Why are we updating our position paper on Israel/Palestine?
We have updated our July 2023 Israel/Palestine position paper in response to the extreme and accelerating urgency of the existential threat to Palestinians. Here’s why.
As Christians we are called to work for justice and peace: for right relationships and creative coexistence. We assert God’s love is for all people. Yet we are witnesses to the slaughter of the people of Gaza. We see that aid is being used to weaponise starvation as a strategy of genocide.
We join with the UN Special Rapporteur, lawyers and academics, NGOs, and kindred spirits of all faiths and none who name as genocide the crimes the State of Israel is committing, and the accelerating crimes of ethnic cleansing and apartheid in the West Bank.
As we have for decades, we again demand a just future in Israel/Palestine where all who call the land home can thrive. In this grave new context, we have updated our position paper on Israel/Palestine.
We issue this updated position paper to honour and stand in solidarity with all Palestinians – our Christian and Muslim siblings in the land of Jesus. Hundreds of Community friends and colleagues have been killed in Gaza. In the West Bank, friends have been murdered with impunity by colonising settlers, and their villages ethnically cleansed.
We issue this updated position paper to honour and stand in solidarity with our siblings of the Jewish faith who seek to save the State of Israel from perpetrating further war crimes, and crimes against humanity including genocide in their name.
We issue this position paper to honour the many people in the Iona Community who strive for justice. Many of our members, past and present, have lived and worked in Israel/Palestine and Lebanon: in hospitals, schools, churches, culture and arts, universities, villages, farms and refugee camps. They hold long-standing relationships in the region.
We issue this position paper in response to the stories we have heard from our Palestinian and Israeli friends, compelling us to raise our voice once again in the face of genocide.
We pray for deliverance from evil, and demand that all churches respond to the repeated calls from Palestinian Christians to act in solidarity with Palestinians, and to repent of our failures to do so in the past.
As people of faith we are called to incandescent hope. So we seek a future in which the peoples of Israel and Palestine build together a land that is a beacon of justice and peace in the world.
God of Mercy, Salam, and Generosity
Stretch Your kind hand over Gaza, where
man-made fear, terror, and starvation
have become heavy burdens – day and night.
Protect the children, the innocent,
the elderly and all those who cry out for shelter, food, peace, justice, and hope.
Quench the fires of hatred and racism
and sow the seeds of lasting peace for all.
Make the painful cries of mothers, new mothers, babies,
and pregnant women in Gaza
move the deaf and blind world to do concrete actions –
not pity, but solidarity and real good deeds.
Let surviving olive trees remind us: peaceful life returns.
Let surviving olive trees remind us: peaceful life returns
In Gaza’s hardest and darkest times,
light candles of hope in every soul –
mothers, fathers, children and all in deserted and oppressed Gaza
Lord of lords
Lord of the worlds
Bring justice and peace for heavily bleeding Gaza
for so long so long so long.
Pour patience and courage in our weak and broken hearts
Heal our deep pains
grant us Your mercy,
justice and peace.
Accept our prayers,
Amen.
This prayer was written in Gaza by an Arabic speaker who has so far survived the genocide. They also provided the English version for us and we are profoundly humbled to share this prayer and to hear this cry from the heart of suffering which is beyond our comprehension.
Life in the Gaza Strip.
All credits: Hosny Salah
USA North East