Christianity and the Middle East, Pages 42-43

Good News From Kelowna: Indications of Turning Tide in Public Opinion

By Karin Brothers

CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES have been struggling to act faithfully with regard to the Palestinian human rights and humanitarian crises, despite overwhelming government and media support for Israel as well as the demands of Jewish-Christian dialogue, which attempt to define anti-Semitism as any lack of support for Israel. Canada’s largest Protestant denomination, The United Church of Canada, faced these pressures this past August at its triennial national conference “General Council 40” in Kelowna, British Columbia, where it considered proposals that included calling for:

• The boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions;
• Economic boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it complies with its obligations to Palestinians under international humanitarian law;
• The right of Palestinians to return to their homes as demanded by international law;
• The United Church to ask the Canadian government to honor its contractual legal obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention to protect Palestinian civilians, as requested by the World Council of Churches (WCC); and also to
• Denounce governments that implement official discrimination based on race, religion or ethnicity; and for
• The United Church to notify the Canadian government that measures such as the elimination of all Israeli settlements and equal rights for all citizens would be necessary to constitute a just Mideast peace.

The United Church has had a long history of concern for Israel/Palestine that goes back to the late 1960s, when Al Forrest, the editor of its magazine, carefully described the Palestinian situation in his book The Unholy Land. In 2003, the United Church’s Toronto Conference passed a resolution to boycott and divest from corporations that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories—the first boycott and divestment resolution from a faith community in the world. National resolutions passed in 2006 called for no investments to be made in corporations whose activities had anything to do with Israeli settlements, the wall, the occupation, or operations on Palestinian territory, and also for an annual week of congregational focus on Israel/Palestine. Moderators have expressed sympathy for the Palestinian situation, and the church published statements which included asking the Canadian government to recognize the Hamas unity government, restore funding, and end its political support for Israel’s siege of Gaza.

The United Church of Canada has had a long history of concern for Israel/Palestine.

The 2009 Mideast proposals all passed with support from either the Toronto or Montreal Conferences, two of the 13 conferences that make up the United Church. The Toronto Conference’s support for the first five of the proposal actions listed above was highly significant because they were passed by representatives from 300 urban, suburban and rural churches—a cross-section of relatively conservative Canadians. Many see the support for these proposals as a sign that the tide is turning in public opinion and that, after witnessing the December 2008-January 2009 massacres in Gaza and the ongoing siege, people are ready to respond to the gravity of the Palestinian situation.

Weeks after the Toronto Conference votes, Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) (IJV), a nationwide umbrella organization of progressive Jewish Canadians, voted overwhelmingly at their own annual general meeting (AGM) to support boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, as well as the right of Palestinian return. Three IJV academics from across Canada visited the church conference to provide a progressive Jewish position on the Mideast proposals. They were joined by a representative from Holy Land Awareness and Action, a United Church task group from Toronto that is attempting to identify and support a nationwide church network of individuals and congregations interested in working on this issue.

Members of the group received positive responses from virtually everyone they spoke to on the Mideast proposals. The proposals had received world-wide attention and dominated media coverage of the conference. On the day before the vote, a message from the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva cited its Amman Call (see box) in appealing to the 150 voters on the Mideast proposals (one-third the number of the Toronto AGM voters) to “risk curses and abuse for standing in solidarity with Palestinian brothers and sisters of all faiths and reject the possibility that occupation will continue.”

Unfortunately, not all the responses were positive. Some objected to wording in the Toronto proposals’ background material. The official declaration that the challenged wording was “provocative, unbalanced and hurtful” was used to eliminate those proposals. Many voters, however, then worked to incorporate eliminated clauses into the remaining proposal, with notable success.

As a result, official United Church policy now calls for church units to “immediately enter into consultation, dialogue, study...and then take appropriate action toward ending the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory,... (including but not limited to economic boycott).” In supporting the principles of the WCC 2007 Amman Call, the official church positions on the situation in Israel/Palestine are now as follows:

• That U.N. resolutions are the basis for peace and that the Geneva conventions are applicable to the rights and responsibilities of the affected people;
• That Palestinians have the right of self-determination and the right of return;
• That a two-state solution must be viable politically, geographically, economically and socially [thereby challenging the church’s past support for a two-state resolution];
• That Jerusalem must be an open, accessible, inclusive and shared city for the two peoples and three religions;
• That both Palestine and Israel have legitimate security needs;
• That the Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal, and constitute an obstacle to peace;
• That the “Separation Barrier” constructed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories is a grave breach of international law and must be removed from the occupied territory;
• That there is no military solution for this conflict. Violence in all its forms cannot be justified, whether perpetrated by Israelis or Palestinians;
• That comprehensive regional peace is indivisible from a just peace in Israel and Palestine; and
• That the life and witness of local churches is at the center of worldwide church advocacy for a just peace.

The adopted proposal opens the way for people of conscience to call for actions “including but not limited to economic boycott” at any level short of the national one. Significantly, no limits are specified, allowing any of the various kinds of boycott, divestment and/or sanctions for which Palestinian civil society—as well as Jewish and Israeli activists—have been calling.

While the loss of a stronger response at the national level was a disappointment to many, the result should be more effective grassroots action, given the call to all congregations to study and determine their own responses.

The onus is now on those who care enough about the catastrophic Palestinian human rights and humanitarian crises—and Canadian complicity in them—to speak out and act for justice.

Karin Brothers is a Toronto-based activist and free-lance writer.

SIDEBAR

Excerpt from The Amman Call, Issued at the WCC International Peace Conference on “Churches Together for Peace and Justice in the Middle East,” Amman, Jordan, June 18-20, 2007

We have heard the voices of the Christian churches of Palestine and Israel challenging and saying to us:

Act with us to liberate all peoples of this land from the logic of hatred, mutual rejection and death, so that they see in the other the face and dignity of God.

Pray with us in our efforts to resist evil in all of its guises.

Raise your voices along with ours as we speak “truth to power” and name with courage the injustices we see and experience. The illegal occupation has stolen two generations of lives in this tortured place, and threatens the next with hopelessness and rage.

Risk the curses and abuse that will be aimed at you and stand in solidarity with us and with our Palestinian brothers and sisters of all faiths as we defiantly reject the possibility that occupation will continue.

Help us to tear down walls and build and rebuild bridges among all peoples in the region. Extremism on all sides produces chaos. It threatens to divide us and to destroy bridges among peoples that would lead to reconciliation and peace.

Add your hope to ours in the knowledge that evil and despair have been overcome through the death of our Lord on the Cross and through His Resurrection.

Insist with us that all dispossessed peoples, all refugees, have the right to return.

Partner with us as we seek peace and pursue it. Peace is possible. Christians and Muslims and Jews have, can and will understand one another and live together as neighbors.

And we representatives of Christian churches and church-related organizations from every corner of the earth, we respond:

Yes, we will. Together we will act and pray and speak and work and risk reputations and lives to build with you bridges for an enduring peace among the peoples of this tortured and beautiful place—Palestine and Israel—to end these decades of injustice, humiliation and insecurity, to end the decades of living as refugees and under occupation. We will work with you to seek peace and pursue it. We have allowed too much time to pass. Time has not served the cause of peace but has served the cause of extremism. This is our urgent cause that cannot wait.