus political agenda therefore was to transform a deeply divided and unjust world and bring liberty, equality and fraternity, in a right relationship with the one true God and one another. Although this will ultimately only be fully realised in heaven, we get to demonstrate a foretaste by the way we treat one another.

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A Survey of CofE Bishops Reveals a Moral Vacuum on Israel and Palestine

A survey of Anglican Bishops was planned by a coalition of ten Christian, Jewish, Muslim and secular groups[1] that were concerned about the position the Church of England had taken vis-à-vis Israel/Palestine under the leadership of Archbishop Justin Welby. It was executed by CAMPAIN (the Campaign against Misrepresentation in Public Affairs, Information and the News)

An Open Letter of April 25th raised a series of issues, but the matter of most immediate concern was Welby’s denial of the existence of Israeli apartheid, which placed him at odds with the views of late Archbishop Tutu, the Anglican Church of South Africa, renowned international and Israeli human rights organisations, Palestinian Christians and the United Nations. 

The purpose of the survey was to ascertain whether other CofE bishops widely shared Welby’s opinion, and if so, why?

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IKIM Interview on Christian Zionism

On air since 2001, Radio Ikim FM is an Islamic radio station located in Kuala Lumpur. It broadcasts in Malay, Arabic and English, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Its mission is to serve the Islamic community. In this interview Batrisya Afrina asked me about Christian Zionists and why they support apartheid Israel.

View the recording here:

https://www.facebook.com/ikimfm/videos/313743824907048

In this special interview, watch as Reverend Dr. Stephen Robert Sizer, the founder and director of Peacemaker Trust, chair of the Convivencia Alliance and a retired Anglican priest, as he explains Christian Zionism. Throughout this conversation, we will explore its fundamental beliefs, the prophecy of Armageddon, and the second coming of Jesus.

Produced by: Batrisyia Afrina

A Christian Response to Israeli Apartheid

A presentation given in the Centre for Advanced Islamic Studies, University of Malaysia, at the Second International Conference on Palestine Studies

Download a pdf copy of my presentation.

On 28 August 1963 Martin Luther King, co-led a civil-rights march of 250,000 people in Washington DC against racism and segregation. In what has become probably the most well-known and widely quoted speech in history, King shared his dream of a diverse but united multi-ethnic nation:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by their character. When we let freedom ring, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”[1]

The origins of institutional racism can be traced back to the European colonization of the Americas and Africa and to the slave trade. With the abolition of slavery, institutional racism evolved into American segregation, German Antisemitism and South African Apartheid. 

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Inevitable Solutions to the Palestinian Plight

May I begin by thanking Professor Datuk Azizian Baharuddin, the director of Universiti Malaya Centre for Civilisational Dialogue (UMCCD), for the kind invitation to give this lecture. I also wish to thank Norma Hashim and Professor Dr Mohd Nazari Ismail of the Hashim Sani Centre for Palestine Studies for co-hosting this lecture and also for sponsoring my visit.

Over thirty years ago I gave an annual lecture to 16–17-year-old students at Guildford Grammar School, on virtually the same subject as we are considering today. I began by warning the students that there would be homework to motivate them to pay attention. And I say the same to you today – there will be homework.

The title I have been given is “Inevitable Solutions to the Palestinian Plight”. Note the first two words – ‘Inevitable” and “Solutions” because there are many solutions to the Palestinian plight. I will major on three today. These three are in fact mutually exclusive. How then can they be inevitable? That in part depends on you, me and seven billion other people in the world. Let me illustrate. Climate change is inevitable, it is happening, but the solutions (and there are several) depend on us and how seriously we adjust our values, our priorities and life styles. So it is with resolving the Palestinian plight. 

You may download a pdf version of this lecture here.

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Israel’s Strategic Weapon: America’s Christian Zionists

This week I recorded an interview with Faisal Mohammad for Turkish TRT entitled ‘Israel’s Strategic Weapon: America’s Christian Zionists’. It has apparently gone viral with over 300k+ viewings in jless than a week. The programme explores why Netanyahu cited the Hebrew scriptures to justify his genocide in Gaza. You can view the programme on the following channels:

YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Israel’s war rhetoric is laced with biblical references, a ploy aimed at wooing Christian Evangelicals in the US. Here’s how British theologian Stephen Sizer unpacks this phenomenon.

Read the article by Faisal Mohammad for TRT based on the interview here

For a more comprehensive refutation and deconstruction of Christian Zionism see here:

Seven Biblical Answers to Popular Zionist Assumptions (an introduction and summary of below)

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ICAHD Calls for an End to Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinian People

As a member of the ICAHD-UK Executive I am pleased to promote this important statement by ICAHD calling for an end to Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people.

“The term “genocide” was formulated by the Jewish-Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin against the backdrop of the Holocaust. It was codified as a crime under international law in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). The definition of genocide, as set out in Article 2 of the Convention, is simple and straightforward, its first three elements clearly reflecting Israeli policies and actions towards the Palestinian people since initiating its process of systematic genocide in 1947:

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction
in whole or in part.

By itself the ongoing destruction of Gaza and its people is a war crime, far too disproportionate to qualify as mere retaliation for the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, far too costly in civilian life and property to justify the scale of Israel’s militarily action against Hamas.

Genocide is often not a single event, but rather a series of deliberate events and processes over time whose ultimate intent is to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. The Indian Wars in America lasted three centuries. If we step back from the war crime that is Israel’s current assault on Gaza to the concerted effort since Israel’s establishment to erase the country of Palestine and its Arab heritage, the picture that emerges is one of genocide, cultural as well as physical. Zionism’s and later Israel’s necessarily violent project to displace the country’s Palestinian population, take its land and replace it with a Jewish one constitutes deliberate destruction of the Palestinian people in part or in whole.

Three events have prompted ICAHD’s call for urgent international action to end Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people: the indiscriminate bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza on October 31, 2023, in which hundreds of innocent people – refugees from Israel’s campaign of expulsion in 1948 – were slaughtered in order to assassinate a single Hamas commander; the brutal attacks happening now against Palestinians in the West Bank in which Israeli settlers and soldiers are terrorizing families and emptying whole towns and villages – forced displacement, a crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention; and the statements of genocidal intent emanating from the highest Israeli government and military officials, whether towards the people of Gaza or directed at Palestinians (“the Arabs”) in general, statements that lead us to fear heightened colonization and further genocide if the international community allows Israel free reign to erase the Palestinian people politically, culturally and if need be physically.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) calls on the international community – the UN, governments and peoples – to hold Israel accountable for its decades of genocidal colonization. Most urgently we call for isolating and sanctioning Israel until its destruction of Gaza and its people ends, and the violent displacement of Palestinians from their lands and communities by Israeli settlers and soldiers cease.

We call on the International Criminal Court to bring to trial for war crimes the responsible Israeli political and military leaders.

We call on the United Nations to enforce Article 3(e) of the Geneva Convention punishing for “complicity in genocide” the United States, Canada, Europe and other countries contributing to Israeli genocide.”

Read the ICAHD Statement on the ICAHD website here