A recent gathering celebrated the 3rd anniversary of the original Moment of Truth document and released a new statement.

The Kairos movement began 3 years ago from Bethlehem when a group of Palestinian Christians released a document called A Moment of Truth: a Word of Faith, Hope and Love from the Heart of Palestinian Suffering.   Recently, a gathering was held to celebrate the third anniversary of the movement and produced a document:

The Palestinian Kairos document was issued at a time when the political process was facing a stalemate. Amid a diminishing hope for peace, it came to present a ray of hope which contributed to its fast and widespread reception on both the local and international level.

At the conference commemorating the third anniversary of Kairos, the church, as a group of believers, agreed that we are all suffering and that we are all on board  of the same ship. The differences we have are in form rather than content and substance. Islamic and Christian unity is based on a solid sense of belonging to Arab nationalism, citizenship, tolerance, diversity and coexistence.

1. From Despair to Hope

We heard your voices:  

The people of Gaza are living witnesses of hope in their resistance, steadfastness and aspiration for a better future. Their steadfastness is reflected in their resolute insistence to remain on their homeland. At a time when the Israeli occupation is destroying everything in Gaza, the Christian institutions are building more schools and expanding their services.

From the Galilee, we heard the voices of Palestinian youth who feel a sense of the loss of identity and the need for handling this through more contact and  communication with their Palestinian sisters and brothers in Palestine in order to restore the Palestinian memory and their sense of belonging to the Arab nations.

From the Palestinians in Diaspora and based on testimonies of young returnees: there is a need for action to encourage the young people to return to their homeland. A national plan should be put forward in order to encourage emigrants to return home and to familiarize them with Palestine, the Arabic language and the Arab Palestinian culture.

2. Kairos: A choice between negotiations and resistance

Israel is heading towards extremism and is pulling the rest of the region into continued violence.

Human beings need to break out from their religious and doctrinal isolation in order to o truly know themselves, their humanity and that of others. Only then can they emerge from this circle of violence. 

Read full document.

The original Moment of Truth document was not intended to be a balanced paper on the situation between Palestinians and Israelis, but a word from Palestinian Christians about their faith, beliefs, hope, life and reality.  On its website, Kairos Palestine says this about the original document:

A delegation from the Lutheran World Federation, including LWF President Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land and LWF General Secretary Martin Junge visited one of the ELCJHL schools in Ramallah recently. 

Bishop Younan said that the mission of the ELCJHL schools is to prepare young Palestinian women and men to build their state.

“We teach our students to respect human rights—especially women’s rights—to respect freedom of religion and to dialogue with other religions. We emphasize peace education in our schools, and the right for each and every person to live in dignity,” said the ELCJHL bishop who had previously served as pastor of the Ramallah congregation.

The importance of Christian education was also a subject when the LWF delegation met with the Palestinian National Authority Prime Minister Dr Salam Fayyad. The premier noted that the role of Palestinian Christians in Palestinian society was indispensable, and urged encouragement for their efforts.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hope, one of the six congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL), was founded in the mid 1950s as Palestinian refugees fled to the Ramallah area after the war. The School of Hope began in 1965 as a kindergarten with ten students and two teachers, and graduated its first class of three students in 1979. The school has since been serving the greater Ramallah area and continues to grow. It is currently serving more than 450 students—comprising 20 percent Christians and 80 percent Muslims.

And the constant expansion has led the European Union (EU) to fund construction of a 4,000 square meter building that will accommodate around 500 students, who are now located in the old campus. The new school campus is expected to be ready in 2013 when it will be handed over to the church. The construction of the new campus comes as a result of the EU’s continuous support to the Palestinian education sector not only by increasing the physical capacity of school buildings but also by developing the quality of education in the occupied Palestinian territories.

During the meeting with the premier, General Secretary Martin Junge reiterated the crucial role the Christian communities play in the region through their institutions.

“The importance of the Lutheran schools in the Palestinian context became evident again in the conversation with the Palestinian Prime Minister,” Junge said after the meeting. “I was pleased that the Prime Minister brought up the issue and the importance of the Christian presence among the Palestinians, as a matter of identity for the Palestinian people,” he added.

From the LWF article – Read the full LWF article

Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mt. of Olives in Jerusalem is the only facility available in the West Bank for pediatric dialysis and state-of-the-art radiation oncology treatment.

At Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH) in Jerusalem, they are used to hearing appreciation from grateful parents and patients.  AVH is the only place in the West Bank that offers some services, such as pediatric kidney dialysis and state-of-the-art radiation oncology treatment.   They also enable  patients and staff coming from the West Bank to get there more easily through a unique bussing program that gets through the numerous and time-consuming checkpoints more efficiently.  

The Lutheran World Federation’s (LWF) delegation, which included President Bishop Dr. Munib Younan, of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, and General Secretary Rev. Martin Junge, recently visited the LWF’s hospital and their Vocational Training programs in Jerusalem.  

Junge said “the Augusta Victoria Hospital is owned by the whole LWF communion. That means 143 member churches in 79 countries all over the world, representing more than 70 million Christians. The work of the hospital staff is a beacon of hope and what it represents for the entire communion cannot be overestimated,” he said.

Students work at one of the Vocational Training programs of the LWF near Jerusalem.

The unemployment rate among Palestinian young people aged 18 to 24 is almost 40 percent. Despite these disappointing figures, recent surveys by the LWF’s vocational training program show that 75 to 80 percent of those graduating from the LWF-run centers are employed in areas related to their training.

Junge noted that the vocational training program serves as a witness of the crucial role of churches as part of civil society. He encouraged governmental agencies to recognize the importance of education as a means of empowering young people as full citizens who help to build society.  Read more about the LWF Delegation visit   |   Visit the LWF’s Jerusalem program website

LWF President Bishop Dr Munib A. Younan (left) and LWF General Secretary Rev. Martin Junge (right) meet Nabeel, one of the children who make up 52 percent of Za’atri’s population, during a visit to the camp in late September. © LWF/Thomas Ekelund

The Lutheran World Federation (LWF), a founding member of the ACT Alliance, has recently started offering emergency assistance in the Za’atri Refugee Camp in Northern Jordan, which is growing rapidly and now houses over 90,000 people, the largest number of Syrian refugees in all the neighboring countries.  The primary aim of the assistance is to provide shelter and clothing for children, as winter now hastily approaches.  In Za’atri, 52 percent of the refugees are below the age of eighteen.

The Jordanian government has given the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization (JHCO), the largest non-governmental organization (NGO) in the country, the mandate to manage the camp. Under a memorandum of understanding with the JHCO, the LWF will provide the refugees with winterized tents, prefab containers and warm garments for 10,000 children. The focus will be broadened in the coming months to include assistance to refugees in organizing community-based groups at the camp.

An LWF delegation comprising LWF President Bishop Dr Munib A. Younan and General Secretary Rev. Martin Junge visited Za’atri camp on 27 September and witnessed firsthand the conditions there and the humanitarian response supported by the global Lutheran communion.

Junge said he was impressed by how the different NGOs are working together. But he noted, the needs are there and it takes great efforts to overcome the challenges.

“We are facing difficulties and hardship. I see traumatized people that have escaped violence, and how violence is shaping the way people relate to the situation. Fifty two percent of the population here are children, facing a winter soon to come with low temperatures and rain,” he said.

“We will have to scale up our efforts jointly so that people can live in basic dignity,” Junge added.

Others on the delegation are Rev. Eberhard Hitzler, director of the Department for World Service (DWS), the LWF’s humanitarian relief arm; and Rev. Mark Brown, who heads the Jerusalem-based DWS operations for the Middle East region.

The group’s itinerary until 30 September includes a visit to the LWF-run Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem, and meetings with ecumenical leaders and with the Palestinian Prime Minister Dr Salam Fayyad.  Read more about the LWF response   |  Give now through ELCA disaster response

Jane Harries, a Quaker from the United Kingdom, has recently returned from a three–month stint in the West Bank, working with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). She was based in Yanoun, a small Palestinian village near Nablus, living with its people and observing how they relate to Israelis from nearby settlement communities and the IDF.  Listen to her 10-minute podcast with journalist Roy Jenkins of the BBC about her work there as part of this ecumenical programme.

This program came under attack recently by some in the UK who described the program as biased against Israel.  Despite the controversy, the Church of England voted to support the program and others working for peace and justice in the Holy Land.  The short motion commits the Church to support: the work of EAPPI (including making “use of the experience of returning participants”), aid agencies working with Palestinians, “Israelis and Palestinians in all organisations working for justice and peace in the area” (citing Parents Circle – Family Forum specifically), and “organisations that work to ensure” the “continuing presence [of Christian Palestinians] in the Holy Land”.

The ELCA has sponsored many Ecumenical Accompaniers since the program began in 2002, when the heads of churches in Jerusalem asked the World Council of Churches and churches all over the world to support their Christian sisters and brothers in Palestine and act in the face of increasing violence and the extended occupation in Israel/Palestine. 

Find out more about the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Palestine and Israel in the US.

Presbyterians have had partnerships with Christians in Syria and Lebanon since the early 1800s. Two of their partners recently spoke in New York about how the church is responding to the current crisis in Syria, a crisis that impacts Lebanon.

Watch the 30 minute video featuring the Rev. Dr. Nuhad Tomeh, Associate General Secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches and the PC(USA) Regional Liaison for Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and the Gulf, and the Rev. Fadi Dagher, the General Secretary of the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon.

The ELCA is responding to the growing refugee crisis in Jordan resulting from Syrians fleeing recently-escalated violence in their home country.  A year of brutal violence is believed to have taken over 10,000 lives thus far in Syria with no end in sight.  An estimated 200,000 people have fled to Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey.   

Jordanian officials recently invited the Rev. Munib A. Younan, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land and president of The Lutheran World Federation, into the process of addressing the needs of Syrian refugees. Younan has built a strong relationship with the royal family of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and Younan is now helping to identify ways the ELCA and The Lutheran World Federation can deepen their participation in relief efforts.

 ELCA Disaster Response has committed $250,000 to help support The Lutheran World Federation efforts to provide the lodging for 300 families — about 1,400 people — with adequate housing within the refugee camp in Jordan while providing expertise in camp management to ensure people receive health care, food and water. Earlier this year, ELCA Disaster Response allocated $200,000 to provide food, clothing and other materials to support Syrian families and individuals displaced by the conflict.

Bishop Younan stated:   “I am grateful that, in addition to humanitarian aid organizations, the ELCA was one of the first churches to respond to the needs of the Syrian people, both inside the country and in refugee populations in neighboring countries,” said Younan. “I am grateful for the (ELCA’s) strong accompaniment of my own church, the ELCA’s robust participation in The Lutheran World Federation and for your church’s response to this and other disasters throughout the world.”   Read ELCA news report   |   Go to ELCA’s Disaster Response coverage and donate now   |   Read more on Syria from the BBC    |    Read more about the LWF response

African Americans for Justice in the Middle East & North Africa is an initiative that has been created in order to build solidarity, in a true Pan-African and Black Internationalist tradition, with the peoples and progressive social movements in North Africa and the Middle East that have been engaged in struggles for democracy, justice and national liberation.  We come together from different organizations, institutions and movements, and some as simply individuals of conscience, who have concluded that silence in the face of injustice and oppression is unacceptable.  We believe that African Americans in the United States of America have a special role in speaking out against enemies of peace, justice and democracy, both foreign and domestic.

So states the preface of a statement by fifty-five black activists and scholars.  They say the time has arrived for an African American voice on US policy towards the regions of North Africa and the Middle East.  They call themselves a “process rather than an organization,” and one of their action points is:

Promoting a clear demand for justice for the Palestinian people as central to peace and stability in the Middle East.  In doing so we join together with non-African Americans, people of different faiths, including but not limited to Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, animists and others, who are committed to justice for the Palestinian people.  We believe that there is a special significance to working with progressive Jews in the USA and Israel who share our abhorrence to the system of oppression experienced by the Palestinian people.

Read the full statement | For more information about African Americans for Justice in the Middle East and North Africa, email aajmena@gmail.com.

Here Palestinians Sally and MaryAn and wall team leader Lisa Jeffreys greet youth gathering participants in Palestine.

Youth at the ELCA Youth Gathering were guided through a section called The Wall, with exhibits from places in the world where there are actual or metaphorical walls between people. There were examples of how God is helping to tear down the walls between people. The Palestinian exhibit had 12-foot walls, information, maps, history and videos about the situation.  Many were detained in a prison for a short-time due to lack of proper permits and many added graffiti to the walls in paint.

Palestine youth team member Jenna Dwierzma prepares to write a letter to her member of congress to protest Palestinian home demolitions by Israelis, as a recent Action Alert from the ELCA Washington office requested.

All of the youth exited through a section called “Making us Whole,” a chance to act, reflect and pray about what they had seen.  An advocacy station allowed people to write letters to their members of congress. Here Jenna Dwierzma prepares to write a letter about ending Palestinian home demolitions by Israelis, as a recent action alert from the ELCA Washington office requested.