Editor's note:    In this sermon, Ottawa resident Diana Ralph, a co-founder and active member of Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) calls all people of faith to unite in living their convictions of love, justice and peace, especially as they relate to the genocidal war the state of Israel with complicit active and passive allies, is inflicting on the indigenous peoples and state of Palestine. 

The sermon was preached on this year's Palm Sunday at Glebe-St. James United Church, Ottawa.   It is published here with the generous permission of Diana Ralph.  I am grateful for the thoughtful observations and courageous truth  this bridge builder so ably and frequently demonstrates.  I hope her witness will move others to the urgent cause of just peace and liberation for all in Palestine.   H.O.

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All or None:  Christians, Jews, & Muslims Support Justice, Love & Peace

Thank you for this warm welcome. I am pleased to join you all today. As a devout Jew, I want to reflect on our shared spiritual values and to recommit to our holy purpose of building a more loving, peaceful world. 

Christians, Muslims, and Jews all believe that because we were created in God’s image, we each carry a divine soul. We all strive to understand and model our lives to reflect God’s demands of us and to be accountable to our covenants.

This is a particularly holy time for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. As you know, Christians are now in the Lenten season. Muslims finished celebrating Ramadan on March 19. And Jews are preparing for Passover to start on the evening of April 1. How are these holidays relevant for our peoples today, at this time of war and genocide?

Let’s start with Christianity. The Lenten season is a time of deep soul-searching, when Christians honour and imitate the 40 days following Jesus’s baptism by engaging in fasting and self-denial. I’d like to highlight two aspects of Jesus’s life. First, Jesus was Palestinian. He was indigenous to the region. Like the Palestinian people today, Jesus organized to resist brutal imperial oppression of His people. 

And secondly, Jesus was a devout Jew. His teachings exemplify the core Jewish values of “rachamim” (mercy), “chesed” (compassion), “ahavah” (God’s love), peace (“shalom”) and “emet” (justice). Jews are commanded to view all people as B’tzelem Elohim (made in God’s image) and therefore to welcome and embrace the stranger. By the time Jesus lived, Jewish law (Halakha) had prohibited any form of death penalty, including stoning.

For centuries, Christians downplayed these aspects of His life. Artists often portrayed Jesus as blond and blue-eyed, and, as in today’s reading, the Gospels often differentiate between Jesus and other Jews. During Lent, Medieval European Christian leaders used false claims that “the Jews” killed Christ to justify launching violent pogroms against Jews, killing many and expelling whole communities. In the name of defending and spreading the loving Christian faith, Christian leaders have also committed many other genocides not just against Jews, but also against Muslims, pagans, and Indigenous peoples around the globe. Christian antisemitism led directly to the Holocaust. It is now again on the rise. The Christian evangelical movement powerfully promotes Israel’s current genocide against Palestinians.

What about Islam? Ramadan is the month which celebrates when the Quran was revealed to Muhammad. Like Christians during Lent, the world’s two billion Muslims observe Ramadan by fasting, prayer, self-reflection, charity, and mutual support. Mohammed respected Christians and Jews as People of the Book and he considered Jesus and Moses prophets.

We have been led to equate Islam with violence and terrorism. But Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, is all about love and peace. The word “Islam” means the voluntary, total submission, and obedience to the will of God. And the word “jihad” primarily refers to the spiritual struggle against sin within oneself.

During the 700 years of the Ottoman empire, Muslim rulers welcomed Jewish survivors of Christian oppression and collaborated with Christians and Jews to create profound spiritual, cultural, and scientific achievements. Under Ottoman rule, Palestinian Muslims, Jews, and Christians had always lived in harmony. During the Holocaust, Muslim countries, including Palestine, gave refuge to Jews.

And now to Judaism. Passover is the Jewish holiday which celebrates the Exodus, our liberation from slavery. It is the core story defining Judaism. Each year, the Torah (what Christians call the Old Testament) requires Jews to re-tell the stirring mythical Exodus tale. We revere Moses, who, like Jesus, worked to free not only his own, but all people.

Here’s the Exodus story: After Hebrew people were enslaved for centuries in Mizrahim (Egypt), God commands Moses to demand that the Pharaoh “let my people go.” The Pharaoh refuses and further oppresses the slaves. But with God’s support, ultimately a “mixed multitude” (not just the Hebrews) escape. Pharoah’s army chases them to the edge of the Reed Sea, where they are trapped. But one man, Nahshon trusts in God and dares to jump into the swirling water. His faith prompts God to miraculously divide the sea, and the multitude cross to safely as Pharoah’s army drowns. 

Throughout the Torah, God repeatedly refers to the Passover story to order us to reject all forms of oppression. For example, Exodus 22:20 says: “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:20). This tale also has inspired many other liberation movements. 

I believe we are now witnessing a real Exodus struggle. This time, it is the Israeli state which occupies the Pharaoh’s role, and the Palestinians, who are forced to live like the Hebrew slaves. Israel’s founders had always planned to appropriate all the land from the river to the sea and to expel or subjugate Palestinians. For over 75 years, Israel has ethnically cleansed and imposed increasingly brutal political, economic, and military control over the Palestinian people. 

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has directly killed over 75,000 people in Gaza. The British medical journal, Lancet estimates that the real death toll is higher than 186, 000, if we count the many more who lie crushed under bombed buildings or dead of starvation, cold, and disease. Israel has destroyed virtually all of Gaza’s homes, hospitals, universities, and essential infrastructure. It intentionally starves the survivors, blocking almost all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. It is also rapidly expanding its ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. And now Israel (with US and Canadian support) has launched an unprovoked war on Iran which threatens to destabilize the entire world.

Of course, all of this violates core Jewish values. Realizing this has shocked many Jews who had equated Israel with Judaism.  Like many Jews, I grew up viewing Israel as a democratic “light unto the nations,” and, in the wake of the Holocaust, believing Jews deserve and need a state to protect us against antisemitism. Many of us were unaware of how oppressively Israel has treated Palestinian people. Some thought the Palestinians were inherently violent terrorists and that Israel has had no choice but to defend itself. And some bought the claim that Hamas is the enemy and that if it can be destroyed, we will finally have peace.  But these are all lies.

I, along with many other Jews, have had to face the fact that Israel’s policies and actions violate everything we value about Judaism. As I mentioned, before Israel was founded, all three faiths lived in harmony in Palestine. Israel was founded and continues to act as a colonial settler nation, funded and militarily backed by British, US, and Canadian antisemitic politicians for their own geopolitical interests in the oil-rich Middle East.

Oppression enslaves not only the victims, but also their oppressors, dehumanizing them and keeping them constantly afraid of retribution. Like the ancient Hebrew people, the Palestinians have always resisted their enslavement. And like the mythical Egyptians of Exodus, Israeli Jews are ensnared in a trap of escalating fear and violence. Israel is built on a preoccupation with “security”. Far from promoting love, peace, or justice, it has engaged in seven major wars with neighbouring countries since it was founded. It has flouted international law and supported oppressive regimes. Its economy depends on exporting weapons and spy equipment which have been “field-tested” on Palestinians. It has become a pariah state.

And far from making Jews safe, Israel is now the least safe place in the world for us. The October 7 massacre was a horrific, but predictable outcome of Israel’s tightening noose around Gaza. The ensuing violence has left over 2,000 Israelis dead, over 12,000 wounded, and over 200,000 displaced. The economy is shattered, the government is in disarray, and bombs are raining down on terrified Israeli civilians, with no end in sight. Because Israel claims to act on behalf of the world’s Jews, its oppression is also fueling antisemitic attacks on synagogues and Jews here in Canada and everywhere else.

So, what is the path to peace there? What do we even mean by “peace”? Is peace merely the absence of resistance? Israel has tried to impose “peace” by outlawing and punishing all forms of Palestinian resistance. It segregates, discriminates against, displaces, assassinates, imprisons, tortures, shoots and bombs Palestinians.  Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem (the Israeli human rights organization) argue that Israel has become an apartheid state, worse even than South Africa. All this has failed to produce peace.

There will be no “peace” without ending the oppression. Christians often tell me that they are reluctant to get involved in a conflict between Muslims and Jews. But this is not about religion. The real conflict is between justice and injustice, compassion and oppression.  Jesus and Moses both put their lives on the line to oppose oppression. At this holy time, we too can and should risk acting for justice and real peace.

What keeps you from speaking out? Are you afraid of being called antisemitic? Of course, we all oppose real hatred and discrimination against Jews. But criticizing Israeli oppression is not antisemitic. Many Jews, like me, also get attacked for being critical of Israel. When you speak out, you may be called antisemitic. But please don’t fall for this bullying tactic.

The enemy is not Jews or Muslims or Hamas or you or me. I believe, the enemy is capitalism, a godless, vicious, greedy system, that fuels war, divides and hurts us all, and which is making our precious Earth uninhabitable.

Let us recall the words of the prophet Isaiah. Rejecting words without meaningful action, he called on us “to unlock the fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke.” (Isaiah 58:6ff)   So, for Lent this year, I’ll invite you to give up your fears and to risk standing up for justice. We all have a stake in resisting Israel’s genocide, because it violates everything our three faiths cherish, and because it threatens to drag us into a World War III Armageddon.

The United Church has been at the vanguard of this struggle since the 1960s and early '70s, when Rev. A.C. Forrest published The Unholy Land. He faced massive attacks from pro-Israel lobby groups. But that didn’t stop him.  (https://www.justpeaceadvocates.ca/the-unholy-land-by-rev-dr-a-c-forrest/)

Since 2006, I have worked with United Church leaders who stand in solidarity with Palestinians. In October 2024, the United Church General Council took a major step forward, adopting a Principle-Based Approach to Israel-Palestine which includes support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and which rejects “Israel's apartheid system of laws and legal procedures towards the Palestinian people”.

Last year, the United Church issued another courageous statement along with other ecumenical partners urging “the Canadian Government to support a ceasefire and a negotiated resolution to this violence.” And this month, March 2026, the United Church joined the World Council of Churches in launching a month-long campaign entitled “From Condemnation to Consequences” which calls on us all to take concrete steps to end Israel’s illegal occupation and promote peace.  I look forward to supporting Glebe St. James Church in finding ways you can do this.

I’ll close by offering an excerpt from the 2002 poem “Red Sea” by Aurora Levins Morales, a Puerto Rican Jewish poet which I read at all my Passover seders. It is particularly relevant this year:

This Passover, who reclines?
Only the dead, their cupped hands filling slowly 
with the red wine of war.  We are not free. 

The blood on the doorposts does not protect anyone.
They say that other country over there
dim blue in the twilight
farther than the orange stars exploding over our roofs
is called peace.…
Back then, one man's faith opened the way.
He stepped in, we were released, our enemies drowned. 
This time we're tied at the ankles. 
We cannot cross until we carry each other,
all of us refugees, all of us prophets.
No more taking turns on history's wheel,
trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.
The sea will not open that way. 
 This time that country
is what we promise each other,
our rage pressed cheek to cheek 
until tears flood the space between,
until there are no enemies left,
because this time no one will be left to drown
and all of us must be chosen. 
 This time it's all of us or none.