World Peace & Justice

The Middle East is in transition and the Holy Land has had more than its share of violence and strife. We recognize that our media privileges certain points of view and because of this imbalance our mission to ‘do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God’ requires exploration of the often neglected points of view.

On our journey to understanding, we have developed a partnership with St. George’s Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Zababdeh, Palestine. Zababdeh is situated in the northern West Bank and is one of the few villages in Palestine where the predominant religious affiliation is Christian.

We traveled to Palestine/Israel to learn first-hand about the occupation in Palestine. Some of the highlights of our travels were to:

• Zababdeh, where we visited with the parishioners of our partner church;
• The Bethlehem area, where we helped with the olive harvest of farmers who have been harassed by the Israeli occupation forces and setters;
• Jerusalem, where we visited:
  • Sabeel, the Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem;
  • B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories;
  • ICAHD, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions;
  • Badil, Palestinian Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refuge Rights;
  • ARIJ, The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ)/Society towards A Sustainable Palestine;
  • Hebron where we visited with HRC, the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee for a presentation about the situation in Hebron.

On a more personal level, we visited Jaffa where the home of one of our members still stands. The property was cut up to form apartments and we were able to visit with one of the tenants. The emotionally moving experience was described in the Daily Record article of Sunday, January 30, 2010 as well as an entry from Nahida Halaby Gordon’s diary of that day.