GUEST BLOG: Lois Griffiths – RELIGION ISN’T THE ISSUE
Israel’s destruction of the international media centre in Gaza has served its intended purpose. Israel can continue its criminal outrages against the people of Gaza, without media available to inform the outside world with details. We need to have journalists on hand who can investigate and then answer questions: How many people have been made homeless? How many have died? How many children have died or been wounded? How are the childen affected? Can the hospitals and clinics cope? What about Covid19?
Why does the world allow Israel to get away with this?
Why is there no anger?
Demonstrators should gather outside the Israeli Embassy calling for it to be shut down. The message to the Israeli Ambassador should be clear: ‘NOT WANTED’.
And we have already forgotten? It’s not just Gaza. Maybe not especially about Gaza. Maybe the bombing of Gaza, which they’ve done so many times before, is meant to distract the world from the issue that perhaps is the last straw for all Palestinians.
The invasion of Al Aqsa Mosque, the world’s 3rd holiest mosque , by armed forces , on the holiest day of the Islamic year, while people were praying, the utter contempt of the Israeli regime with its armed religious extremist backers, for the Muslim religion has not surprisingly led to a display of solidarity by all Palestinians and the show of defiance by Gazans.
Palestinian Christians are angry too. Catholic Father Manuel Musallam, called on Palestinian Christians to “donate to support Al Aqsa Mosque” in Occupied Jerusalem.
“I repeat my call to the honourable clergy, the patriarchs, bishops, and priests to shoulder their responsibilities and strongly stand in the face of the occupation and its crimes,” Musallam said in a statement. He added that “the Jerusalemites were fighting a battle for their dignity, their holy sites, their homes, their land, their people and their religion.”
Greek Orthodox Archbishop Atallah Hanna said that “the Jerusalemites have a message to the world that they are defending the heritage and history of the holy city.”
“During a tour around and inside Al Aqsa Mosque we met champions who do not accept to surrender to the status quo.” The archbishop’s plea last December is even more urgent today. “I call upon all the churches of the world, in the west and east, to urgently defend Palestine, the children of Palestine, and the Palestinian cause.”
The ongoing nakba of robbing the indigenous of their land and water sources, their houses, is also a campaign to destroy historic and religious landmarks and buildings.
Let’s hear from our New Zealand clerics. Imagine if armed police and soldiers, who despised you and your religion, invaded the Vatican or Westminster Abbey!
Palestinian clerics have been pleading for support for some time. They periodically issue a Kairos plea, Kairos meaning the situation is urgent.
The Palestinian cause should be supported by all, whether of any religion or no religion. The issue is one of humanity. Palestinians are our fellow human beings.
Palestinian supporters often call on all of us, everywhere, to ‘Stay Human.’
Lois Griffiths is a Human Rights Activist.
Thank you Lois. Great to see one of my favourite characters getting some ink. Fr. Musallam has both Humour and Humanity in abundance.
Indeed, this conflict has nothing to do with religion. In my view it differs little from any of the indigenous struggles to throw off colonialism in History.
Christians should read the Kairos document:
“This document is the Christian Palestinians’ word to the world about what is happening in Palestine. It is written at this time when we wanted to see the Glory of the grace of God in this land and in the sufferings of its people. In this spirit the document requests the international community to stand by the Palestinian people who have faced oppression, displacement, suffering and clear apartheid for more than six decades. The suffering continues while the international community silently looks on at the occupying State, Israel. ”
https://www.kairosresponse.org/kairos_palestine_document.html
Staying human isn’t the solution, when the problem is in becoming human. Kairos Palestine, in their message dated May 14th, deliberately manipulated (trimmed) verse, and then openly rejected it in the accompanying text. That sort of thing might well result in the underwhelming response you say they recieved, which would be a reflection of christians also generally being in a state of becoming human rather than staying human. If becoming human means going to war, and staying human means only temporarily arriving at that state before an actual physical death – in this case accelerated by the IDF – then there is only the potential pain of death left to fear. Isn’t this the same battle fought for thousands of years everywhere on earth? They seem to accept that, so what has it got to do with us, except as a distorted reflection of our own “battles”? We still won’t see the basic calculations that’ll stop the painful deaths of our own people in poverty. What could anyone in NZ possibly say that would be of any use, stay true their method of becoming human, and not fall into the category of “…calls for calm and toothless church statements that “call for peace.”? The path between invoking death or enforcing oppression is outlined in multiple different texts all readily available and known to combatants and supporting groups on either side. Do you want me to tell you it’s ok to not be a human rights activist? Then I say it, it’s ok, let it go. Become a free Palestinian reporter, an echo of a Fenian past, whatever you want, get a fresh new free perspective. With everyone charging around mistaking the physical for the spiritual, forgetting the links back to the source, and complaining reason and logic can’t free them, they also forget that they could just choose different physical images, and shift the angle and find a continuation to the same blocked path forward. No need to actually die to experience a “small death”. we should count overselves lucky that our transformative process isn’t dependant on a rocket landing in our house.
Here’s one for you Gaby: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/524455-neturei-karta-rabbi-weiss-israel/
Really scraping the bottom of the propagandist barrel today Gaby. The first link is a straight out of a Hasbara outfit that has no sense of accuracy and honesty. It even makes IINZ look credible. The other is an ancient link about a bought and paid for for quisling who was owned by Israeli propagandists. Funny, if you enter his name in a search engine, the links are almost exclusively to Zionist linked sites. Really credible eh?
Now for some truth about where Hamas came from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30/how-israel-helped-create-hamas/. Sorry Gaby but it is more than a headline and two sentences long so it could be a strain for you.