by Palestinian Artist Fayez Elhasani,

                                                                                  born in Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza, 1958

                                         Standing Up to Repression, Breaking the Silence, Speaking Truth to Power

                                                                                         a Reflection by the Rev. Allie Perry,

                                                                                               UCC PIN Steering Committee

Next month will mark a year since October 7. I, for one, and perhaps others, would never have predicted that Israel’s genocidal response to the horror and violence of the Hamas attack that day would have continued, not only unabated, but with an almost escalating fervor, metastasizing now with increasing intensity into the West Bank. 

Ceasefire talks continue, but to no avail. The Biden-Harris administration claims to be working around the clock for a ceasefire agreement, but when it continues to fund Israel’s genocide, with yet another infusion recently of 20 billion for weapons, the U.S. government is not, cannot be, and has never been an honest broker. Meanwhile, Israel has turned the Hamas assaults of October 7, horrific as they were, into cover for expanding the footprint of its occupation since 1967, de facto annexing the West Bank; for solidifying its apartheid regime (extensively documented by human rights organizations); and for continuing its project of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, ongoing since 1948.

Recent statistics, according to OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, document the extent of Israel’s genocide: over 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza killed, (a recent Lancet report argued that the Gaza death toll may exceed 186,000); close to 95,000 Palestinians injured; over 10,000 missing or still buried beneath the rubble; and 1.9 million, 90% of Gaza’s population, internally displaced. These figures do not include those Gazans facing starvation or the numbers of West Bank Palestinians killed, injured, displaced, and detained. Nor can these figures begin to convey the human suffering of a people who Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, heartlessly called ‘animals.’ Nor can these figures account for the incalculable familial, cultural, health, and environmental devastation inflicted on an entire population. 

Given this heartbreaking reality and the responsibility we as United States citizens bear for our country’s complicity, how might we, in our congregations, mark this anniversary with honesty, truth-telling, and faithfulness?  In anticipation of this need, our UCC PIN Liturgical Resource Team has been developing a communion liturgy and other prayers and offerings for World Communion Sunday, October 6. We will share these resources next week through our Constant Contact distribution list and also will post them in a newly created UCC PIN Liturgical Resources substack where they will be archived along with our weekly Pause for Palestine prayers.

While Israel continues to perpetrate genocide, the hopeful news is that the movement for Palestinian lives, human rights, and freedom is growing. It’s not going away. Globally and within the US, it is gaining traction, strength, numbers, and power, inspired by the persistence and resilience of Palestinians, in solidarity with their suffering and struggle, and consistent with the moral imperative for justice and human dignity. 

Concurrent with the movement’s growth, however, is a predictable reaction: silence truth-telling, repress and punish dissent, and in some cases, as with anti-BDS laws, criminalize it. Articles in this newsletter’s 
Breaking the Stories are organized around various contexts and examples of being silent, of active silencing, of intimidation, and of repression: the majority of our congregations, as the Rev. Munther Isaac lamented in his recent US tour, still remaining quiet; the mainstream media with its selective and biased reporting; our college campuses with new policies constricting rights of assembly or punishing freedom of dissent. Efforts at silencing should come as no surprise nor should we be intimidated or deterred. There is always a cost for speaking truth to power, for power, as Frederick Douglas taught us, “concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

The perceived need to intensify repression is its own indictment, evidence of the Palestinian solidarity and justice movement’s increasing power and moral urgency. The antidote to repression is to continue to stand up and speak out, to continue to advocate and be tireless, ever hopeful, in demanding justice and pursuing it. Now is precisely the time for us, in response, to intensify our activism

Here are three immediate actions to take:

Sign the Declaration of Faith and Urgency from Christian Clergy to the Government of the United States (Find link in the article below about The Stones Cry Out).

Support the parents of the Palestinian-American Aysenor Azgi Aygi in contacting your elected officials and demanding the US call for an independent investigation into the IDF’s fatal shooting of their daughter. (See articles in Breaking the Stories). To date, the US government has refused to make that call.

Tell Congress to oppose the $20 billion transfer for Israel – no more bombs, no more tanks, no more weapons. You can send your message to your elected officials through Code Pink here or Peace Action here, or both.

This is a section of the UCCPIN September 2024 E-Newsletter. To read the entire newsletter, follow
this link.