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 tyrany and 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 attacks, warfare, and intentional annihilation. 

Palestinians’ legal resistance has been met with asymmetrically fierce Israeli armed warfare resulting in displacement, ethnic cleansing, destruction of essential infrastructure and life-fostering institutions including hospitals, universities, schools, and churches.  Israel is waging 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 major documents, Palestinian Christians have reported their suffering under Israeli occupation.  They  are calling on Christians around the world to take their plight to heart.

In 2009, the first 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.  Unbelievably, Western Christian churches, including the UCC, hardly responded to the cry for help from their beleaguered sisters and brothers in the faith. Instead of action, many denominations sought substitutionary justification in interfaith dialogue with Jewish leaders, usually ignoring the bloodied context in Palestine. 

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

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 with the hope of heart-felt response.  The signs are encouraging.

As part of its 45th General Council (2025) decisions, the United Church of Canada (UCC) endorsed  Kairos Palestine II, for study, reflection and action:

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:  be aware of 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 UCC endorsing?   In my judgement, the Church is now finally resonating with and appropriating substantially the testimony of Palestinian Christians about the way they have been assaulted for generations by Zionist Israel.  The illegality, immorality, and evil of the assault has been acknowledged.

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Some Key Elements of the Palestinian Witness Now "Endorsed" by The UCC:

-       Israel’s action on Gaza constitutes genocide carried out by Israel after decades of apartheid, settler colonialism, involving political repression and the deliberate policy of killing any possibility of a political solution – including the two-state solution.   By international statute these are violent crimes against humanity and violations of the UN Charter.

-       The Zionist project's 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 own decades of injustice, oppression, and displacement since the Nakba of 1948 and more than 16 years of immoral, suffocating blockade of the “open air” prison camp which is Gaza. 

-       Palestinians, as a people under Israeli military occupation, have the right by international law to resist Israel as occupier and oppressor,  just as European nations during World War II had the duty and right to resist Nazi tyrannical military occupation of their countries.  Palestinian Christians espouse non-violent resistance to effect their liberation, but even this is met with Israeli armed violent oppression.

-     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.”

-       Attacks on Muslim and Christian communities and their leaders and facilities aim to Judaize Jerusalem (and entire Gaza!) in place of pluralistic peaceful 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 [and ethnic cleanse] the West Bank has further exposed the true intent of this expansionist 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 is not debatable, but actively blocked by Israel.  Palestinian self-determination is key.

-       Thousands of Palestinians – children to elderly, 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 are 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, shielded by USA's impunity veto, defies international law and rulings of legitimate international courts; the co-conspirators assume that their military “might makes right”.

-       The evil of antisemitism is being used as an accusation to smear and silence the Palestinian voices of truth.  “We [Palestinians] condemn … all forms of racism, exclusion, and prejudice including Islamophobia." Equating “Jew” and “Zionist” is a falsehood. “Not every Jew is a Zionist and not every Zionist is a Jew.”  Conflating criticism of the state of Israel with antisemitism is false and 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 “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 with us Palestinians. By its 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 humanity and fraternity.  Either we live together - or we perish together.  "Today it is Palestine.  Tomorrow it will be other marginalized and oppressed peoples."

-       “Come and visit the living stones… “help strengthen the steadfastness of the Palestinians and the Christian Palestinians among them.”  Learn the realities of life in Palestine - on site!

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 KPII is a seven-page document, so there is much more to highlight. [Read the full document using this link: https://www.kairospalestine.ps/index.php/about-kairos/kairos-palestine-document   (copy & paste in browser).] But the points above make clear that a great moral struggle is and has been taking place in Palestine and that Christians world-wide are called to faithful response.  The suffering, oppression, and murder of Indigenous Palestinians must stop.  Liberation of all in Palestine is the goal.   The call of the Spirit to the faithful, including in the United Church of Canada, and to all people of conscience is clear.

For further reading  I recommend any book by Illan Pappe, an Israeli historian teaching at Exeter University in the UK.   In  "Ten Myths about Israel" he destroys with careful research and clear evidence, the fallacious narratives the Israeli lobby likes to peddle especially in Western nations.  Any book store can get it for you: Verso books, New York  ISBN 978 1 80429 704 9.  $26. CDN.