Year: 2017

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Christians in the Holy Land today, part 2

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The separation wall in Bethlehem. (photo: Mary Pneuman)

By Mary J. Pneuman / Bishop’s Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land

[Ed. note: After returning from a recent trip to the Holy Land, the author has updated her previous writings. We offer The Promised Land or the Land of Promise Revisited here in serial form.]

“The future is guaranteed by reaffirming the best in our Palestinian past and present, celebrating our humanity and overcoming the prejudices that come with narrow identities that lead to violence and the exclusion of others.”
— Bernard Sabella, PhD, professor of sociology at Bethlehem University

Population statistics that are both current and reliable are hard to come by because of the shifting demographics now taking place. In his detailed status report A Place of Roots (2014), Dr. Bernard Sabella[1] states that Palestinian Christians in both Palestine and Israel numbered below 2% of the overall population. Inside the State of Israel, the number of resident Christian citizens stood at about 120,000 or about 1.4% of a total Israeli population of 8.3 million. More recent reports seem to indicate that the number of Christians in Israel is actually growing. According to Dr. Sabella, Israeli Christians comprised about 7.1% of its Arab citizenry, and together, Arab Christians and Muslims numbered about 1.7 million or roughly 20% of Israeli citizens. In Palestine, as of his report, the number of local Arabic speaking Christians stood at about 50,000 or 1.1% of a population of about 4.5 million Palestinians. The Christian population of Jerusalem had fallen from approximately 32,000 in 1945 to about 8,000 today. As of 2015, it was estimated that about 38,000 Christians live in the West Bank, centered primarily in and around Bethlehem (down from about 50,000 less than 10 years ago). The National Catholic Reporter (12.16) reported that in 1950, the Christian population of Bethlehem and surrounding villages was about 86% of the total; presently, the number stands at about 11,000 Christians, or 11.7%. Once a predominantly Christian town, Ramallah is now home to 7,000 Christians out of a population of just under 60,000. Figures from 2013 estimate 1,000–1,300 Christians in Gaza (pop. 1.7 million). Continue reading “Christians in the Holy Land today, part 2”

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EVENT: End the deadly exchange, no more US-Israel police partnerships!

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Please join our brothers and sisters from JVP Seattle at this upcoming event.

Date: Wednesday, Nov 8, 2017
Time: 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
Location: Downtown Seattle (specifics TBD)
Information: Facebook event
Sponsor page
Event Details

Join us in action to call on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to end its deadly law enforcement exchanges between the U.S. and Israel.

Under the banner of “counter-terrorism,” the ADL’s police exchange programs send high-ranking U.S. law enforcement, FBI and ICE officials to train with Israeli police, military and intelligence agencies. These trainings transform Israel’s 70 years of dispossession and 50 years of Occupation into a marketing brochure for successful policing — reinforcing racist & militarized policing in Palestine/Israel and the U.S.

Our own Seattle Police participated in these programs in 2013 and 2015, and it’s time to make clear that these deadly exchanges must end. In Seattle, we need housing, services and support for targeted communities, not more militarized, racist policing. At the action, local activists will speak to these connections between the crisis of police violence here and Israeli occupation and apartheid abroad.

On the anniversary of Trump’s election, with highly visible white supremacist violence, islamophobia and antisemitism on the rise, let’s remind the ADL that it is time for everyone to choose a side — upholding the racist, violent status quo or fighting for a just future, in Seattle and in Palestine/Israel.

More information here →

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Recognize Palestine to mark Balfour centenary

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Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, said the Balfour declaration had been a “turning point in history.“ (photo: Christian Sinibaldi / The Guardian)

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry urges formal UK recognition 100 years after declaration that paved way for creation of Israel.

By Peter Beaumont / The Guardian / Oct 30, 2017

“I don’t think we celebrate the Balfour declaration. But I think we have to mark it because it was a turning point in the history of that area and the most important way of marking it is to recognize Palestine.”
— Emily Thornberry, UK shadow foreign secretary

The shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, is calling on the UK to mark the centenary of the Balfour declaration — which called for the creation of a Jewish national homeland — with a formal British recognition of the state of Palestine.

The Balfour declaration was issued on Nov 2, 1917, and took its name from a letter written by Arthur Balfour, the foreign secretary, expressing support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” to Lord Rothschild.

Although Israel was not established until three decades later, the declaration is still seen, not least by Israel, as a founding diplomatic initiative for a Jewish state. It is deeply resented by Palestinians.

Continue reading “Recognize Palestine to mark Balfour centenary”

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Christians in the Holy Land today, part 1

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Sabt al Nour parade on the Sunday before Easter in Ramallah. (photo: Mary Pneuman)

By Mary J. Pneuman / Bishop’s Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land

[Ed. note: After returning from a recent trip to the Holy Land, the author has updated her previous writings. We offer The Promised Land or the Land of Promise Revisited here in serial form.]

“Often permits [to travel to Jerusalem] are issued for only some members of the family — the wife, or the children. Some permits are issued for dead people . . . even if people have permits, they often cannot travel because of closures due to military restrictions or Jewish holidays, when only emergency medical vehicles are allowed through the checkpoints.”
— Yusef Daher, secretary general of the Jerusalem Inter-Church Center

All was calm in Bethlehem’s Manger Square as I stood with my husband Fred among hundreds of Palestinian Christian and Muslim families while they gathered together around a 30-foot lighted Christmas tree to sing carols and enjoy the beginning of the Advent season in 2013. Throngs would come again and again over the next four weeks to share the spirit of Christmas as they prepared to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace. As visitors enjoying the festivities, we understood that many Palestinian Christians would not be allowed to come to Bethlehem to celebrate the birth of Jesus at the Church of the Nativity or able to travel to Jerusalem for Good Friday or Easter at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, revered as the site of the crucifixion and the resurrection.

Jerusalem is off-limits to most West Bank Christians unless a special permit can be obtained. In fact, many of the Christian holy places, such as Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee — the locations of churches that commemorate the Annunciation, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Feeding of the 5,000 — fall inside the boundaries of the State of Israel. Tourists can come and go, but without special permits, West Bank Palestinians are not allowed to enter or travel freely inside Israel. Continue reading “Christians in the Holy Land today, part 1”

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I stand with Esther

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From buses to tea, fossil fuels to grapes, boycotts are a time-honored and constitutionally protected form of speech! #IstandwithEsther and her right to boycott!

A message from our brothers and sisters at FOSNA.

In violation of her First Amendment right to free speech, Ms. Koontz was denied a professional opportunity based on her conscientious determination to preserve her right to boycott companies that profit from violent and repressive business endeavors.

Whenever we choose to work for peace and justice in the Middle East, we know this choice can be costly.

In August, Ms. Esther Koontz, a trainer of math teachers in Wichita, Kansas, and a member of the Mennonite Church USA, learned that she would not be allowed to participate in a professional program for which she was qualified because she would be required to sign a statement affirming she is not presently engaged in a boycott of Israel. When Ms. Koontz refused to sign that statement, she was informed she would be ineligible to receive payment as a state-contracted teacher trainer. Continue reading “I stand with Esther”

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EVENT: Palestinian-Israeli dialog

Please join our brothers and sisters for Roots: A Local Palestinian-Israeli Initiative for Understanding, Nonviolence and Transformation.

Date: Thursday, Nov 2, 2017
Time: 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Location: Temple De Hirsch Sinai
1511 E Pike St
Seattle, WA 98122
Information: Event website
Email questions
Tickets: free
Event Details

A unique dialogue between an Israeli-Jewish settler and Palestinian activist as they struggle to achieve understanding. Ali Abu Awwad is a leading Palestinian activist teaching his countrymen non-violent resistance, and reaching out to Jewish Israelis at the heart of the conflict. Ali has toured the world many times over, telling his riveting story of violent activism, imprisonment, bereavement and discovery of the path of non-violent resistance, a story of personal transformation. Hanan Schlesinger is an Orthodox rabbi and teacher, and a passionate Zionist settler who has been profoundly transformed by his friendship with Ali. Join Ali and Hanan as they tell their personal stories and of their efforts to build a better future for their peoples. They come with no ready peace plans in hand, but only with the conviction that human understanding and trust will be the prerequisites for lasting justice, freedom and peace on that tiny sliver of land that they both call home.

More information here →

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Balfour and Britain’s broken promise

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Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May greets Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at Downing Street in London, Feb 6, 2017. (photo: Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP)

November 2 is the 100th Anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, signaling Britain’s support of the nascent Zionist movement.

By Tim Llewellyn / Mondoweiss / Oct 26, 2017

“Our record [in Palestine] demonstrates that we [British] can be, and have been, as devious as any other people. A nation which only has room for national pride, and no room for honest reflection about its past has little claim to describe itself as either moral or civilized.”
— Peter Shambrook, Durham University historian

If the British Conservative Government of Teresa May represented the views of the people of Britain rather than the preferences of the state of Israel on the disastrous outcome for the Palestinian Arabs of the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, she would not be planning to celebrate this 100th anniversary with Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister. This will happen at a cosy London dinner party at the home of Lord Rothschild, heir to the recipient of that infamous letter from Arthur J. Balfour, Britain’s then Foreign Secretary.

As it is, her November 2 tete-a-tete with Mr. Netanyahu, Lord Rothschild and Lord Balfour, a descendant of Arthur J. Balfour who had no direct descendants, and a subsequent November 9, rally organized by Christian Zionists at the cavernous Albert Hall, in London’s Hyde Park, which Britain’s leader and Zionist and Israeli notables will also attend, are being pre-empted and countered by a host of events throughout the British Isles. These are not only highly critical of Britain’s disastrous legacy in its former Mandated Territory, but urge it to recognize Palestine as a state and work practically to grant the Palestinian Arabs their freedom and self-determination.

This was the duty, a “sacred trust,” the League of Nations imposed on Britain when it obtained the mandate to rule Palestine after the First World War — to prepare the people of Palestine for self-government. Where the Arabs were concerned, then 90 per cent of the population, it signally failed to do so, instead encouraging the Zionist movement to create a parallel government alongside the colonial one.

Continue reading “Balfour and Britain’s broken promise”

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Promised land or the land of promise revisited

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The separation wall between Israel and Palestine. (photo: Mary Pneuman)

Introduction.

By Mary J. Pneuman / Bishop’s Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land

[Ed. note: After returning from a recent trip to the Holy Land, the author has updated her previous writings. We offer The Promised Land or the Land of Promise Revisited here in serial form.]

Only a small percentage of the American public has much understanding of the root causes of the conflict or the correlation between a peaceful resolution to this conflict and peace in the greater Middle East — indeed, the ultimate security of the United States and the West.

In reporting the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, American media has tended to focus on periods of intense military conflict between the Government of Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian faction in control of Gaza. In an effort to put an end to largely ineffectual home-made rocket fire from Gaza into Israeli towns and villages by Hamas militants, Israel launched three major military strikes deep into Gaza between 2009 and 2014. In these attacks, over 2,100 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians; 73 Israelis were killed, seven of them civilians (BBC News).

Since then, intermittent rocket launches from Gaza (pop. nearly 1.8 million) have prompted disproportional retaliations from Israel, most recently in May through October 2016, and February 2017, two of them resulting in civilian casualties. While Israeli airstrikes were reported by many British and Israeli media outlets (The Guardian, Telegraph, Reuters, Israel Times, Ha’aretz, and Al Jazeera), US media reports were hard to find in an on-line search. In general, US news on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where 2.9 million Palestinians reside,[1] tends to highlight the military defense needs of the Israel and tarnishes the image of the Palestinians with a broad-brush of terrorist. In the West Bank, under the governance of the Palestinian Authority, no military actions have been seen. Continue reading “Promised land or the land of promise revisited”