View my short presentation at the Jerusalem Day Rally held in Whitehall, London, here. The text is below.
What does the word Jeru-salem mean? It means “city of peace” In the Psalms we are told to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6). Why are we told to pray for the peace of the city of peace? Perhaps because God knew people would interpret the word “peace” in contradictory ways. That is why the prophet Jeremiah warned “‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14).
Do you remember the film Miss Congeniality staring Sandra Bullock who plays a police officer.There’s a scene in which she enters theMiss USA beauty pageant. Each contestant steps up to the microphone to answer the question, “What’s the most important thing our society needs?” They each smile and give the same cliched answer – “world peace“. All except Sandra Bullock who replies, “Harsher punishment for parole violators”. The crowd goes silent and Sandra Bullock realises they don’t share her enthusiasm for justice, so she adds, “And world peace” and the crowd goes wild.
Although the scene makes light of ‘world peace’, Sandra Bullock is making a point, “If we all believe in ‘world peace’, if we all want ‘world peace’ why, oh why, is it so elusive? Because peace begins, for exampole, by holding parole violators accountable. That is why the prophet Jeremiah warned “‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14).
I wonder if you can remember the comedy film Miss Congeniality staring Sandra Bullock. There’s a scene in which she appears in the Miss USA beauty pageant. Each contestant steps up to the microphone to answer the question, “What’s the most important thing our society needs?” They each smile and give the same cliched answer – “world peace”. All except Sandra Bullock who replies, “Harsher punishment for parole violators”. When the crowd goes silent and Sandra Bullock realises they don’t share her enthusiasm for justice, she adds, “And world peace” and then the crowd goes wild.
Although the humorous scene makes light of ‘world peace’, implicitly, it raises the question, “If we all believe in ‘world peace’, if we all want ‘world peace’ why, oh why, is it so elusive? I suggest the clue lies in Sandra Bullock’s unpopular reply, but lets leave that for now and come back to it later.
When we turn our attention from fiction to reality, and in particular to Gaza, we recognise peace is a serious, urgent, vital, not just need, but demand. There are people living and breathing in Gaza today who will be dead by tonight, or who will die tomorrow or on Thursday and on Friday.. In a very real sense, Palestine is the litmus test, or as Revd Dr Munther Isaac said this week, “Gaza is the moral compass” of the world order. If the international community cannot, or will not, apply international law and binding UN resolutions, and stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, if the highest court in the world, the ICJ will not hold Israel accountable for genocide, then there is no hope for peace anywhere else in the world. All we have is anarchy, the law of the jungle, the survival of the strongest. Ironically Sandra Bullock was right in Miss Congeniality. World peace begins by holding parole violators accountable because there will be no peace without justice.
A revealing interview with Dashran Yohan recorded for BFM Media in Malaysia about the source of my commitment to peacemaking and some of the challenges faced along the way…
Imagine we are living in a parallel universe. 75 years ago, Britain was defeated in the 2nd World War. The RAF lost the Battle of Britain. D Day was a disaster. Britain was invaded and then colonised. The majority fled the country and cannot return. Those who survived have moved to the Southampton-Portsmouth Strip. Nearly 3 million people live as refugees in what is the world’s largest open prison, 25 miles long, 5 miles wide. The M27 is a militarised separation barrier. The coastline is patrolled. The ports are derelict. No one can leave. There is no escape. Imports and exports are heavily restricted. We depend on UN aid to survive.
Our democratically elected civil government has been designated a terrorist organisation. Three months ago, it got much worse. Armed resistance fighters broke out of our enclave. In retaliation, for the last 100 days, Southampton, Fareham, Gosport and Portsmouth have been sieged, invaded and bombed. Day and night. As a result, there are tens of thousands of dead and wounded. 80% of homes have been destroyed or are uninhabitable. The Civic Hall has been demolished. Portsmouth, Solent and Southampton Universities have all been flattened. The University Hospital, Royal South Hampshire and Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth have been severely damaged and are out of operation. Southampton airport is unusable. Most churches and mosques, shops, schools and community centres have been demolished or are unusable. Mass burials are taking place daily on Southampton Common.
And then, just when we thought it could not get any worse, two million people have been forced to move to a so-called ‘safe zone’ along the Weston Shore, Netley and in Royal Victoria Park. We are living in the open air, in makeshift tents. There is little or no food, no water or electricity. There is a communication blackout. The UN are only allowed to bring in a fraction of the supplies we need to survive. Medical staff are performing operations without anaesthetics. With no sanitation, communicable diseases are rampant. diarrhoea cases surged 66 percent among children. Meningitis, chickenpox, jaundice also reported. Half a million people are literally starving.
If you are like me they you probably find January a challenging month. After the highs of the Christmas season, the short-lived New Year resolutions, long dark nights, and typically cold weather, we can easily become discouraged or demotivated.
In my former parish, just after Christmas I would invite the whole church family to reflect upon the previous year and identify their personal ministry highlights. Having collated their answers, we gave a copy to every church member encouraging them to keep it in their bibles and use it in their daily prayers, giving thanks for God’s abundant blessings in the year that had gone. Each January we found this really strengthened our faith and raised our expectations of what the Lord could accomplish in and through us during the year ahead.
I have done the same in what follows, highlighting an event or initiative for each month of 2023. I have also appended news of two exciting new initiaitves in 2024. Thank you for making this all possible, through your prayers and support. We look forward to partnering with you in the year ahead.
The Revd Dr Munther Isaac, is the vicar of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. Munther delivered a prophetic message during the Christ in the Rubble Liturgy of Lament service today. It was a powerful message challenging Western Churches to demonstrate solidarity with the suffering church in Palestine and repudiate the genocide occurring in Gaza, because silence is complicity.
“We are angry… We are broken… This should have been a time of joy; instead, we are mourning. We are fearful.
20,000 killed. Thousands under the rubble still. Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways. Day after day after day. 1.9 million displaced! Hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed. Gaza as we know it no longer exists. This is an annihilation. A genocide.
The world is watching; Churches are watching. Gazans are sending live images of their own execution. Maybe the world cares? But it goes on…
Jesus of Palestine: A Christmas presentation given at the Gulf Cultural Club, Abrar House, London
The Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem are commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ differently this year. They have created a nativity scene resembling the situation in Gaza amid Israel’s brutal onslaught. The nativity scene shows a baby wrapped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh and placed in debris and rubble. While the keffiyeh symbolises Palestinian identity, history, and struggle, the debris represents destruction in Gaza, where at least 20,000 people have already been killed by Israel’s indiscriminate war, and thousands more are missing under the rubble, most of them children and women. The baby Jesus represents the thousands of children buried beneath the rubble in Gaza. The vicar of the Nativity Church, the Revd Dr Munther Isaac, said: “If Jesus were born today, he would be born in Gaza under the rubble.” The municipalities and churches in Bethlehem and Ramallah have announced that Christmas celebrations have been cancelled in the occupied West Bank in solidarity with Gaza, calling on parishes instead to collect donations to help the victims.[1]
As we reflect on Christmas at the Gulf Cultural Club, we have been asked to consider two questions this evening. First, how would Jesus deal with the current situation in Palestine? Second, how can peace be promoted today? The hope is that this seminar will contribute to the promotion of justice and peace as we mark the festive season linked to Jesus and Mary. Let’s consider these two questions one at a time.
Following last week’s lecture tour in Kuala Lumpur, I have been appointed a Senior Non-Resident Scholar of the Hashim Sani Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Malaysia
