Palestinian Christians are criticizing a World Council of Churches statement for ignoring the context of the October 7 attacks and refusing to call out the unfolding Gaza genocide.
The Palestinian Christians are losing patience. In June, the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC) meeting in Bogota, Colombia published a “Statement on the Escalating Crisis in Gaza.” In response, the Board of Kairos Palestine, a Christian Palestinian movement, released an “Open Letter to the World Council of Church’s Executive Committee.” It begins respectfully: “We trust that the statement was issued with great concern and with the urgent need to terminate the atrocious crimes in Gaza.” And on the surface, the WCC statement appears to take full account of the horrific suffering of Gaza and Israel’s responsibility for its egregiously disproportionate response to the October 7 attack. It appeals to international law and stresses the urgency to put an end to the carnage.
But the Palestinians see what is missing. They feel what is missing. “As Palestinians, as Christians and as your partners,” the Open Letter continues, “we would like to bring to your attention the following points.” They do not mince words, getting to the heart of the matter in their first point:
We believe that the title “Escalating Crisis in Gaza” is neither accurate, nor adequate. The protracted “crisis” is a result of 8 months of Israel’s incessant large-scale military aggression which amounts to acts of genocide, prior to which Gaza has been strangled by a 17-year blockade that forced 2.3 million people to become aid-dependent and extremely vulnerable to famine and starvation…Not only is the term genocide absent from the title, it is marginalized in the body of the statement instead of being the essence of what the statement is condemning. It cannot be acceptable that crimes of such scale, committed deliberately over 8 months, be narrowed down to a “crisis.”
The Palestinians then proceed directly to place the October 7 Hamas attack in context, shifting the framework from “humanitarian crisis” and “human rights” to Israel’s longstanding, systemic denial of Palestinian peoplehood.
We deplore that the Statement fails to mention Israel’s 7-decades settler colonial regime, apartheid and prolonged occupation with total impunity as the root cause and the context that laid the grounds for the events of 7 October and the ensuing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the grave escalation of Israel’s atrocities in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
It is shocking that it was necessary to call the WCC to account for this failure. The world church body has decades of direct involvement with Palestine to its credit, with missions and programs on the ground addressing the consequences of Israel’s ongoing project of dispossession and ethnic cleansing. Is it possible that the members of the WCC Executive Committee do not see the root cause of Palestinian resistance, especially in the case of the almost two-decades-long siege of Gaza? (more...)
Palestinian Christians challenge the World Council of Churches on Gaza
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