A recent resolution of the Evangelical Church in Germany underscores the church’s continued failure to challenge Israel's prolonged settler colonial occupation.
Meeting in Würzburg last month, the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) passed the resolution, “Humanitarian aid for people in the Middle East”. Coming after approximately 400 days of what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled is a plausible genocide in Gaza, the resolution underscores the church’s continued failure to address the urgent needs of a region marked by prolonged settler colonial occupation, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement.
The EKD’s call for compassion and humanitarian aid is commendable. But the resolution fails to address the root causes of what it describes as “the suffering of people in the Middle East.”
Conspicuously absent is any acknowledgment of the political and systemic injustices that fuel the suffering. By framing its engagement in humanitarian terms, the EKD avoids grappling with Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, its apartheid policies, the ongoing displacement of Palestinians, and the broader structural violence imbedded in the region’s history.
This omission is especially troubling given Germany’s historical culpability for the Holocaust. It reveals a pattern within the EKD: a theological and political framework that prioritizes Holocaust memory and Germany’s responsibility toward Jewish communities, while sidelining the equally important duty to address Israel’s violations of international law. (more...)
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