Homeless family, Gaza assault 2008-2009

Embroiderer:  Iman Shehaby [Tabariyeh], Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon.  Artist:  Peter Rhoads, Oxford UK. 

With thanks to the Palestine History Tapestry Project, 2025. Copyright.

Kairos Palestine II - Introduction

Christians in Palestine are not silent as they live under Israel’s terrorism and genocidal warfare aimed at illegally expanding Israel’s land base and erasing Palestinian presence.  For more than 100 years Indigenous Palestinians have experienced an ongoing Nakba (Catastrophe) as the object of Israel’s racially-based Zionist hatred, violent attack, warfare, and annihilation. 

Palestinians’ legal resistance has been met with asymmetrically fierce Israeli warfare resulting in displacement, ethnic cleansing, destructions of infrastructure and essential institutions including hospitals, universities, schools, and churches - genocide.

With impunity guaranteed by the USA veto in the United Nations Security Council, Israel has violated International Laws and Conventions, defied International Courts, and breached essential values and teachings of Judaism, including the Covenant with the Holy One and the Torah. 

The Zionist Israeli regime has become a pariah state carrying out an immoral and illegal agenda with complicit support of too many Western, former colonial nations.  

Kairos Palestine I  & II

In two documents, Palestinian Christians have reported their suffering under Israeli occupation and have called on Christians around the world to take their plight to heart.

 In 2009, the Kairos Palestine Document “A word of faith, hope, and love from the heart of Palestine suffering” was communicated to the Christian world of churches and their members.  Infuriatingly, Western Christian churches, including the UCC, hardly responded to the cry of hope from their beleaguered sisters and brothers in the faith. Instead of action, many sought substitutionary justification in interfaith dialogue, usually ignoring the bloody context in Palestine. 

This non-response and implicit support of Israel's assault raised profound questions about hollow theologies, ethics, and deeply-rooted racism that failed to mobilize courageous justice- and faith- based non-violent action in these denominations.   Nothing emerged from the churches or governments like the concerted effort to end the crime of apartheid in South Africa.

On November 14, 2025, Kairos Palestine II was released to “renew our stand for truth and our commitment to fundamental religious, theological and moral principles”, as a response to “the voice of the Holy Spirit deep within and the call of faith in a time of genocide.”  Again it was sent to the global Christian family of churches and members.

As part of its 45th General Council decisions, the United Church of Canada endorsed  Kairos Palestine II, for study, reflection and action by United Church of Canada people, Communities of Faith (congregations), and theological centres:

It endorsed for engagement by United Church people, theological schools, communities of faith and the Government of Canada (as relevant) the actions in Kairos Palestine II calling on people of conscience to:

• name the reality truthfully; advocate for accountability and international law;
• reject theologies that justify oppression: reject hateful ideologies such as Christian Zionism, Islamophobia and antisemitism;
• encourage courageous and costly solidarity with the people of Palestine and especially the diminishing Christian community; and
• support creative, nonviolent resistance, specifically boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).

A note of caution was added in the endorsation. The Council drew attention to the risk of “consequences for engaging in costly solidarity, such as suppression of free speech in support of Palestinian human rights.”

By endorsing the KPII, the General Council “deepens the ways in which the church lives out its Creed, its expressions of faith and its commitments to partnership, anti-racism and anti-oppression. It calls for deepened engagement with Palestinian oppressed communities facing genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.”

Endorsing What?

What in the witness of Palestinian Christians' writing in KPII is the General Council of The United Church of Canada endorsing?   Finally, the Church is resonating substantially with the testimony of Palestinian Christians about the way they have been assaulted for generations by the government of Israel.  Here are some of the elements of the Palestinian witness now "endorsed" by The UCC:

-       Israel’s action in its assault on Gaza constitutes genocide "carried out by Israel after decades of apartheid, settler colonialism, political repression, and the deliberate policy of killing any possibility of a political solution – including the two-state solution.”   By international statute this is a crime against humanity and violation of the UN Charter.

-       The Zionist project goal is “to seize all of Palestine, emptied of its Palestinian people."

-       Zionist ideology is “a system that over decades has entrenched an organized and sophisticated regime of apartheid, supported by advanced technologies, exercising total control over every aspect of Palestinian life …turning Palestinian existence into an unbearable hell.”

-       Israel’s claim to “have the right to defend itself” [especially in response to October 7, 2023], fails to acknowledge its decades of injustice, oppression, and displacement since the Nakba of 1948 and more than 16 years of immoral, suffocating blockade and the “open air” prison camp which is Gaza. 

-       Palestinians, as a people under Israeli tyranical military occupation, under international law have the right to resist Israel as occupier and oppressor,  just as European nations during World War II had the duty and right to resist Nazi tyranical occupation of their countries. Palestinian Christians espouse non-violent means to effect their liberation.

-       Attacks on Muslim and Christian communities and their leaders and facilities aim to Judaize Jerusalem (and entire Gaza!) at the expense of pluralistic co-existence.

-        Israel’s Nation-State Law enacted in 2018 embodies Zionist racism and arrogant Jewish supremacy in Palestine, making apartheid a lived reality. Palestinians – Christian, Muslim, other faiths or  of  no faith – are squeezed out of Palestine or killed.

-       Israel’s decision to annex the West Bank has further exposed the true intent of this colonial project.

-       The right of Palestinians to “return” to their homes and ancestral properties (or restitution) as guaranteed by the United Nations General Assembly resolution #194 (December 11,1948) and affirmed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 13b and repeatedly re-affirmed by the UN.

-       Thousands of Palestinians – young children or old adults, male or female, able-bodied and with disabilities – are held in Israel prisons enduring torture, sexual violence, starvation policies, denial of medical care, solitary confinement, enforced disappearances and murder –  serious international observers (e.g. Red Cross) or legal representation routinely blocked.

-       Human rights organization and humanitarian agencies  come under fierce assault by Israeli forces to discredit, impede, and threaten their crucial life-saving work.

-       Israel and Palestine are not “in conflict”. “Israel is a colonial, [invasive] settler, and exclusionary entity built upon displacement of the indigenous population and their replacement with new settlers….[with] tyranny and an oppressive regime of settler colonialism and apartheid.”

-       Israel, shielded by USA's impugnity veto, defies international law and rulings of legitimate international courts; they assume that their “might makes right” and

-       The evil of antisemitism is being used as an accusation and smear to silence the Palestinian voice of truth. Conflating this form of racism with opposition to apartheid, Zionist ideology, and Israeli oppression denies that Israel must be held accountable to international law. “We condemn … all forms of racism, exclusion, and prejudice including Islamophobia. Conflating “Jew” and “Zionist” is a falsehood. “Not every Jew is a Zionist and not every Zionist is a Jew.”  Conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism does great harm to Judaism and to its image worldwide.

-       Honour the growing number of Jewish voices opposing the Israeli assault, and confront Zionism “from moral, faith-based and human conviction.” Distinguish between dialogue with Jews and dialogue with Zionism, indeed “boycott dialogue with Zionist voices that have supported and continue to support occupation, apartheid, and the genocide of Palestinian people.”

- More than ever, now is a time for costly solidarity. By it very nature true solidarity is costly.  It has a price.  It is a faith-based stance, a human commitment, and a moral responsibility.  True solidarity is also the embodiment of our shared hmanity and fraternity.  Either we live together - or we perish together.  Today it is Palestine.  Tomorrow it will be other marinalized and oppressed peoples."

-       “Come and visit the living stones… “help strengthen the steadfastness of the Palestinians and the Christian Palestinians among them.”

 KP2 is a seven-page document, so there is more to say. [Read the full document using the link above.] But the points above make clear that a great moral struggle is and has been taking place in Palestine.

Further reading:  Ten Myths about Israel, by Illan Lappe

Israeli lobbyists would have us believe that their vision is given by God in the Tanakh (Hebrew Scriptures) which transcend human laws, including International statutes, treaties, and conventions, including the Charter of the United Nations. Faith-based Jews and Christians refuse to believe that the Holy One of the Covenant and Torah, and of the Ways of Jesus could reconcile “God is Love” with God wants the expulsion and death of another part of the global human family (Indigenous Palestinians) from the Holy Land.  The scriptural witness place God squarely on the justice and peace side of any of earth’s lands.

120 years of conflict and murder witness to the fact that further violence will bring no peace. Only personal transformation / and community liberation and justice are the ingredients of peace.

The Spirit who transcends all boundaries, calls the entire Church and all faith communities, to demand an end to the deadly violations of Torahl and to  embrace the witness of the Law and the Prophets, and the self-giving Ways of Jesus so the killing may stop and life may flourish for all who dwell in this holy land.

We are called by the Spirit and addressed by the General Council of The United Church to be about justice-based peace building in Palesting [and in the rest of Creation.]