RESOLUTION OF WITNESS: "Why 'Apartheid' Matters"

From General Synod 33, Plenary 4
Sunday, July 18, 2021
On the Resolution of Witness:
Declaration on a Just Peace in Palestine and Israel

This MOTION passed, leading to the eventual adoption of the resolution itself.  A subsequent motion (also passed) restored the recognition that oppression and occupation of the Palestinian people is a "sin" to be confessed in the church and transformed in a spirit of humility and justice.

MOTION: 

 

I’m Dave Grishaw-Jones.  My pronouns are he, him and his; and I am the pastor of the Community Church of Durham, and a delegate from the New Hampshire Conference.  

 

I move to strike the words “systemic economic and political oppression of the Palestinian people” after the possessive “Israel’s” in line 197 of the resolution; and then to add in their place “apartheid system of laws and legal procedures”.

 

And I’d like to speak to the motion.

 

SPEAK TO THE MOTION:

 

This motion would restore a key and consequential word, in the original draft of the resolution.

 

“Apartheid” is an internationally defined and recognized term, used in legal circles and international diplomacy to name situations like the current one in Palestine-Israel.  The word is profoundly important to our covenant partners in Palestine and Israel who struggle against the yoke of occupation and oppression every day.  Using it here, in this resolution, we can CENTER and AMPLIFY the urgent Palestinian call for solidarity.  

 

The statement proposed by six congregations is a faithful response to the Palestinian “Cry for Hope.”  It is our Palestinian partners—out of their own lived experience of dispossession and apartheid—who called upon us to name what they have already experienced, and continue to experience each day.  Call this what it is, they cried.  Join the consensus around international law.  Call it apartheid.  In the United Nations context, doing so compels member states to act together and address together the conditions of apartheid itself.   It conveys purpose and obligation within the international community.

 

While some Jewish friends express discomfort with the word, I note the growing movement among Jews to use apartheid to describe the Israeli government.  Earlier this year B’tselem, an Israeli organization, and a UCC partner through Global Ministries, issued a report entitled “This is Apartheid.”  Just this week, a Jewish Electorate Institute poll documented that 38% of US Jewish voters under 40 believe that Israel is an apartheid state.  Clearly we have reached a tipping point, within and beyond the Jewish community.

International consensus around “apartheid”—what it means, where it exists, and how it should be addressed—is a critical sign of meaningful change and a catalyzing force for justice.  We’ve seen this in South Africa.  We know that this is true.  Our Palestinian partners have spoken—urgently and faithfully.  Let’s center and amplify their voices by returning the vocabulary of “apartheid” to this powerful resolution.

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See the text of the entire resolution, as it was amended and passed, here!