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Film: In the Image (Tomorrow)

amneh

Pushing for Change: Mideast Focus Ministry Film Series V

This film explores the daily lives of Palestinian women living in the West Bank. It portrays their stories in a novel and eye-opening manner through footage captured by the women themselves. Their courage is inspiring as they persist in working for change — and to pave the way for future peace in the region.

Date: Friday, Apr 13, 2018
Time: 7:00 – 9:00 pm
Location: Bloedel Hall
St. Mark’s Cathedral
1245 10th Ave E
Seattle, WA  98102
Information: Event website
Admission: Free

Event Details

Our concern is to help balance the limited and confusing media coverage of the Holy Land. We use compelling films as an entry point for reflection and discussion. As Christians, we respond to Christ’s call to seek justice and love the oppressed. As Americans, we ask: Can we reconcile this calling with our government’s massive financial support of Israeli military operations? We hope the time will come when Jews, Muslims and Christians will again come together in harmony in the Holy Land.

In this series, we see how people pushed to bring about a safe country for the Jewish people, and how today others are still push- ing for safety and change. Do our efforts for change lead to peace and justice . . . or not?

More information here →

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“Sorry Commander, I Cannot Shoot”

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Protesters wave Palestinians flags in front of Israeli solders on Gaza’s border with Israel, east of Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip, Apr 4, 2018. (photo: Adel Hana / AP)

Israeli human-rights group B’Tselem has launched a campaign titled “Sorry Commander, I Cannot Shoot,” calling on Israeli troops to refuse orders to shoot unarmed demonstrators.

By Elliott Gabriel | Mint Press News | Apr 6, 2018

“Our legitimate protest against Israeli military occupation, colonization and apartheid is granted in international law and must be protected by the international community. . . . The 70-year-old practice of Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy and dehumanization of the Palestinian people must end.”
— Dr. Husam Zomlot, Palestinian ambassador to Washington

Tens of thousands of residents in the besieged Gaza Strip plan on returning to the Israeli-controlled border Friday [Apr 6] in defiance of menacing promises from Tel Aviv to use massive and disproportionate force. The event will occur exactly one week after the Israelis massacred 17 unarmed demonstrators with live ammunition on Palestinian Land Day.

The protest is the latest in a six-week-long set of nonviolent protests meant to commemorate the continuing dispossession of the Palestinian people and the absorption of ancestral Palestinian land by the country now known as Israel.

The series of events will last until the 15th of May, a date making the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel — known to Palestinians as Nakba Day, or “The Day of Catastrophe” — when three-quarters of a million Palestinians were brutally displaced by Israeli militia in 1948.

Continue reading ““Sorry Commander, I Cannot Shoot””

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Inspiring Hope: The Kids4Peace Seattle Annual Benefit (Apr 24)

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Please join our brothers and sisters at Join Kids4Peace Seattle for their fifth annual spring celebration!

Date: Tuesday, Apr 24, 2017
Time: 7:00 – 8:30 pm
Location: Temple De Hirsch Sinai
1441 16th Ave
Seattle, WA 98122
Information: Event information here →
Email questions here →
Tickets: $50 per person
Register here →
Event Details

Help us recognize the many successes of the past year as we also look forward with excitement to upcoming programs. You will hear directly from youth involved in Kids4Peace and get updates on our work in the US and Jerusalem.

Tickets are $50 per person; there will be an opportunity to make an additional pledge of support at the event. The ticket price is fully tax-deductible, and all donations go directly to support the work of Kids4Peace as we develop a new generation of peace leaders.

Wine and coffee will be served, along with a delicious dessert buffet. Continue reading “Inspiring Hope: The Kids4Peace Seattle Annual Benefit (Apr 24)”

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I’m not ashamed to be Israeli — but I’m disgusted with having become Pharaoh

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Palestinian paramedics carry a protester injured during clashes with Israeli forces following a tent city gathering at the Israel-Gaza border, Apr 2, 2018. (photo: Said Khatib / AFP)

Living in Israel has turned me into a person who can live with a government that relates to African asylum-seekers and millions of Palestinians as property.

By Bradley Burston | Haaretz | Apr 2, 2018

Living in Israel has hardened my heart. It has made me into a person who cannot believe that Israel will do the right thing. That Israel will make any effort at all to even begin treat the true cancer in our body — the occupation.

The best people I have ever met live in Israel.

They are tireless. They come in all colors and creeds. Their reservoirs of hope, goodness, giving for others, respecting the Other, striving for a better, more human, society — despite everything, despite hatred and graft and incitement and ill-will — are as boundless as they are inexplicable.

Then there is Caroline Glick.

Continue reading “I’m not ashamed to be Israeli — but I’m disgusted with having become Pharaoh”

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Israeli forces kill photojournalist at Gaza rally

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Yaser Murtaja, 30, was shot in the abdomen in Khuza’a in the southern Gaza Strip on Apr 6. 2018. (photo: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / Reuters)

Seven other journalists were wounded in Friday’s protest.

By Al Jazeera | Apr 7, 2017

The Palestinian health ministry reported that on Friday 491 people were injured by live ammunition after Israeli forces fired on protesters who had gathered near the Israeli border in the besieged Gaza Strip.

A Palestinian journalist shot by Israeli forces during a mass demonstration along the Gaza border has died of his wounds.

Yaser Murtaja, a photographer with the Gaza-based Ain Media agency, was shot in the stomach in Khuza’a in the south of the Gaza Strip on Friday, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Murtaja, 30, was hit despite wearing a blue flak jacket marked with the word “press,” indicating he was a journalist.

Continue reading “Israeli forces kill photojournalist at Gaza rally”

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This is Israel at 70: Zionism as Racism

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Asylum seekers protest at the Rwanda Embassy in Herzliya, Israel, Feb 7, 2018. (photo: Moti Milrod / Haaretz)

It hurts me to write what I’m about to. But it also hurts me to live in this place today.

By Bradley Burston | Haaretz | Apr 4, 2018

Don’t get me wrong. I understand where much of this comes from. Jews of all ethnicities bear the scars and the genetic memory of every manner of heinous racism, up to and including genocide.

It’s all too true, at the same time, that in a tragic given of human nature, the abused is at great risk of becoming an abuser.

This is Zionism as racism. This is Israel at 70.

This is a country which so demeans and dismisses and conflates Palestinian lives, that after a horrendous casualty rate in massive demonstrations at the Gaza border over the weekend, Eli Hazan, a spokesman for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, referred to the men, women, children and elderly protesters camped hundreds of meters from the border fence, and told i24 News Monday without flinching:

“All 30,000 are legitimate targets.”

Continue reading “This is Israel at 70: Zionism as Racism”

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May is likely to be an ugly month in Gaza

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Palestinian using a slingshot at a protest in Gaza. (photo: Said Khatib / AFP / Getty Images)

When an entire people have concluded they have nothing to hope for and nothing to lose — that all their dreams will remain deferred for the foreseeable future — an explosion may be inevitable.

By Hussein Ibish | Bloomberg View | Apr 3, 2018

Both Palestinian Islamists and nationalists are out of options, out of ideas, and out of luck. The Palestinian public is out of patience and nearly out of hope. That’s a combustible formula.

The violence last Friday in Gaza, in which 18 Palestinian protesters were killed by Israeli troops near the border, was the worst since the war of 2014. But everything is in place for a significant escalation in coming weeks, particularly in mid-May.

A series of major tripwires are clustered tightly together: commemorations of the 70th anniversary of Israel’s founding on May 14–15; mourning by Palestinians who regard the same event as their “catastrophe” and observe May 15 as “Nakba Day”; and the scheduled opening of a US Embassy in Jerusalem on May 14, courtesy of the administration of President Donald Trump.

Things are likely to get worse because Palestinians increasingly feel they have nothing left to lose. The “March of Return” last week drew unprecedented crowds of up to 30,000 Palestinians from all parts of Gaza society. In a festive and surreal atmosphere, vendors sold ice cream to picnicking families as young men risked their lives by approaching the border.

Continue reading “May is likely to be an ugly month in Gaza”

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Film: In the Image (Friday)

amneh

Pushing for Change: Mideast Focus Ministry Film Series V

This film explores the daily lives of Palestinian women living in the West Bank. It portrays their stories in a novel and eye-opening manner through footage captured by the women themselves. Their courage is inspiring as they persist in working for change — and to pave the way for future peace in the region.

Date: Friday, Apr 13, 2018
Time: 7:00 – 9:00 pm
Location: Bloedel Hall
St. Mark’s Cathedral
1245 10th Ave E
Seattle, WA  98102
Information: Event website
Admission: Free

Event Details

Our concern is to help balance the limited and confusing media coverage of the Holy Land. We use compelling films as an entry point for reflection and discussion. As Christians, we respond to Christ’s call to seek justice and love the oppressed. As Americans, we ask: Can we reconcile this calling with our government’s massive financial support of Israeli military operations? We hope the time will come when Jews, Muslims and Christians will again come together in harmony in the Holy Land.

In this series, we see how people pushed to bring about a safe country for the Jewish people, and how today others are still push- ing for safety and change. Do our efforts for change lead to peace and justice . . . or not?

More information here →

Posted on

Israel’s Gaza nightmare

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Israeli soldiers shoot tear gas from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border as Palestinians protest in Gaza, Mar 30, 2018. (photo: Amir Cohen / Reuters)

The Israel Defense Forces consider “only” 16 casualties a “very significant achievement.”

By Ben Caspit | Al-Monitor | Apr 2, 2018

“Just imagine what could have happened. Picture the outcome if they would have burst through the fence, even at a single point, and begun marching into Israel. It would have ended in a bloodbath. . . . We would have no choice but to employ enormous force, and that would have resulted in dozens, if not hundreds, of casualties. The images would have been a huge victory for the Palestinians.”
— Senior Israeli defense official, speaking anonymously

The March 30 Great March of Return to the Gaza border fence was nothing more than Act 1 of an unfolding drama, a dress rehearsal or possibly a pilot for what one can expect to see in the very near future. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are now preparing for April 17, Palestinian Prisoners Day, also the eve of Israel’s Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers, and for May 15, Nakba Day, also the day after the United States is expected to open its new embassy in Jerusalem. Further complicating matters, the latter event coincides with the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The Great March of Return was initiated and orchestrated by Hamas in an attempt to change the rules of the game, create a new balance of power and send a message to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the struggle for the hearts and minds of the Palestinian people is far from over. Hamas is alive and kicking, and it is marching as well.

Hamas is in the process of losing its tunnels as a weapon. The IDF and Egypt have also successfully prevented the group from smuggling into Gaza rockets, missiles and other arms that could break the balance of power. Facing the most threatening dead end ever, Hamas found a way to reinvent itself: a popular, mass march by tens of thousands of people, all heading to the Israeli border at the Erez checkpoint, where they would trample the fence, break the Israeli siege and move on toward Jerusalem or at least to the southern town of Ashkelon. Images of IDF tanks and helicopters firing at civilians marching for their freedom would be Israel’s worst imaginable nightmare.

That is why the IDF has decided not to let that happen.

Continue reading “Israel’s Gaza nightmare”

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Film: Junction 48 (Fri, Apr 20)

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Pushing for Change: Mideast Focus Ministry Film Series V

This Israeli narrative film gives us an Arab’s eye view of contemporary life in Israel. It tells the story of an emerging Palestinian Rap Artist who has issues with his family and confrontations with rival Israeli rappers. Fraught with complexities and confusions in Lyd (Lod) — we get a sense of how diffcult it is to get a footing to push for change.

Date: Friday, Apr 20, 2018
Time: 7:00 – 9:00 pm
Location: Bloedel Hall
St. Mark’s Cathedral
1245 10th Ave E
Seattle, WA  98102
Information: Event website
Admission: Free

Event Details

Our concern is to help balance the limited and confusing media coverage of the Holy Land. We use compelling films as an entry point for reflection and discussion. As Christians, we respond to Christ’s call to seek justice and love the oppressed. As Americans, we ask: Can we reconcile this calling with our government’s massive financial support of Israeli military operations? We hope the time will come when Jews, Muslims and Christians will again come together in harmony in the Holy Land.

In this series, we see how people pushed to bring about a safe country for the Jewish people, and how today others are still push- ing for safety and change. Do our efforts for change lead to peace and justice . . . or not?

More information here →