Peace Not Walls

In their Easter message, the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem “call upon all Christians from around the ecumenical world to come and visit with our churches and walk with the living stones of the Holy Land  in the footsteps of our risen Lord.” If you are interested in responding to this call take a look at Peace Not Wall’s resources for traveling to the Holy Land.

Below is the full text of the Easter message:

“He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.
Come and see the place where he lay.” Matthew 28:6

We, the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, bless our faithful people in this region and the people of God everywhere in the name of the risen Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Each year the Church calls us to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ through Divine Liturgies and Paschal ceremonies and gatherings. The Church in the Holy Land offers what no other church around the world can offer – Pilgrimage in the land where it all happened. Through many prayers, fasts, and holy journeys, this land we call Holy became a fifth gospel. Indeed, our Easter greetings come from the heart of the City of Hope, Resurrection and the Empty Tomb.

As Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, we call upon all Christians from around the ecumenical world to come and visit with our churches and walk with the living stones of the Holy Land in the footsteps of our risen Lord. And for those who are not able to make their pilgrimage to the Holy Land, we appeal to them to hold the peoples of this land in their prayers, particularly the Christian presence that keeps dwindling and faces existential challenges throughout the Middle East.

The holy fire on Holy Saturday and Easter Vigil remind us, and the entire world, of the ‘Light of the Risen Lord’, which illumines the whole world, even in the darkest places of the earth. Our world today is full of false idols that separate people from the light of Christ and the truth of his Gospel. The Christian presence here in the Mother City of our faith continues to serve as a beacon of light of the risen Christ, which the first disciples witnessed here at the empty sepulcher in Jerusalem.

As a continued witness of the resurrection, the Church in the Holy Land urges all people of faith and goodwill around the world, especially those in authority, to strive for justice and peace among the nations. In particular, pray with us for the situation in Syria; in Lebanon; in Palestine and Israel; in Egypt; in Iraq, and wherever there is political unrest. Pray for all victims of violence and oppression, for prisoners, for those who live with the lack of security, and those who are displaced and refugees, especially here in our land.

May the light of the risen Lord shine upon the whole world and in our region, and may we all be raised with Christ into life victorious. Alleluia, Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed.

Alleluia!

Patriarch Theophilos III, Greek Orthodox Patriarchate
Patriarch Fouad Twal, Latin Patriarchate
Patriarch Norhan Manougian, Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Patriarchate
Very Rev. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, ofm, Custos of the Holy Land
Archbishop Anba Abraham, Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate, Jerusalem
Archbishop Swerios Malki Murad, Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate
Aba Fissiha Tsion, Locum Tenens of the Ethiopian Orthodox Patriarchate
Archbishop Joseph-Jules Zerey, Greek-Melkite-Catholic Patriarchate
Archbishop Moussa El-Hage, Maronite Patriarchal Exarchate
Bishop Suheil Dawani, Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East
Bishop Munib Younan, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land
Bishop Pierre Melki, Syrian Catholic Patriarchal Exarchate
Msgr. Joseph Antoine Kelekian, Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Exarchate

Taken from Independent Catholic News website

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According to a report by the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), on Wednesday, March 20, at 7:30 am, the day President Obama landed in Tel Aviv, 22 Israeli soldiers arrived at the Hebron Public Elementary School where they forced schoolchildren to walk to Checkpoint 29 and then into military vehicles. In total, the Israeli Military apprehended 27 minors, ages 7-15 during this incident.  An international protester took the video above.  According to BtSelem, an Israeli human rights group, 14 were under the age of 12.  It is illegal to detain Israeli children under the age of 12, but the occupied Palestinian territories are subject to a different set of laws through the Israeli military.

Though reports of the details differ, according to the EAPPI report:

- two of the children were released on the side of a road shortly after being detained. The remaining 25 children were taken to the police station near the Ibrahimi Mosque, where they were photographed and had their fingerprints taken.  Teachers from the school went to the police station but were not allowed to enter.

- At 2:00PM the soldiers released the 8 youngest children, and continued to detain the remaining 17, who are all between the ages of 13 and 15.  After interrogating them at the police station the soldiers transported the 17 children to the Jabarah and Junaid military bases, where they continued to question them.

- Later that night soldiers released 14 of the remaining children. Three of the children, Muhamad Al-Razim, Muhamad Burqan and Muhamad Al-Fakhoury (ages 14-15) were transported to the Ofer Military Prison where they were still detained as of Wednesday, March 27.  

- The minors were questioned, photographed and had their fingerprints taken multiple times without consent and without the presence of parents, legal guardians, lawyers or teachers. Moreover, throughout the incident, the children were held along with other adult detainees, one of which is a long-time contact of EAPPI, Issa Amro, who confirmed that the children were both blindfolded and handcuffed for extended periods while being detained in the police station.

Ynet reports that the IDF confirmed it had arrested Palestinian schoolchildren on Wednesday morning “due to recent stone-throwing incidents toward the security forces and citizens in the city.” The Israeli army added that seven children had been taken for police interrogation.

Under international law, children should be restrained only if they pose an imminent threat to themselves or to others, and all other means have been exhausted.  They also are entitled to have a parent, guardian or lawyer present for the interrogations.   

Also in Hebron that day, according to Reuters, dozens of children and adults marched through Hebron’s Shuhada Street to protest the American president’s visit. Hebron is a flashpoint of tension between the more than 150,000 Palestinians and the less than 1000 Israeli settlers who live in the city.  Shudada Street has been closed since 1994, and parts of the Old City of Hebron, where Palestinians used to own houses and shops, have been either closed or taken over by settlers.  

According to Ali Gharib, reporting for the Daily Beast from Hebron, the protesters wore cartoon Obama masks and spoke out against segregation of Palestinians and Israelis in the city. They were joined by international activists with t-shirts saying “I have a dream.”

See EAPPI action alert  |   See story in Huffington Post  |  See BtSelem report

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(Left to Right) Rev. Ibrahim Azar, Pastor of the Arabic Speaking congregation of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer; Rev. Mark Brown, Church Council Chairperson of the English Speaking congregation of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer; Bishop Munib Younan, Bishop of the ELCJHL; Propst Wolfgang Schmidt, Representative of the Evangelische Kirche Deutschland in Jerusalem bless Rev. Dr. Martin Zimmann and Rev. Dr. Angela Zimmann. © Danae Hudson/ELCJHL

On March 10th, 2013, ELCJHL Bishop Munib Younan installed Rev. Dr. Angela Zimmann and Rev. Dr. Martin Zimmann as pastors of the English Speaking Redeemer congregation and Special Assistants to the Bishop. Also installed were Danae Hudson, as Communications Assistant to the Bishop, and Steve Hudson, as volunteer accountant for the ELCJHL.  

Bishop Younan challenged them in his sermon: “You are called to accompany the people of Palestine in their struggle to realize the dream of a peaceful coexistence with their Israeli neighbors. You will hear the pains and insecurity of both peoples, Israeli and Palestinian, but you are called to give them a word of comfort, a word of peace, a word of love. The road is difficult, the work is challenging. I pray you will be up to the task. And we in the ELCJHL will be supporting you.”

Listen to Bishop Younan’s sermon for the installation service.  See more photos of the installation. 

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From left: Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, WCC general secretary; Rev. Dr Margaretha Hendriks-Ririmasse, vice-moderator of the WCC Central Committee; Rev. Dr Walter Altmann, moderator of the WCC Central Committee; Bishop Dr Munib A. Younan; and Metropolitan Prof. Dr Gennadios of Sassima; vice-moderator of the WCC Central Committee, after the WCC Executive Committee vote.

The Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC) meeting near Geneva at the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey voted to approve the full membership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL) in the WCC. The approval ended a two-year process in which both the Executive Committee and Central Committee of the WCC considered the application of the ELCJHL. During this period, visits to the churches in Jerusalem and discussions with other member churches in the area took place. The ELCA has a long relationship with the ELCJHL.

“The ELCJHL widely identifies with ministries of the World Council of Churches,” Bishop Dr Munib A. Younan of the ELCJHL said in a brief speech to the Executive Committee after the vote, pointing to their support of the Jerusalem Inter-church Centre, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel and the Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum.

“We are honoured to serve God’s will through the essential ministries of the World Council of Churches,” Younan said. “The ELCJHL supports these ministries … because they show our people in Jerusalem, The Holy Land, and Jordan that their Christian sisters and brothers around the world stand with them, accompanying them in their sorrows and in their joys.”

Younan said, “in this age of globalization, we join with the churches in the world around us to be instruments of peace, harbingers of justice, initiators of dialogue.”

“The ELCJHL is richly blessed by the accompaniment we have received through this ecumenical body, and we hope that we have returned some of that goodness to you,” he said.

The ELCJHL, with its origins in 19th century missionary activity in the Holy Land, is made up of congregations in Amman, Jerusalem, Ramallah and the Bethlehem area. An updated count of WCC member churches will come after the WCC 10th Assembly being held in Busan, Republic of Korea, 30 October to 10 November, 2013.

See the ELCJHL’s story.       See World Council of Churches’ story.

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Two documentary films about Israel/Palestine are in the news right now because they are both up for an Oscar award for best documentary film.

Five Broken Cameras was made by two men, one Israeli and one Palestinian, and tells the story of  non-violent resistance in the West Bank village of Bilin to the Israeli separation barrier and the growing Israeli settlements infringing on their daily lives.  See an interview with Christine Amanpour with the film makers. 

The Gatekeepers captures the stories of the 6 living past directors of the Shin Bet, the Israeli Secret police, and their warnings to the state of Israel that the current path of occupation and expanding Israeli settlements will not lead to peace but perpetual struggle.  See an interview with Christine Amanpour with the film maker.

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In its latest report, released Monday, the UN commission of inquiry in Syria finds that both pro- and anti-Government forces have become increasingly violent and reckless with human life as the conflict draws to the close of its second year. It emphasizes the urgent need for parties to the conflict to commit to a political settlement to end the violence.  The commission is to present its report to the UN Human Rights Council on March 11.

An estimated 70,000 people have been killed in the two-year conflict, and a rising number of internally-displaced people head toward refugee camps.  The numbers, however, are in dispute:

“‘“Syria is the largest IDP crisis in the world,’ said Clare Spurrell of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, the leading body monitoring internally displaced people worldwide. ‘The longer we underestimate the reality of what is happening on the ground, the further we are getting from an appropriate response.’

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees released new figures Monday showing 2.08 million people in urgent need in six provinces of northern Syria. That’s way below a partial survey of the same provinces that the Syrian opposition and 10 international aid agencies conducted over four weeks in January.

That survey, undertaken by teams of researchers who met with local relief committees, religious leaders and local police, among others, estimated that the number of people in urgent need totaled at least 3.2 million in those provinces: Idlib, rural Aleppo, Latakia, Raqqa, Hasaka and Deir el Zour. That’s nearly three-quarters of the 4.3 million people thought to be living now in the surveyed areas of those provinces.”  Taken from McClatchy newspaper, read more here. 

Read about the ELCA’s response to the Syrian crisis.

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Ask President Obama to meet with religious leaders when he visits the Middle East next month; call for a halt to settlement activity; ask his delegation to visit Augusta Victoria Hospital

President Obama is scheduled to visit Israel, Palestine and Jordan next month, his first such visit as president. The president has often sought out the views of U.S. religious leaders through his White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and other meetings. It will be important for the President to hear the voices of faith leaders during his visit to the region as well. The Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land consists of leaders of the three Abrahamic faiths, including Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land and President of The Lutheran World Federation.

As you may be aware, the Council’s long-awaited study of the “Portrayal of the Other” in Palestinian and Israeli school books was recently released and generated much discussion, some of it critical. However, the Council’s researchers utilized identical, standardized scientific methods for this work. Now, as much as ever, the Council needs support from us and U.S. leaders for this effort as well as its overall mission to advance the sacred values of each faith, “to prevent religion from being used as a source of conflict, and to promote mutual respect, a just and comprehensive peace and reconciliation between people of all faiths in the Holy Land and worldwide.”

Please contact the White House and ask President Obama to meet with the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land during his visit.

As noted in a report issued late last year by the United Nations (U.N.) on the humanitarian impact of the Israeli settlement policy on Palestinians, since 1967, Israel has established about 150 settlements (residential and others) in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; in addition to some 100 “outposts” erected by settlers without official authorization. Three new settlements were approved in 2012 by retroactively ‘authorizing’ such outposts. More than 500,000 people live in these settlements, which are against international law. Additionally, in 2012, one Palestinian was killed and approximately 1,300 injured by Israeli settlers or security forces in incidents directly or indirectly related to settlements, including demonstrations.

Furthermore, a recent U.N. report states that: “The establishment of the settlements in the West Bank including East Jerusalem is a mesh of construction and infrastructure leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian State and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. The settlements have been established and developed at the expense of violating international human rights laws and international humanitarian law, as applicable in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territory] as notably recognized by the 2004 ICJ [International Court of Justice] Advisory Opinion.”

Repeated warnings by U.S. officials to stop the growth of settlements have fallen on deaf ears, as settlement expansion has advanced at an accelerated rate and could render a viable two-state solution virtually impossible.

Please contact the White House and ask President Obama to urge him to demand, during his visit, a halt to all settlement activity.

The Lutheran World Federation has operated the Augusta Victoria Hospital for the benefit of Palestinian refugees since 1950. The ELCA and other churches around the world have been strong supporters of this effort to meet human need and be a sign of hope over the years. In addition, the U.S. government has supported the hospital’s work, particularly in the field of oncology through significant grants for crucial equipment. In March 2010, Dr. Jill Biden, wife of the vice-president, visited the hospital during her husband’s visit to Jerusalem.

Please contact the White House and ask President Obama to have one or more members of his delegation visit the Augusta Victoria Hospital.

Click here to write to President Obama now

Click here to share your concerns for the President’s upcoming trip with Secretary of State John Kerry

Click here to share those concerns with your members of Congress

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On Monday, a team of researchers presented the results of a three-year study that tried to objectively look at bias in Israeli and Palestinian textbooks directed against “the other.” The results and the responses they engendered were mixed, leaving the State Department, the primary funder of the study, to dance around the results.

While the report found that each side teaches their children little about the other’s religion, culture or economy and most maps on both side ignore the other, the results were not all negative. For years, the debate over incitement in textbooks has fueled accusations that there is no desire for peace. According to the Guardian, “Israel and the Palestinian Authority have both been accused of teaching violence and hatred, demonizing the other, or using excessively negative depictions in children’s education” but the study found these claims unfounded. National Public Radio reports: “there are few dehumanizing references in the textbooks of either side. The research team found few if any references to the other culture as ‘subhuman,’ something they said is common in other tense situations.”

The study was initiated by the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land comprised of the Chief Rabbis of Israel, the Minister of Religious Affairs of the Palestinian Authority, the Greek, Armenian and Latin Patriarchs of Jerusalem and the Anglican and Lutheran Bishops of the Holy Land; and was fully funded by the U.S. State Department.

The reactions to the report were varied. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad welcomed the study, saying it “proves what we have repeatedly affirmed in response to allegations” about Palestinian incitement against Israel. He said he had encouraged the Ministry of Education to adopt its recommendations for improving the Palestinian curriculum.

The Israeli Education Ministry denounced the report’s findings as an attempt to create a parallel between the Israeli and Palestinian educational systems and explained it chose not to cooperate with the study whose members “are interested in maliciously slandering the Israeli educational system and the State of Israel.” In the U.S., the Anti-Defamation League supported the Education Ministry’s criticism, calling the study “distorted and counterproductive.”

Dr. Bruce Wexler, the Yale University psychiatry professor who designed the study, countered those claims to reporters on Monday saying, “Frankly, I think that the minister of education is a great example of the power of these unilateral narratives. That man cannot see beyond the blinders that have come into his mind by developing as a product of a national narrative that can’t understand the types of things we’re talking about here.”

The State Department distanced themselves from the findings of the report, a reaction that The Washington Post said was  “probably owed to ally Israel’s angry reaction.” The spokeswoman told reporters, “The results are not necessarily endorsed by the U.S. government, but we fund NGOs who are seeking to do independent analyses so that parties on the ground can use them in their own evaluation of these things…So you know, we’re not taking a position one way or another on what the study found.”

Sami Adwan of Bethlehem University, the chief Palestinian researcher on the project, says that despite the Palestinian textbooks’ low instances of dehumanization, “How can you teach children to act positive toward the Israelis when they’re creating a much more difficult life? How can you tell them, ‘Be nice to your neighbor’ while you only see your neighbor in bulldozers and at checkpoints?”

Mohammed Dajani, a former Fatah fighter turned peace activist, who served on the advisory board of the textbook study says now is the time to make changes in the curriculum. “We should not let our children inherit our problems.”

Taken from the Churches for Middle East Peace website

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All the land you see is Palestinian land. The Israeli separation barrier has been used to loop in and take land into the Israeli side of the barrier (to the right of the barrier). Here, a view from a Bethlehemite’s house looking over the barrier to Gilo, one of the larger settlements in East Jerusalem.

The report on the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people has been released by the UN international fact-finding mission, concluding that the settlements violate a “multitude” of human rights of the Palestinians and that “these violations are all interrelated, forming part of an overall pattern of breaches that are characterised principally by the denial of the right to self-determination and systemic discrimination against the Palestinian people which occur on a daily basis.”  

Read the full report . 

The chair of the mission, Ms. Christine Chanet from France, said the report concludes that “in compliance with Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel must cease all settlement activities without preconditions.”

The report details how the Israeli governments since 1967 have openly led, directly participated in, and had full control of the planning, construction, development, consolidation and encouragement of settlements.

“We are today calling on the government of Israel to ensure full accountability for all violations, put an end to the policy of impunity and to ensure justice for all victims,” said Ms. Asma Jahangir, member of the Mission from Pakistan.

The report states that Israel is committing serious breaches of its obligations under the right to self-determination and under humanitarian law. The report also concludes that the Rome Statute establishes the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction over the transfer of populations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.“The magnitude of violations relating to Israel’s policies of dispossessions, evictions, demolitions and displacements from land shows the widespread nature of these breaches of human rights. The motivation behind violence and intimidation against the Palestinians and their properties is to drive the local populations away from their lands, allowing the settlements to expand,” said Ms. Unity Dow, member of the Mission from Botswana

The International Fact-Finding Mission: Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory was established by Human Rights Council Resolution 19/17 in March, 2012, which decided to “dispatch an independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Human Rights Council, to investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”

Tenders for illegal settlement units in East Jerusalem have ballooned during Prime Minister Netanyahu’s leadership. This chart is from the UN report above.

Recently, another report criticized the settlement enterprise.  A Peace Now report concluded that Israel’s settlement policies since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been a direct threat to the two-state solution: 

The current government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, took office on March 31, 2009. In the period since, its policies and actions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem disclose a clear intention to use settlements to systematically undermine and render impossible a realistic, viable two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Read more about the Peace Now report. 

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