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The following message was released by Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, The Most Rev. Michael Curry, on November 7, 2023

The violence is horrific, and the geopolitics are complex, but my call to love is simple: Stop the killing. Stop all of it. Stop it today.

—The Most Reverend Michael Curry

You may know me as the pastor who is always talking about love, and I am. But today I am mindful that the urgency of love—true, sacrificial love that respects all of humanity—is not just a good feeling, and it is not easy.

We are called to a love that demands much from us. We are called to a love that tells the truth.

Today I raise my voice for love because more than 10,000 people have died in Gaza, including more than 4,000 children.

The violence is horrific, and the geopolitics are complex, but my call to love is simple: Stop the killing. Stop all of it. Stop it today.

We will not be silent while an entire population is denied food, water, electricity, and fuel needed to run hospitals. We cannot stand by while thousands of civilians die. Our partners in the region tell us they live in terror—that they feel they have died even while alive. They feel that the international community is tacitly sanctioning the killing of civilians and the bombing of schools, hospitals, and refugee camps.

Staying quiet in this moment would be a stain upon our souls and would deepen our complicity.

U.S. leadership must tell Israel to stop bombing civilian areas and allow access for full humanitarian aid to flow freely into Gaza.

Every human child of God—Palestinian and Israeli—deserves safety and security. We need to stop the killing. Today.

Vengeance will not bring back the dead. Retaliation will not repair the harms and the hurt. We are called to love, even and especially when it seems impossible.

We must stop the next 10,000 from being killed. As Episcopalians, we must call upon our leaders—President Biden, members of Congress, and others—to be unequivocal that we need to stop the killing. Today. This is clearly what love demands of us.

—The Most Rev. Michael Curry, presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church

Read the full article here:    r20.rs6.net/tn.jsphere

This week’s events do break an unsustainable status quo, challenging everyone to think beyond the current paradigms.

By Jonathan Kuttab | Friends of Sabeel North America| October 12, 2023

The truth is that there is no military solution, and once that becomes clear to one and all, perhaps we can finally decide to give peace a chance.

The events of the last few days in Israel and Gaza have shattered the long-held assumptions of many observers, working to shift many popular paradigms. Amidst the devastation, there does remain reason to hope that these events will shake up the status quo and lead to major changes. Even the taking of captives could serve as a catalyst for the opening of negotiations and contacts between Hamas and Israel. The astonishing and unexpected military success of Hamas in breaching the separation wall and in shifting the battle over the weekend to the enemy’s population could potentially even help reduce the power imbalance and lead to genuine talks.

For one thing, the fighting mostly took place inside sovereign Israeli territory and amongst its civilian population. This has never happened since the creation of the state in 1948, whereby the Israeli army successfully ensured that for all the wars with the Arab World the fighting (and the vast majority of destruction, civilian casualties, and human suffering) occurred within Arab territories and amongst the Arab population. It was Israeli soldiers who entered Arab houses, ordered kids out of their beds, kidnapped them and took them in their jeeps, controlled their lives, and triumphantly returned to their own homes at the end of hostilities.

My heart goes out to the families who lost their dear ones and particularly to those who still do not know the fate of their loved ones, who may be dead, injured, or held captive under the power and mercy of their enemies.

While watching Israeli TV in Hebrew (simultaneously with Palestinian sources in Arabic) I heard the stories of Israeli families who lived in fear under lockdown, without electricity, and who attempted to call for help but no responsible agency would answer or come to their rescue. It seems, those Israelis living a few kilometers from Gaza were given, for a few days, a taste of what Gazans experience all year round.

Continue reading “Broken Paradigms”

Could the widespread protests against Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul change the status quo in the West Bank?

By Isaac Chotiner | New Yorker | August 15, 2023

In January, shortly after Benjamin Netanyahu swore in Israel’s new government, I spoke by phone with Raja Shehadeh, the Palestinian lawyer and activist who co-founded the human-rights organization Al-Haq. Shehadeh was concerned about many of the extremists who had joined Netanyahu’s coalition, but he also predicted that the government’s impact was likely to register more strongly among Israelis than Palestinians, who have been living under occupation for decades. Netanyahu has now overseen parts of a judicial overhaul that opponents characterize as a profound threat to Israeli democracy, as well as an expansion of Israeli settlements. There has also been an increase in violence by settlers, which—combined with the actions of Israeli security forces—has resulted in the deaths of more than a hundred and fifty Palestinians; Palestinian attacks on Israelis have caused more than twenty deaths. Amid this increase in violence, the Palestinian Authority has struggled to maintain order in the West Bank.

Shehadeh and I spoke again recently about what the most right-wing government in Israel’s history has meant for Palestinians, whether the protests in Israel against the Netanyahu government could expand to address the occupation, and Shehadeh’s despair over the impossible choices facing the Palestinian people. Our conversation, edited and condensed for clarity, is below.

Continue reading “How Israel’s Democratic Crisis Affects Palestinians”