Nakba Day – A Call for Global Action and Solidarity

Our partner Kairos Palestine, together with the Global Kairos for Justice network, issues this statement and Global Call to Action on the 76th Anniversary of the ongoing Nakba.

A call for global Action and solidarity on Nakba Day May 15^th, 2024

Israel’s Continuing Apartheid, Ethnic Cleansing, forcible displacement and Now Genocide

“That’s what happened,” Jesus continued, “the people were attacked,

stripped, robbed, beaten, and left for dead. So, who do you think

turned out to be a neighbor to those who were attacked?”

See Luke 10

In November 2023, Israel Security Cabinet Member Avi Dichter declared, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.” Numbers from the war-torn Gaza Strip are proving Israel’s intent.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian update report on April 15th 2024, 33,797 Gazans have been killed by Israeli air strikes, tanks, snipers and soldiers on the ground. The number of dead still under the rubble is unknown. 76,465people have been injured. 1.7 million Palestinians (80% of the population) have been forcibly displaced. While over 14,000 children have been killed and thousands more are presumed buried under the rubble, another 17,000 children are unaccompanied, meaning their parents have been killed or they have been separated from them. And over 3,000 Palestinians from Gaza were abducted in mass arrest campaigns.

Mere numbers too often conceal the suffering. Every Gazan child has been exposed to Israeli military violence, experiencing traumatic injuries, mass displacement, hunger, the destruction of their houses and neighborhoods. According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), every child in Gaza–approximately one million children–will require mental health and psychosocial support.

How are we to respond to Jesus’ admonition, “Let the little children to come to me, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs (Mark 10:14).”?!

According to an interim report from the World Bank, the EU and the United Nations, Palestinians in Gaza make up 80 percent of all people facing famine or severe hunger worldwide. Human Rights Watch and other humanitarian organizations have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war, a war crime. Over 300,000 housing units are totally or partially demolished. More than 200 heritage and archaeological sites have been destroyed. Gazan churches, where Christians have sought refuge and out of which they have been serving their neighbors, have been attacked. Many Christians are among the numbers killed.

While the world’s eyes have been turned toward Gaza, Israel has continued its brutal occupation of the West Bank. Since October 7, over 400 Palestinians have been killed, over 7,350 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces. Roadblocks, checkpoints, closed gates and settler violence have sharply curtailed travel between villages and caused parents to keep their children at home. House demolitions and settlement building are growing at an unprecedented rate. Waves of settler violence, many settlers armed now by Israeli National Security Minister Ben-Gvir often and backed by Israel Defense Forces, have led to the displacement of over 1,200 Palestinians, including nearly 600 children. Entire villages have been overrun.

The Nakba, or catastrophe, which culminated in the forcible displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians, between 1947-1949 continues today. During the Nakba, 90,000 Palestinian Christians were forcibly displaced. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Christian communities involved multiple documented cases of massacres and the desecration of various churches. See Kairos Palestine and Badil Center’s 2023 joint publication “Palestinian Christians the forcible displacement and dispossession continues” . Today, the Nakba has never been more evident in Gaza and the West Bank. The world has watched the Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza which is housing around 900 Palestinian Christians being bombed and Christians being killed and displaced.

As one Christian from the West Bank said, “The uncertainty of our situation in the West Bank is overwhelming. We never know what Israel may do next. If a thief breaks into your house, you call the police. If there’s a fire, you call the community’s firefighters. But there is no one to call when Israeli soldier stop and threaten us with impunity, when settlers amass and march on villages, when the occupation army knocks on our door. We feel helpless, powerless. We feel anxious, abandoned. Ours are tears for ourselves and our own families as well as those in Gaza.”

“the fate of Palestinian Christians is inseparable from that of Palestinians. There is no resolution or solution to the “Christian” problem in Palestine, but there must be a resolution to the Palestinian question, namely dismantling the Israeli colonial apartheid regime and its structures and policies.”

Palestinian Christians the forcible displacement and dispossession continues publication, P.30

Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

We plead with Christians around the world to use these terms to describe the realities that your Palestinian siblings are experiencing. All three—apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide—are defined under international law. (See Kairos Palestine’s 2022 Dossier on Israeli Apartheid). The International Court of Justice declared in January that Israel is plausibly committing genocide. In her March 2024 report, “Anatomy of a Genocide,” United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, concludes “that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met.”

OUR CALL:

To churches:

• To pray and push for an immediate end to the genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
• To pressure your governments to cease sending military assistance to Israel and to support an immediate permanent unconditional ceasefire and ensure the delivery of necessary humanitarian aid.
• To plan vigils to mourn the Palestinians who were killed in Gaza, collecting money for Gazans and Palestinian and Christian organizations who are supporting the Palestinians in Gaza.

To the International Community:

• To pressure Israel to comply with international law and stop committing the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank.
• To exert effective efforts to ensure delivery of humanitarian assistance including food, medicines, water and electricity for the people in Gaza.
• To Defend Palestinians’ right and duty to resist their oppressors as guaranteed under international law and expressed in the Kairos Palestine’s Moment of Truth.
• To pressure your governments, take concrete measures, including diplomatic and economic sanctions, and immediate freeze the weapons and arms trade with Israel.

To civil society groups, unions and all other groups and individuals:

• Study, further explore and amplify calls and publications of Kairos Palestine: the 2009 Kairos Palestine Moment of Truth; Cry for Hope—A Call to Decisive Action; Palestinian Christians the forcible displacement and dispossession continues; A dossier on Israeli Apartheid: A Pressing Call to Churches Around the World; Kairos Palestine statements; and other books by Palestinian theologians.
• Read and sign the Apartheid free pledge which commits to Freedom, Justice and Equality for the Palestinian people and all people.
• Find ways in local contexts to partner with like-minded people of other faiths and spiritual communities, and indigenous and human rights organizations sharing in the costly struggle against the Israeli Apartheid and genocide in Palestine.
• Boldly, prophetically challenge the heresy of Christian Zionism and all other theological justifications and defenses of Israel’s apartheid and genocidal policies; confront the silence, neutrality and complicities of churches, calling all to take the side of the oppressed.

Download the call to action here: Nakba_Day_-_call_for_global_action.pdf (kairospalestine.ps)