The painting above, entitled “Ceremony of the Seven Spirits of Wisdom,” is by James Jacko of Ojibwe First Nation, living in Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island, Canada. The seven spiritual gifts are:   respect (Buffalo), love (Eagle), courage (Bear), honesty (Sabe), wisdom (Beaver) , humility (Wolf), Turtle (truth).  Yearning for the Spirit's gifts is at the heart of being human and is shared by most religious traditions, (G.M.Huws' collection.)

Introduction 

The horror the State of Israel is inflicting on Palestinians and the State of Palestine has been going on for a century. The last two-plus years revealed unimaginable, but readily visible total depravity as Israel intentionally seeks to implement the declared Zionist goals of erasing Palestinians and Palestine from the Middle East map in order to create a Jewish-controlled homeland, i.e. apartheid. 

The world knows the horrors.  As witnesses of this ongoing Nakba  (catastrophe), I and others are appalled, weary and disgusted.  The immoral, evil creators of this abyss in Palestine reject all efforts for justice and real peace.  No matter how vigorously the horror is challenged, Israeli Zionist ideologues, their terrorist forces, and allies refuse to listen and remain embedded in this death-dealing enterprise. Palestinian children and adults bear the brunt of the evil.

In what follows in two instalments, I list some of the factors that weigh on me as I observe the sore abuse of God’s human family in this particular theatre of violence and perverted legality.  I am not forgetting the many other international scenes of conflict and inhumanity. The accumulated evil allows no faithful person committed to justice and liberation to avoid the heart-wrenching calls to prophetic testimony and peaceful resistance -  in both specific and general circumstances. 

The call is to action, but also and especially, to spiritual battling with the principalities and powers of evil which surround us, as  individuals and organizations, governments and nations allow depravity and evil to direct their ways. A spiritual renewal is urgently called for. Individuals and collectivities like faith communities, humanitarian organizations, and nations must respond. The grip of the demonic must be exorcised to harvest the fruits from the encounter with Spirit.  (cf. Isaiah 11:2; Galatians 5:22-23). 

I, and doubtless many others, yearn for the Spirit's gifts to transform, to heal, and to recover and nurture human fullness in me, in advocates for truth and justice, in Palestinians as they bear their suffering and strengthen their resistance, in Zionist Israelis to end their terrorizing occupation of Palestine   Exorcising evil and healing humanity in Creation is the Gospel goal.

 Disclaimer:  I refuse the falsehood of conflating criticism of the State of Israel's actions with "antisemitism."  The multi-generational impact of the Holocaust must never be underestimated.  But the Shoah evil provides no justification for Zionism's ideology to wage genocidal war on Palestine.  Nor is it possible to justify perverted Zionist ideology and war on Palestinians using biblical narratives. God is love and love deplores, rejects, resists, and condemns hatred and violence..

I am grateful to Jews who observe and advocate for what they have learned from their faith heritage. I celebrate the courage with which they have promoted truth, justice, and peace for indigenous Palestinians. I believe and lament that the heinous crimes of the State of Israel and its terrorizing military vis a vis Palestine have contributed substantially to the global growth of the crime of antisemitism  and undermined the integrity of the Jewish faith in particular. I deeply regret this abominable state of affairs and seek a new, more just way ahead for God’s entire diverse human family where all may experience justice and abundance of life.  Harry Oussoren

Each point which follows deserves books, not just a paragraph or two.  Even my short list is too long for one Pilgrim Praxis post. So here is half of a summary of key factors.  They weigh down upon me as a world citizen rooted in Christian faith convictions and committed to truth, justice, and liberation. The other half of my testimony will arrive in the next installment.

As I persist in writing about this intractable issue, I live with the hope that the people of Palestine will be finally be liberated to thrive in their Palestinian homeland, and

Israelis will be relieved of their fear and freed to share in  God’s shalom – also in Palestine with Palestinian neighbours. 

Factors

 1.     Biblical:   Scriptures - Jewish, Christian, Muslim - witness to the core relationship God has with God’s human family and all Creation.   

In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, the biblical story tellers root Earth's human family in God’s creative and redemptive action.  “Then God said: “Let us make humankind in our image according to our likeness….” (Genesis 1:27).   

In Chapter 9, God repents of the great flood and swears “never again to destroy every living as I have done….” As a sign of this repentance resolution God provides the rainbow marking “the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations.” (v.12 ff.) 

In Chapter 12, Abram (and Sarai) move to the land of the Canaanites and receive the promise “To your offspring (seed) I will give this land.” Then in Chapter 15, because the aging couple had no offspring, Sarai gives to Abram her Egyptian slave girl Hagar “as a wife”. (16:3). Ishmael is the first "seed" in the Abrahamic family. In Chapter 21, Sarah does conceive by the 100 year-old Abraham! Isaac was born.  Now two wives each with a son creates friction in the patriarchal family, but God recognizes that Ishmael too “is your (Abraham’s) offspring… and God was with the boy (Ishmael).” (21:20) 

This short narrative calls believers to honour and celebrate the divinely instituted common heritage  of “the Abrahamic” faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam and to love the extended family in  gratitude for God's faithfulness.

The story of the Exodus from Egypt’s bondage witnesses to a gift that reminds the faithful that God is indefatigably committed to human liberation from subjugation.  Add to this the witness of Hebrew prophets calling the unfaithful back to grateful living coherent with God’s covenant with the people and the Torah commandments.   The Apocalypse (Revelation) in several mystical images prophetically  envisions an end time when all nations will gather in  the holy places where Christ returns and  God dwells to judge and conquer evil.   

People of faith cannot fail to trust that God will triumph over evil to restore all of Creation.   It is not for humans to "determine" God's time and place. In the meantime, the entire human family, including its Abrahamic/Sarah/Hagar branch, is called to faithful living side-by-side in Creation and to renounce all that destroys Shalom/Salam/Peace.

2.     Moral / Ethical: In my lifetime I have seldom been a spectator of the kind of utter destructive depravity by humans against other humans we see today.  In the past two years I grieve to have observed and been affected by unmitigated evil in Palestine. To be sure, I had learned about various examples of murderous necrophilia in the history of the world. A few names tell the tales:  genocide in Armenia and SW Africa, Holodomor in Ukraine, Holocaust in Europe, tribal wars in Sudan and D.R.Congo, nuclear death in Hiroshima & Nagasaki, "pacification" in Viet Nam, etc.

But the genocide in Palestine imposes on me a sordid history of the land where my faith heritage was birthed.  As a person of faith I seek by faith the transformation of this place as a source of blessing for all the world.  The gifts of the "Holy Land" which is Palestine include truth, justice, peace, and life in its fulness. The current horrors make clear that the human family needs a better understanding of the divine intention for the global human family.  we all need to embrace and cultivate the Spirit's gifts.   

To effect this, the Holy One provides humanity Torah –  divine laws centred in the Ten Commandments as the guideposts for living faithfully. At its core is the command to “have no other gods before me” than the God of love. (Exodus 20:2). Making idols of whatever variety and type is a narcissistic human enterprise. Bowing down to them, worshiping them is blasphemy, This is foundational.  The other commandments follow this single thread: no other Gods!   Divinizing land, endless work, disrespecting parents, demonizing and killing humans, breaching covenant relations as in adultery and sexual abuse, stealing, bearing false witness, dispossessing others of their possessions – all blaspheme the Holy One and breach the Covenant with the Holy One.

In other parts of the scriptures, self-giving and often courageous generosity is at the core. Caring for the alien, loving the neighbour as self, and doing to others what you want done to you - this and more  emphasizes the commonality of compassion and care that are intended to grace the whole human family. 

The apartheid culture,  Israel's Zionist legislative supremacy and violent subjugation afflicting Palestinians, is the antithesis of faith-based ethics and violates the Divine intention for the human family and Torah.  The genocide which Israel’s Zionist ideology promotes is a clear negation of all that the Jewish and Christian heritages profess. Ethics and morality are obliterated.. Netanyahu’s mendacious claim that the Israeli military is the most moral military is contradicted by thousands of Palestinians under the rubble and in mass  graves.  His lie blasphemes the Holy One.

3.     Faith Communities (ecclesiology):  Dipping into the history of the Christian Church can be challenging and too often disappointing. I can, however, attest to both personal as well as institutional achievements that reflect the Spirit’s presence and influence.   Over the 20 centuries, reform movements challenged institutional church failings and sought to recover the roots of Jesus' Way (e.g. St. Francis of Assisi).  Their efforts in the Spirit were to move people of faith toward greater fidelity and love of neighbour, including Creation. 

In our time, Christians and other faith-and justice-based people have linked with courageous observant Jews to resist the negation of faith-ways and to denounce the evil of the State of Israel's ongoing war on Palestine and Palestinians.   

Unhappily,  undermining the Way  of Jesus is very much part of the institutional church's infidelity.  Instances include:  after the fourth century, the Church increasingly in contradiction to Jesus' Way, chose as its governance model the imperial culture and triumphalism of the Holy Roman Empire. Among the consequences were dominating hierarchy and misogynist patriarchy. 

In the post-Reformation era, we witnessed the consequences of colonialism mandated and launched by papal authority ("Doctrine of Discovery") and largely embraced by European churches and nations.   This resulted in the brutal subjugation of indigenous peoples on virtually all continents and the dispossession of their lands and resources. 

Israel has chosen settler colonialism as its model for violently dominating all of Palestine. (Canada has a long way to go to rid itself of its settler colonial arrangement as prescribed in the Indian Act.)

Any serious and truthful Christian will confess that throughout the Christian era in Europe antisemitism was a curse and evil which resulted in profound hatred, brutal discrimination, and anti-human behaviour and inter-generational trauma. Systemic antisemitism culminated finally in the Nazi era's Holocaust and six-million-plus deaths.

One result of this criminal behaviour has been Euro-based churches' awakening to  their guilt in this racist relationship.  Only after World War 2 did churches (and nations) seriously acknowledge and seek to mitigate the impact of this sin.  In the process, they accepted the Zionist dream - too often as a solution for the antisemitism still too current in their own cultures and communities. 

The imprimatur of the British government's Balfour declaration and subsequent United Nations resolutions establish Israel seemed like a suitable solution for providing a "home" for European Jews, while keeping them away from European and North American societies.   The objections of some courageous Christian witnesses against this less obvious antisemitism were rejected.  In rejecting the objections and refusing to attend to indigenous voices, churches contributed to the betrayal of the valid rights and interests of Palestinians.

Various forms of Christian Zionism found specious ways of  justifying or living with Zionist policies and sought to mute voices of truth tellers describing the militant agenda of the Israeli Zionist colonial regime.   First-hand reports of Israel's brutal subjugation of Palestinians published in the United Church's Observer magazine by its editor Al Forrest, were attacked with threats by Zionist propagandists.  The Church failed both Forrest and the Palestinian people by approving an agreement to appease Israeli lobbyists and limit the church's freedom for prophetic witness. 

I confess that I was not adequately paying attention Palestine's lot.  Like other Christians, I have every reason to confess.   I also wonder why the Canadian Council of Churches and its member denominations were not heard denouncing the injustice inflicted on Palestinians.   Whatever cautions or pressures prevented this Christian body from responding to urgent repeated calls for prophetic witness need to be exposed.  This failure raises questions about the actual purpose of the CCC as a national Christian voice in the global human family.. 

The Western churches' relative silence during this unbroken Nakba - Catastrophe did nothing  to  impede Israel and USA from murdering and maiming hundreds of thousands and driving countless Palestinians in refugee camps and open air prisons.   Palestine's infrastructure and culture is destroyed, lands and property stolen, Israeli military dominance backed by USA threatens to inflame the entire Middle East;  international law and order is undermined and unraveling. The frequent experience-based warnings and urgent pleas of Palestinian Christians nave failed to move Western churches and few nations into significant collective action for Palestine's liberation.. 

Could listening to the Spirit finally turn the tide - contribute to a new Palestine where all who live their know themselves beloved and blessed as neighbours?  Certainly the Trump/Netanyahu "Peace Plan" will do nothing to achieve that!  But maybe....

.....more to come in second installment next week.