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Background and Explanation for the Position Statement of the Iona Community on Palestine/Israel

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Background and Explanation for the Position Statement of the Iona Community on Palestine/Israel Background and explanation for the Position Statement of the Iona Community on Palestine/Israel The Iona Community is an international, ecumenical Christian movement working for Peace and Justice. Since its origins, the Iona Community has supported anti-colonial struggles worldwide; opposed apartheid in South Africa; practised and encouraged nonviolent resistance; expressed practical and political solidarity with the poor and oppressed at home and worldwide as well as focussing on the relationship between personal responsibility and political context in faithfulness to the kingdom of God. Many Iona Community members and associates have been very active in working for justice and peace in Palestine/Israel in a wide range of ways, including: working, serving and ministering in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories; enabling and promoting fair trade with Palestinian producers; human rights observer missions including volunteering with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI); meeting with and providing support to Palestinian and Israeli groups working for peace with justice; offering hospitality, friendship and solidarity with visiting Palestinians in our homes and our island centres; campaigning in solidarity with the Palestinian people. 1 The Iona Community fully endorses Kairos Palestine: A moment for truth, _ as a cry from the Christian Communities in Palestine in 2009 to the worldwide church and international community. As a worshipping community we seek to play our role in encouraging the churches in the countries where we are based to adopt and act on the call of Kairos Palestine. In particular we are called to scrutinise our own theological assumptions and those of our churches, for any elements which legitimise the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people in Israel, the occupied Palestinian Territories and amongst the Palestinian diaspora. The Iona Community deplores and condemns anti-Semitism. As with many Jews, we reject the equation of Judaism with the divine right of Jews to the whole land of Palestine: to question this claim is not anti-Semitic. As a social movement in civil society, we embrace the call from Palestinian civil society and Christian Leaders affirmed in A Moment of Truth, to enact Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, as nonviolent resistance to injustice; an act of love which seeks the welfare of both oppressed and oppressor: an academic and cultural boycott of the Israeli state and its agents, its academic institutions and cultural expressions of 'soft power'; a consumer boycott of Israeli products and divestment from companies which profit from the unjust practices of the Israeli state; and to lobby for sanctions against the Israeli state whilst Israel remains in breach of international humanitarian law through its occupation of the West Bank, siege of Gaza; treatment of Palestinians in Israel and denial of the right to return for Palestinian refugees. The Community played midwife to the Iona Call_2, which was launched from Iona Abbey at Pentecost 2012 during a week of reflection, study and prayer with Palestinian liberation theologian Rev. Naim Ateek and American Jewish author and activist Mark Braverman. The 1 http://www.kairospalestine.ps/sites/default/files/English.pdf 2 https://iona.org.uk/2012/06/07/kairos-palestine/ Iona Call led to the formation of Kairos Britain as a practical response to the call of Kairos 3 Palestine. The Kairos Britain document, Time for Action _ has been endorsed by the Iona Community which has also supported visits to Scotland by Kairos Palestine co-authors Naim Ateek, Mitri Raheb and Atallah Hanna. As a Scottish-rooted community with members throughout the world, we share with the British people a historical responsibility for the crisis in Palestine/Israel and across the Middle East. In particular, we note Britain’s role with regard to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, British rule in Palestine (1920-1948), and complicity in the colonisation of Palestine by European Zionists which led to the creation of the state of Israel in Palestine against the wishes of the Palestinians, at the time, the majority population4. The Balfour Declaration’s author, Arthur James Balfour, was Foreign Secretary in the UK Government. He was born in Scotland and previously served as Scottish Secretary. The only part of the Balfour declaration that was ever implemented was the establishment in Palestine of a national home for Jewish people – interpreted by Zionists as legitimacy for a ‘Jewish state’. The second part which states that 'nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine' has not been observed. We recognise that the Balfour Declaration and subsequent policy was misguided in its aspirations and highly selective in its implementation, to the detriment of Arab peoples of all religions in Palestine, and Jewish people of all nationalities throughout the world. As a result, during the three year period which encompasses the centenary years of the McMahon-Hussein correspondence (1915), the Sykes-Picot agreement (1916) and the Balfour Declaration (1917), the Iona Community established a working group in order to raise awareness of the situation in Palestine/Israel, implement and support BDS within the Community and promote BDS amongst churches. The Iona Community wishes to raise awareness of the situation in Palestine/Israel, which continues to deteriorate as a result of Israel's military occupation, house demolitions, settler colonialism and apartheid against the Palestinian population. We believe that the future of the Jewish people in Palestine/Israel depends upon equal rights for Palestinians and Jews and not on a continuing relationship of coloniser-colonised. The Iona Community believes in nonviolence and condemns on the one hand violence used against the Palestinian and Israeli people, and on the other hand the passivity of most Israelis and the international community in the face of injustice. It is for this reason that we believe in BDS as a tool to be used to try and gain equal rights for all Palestinians and as a way of responding to the call from the Christian Community in Palestine in their Kairos Palestine 2009 'cry of hope'. We therefore reject practices which seek to establish cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians without challenging the occupation as this encourages normalisation of the occupation. Cooperation without challenging colonisation is collusion with oppression. We recognise the character of Israel as a settler colonial state which has, since its conception, been predicated on the expulsion of Palestinians from the land. This is important, because settler colonialism has occurred before, in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other places where despised minorities from Europe have sought to establish a new society by settling in colonised lands, to the exclusion of those already living there. The situation in Israel/Palestine is not unique to Jewish and Arab peoples, nor is it intrinsically a religious conflict, and we can 3 http://www.fodip.org/articles/time_for_action.pdf 4 http://www.balfourproject.org learn from history to seek a just solution. We believe that any future for this land which is compatible with peace and justice must ensure the ongoing peaceful and secure presence of people who are Jewish, Muslim, Christian and secular; Arabic-speaking and Hebrew speaking; Palestinian and Israeli; of European, Arab and other ethnic background; recent settlers and older inhabitants and their descendants. These diverse people must be able to live together in a decolonised relationship of equality and justice and so the political and economic structures must serve to facilitate these aspirations. The current situation is a long way from this. In order to take the first steps towards this ambition of peace and justice we support BDS as a nonviolent movement to bring about change in Palestine/Israel. The BDS campaign, in accordance with resolutions of the United Nations, has called upon Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian lands and to return to the Green line of 1967; to end all discriminatory legislation and ensure equal rights for all citizens irrespective of nationality, religion or ethnicity and to respect the right of return for all refugees. We recognise that the Church and Christian Organisations have a distinctive responsibility to address the violent conflict in Palestine/Israel because these lands, along with neighbouring countries, are the historical setting for much of the Biblical narrative, including the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The names of many of the cities, towns and geographical features are familiar to Christians from scripture, which can serve to distort the historical distance and lead to simplistic theologies and erroneous interpretations of the current political situation. The land is considered holy in many Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions. Whilst there have been extensive periods of peaceful and fruitful coexistence between adherents of these religions, much of the history of the region has featured inter-religious, and intra-religious violence, to which Christians have contributed. Aspects of our theology retain elements which reinforce or are used to justify the oppression of both Jews and Palestinians. It is essential that in a spirit of repentance we apply a rigorous hermeneutic to our spiritual traditions, and be vigilant in challenging oppression
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