by Scott Wright
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace
Ignatian Volunteer Corps
They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not raise sword against nation, nor shall they train for war anymore. – Isaiah 2:1-5
This Advent, Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP), of which Pax Christi USA is a member, have called to suspend all offensive arms sales to Israel as the only path forward to a just peace in Israel and Palestine. Members will gather to worship on December 10, International Human Rights Day — CMEP will hold a prayer service at 6:30 PM Eastern at Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington DC (1500 9th Street NW), which will be live-streamed on CMEP’s YouTube channel.
In recent days, Amnesty International has called Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide, and Pope Francis has also shared his concern for the slaughter of innocents and starvation of the people.
In the past year, I traveled to Israel and Palestine on two occasions with ecumenical delegations of US Christians, hosted by Palestinian Christians working for justice and committed to nonviolence. Years ago, during the 1980s, I had lived eight years in El Salvador during the civil war, working with pastoral teams in zones of conflict, but nothing prepared me for what I was about to witness in Israel and Palestine.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas massacred 1,200 Israeli men, women and children, and took 250 hostages. On the two delegations in which I participated, we met with family members of the hostages and heard eyewitness testimony of the atrocities committed on that October day from a rabbi who, along with his wife and two daughters, survived the slaughter.
What has happened in Gaza since that date defies imagination. Gaza is a living hell on earth – and even more so now. At least 45,000 Palestinians – 70 percent of them women and children – have been killed in the bombings, and 1.9 million Palestinians – 90 percent of the people of Gaza – have been forcibly displaced by the Israeli army on numerous occasions. Palestinians in Gaza literally have nowhere to escape the death and destruction, the internal displacement, the forced starvation and the epidemics of disease.
But not only Gaza is in peril; increasingly the situation in the West Bank is becoming unbearable for its Palestinian inhabitants, as we also witnessed in our visits to Palestinian communities under attack by Israeli Occupation Forces and armed settlers, working together to implement their vision of a greater Israel, “from the river to the sea.”
Christ born in the rubble and the slaughter of innocents
On my first trip to Palestine in March, we were hosted by the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, where Pastor Munther Isaac preached a now famous sermon on “Christ born in the rubble,” a year ago on Christmas Eve. On this occasion, I heard Pastor Isaac preach on “the normalization of genocide in Gaza,” and the silence of Western nations and churches.
By late spring, the Israeli invasion and bombardment of Gaza was characterized by the International Court of Justice as one of genocide – a judgment shared by Israeli historians Omar Bartov and Ilan Pappe, both of whom have dedicated time in recent years to dialogue with Palestinians and build a bridging narrative that provides a way out of the deadly conflict.
Another Jewish scholar and cofounder of Human Rights Watch, Aryeh Neier, also denounced the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza as genocide. His declaration was significant for me and made a personal connection to my years working with the Church in El Salvador.
Neier (photo at right) was vigorous in his condemnation of Salvadoran military atrocities during the civil war, including the massacre of 50 men, women, and children at the Gualsinga River in Chalatenango, where I worked with a pastoral team during the war. His defense of human rights – first in El Salvador and today in Gaza and the West Bank – recalled for me Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero, his defense of human rights and call to end US arms to the Salvadoran government: “Nothing is as important to the Church as human life, especially the lives of the poor and the oppressed. Jesus said that whatever is done to the poor is done to Him. This bloodshed, these deaths, are beyond all politics. They touch the very heart of God.” – Oscar Romero, March 1980
What eyes have seen, the heart does not forget
By the time I returned to Palestine in August, this time hosted by the Palestinian Christian organization Sabeel, things had changed dramatically. You could see it in people’s faces, and the tone of their voices. We felt the tension and trauma that gripped our bodies as we viewed the bombed-out and bullet-ridden homes in an urban refugee camp in Nablus and witnessed it in the trembling voices of Bedouin farmers from Uum Jamal driven off their lands by armed settlers. We also witnessed something more: an amazing resilience and determination not to give up or give in – what the Palestinians call sumud.
I wondered aloud, why is there so much resignation and denial in the United States, and even among our churches, to the plight of the Palestinians? Certainly, and with good reason, we respond with horror to the massacre of 1,200 Israelis and the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023. But what about the Palestinians? What about the death and destruction in Gaza, the daily bombardment, the forced displacement and starvation?
Whether we call it ethnic cleansing, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide, how can we be silent in the massacre of at least 45,000 Palestinians – and many more who have gone missing – most of whom are children and women? If we remain silent, and refuse to act in the face of war crimes and crimes against humanity, what does that say about the credibility of our faith traditions? What does that say about our shared humanity?
What has become of human rights and international law?
As US citizens, we were keenly aware that the billions of dollars of military aid from our country is not only fueling the death of Palestinians and destruction in Gaza, but also enabling Israeli settler violence and terrorism against Palestinians in the West Bank. On several occasions we were told by Palestinians, “This is a US war. Without US weapons to Israel, and US diplomatic cover at the United Nations for Israel, this violence would not be happening.”
I think one of the most devastating and long-term consequences of the continual flow of deadly US weapons to Israel is the further erosion and dismantling of the global architecture of human rights and international law that came at the expense of so much blood, death and destruction during World War II, including the Holocaust and genocide of six million Jews.
December 10 this year marks the 76th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, a document that the United States and European nations worked so hard to ratify. Now these very nations, and especially the United States, by our offensive weapon sales to Israel and silence on genocide, are the ones undoing the human rights and international law framework we worked so hard to achieve – at great peril to global peace and the security of future generations.
Between the Holocaust and the Nakba: From the river to the sea
We heard many times: This is not a religious war between Jews and Muslims (Christians are less than one percent of the population). Rather, two profoundly traumatic narratives are in conflict: the Jewish Holocaust and the Palestinian Nakba, or catastrophe. Depending on who we spoke to, the roots of this conflict go back to the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories or to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.
During the 1948 war, armed Israeli military and paramilitary groups destroyed 500 Palestinian villages and forcibly displaced 750,000 Palestinians – 85 percent of the population – to neighboring countries. Another 460,000 Palestinians were further displaced by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967.
Palestinians told us: “We are being punished for the Holocaust which happened on European soil. We had nothing to do with it.” That sentiment, and the narrative of the Palestinian Nakba has not changed my understanding of, or horror at, what happened to European Jews in the Holocaust. It has, however, brought these two narratives into dialogue, and focused attention on the conflict on the ground as Palestinians and Jews are locked in a deadly conflict over how to live together in that narrow region that stretches “from the river to the sea.”
Praying for peace at the Gaza border: To save us from the scourge of war
On our last day in August, we participated in an interfaith service organized by Sabeel and Rabbis for Human Rights, which was held in the ancient ruins of a fifth century synagogue. On our way we passed through the empty lands of the kibbutzim attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023. There was an eerie silence to the land, as though the land itself was mourning from the violence that took place on that day. As we made our way to the interfaith service, we were just one mile from the Egyptian border, and one mile from Khan Yunis in Gaza.
During the service, we exchanged prayers and songs in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. We were 30 people representing three Abrahamic traditions on a land that has witnessed incredible violence and bloodshed and forced displacement since the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948. Yet there was a fraternal spirit of compassion, mutual concern, solidarity, and reconciliation as we were joined by a common desire for a ceasefire and an end to the slaughter in Gaza.
Our delegation offered several prayers for peace, for the refugees, for nonviolent peacemakers, for soldiers of conscience to lay down their guns, and for the US to end its military aid to Israel. We also heard from Rabbi Avi Dabush, who survived the Hamas attack on his kibbutz, along with his wife and two daughters. His words were not filled with vengeance or hatred, but rather with a vision of peace where Jews and Muslims could live together, as his own parents remembered prior to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. “I look forward to that day,” he said, “when from the river to the sea, people of all faiths may share this land as sisters and brothers.”
There, at the Gaza border, we stood at a crossroads, heirs to the post-World War II legacy and promise of the United Nations Charter “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” We stood there on that promise, enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions and Protocols, and international law related to ethnic cleansing, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Here, in our broken humanity, words continue to fail us, but words are important, as are actions, but only inasmuch as we agree to stake our lives on their promise. We cannot afford to make exceptions, neither for the United States nor for Israel, nor for any nation or non-state actor like Hamas.
The failure of the United States and Western nations – and Western churches – to effectively condemn the genocide in Gaza and block the sale of offensive weapons to Israel will stand as a moral failure for generations to come.
And everyone beneath their vine and fig tree
The following prayer for peace is one I offered during the interfaith service at the Gaza border:
God of life, we pray for peace in this Holy Land.
We pray for all people, for the safe return of the hostages held in Gaza, and the release of Palestinians held captive in administrative detention in Israel.
As US citizens we ask God for forgiveness for the way our nation has contributed to the horrific death and destruction in Gaza. We have heard repeatedly: This is a US war; without our weapons and political cover, and the silence of our Christian leaders, this war would not have happened. We say: Not one penny more in US military aid for war.
We pray for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an end to settler violence in the West Bank, respect for human rights and international law, and that those responsible for the murder of innocent lives, including those killed in Gaza, be brought to justice.
In the words of our prophet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “either we shall learn to live together as sisters and brothers, or we shall surely perish together as fools.”
As Christians, Muslims, and Jews, let us make a sacred covenant on this day and in this place and work to abolish violence and war, until that day when we can sing together these words from the prophets Micah and Isaiah:
“And everyone beneath their vine and fig tree, shall live in peace and unafraid. And into plowshares turn their swords, nation shall learn war no more.”