Category: anti-Zionism

Are Western Churches still in Communion with Palestinian Christians?


Palestinian Christians and theologians are raising the question as to whether western churches are still in communion with them. In a situation where – after the violent breaking of international law by the Kassam Brigades, the military arm of the resistance movement Hamas – Israel is potentially committing genocide in Gaza, and certainly committing war crimes according to international law, some churches are keeping silent. They follow the government refusing to even ask for a ceasefire. It is expected that there will be no more Christians or churches in Gaza after the end of the war.

This raises serious ecclesiological questions. In July 2020 Kairos Palestine and its Global Kairos for Justice Network (GKJ) issued the Cry for Hope. This document “calls upon all Christians and on churches at congregational, denominational, national, and global ecumenical levels to engage in a process of study, reflection and confession concerning the historic and systemic deprivation of the rights of the Palestinian people, and the use of the Bible by many to justify and support this oppression. We call on churches to reflect on how their own traditions can express the sacred duty to uphold the integrity of the church and the Christian faith concerning this issue. We cannot serve God while remaining silent about the oppression of the Palestinians”(https://cryforhope.org/).

Several churches have responded with impressive confessions and responses. The majority of European churches did not realise the seriousness of this call, referring to the tradition of the confessing church in Nazi-Germany and the declaration of a status confessionis in relation to apartheid in South Africa.

Continue reading →

University of Malaya Lecture Tour

During the last week of November, I spoke at several events in Kuala Lumpur at the invitation of the University of Malaya, Hashim Sani Centre for Palestine Studies, the Centre for Civilisational Dialogue and also the International Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies.

Inevitable Solutions to the Palestinian Plight

A lecture given at the invitation of the Centre for Civilisational Dialogue and Hashim Sani Centre for Palestine Studies. Read my text here.

Continue reading →

Christian Zionism in Africa

Africa has a long history of racism and colonialism, so it’s quite surprising to find many Africans who support Zionism – despite its racist roots. We dug into the root cause of this phenomenon by talking to an Anglican minister who is no stranger to the subject: Stephen Sizer. He is the author of “Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon?” He explains how foreign funding forces African churches to align their doctrines with Christian Zionist benefactors in the United States. Sizer also calls for a return to the authentic faith initiated by Jesus-that of peacemakers, not widowmakers. A faith that embraces all regardless of race, tribe, social status, or other criteria.

An interview for African Stream

African Stream is a pan-African digital media organization based exclusively on social-media platforms, focused on giving a voice to all Africans both at home and abroad through cutting-edge, African-centered content. African Stream currently has around 300k subscribers.

A Call for Repentance: An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians

Peacemakers is pleased to endorse this call for repentance from twelve Palestinian Christian institutions.


“Learn to do right; seek justice; defend the oppressed” (Isa 1:17).

We, at the undersigned Palestinian Christian institutions and grassroots movements, grieve and lament the renewed cycle of violence in our land. As we were about to publish this open letter, some of us lost dear friends and family members in the atrocious Israeli bombardment of innocent civilians on October 19, 2023, Christians included, who were taking refuge in the historical Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza. Words fail to express our shock and horror with regard to the on-going war in our land. We deeply mourn the death and suffering of all people because it is our firm conviction that all humans are made in God’s image. We are also profoundly troubled when the name of God is invoked to promote violence and religious national ideologies.

Continue reading →

Anglican Church of South Africa Declares Israel an Apartheid State 

The Anglican Church of South Africa: PSC Resolutions declaring Israel an apartheid state and on pilgrimages to the Holy Land. The following resolutions were approved by Provincial Standing Committee at its 2023 meeting on Wednesday.

On Israel as an Apartheid State

1. Whereas:

a. Many global human rights bodies including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have now declared Israel an apartheid state;

b. The SACC National Executive Committee has now also declared Israel an apartheid state;

c. The Dutch Reformed Church Western Cape synod has now also expressed its opinion that Israel should be declared an apartheid state and has asked its church’s National synod to consider this at its October 2023 Synod;

d. Most Palestinian civil rights bodies consider this to be true;

2. This PSC Resolves to:

a. Endorse the position taken by the SACC national executive committee declaring Israel an apartheid state;

b. Respectfully request the Archbishop to inform the Primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East of this decision;

c. Pray for our Anglican brothers and sisters in Palestine and to express our solidarity with them;

d. Express support for the upcoming global anti-apartheid conference on Palestine to be held in Tshwane in November 2023.

Source

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba issued the following statement on the decision by Provincial Standing Committee to declare Israel an apartheid state.

“As people of faith who are distressed by the pain of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza – and who long for security and a just peace for both Palestine and Israel – we can no longer ignore the realities on the ground. We are opposed not to the Jewish people, but to the policies of Israelis’ governments, which are becoming ever more extreme.

For Christians, the Holy Land is the place where Jesus was born, nurtured, crucified and raised. Our hearts ache for our Christian brothers and sisters in Palestine, whose numbers include Anglicans but are rapidly declining. People of all faiths in South Africa have both a deep understanding of what it is to live under oppression, as well as experience of how to confront and overcome unjust rule by peaceful means. When black South Africans who have lived under apartheid visit Israel, the parallels to apartheid are impossible to ignore. If we stand by and keep quiet, we will be complicit in the continuing oppression of the Palestinians.

If we are to celebrate peace for Palestinians and security for the Israelis in in our time, we need to pray and work for the land we call holy, for an end to the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and for full recognition of the Palestinians’ inalienable right to self-determination.

We yearn for peace and the wholeness of God to be made manifest in Palestine, in Israel and among their neighbouring countries. I pray the prayer we adopted at the last meeting of the Provincial Synod, the ruling body of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa:

Lord God,
Bless the people of the Middle East;
Protect their vulnerable children;
Transform their divided leaders;
Heal their wounded communities,
Restore their human dignity,
and give them everlasting peace. Amen.”

Source

One Democratic State Coalition

I was delighted to participate in a strategy meeting for the One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC) with founders Awad Abdelfattah and Jeff Halper at the Wesley Centre in Euston. We are planning the launch of the One Democratic State Coalition in the UK soon.

The coalition already includes the Convivencia Alliance, ICAHD, Jewish Network for Palestine, Islamic Human Rights Commission and Peacemakers.

Find out more on our Facebook page here Endorse the ODSC Manifesto here.

Greenbelt Festival 2023

It was a delight to attend the 50th anniversary Greenbelt Festival held at Boughton House, near Kettering in August. I was part of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) team sharing a marquee with the Action around Bethlehem Children with Disability (ABCD). During the Bank Holiday weekend, I interviewed several speakers and participants.

Daniel Munayer is the Executive Director of Musalaha, a faith-based organization that teaches, trains and facilitates reconciliation mainly between Israelis and Palestinians from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, and also international groups, based on biblical principles of reconciliation. Daniel spoke at Greenbelt sponsored by Embrace the Middle East. In this short interview he shares his vision for the future in Palestine.

Linda Ramsden is the founder and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD UK) which is dedicated to resisting apartheid and building a shared democracy from the River Joran to the Mediterranean Sea.

Robert Cohen is the Chair of Amos Trust, a small creative human rights organisation committed to challenging injustice, building hope and creating positive change. Listen in on a conversation between Robert and Linda Ramsden talking about ICAHD and Palestine.

Continue reading →

Ten Years Hard Labour: Chris Williamson

An interview with Chris Williamson about his new book, Ten Years Hard Labour.

For 42 years, Chris Williamson was a Labour Party member. In 2010, he was elected to Parliament to represent his home town. However, in 2019, he was unceremoniously suspended from the party after being subjected to a smear campaign, and he later resigned in protest at the betrayal. In this forensic memoir – free of his Labourist clutches – Williamson provides a unique ringside view.

As well as lifting the lid on the amateurish politics-by-focus-groups under Ed Miliband, Williamson exposes some of the major events that created and deepened Labour’s ‘antisemitism crisis’ under Jeremy Corbyn.

In his mission to set the record straight on numerous misreported events, Williamson names and shames the individuals – on the left and the right – whom he holds responsible for delivering his former party back into the hands of New Labourism under Sir Keir Starmer.

To understand the existential crisis facing socialists in Britain today, Williamson’s account of recent Labour history is indispensable.

Ten Years Hard Labour is published by Lola Books and may be purchased here https://www.lolabooks.eu/…/ten-years-hard-labour-chris…

The book is also available as an audio book read by Chris https://www.audiobooks.co.uk/audiobook/694616/

Brian Brown: Apartheid South Africa! Apartheid Israel?

An interview with the Revd Brian J. Brown. Brian is a South African-born Methodist minister – banned for 13 years by the Apartheid regime – who shares his hope and quest for justice and peace for Israelis and Palestinians that both may share the indivisibility of freedom and equality in one democratic state.

In exile Brian held appointments in the British Council of Churches and the Methodist Missionary Society where he continued to pursue the apartheid-related justice issues he describes in his autobiography, ‘Born to be Free: the Indivisibility of Freedom’. This interest led to study of the Israel-Palestine conflict at a time of growing emergence of Israel’s government as an undemocratic, settler-colonial, and apartheid regime.

In ‘Apartheid South Africa! Apartheid Israel?’ Brian analyses Israel as replicating what he calls Grand Apartheid; the violent dispossession of land, nationality and human rights by one ethnic group of another. Save that this time it is Palestistian rather then Black people who suffer apartheid’s illegal occupation, domination and disempowerment. The book’s comparative analysis of two apartheid states is backed by accounts of Israeli and International Human Rights organisations whose legal analysis presents Israel as practising a crime against humanity, the Crime of Apartheid.

Jewish and Palestinian narratives engage with each other, whilst the book’s Christian option for the oppressed and marginalised is presented unapologetically. Related themes of Zionism (Jewish and Christian), Interfaith dialogue, apartheid as heresy, anti-Palestianism and antisemitism are treated. Most importantly, the voices of those who live between the river (Jordan) and the sea (Mediterranean) are heard. For Jews and Palestinians alike, their freedoms remain indivisible.

To find out more about Brian’s book and buy a copy, visit: https://apartheid-southafrica-israel.com