UCC PIN SEPTEMBER E-NEWS

In this issue:

• Standing up to Repression, Breaking the Silence, Speaking Truth to Power: Reflection by the Rev. Allie Perry
• The Stones Cry Out: Palestinian Solidarity Actions, September 23-25, Washington, DC
• Looking Ahead - Christian Zionism and the Israel Lobby: a Conversation with Ilan Pappé, Saturday, Oct. 5, noon ET
• Defense of Children International-Palestine Report: Targeting Childhood
• Breaking the Stories, curated by the Rev. Loren McGrail
• Recommended Recent Podcasts

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. 

by Palestinian Artist Raed Al Qatanani

“The work is taken from a snapshot of a brother and friend who is resilient in Gaza, Fadi Shabat.”

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.

The Stones Cry Out: Palestine Solidarity Actions September 23-25

Washington DC

On-line conversations with a stunning line-up of Palestinian solidarity activists, offered as webinars through the summer months, have helped The Stones Cry Out build momentum for the upcoming three days of Palestinian solidarity actions, witness, and resistance in Washington, D.C., September 23-25. If you are able to participate in person, and haven’t yet registered, there is still time to sign up. Contact Doug Thorpe (dthorpe@spu.edu). The D.C. gathering will feature the prophetic words of several speakers including those listed in the flyer above.



Even if you cannot be there in person, you can participate through adding you name to a Declaration that will be delivered on the steps of the Capitol to some members of Congress and also to the executive branch of our government on Tuesday the 24^th. The title of the declaration makes its message explicit: "There is Another Way for Israel and Palestine: A Declaration of Faith and Urgency from Christian Clergy to the Government of the United States." 

There is indeed another way. It is beyond time for the United States government to stop being complicit in funding Israel’s genocide. It is time instead to use our government’s considerable power, as the declaration states, “to pull Israel back from its descent into militarism and barbarism.” To read the full text of the Declaration and its demands and to add your name go here. The Declaration will be made available later in a booklet form for study in churches and communities.

The series of summer webinars provides a treasure trove of educational materials for individuals and congregations to us, including speakers such as Palestinian-American businessman and political analyst Sam Bahour; the Rev. David Wildman, Methodist representative to the UN; and Ali Abunimah, journalist, political analyst, and director of the  Electronic Intifada, and many more. The full series of The Stones Cry Out webinars is archived on the Indiana Center for Middle East Peace's YouTube channel that you can access here.

Looking Ahead

Christian Zionism and the Israel Lobby: a Conversation with Ilan Pappé

Saturday, October 5, 12 noon ET

Ilan Pappé, one of Israeli’s New Historians and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), and numerous other books, is a persona non grata in Israel. He left Israel, after his endorsement of BDS in 2007, among other things, led to death threats, the threatened loss of his teaching position at the University of Haifa, and a subsequent condemnation by the Knesset. Now a professor of history at the University of Exeter in England, Pappé has just written a new book, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic. 

As he explains in the preface to his book, the “riddle” he wants to solve is: “Why does Israel invest vast amounts in two major lobbies, Christian and Jewish, on both sides of the Atlantic? Why does the Jewish state still crave recognition of its legitimacy in the West?”

The Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace (PCAP) and Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) are hosting a conversation with Ilan Pappé, about his book, focusing especially on Christian Zionism and the Israel lobby, Saturday, October 5, at 12 pm ET. 



UCC PIN is one of several organizations co-sponsoring this webinar. Dr. Awad Halabi, professor in the Departments of History and Religion at Wright State University, Dayton, OH and on the board of trustees of PCAP, will be facilitating the interview with Ilan Pappé. To register for this webinar, go here.

Defense for Children International - Palestine Report: Targeting Childhood

A bullet hole in Al-Far'a refugee camp after the Israeli killing of 14-year-old Maher Abdullah Ahmad Jawabra on December 23, 2023

(Photo: Wahaj Bani Moufleh/Activestills

Defense for Children International–Palestine has just this month released Targeting Childhood, a new report documenting, through a series of case studies, how since October 7, 2023 Israeli forces and settlers have been systematically and unrelentingly killing Palestinian children, in most cases using live ammunition. The report’s overview states that, “On average, Israeli forces have killed a Palestinian child in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, every two days since October 7, 2023" through July 31 of this year. This frequency represents an alarming escalation of what the report names as Israel’s “de facto policy of shooting to kill.” What does this escalation look like in percentages? According to the report, “20% of all of the Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank in more than two decades were killed in the last ten months.”

The report makes visible what mainstream media has, for the most part, continued to ignore or silence: Israel’s Gaza-ification of the West Bank, a process which Hagai El-Ad, former director of B’tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, named as such, in a New Yorker interview as early as November 2023. That process has intensified over the intervening months as Israel has launched its cynically named “Operation Summer Camps” and is using “lethal war-like tactics” in the West Bank, according to the UN’s humanitarian agency: drones, bombs, bulldozers. (See related stories in Breaking the Stories). Reports like Targeting Childhood are critical resources for us to use as we refuse to be silent and continue our advocacy for Palestinian rights and lives. 

Breaking The Stories: September 2024

curated by the Rev. Loren McGrail,

UCC PIN Steering Committee

Gazan Artist Abdul Nasser Amer

Schools set to crack down on Palestine protests

Students at Columbia University protest for divestment during the encampment for Gaza, April 2024 (Photo: Hoda Sherif)

Students are returning to campus and little has changed in Gaza since the summer began. Israel continues its genocidal assault on the population and the United States government continues to support the effort with caveats or anything resembling a red line.

This week we saw a potential foreshadowing of what this semester is going to look like. At the University of Michigan cops mobilized to shut down a demonstration in support of Gaza. Multiple people were arrested. Here

Why Democrats refused to allow a Palestinian speaker at the DNC

Under portraits of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz adorning the United Center where the Democratic National Convention is taking place, Uncommitted Movement co-lead Abbas Alawieh announces the DNC rejected their request to have a Palestinian speaker address the convention,  on August 21, 2024. (Photo: Prem Thakker, @prem_thakker)

The Democratic National Convention is over and, for the most part, Democrats are taking a victory lap. They wanted to display unity and enthusiasm for the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz ticket on the convention floor. Both were accomplished, although some chicanery was necessary for the unity display.

To achieve the appearance of unity, discussion of policy in Chicago’s United Center, where the convention was held, was minimized. Gaza is not the only foreign policy issue in this election, of course, but it is by far the most prominent one, the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia notwithstanding. Yet it barely got a mention at the convention. 



Only a few words were devoted to Gaza by Democratic speakers, most of them framing the issue primarily in terms of the Israeli hostages still being held there. Much of the hope that some in the Palestinian-American community might have held that Harris would be materially different than Biden on Gaza was dashed when the Democrats refused to allow a Palestinian-American speaker to address the convention. Here

Life for Jenin residents 'in paralysis' as Israeli operation enters second week

 A dog walks towards a man in Jenin, occupied West Bank amid

destruction and excavations left by the Israeli army on 4 September, 2024 (Zain Jaafar/AFP)

As the Israeli military operation in Jenin and its environs in the occupied West Bank enters its second week, the situation has only gotten bleaker for Palestinians in the area. The Jenin municipality said on Sunday that the Israeli army has bulldozed 70 percent of the city’s streets and water has been cut off from 80 percent of homes. Additionally, 20 kilometres of water and sewage networks, communication and electricity cables have been demolished. Out of the 33 Palestinians who have been killed since Israeli forces launched their largest invasion of the West Bank since the Second Intifada, 19 were in Jenin, the Palestinian health ministry says. Here

Press Release: Israeli army kills American International Solidarity Movement volunteer during demonstration in Beita, Nablus

During the weekly demonstration in Beita, Palestine, on the morning of September 6th, 2024, the Israeli army intentionally shot and killed an International Solidarity Movement (ISM) human rights activist named Ayşenur Eygi.

The demonstration, which primarily involved men and children praying, was met with force from the Israeli army stationed on a hill. Initially, the army fired a large amount of tear gas and then began using live ammunition. Ayşenur, who we consider a martyr in the struggle, was the 18th demonstrator to be killed in Beita since 2020. She was an American citizen of Turkish descent. Here

More Resources

DNC widened the split between liberals and progressives over whether to back Harris Here

Kamala Harris must protect Palestinians with an arms embargo  Here

Campaigning Against Genocide (w/ Dr. Jill Stein & Butch Ware) | The Chris Hedges Report Here

To the Israeli Soldier Who Murdered Aysenur Esgi Eygi by Mr. Fish – Chris Hedges Report Here

Ceasefire and Ending the Occupation

Sanctions Now! Palestinian Civil Society Demands Immediate International Compliance with the ICJ Findings on Israel’s Unlawful Occupation Here

When Churches are Silent

Apartheid-Free Interview with Munther Isaac Here

Rev. Munther Isaac at Riverside Church Here

Silencing the Gazification of the Occupied West Bank

Life for Jenin residents 'in paralysis' as Israeli operation enters second week Here

‘Days filled with terror’: Palestinians in Jenin recount harrowing 10-day Israeli army invasion Here

Israeli forces using ‘war-like’ tactics in occupied West Bank: UN Here

Silencing Dissent

Watch: Palestinian American Lawmaker Gives Speech the DNC Wouldn't Allow on Stage Here

Advocates demand justice after US protester killed in Israeli gunfire Here

“Campus Has Become Unrecognizable”: Columbia Prof. Franke Faces Firing After DN Interview on Gaza

Here

How U.S. College Administrators Are “Dreaming Up Ways to Squash Gaza Protests” Here

Silencing the Truth

‘Extraordinarily Dishonest’: The Truth About the Ceasefire Negotiations Here

Fmr. Israeli Hostage Negotiator Gershon Baskin Slams Netanyahu for Blocking Ceasefire Deal Here

Gaza War is an environmental Catastrophe Here

Recommended Recent Podcasts

The Long Read - As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel by Omer Barto Here

The Take- The Contrasts of the DNC Here

Dispatches- Turning Israel’s Murder Spree into Background Noise Here

Occupied Thoughts: U.S. Policy Through the Looking Glass Here