While General Synod was in its closing two days, Israel spent those same days engaged in a brutal assault on the Jenin Refugee Camp in the West Bank, deploying drones and Apache attack helicopters from the air and on the ground military tanks and over 1,000 Israeli soldiers. The densely populated 'camp,' administered by the United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency (UNRWA), is home to more than 18,000 Palestinians, refugees from the Nakba (“catastrophe”) in 1948 and their descendants, squeezed into a ‘footprint,’ essentially a ghetto, of 0.43 kilometers. Israel’s attack, cynically dubbed ‘Operation Home and Garden,’ elicited condemnation globally, including from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (see story here).

Within days, the national leadership of the UCC and the Disciples of Christ had issued a statement noting that Israel's troops had by then been withdrawn "for the time being," but deploring that its occupation “remains firmly in place” and its illegal settlement expansion continues with no accountability. In their statement, UCC and DOC leaders wrote, “We abhor this week’s assaults on Palestinian lives, communities, and rights. We are deeply concerned that this operation will result in an escalated risk of extended violence. We urge our own governments to use their leverage – and apply existing laws – to hold Israel accountable for such violations which amount to collective punishment of a people.” 

The U.S. government, however, has given no indication of holding Israel accountable. To the contrary, on the first day of Israel’s invasion, a National Security Council spokesperson expressed US support for "Israel's security and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups." Marwa Maziad, an expert on US-Arab-Israeli relations at the University of Maryland, observed, "The US clearly has no red lines when it comes to Israel's use of force."

Does Israel’s escalating violence against Palestinians and now this recent assault on the Jenin Refugee Camp, portend another Nakba? Political commentator and Jewish Current editor Peter Beinart thinks so. In a recent podcast, he argues that Israel is moving “closer to the possibility of mass expulsion of Palestinians in the West Bank.” Beinart observes that “Israel has in its political DNA this history of mass expulsion at its founding, and another mass expulsion . . . in 1967, and smaller scale expulsions kind of in-between.” Israel’s two-day assault on Jenin is an example of one such “smaller scale expulsion”; in response to the violence, the Palestinian Red Crescent evacuated around 3,000 residents. Beinart is likely right that we are witnessing “another Nakba.” Or perhaps more accurately, we are witnessing the Nakba that has never ended.

Meanwhile, our own US government not only draws no “red lines.” It continues to finance Israel with close to 4 billion dollars in no-strings-attached military aid and provides, as political cover, the argument that Israel has a right to defend itself. But what about the Palestinians? Don’t they, as an occupied people, have the right to defend themselves? International law is clear; yes, they do. 

by British artist Dave Brown

How might we, keeping faith with our 2021 General Synod resolution, Declaration for a Just Peace Between Palestine and Israel, speak prophetic words denouncing the sin of Israel's on-going occupation? How can we escalate and intensify our advocacy, holding our government accountable to its own laws and insisting that it end its complicity with Israel’s violation of human rights.

Here are some concrete suggestions for immediate actions:

1. Global Ministries has turned our UCC and DOC national leaders’ statement into a bulletin insert. Use that with your congregations. You can access it here.

2. Contact your Congressional representative and senators. Urge them to condemn Israel's invasion of Jenin and to stop funding Israel’s massacres. Find links for contacting your legislators in the Actions section at the end of Breaking the Stories.

3. Go here to learn whether your Congressional Representative has signed on as a co-sponsor of HR 3103 Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israel Military Occupation. If not, call them to ask why not and then urge them to co-sponsor. Share with them the story (see Breaking the Stories) about Save the Children's new report documenting the "immense emotional and physical abuse" to which the Israeli military subjects Palestinian children.

4. Urge your congregation to study and then take the pledge and become an apartheid-free congregation. Go to the Apartheid-Free website for resources for study, for taking the pledge, and for action. 

5. Support and engage in the BDS Movement, all the more important as New Hampshire just became the 37th US state to effectively boycott boycotts, specifically prohibiting state contracts with companies that boycott Israel (see Breaking the Stories for full story).