Yesterday afternoon, the Committee for National and International Concerns heard testimony on about 12 resolutions encouraging the church to act in support of the Palestinian people. Even our own Diocese of Maryland put forth a resolution on this complex issue. After reading the resolutions and listening to the testimony, here is my distillation of the arguments at hand.
No one disagrees that Palestine and the minority community of Palestinian Christians are being oppressed, persecuted, and denied basic human rights. Everyone also agrees that in the United States, the story of the Palestinian Christian people is not widely known and they feel forgotten by their brothers and sisters in the West.
But how do you fight the oppression and discrimination of a people?
There is an injustice, but it’s based on fear. Fear that comes from someone sneaking into a kibbutz and cutting the throats of women and children to fear of the person getting on the bus and exploding himself and you dead. Fear of seeing the land on which your grandfathers had grazed or tended fig trees turned into homes for strangers or your young men rounded up and sent to prison or denied jobs.
What to do? I don’t think shaking a fist at a heavy equipment company or pretending the fears of either side are silly will get anyone anywhere, but that’s what gets promoted as progresive action. Bowing to demands for “Change now!” usually brings about (perhaps) unintended consequences.
Christian duty as revealed by the prophets and early church calls on us to support the peacemakers and care for the widows and orphans and to not encourage the violence, all in Jesus’ name. Oh, and to pray for the Holy City. Some people are already doing this. I pray they don’t grow weary and stop.