LETTER TO MY COLLEAGUES: "Into Every Shadow"

Dear friends and colleagues in the Conference, 

I'm grateful for your ministries of compassion and your commitments to protection--not only for your own communities and members, but for peoples of all faiths and backgrounds.  This kind of witness is deeply embedded in our United Church; and for this I am so, so grateful.

In conversations with many of you, I'm struck by how quickly we turn to a 'religious lens'--and attempt to understand the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through that lens.  Given our concerns for Jewish and Muslim neighbors, and the trauma unleashed by violence and retaliation, this is perhaps inevitable.  We want to protect Jewish allies here in New Hampshire (rightly), and we want to stand bravely with Muslim colleagues in our own towns and cities (rightly).  So we describe the brutality unleashed on October 7, and the deadly wave of warfare in response, as a religious war.  And that breaks our hearts.  And that seems so complicated.  And that causes us to remain silent on issues of war and peace (and racism and apartheid).

But I'd like to suggest that what we're watching this month, the violence ripping through lives and villages in Gaza and Israel, is not at all a religious conflict (Jews versus Muslims, or Jews versus the world), but an intra-national conflict--one marked by years of occupation, illegal settlement, violent and nonviolent resistance, and despair fueled by dispossession and ethnic cleansing.  These aren't two peoples, but one--joined by one long history, connected through family trees and cultural roots.  A semitic people.  History and cruelty have forced many of them apart, over centuries in some cases, and then brought many of them together again.  But--for many internal reasons, and for many global and political reasons--modern Israel has not seen fit to allow for freedom and fully realized human rights among their Palestian cousins.  Some even seek to expel Palestinians permanently from lands and villages they've loved and lived on for centuries.  (By all accounts, that project is accelerating in this century, and particularly this fall.)

And justice denied is met with nonviolent resistance; which is then characterized as "antisemitic" (which makes no sense); which rejects coordinated global action (diplomatic efforts); and Palestinian communities are left to wonder if the world is even watching.

And through decades and generations of this, and now an escalated occupation (in the West Bank) and intensified seige (of Gaza), systemic and political violence erupts regularly in brother-to-brother violence, sister-to-sister violence.  And that cycle goes on and on and on and on.  Even if Israel succeeds in "wiping Hamas out," something like Hamas will rise up to take its place.  No justice, we say in the peace movement, no peace.  My friend and colleague John Thomas wrote just last week:

Absent meaningful movement toward an end of the Occupation and negotiations that lead to a just peace marked by adherence to acceptable standards of human rights and the rules of international law, violence affecting the lives of both Palestinians and Israelis will be a predictable mark of the future.  Kairos Palestine, a Christian ecumenical movement for non-violent action and a United Church of Christ global partner, offers this prophetic interpretation of the violence we are watching today...  

To identify the conditions that allow us to predict a violent future is not to condone or justify that violence.  It is to warn us that failure to change those conditions sentences both Israelis and Palestinians to a grim future.  

So I would urge you, sisters and brothers in Christ, to consider what we might say and do in such a time of this.  Just as we can and must respond to the cry for justice and reparations of communities of color in our own country, we can and we must respond to the cry of Palestinian and Israeli advocates.  Just as we can and must address systemic injustice and human rights issues in our own country, we can and we must see the Israeli occupation of Palestine for what it is: apartheid, a legalized and militarily enforced system of separation.  A denial of human rights.

And by all means, we should demand that Congress withdraw all funding for Israel's own militarized rage in Gaza and the West Bank.  We spend close to 4 billion dollars annually (and much more in the President's proposal this month) on weapons of destruction and oppression, lighting a proverbial match in what is clearly a cauldron of despair and distrust.  We can and we must say, No more.  Again, as a Just Peace Church, we agree that militarism is an affront to the one and holy God of love.  Here at home.  Over there.  Everywhere.  

URGE US SUPPORT FOR CEASEFIRE NOW!

So it is that the present crisis should motivate all of us to speak, to speak bravely, to advocate first for a ceasefire, but then (and urgently) for a just peace shaped by human rights for all.  Practically, we in the United Church can boldly join the Apartheid Free Movement--an international coalition of churches, synagogues, mosques and communities advocating for an end to the occupation and a just peace among the many siblings of the Holy Land.  (Already our denomination has endorsed this movement, becoming the first denomination to do so; and UCCPIN has done the same.)  If you're looking for resources, tools, ways to educate your congregations on the important difference between a "religious conflict" and an "intra-national" one, please check out UCCPIN's excellent set of webinars and resources online.  There are especially important resources there, exploring the vicious role of antisemitism in American communities, and helping leaders navigate a world where the charge of antisemitism is often used to dissuade and punish Palestinian solidarity.

John Thomas writes that this conflict is, of course, a complicated one--but that complicated moments do not excuse the church of Jesus Christ from bold and prophetic action and solidarity with the broken-hearted peoples of the world.  We stand with those who seek justice.  We stand with those who weep for peace.  We stand with Israelis, Palestinians, children of God all, who ask for our friendship in their many hours of darkness and violence.  Let us not look away.  Let us turn toward the One who walks through every valley, into every shadow, to comfort and release every captive.

Yours on that journey,

The Rev. Dave Grishaw-Jones

Pastor, Community Church of Durham

Member, Steering Committee, United Church of Christ Palestine Israel Network

www.uccpin.org