1. We believe in God as the Creator. This God created all things, visible and invisible.

2. We believe in God as Jesus. Jesus is God. God came to earth in the form of a human and lived among us for some thirty-three years. He did mighty miracles, sided with the poor, and spoke out against oppression and abuse among the clergy. He was well liked by most people of his day. A lot of his friends were people who were looked down on in society: the poor, the sick, outcasts, prostitutes, and even tax collectors. He told great stories with significant truths about people, God, power, love, justice, spirituality, forgiveness, and the like. Sometimes he got in people’s faces and challenged their authority; this would get him in a lot of trouble, and eventually executed. He proclaimed himself to be both the Messiah as well as God in the flesh. He proved all this by dying on the cross and coming back to life three days later in the flesh. He spoke to a lot of people during the next month, and many knew he had come back to life. After that month was over, he elevated into the clouds in front of a crowd of people. In these ways, he proved that he was truly the Messiah and truly God on Earth.

3. We believe in God as Spirit that dwells within us. When we pray, our prayers don’t travel through some time-space continuum; they are heard by God that is already inside of us. God’s spirit in us can be our comforter, our guide, and our supporter throughout life, if we allow God to become these things to us.

4. We believe that God is good. God is nothing but good. God is good all the time, and all the time God is good. God is just and loving, among many other words that describe good characteristics.

5. We believe that every person, throughout their lives, does good things and bad things. In doing bad things, we have turned away from God. We all choose to turn from God in one way or another, which is pretty dumb once you think of it. When we do bad things, we are in line for punishment, as life has prescribed. This punishment comes not only from those who we have harmed, but takes on a spiritual form as well. To make amends with people we have hurt, we must sacrifice ourselves to make things right with them. God, on the other hand, is the one who steps out first and makes the sacrifice so that we might be good with God again. This happened at the death of Jesus. Jesus, God on Earth, suffered and died so that he could be the sacrifice that will reunite people with God. Because of his death, our wrongs are forgiven by God if we choose to follow God.

6. We believe we should all make this choice to follow God. It is the best decision we can make in life. While we are sacrificing up by giving our lives to God, we are receiving something unexpectantly better: God in our life.

7. We believe it is good to praise God, to worship God as the one we submit to. A better life begins the day we give up our own will and begin to submit to God’s will. Praising God lifts up our spirits. It is awesome! We were made to praise God, and we feel fulfilled when we do.

8. We believe that God is still calling us to follow God. God does this primarily through the story of when God came to Earth as Jesus and died so that our wrongs would be forgiven.

9. We believe that God wants Christians to help show others the story of Jesus, so that they too can recognize their wrong doings, repent to God, and have a restored relationship with God.

10. We believe that God loves life. God created life. God created human life. God gave us a sex drive so that we might take part in the creation of life. God is always trying to help people and protect people so they don’t live under persecution, slavery, tyranny, abuse, and neglect. God is always instructing us to do good things for ourselves and for others. Yes, God wants us to grow and mature through our struggles, but God also wants us to experience joy and love and peace and good times. Jesus went to a lot of parties in his day, hung out, and had a good time with his friends. In the Bible, God commands us to have long-ass parties at different times of the year to celebrate the good things God is doing for us.

11. We believe that God hates death. This is why Jesus healed people. This is why he encourages us so much to be fair to each other. When Jesus came back to life, he had conquered death. Yes, he was the sacrifice for our wrongdoings, but the injustices that led to his execution were not strong enough to keep him dead! When he came back to life, it told us that injustice does not have the last say, that God can overcome the death that injustice brings.

12. We believe that all Christians are united as one big group of Christians. No one group of Christians has anything special about them that other Christians don’t have. We are all equally awesome to God!

13. We believe that Jesus will come back to Earth sometime in the future. When he comes again, he will make everything right. He will judge us all at that time, everyone who has ever lived. This will bring on the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine) and will create the afterlife of Heaven and Hell.

14. We believe that the Bible is the story of God and humans and salvation. It is what we base our beliefs and practices on, as we believe that the Bible is from God.

15. We believe God is all about fairness. The Bible uses words like justice and righteousness to describe the idea of fairness. In the Bible, we see God freeing us when we were slaves, then creating a peaceful and prosperous life for us, and staying with us after all that. The prophets, or “messengers” of God, then spoke to us, now a free and prosperous people, when we got cocky and began to oppress one another. God also taught us about economic redistribution, and called it “Jubilee.” Landless people got land back that had been taken from their ancestors, and all debts were cancelled. God envisions a day when “everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.”

16. We believe God is all about peace. Jesus died so that we might have peace with God. God wants us to have complete peace: free from the fear of bodily harm, a deep spiritual connection to God, good relationships with other people, and the ability to work hard and make a decent living without fear of violence or oppression. Some of us think that God prohibits all acts of violence, while others think that there may be a time and place for the appropriate use of violence; we all agree that part of our mission as Christians is to help create the conditions where violence would be less. This is where the fairness/justice thing comes in.

17. We believe that all humans are created in the image and likeness of God, a God who is loving and just. No matter our gender, race, nationality, physical ability, mental ability, or anything else, we are all equally wonderful and worthy to God. God hates the power inequalities that we have created along the lines of gender, race, nationality, physical ability, mental ability, economic well-being, etc. God is about love, fairness, peace, and equality.

18. We believe that God wants Christians to do good things for other people, especially those that really need it. This could come in the form of medical assistance, gifts of money, job creation and job training, helping people become economically fruitful, or even lending an open ear to someone with a crisis. By serving others, we serve God. God promises us a joy in serving others.

19. We believe that God wants us to get together with other Christians and try to do life together. We call this church. We are to see our church friends like family.

20. We believe that God causes miracles to happen all the time. God can do whatever God wants, so far as it is good. God gives some Christians the ability to speak in human languages they have never known before. God gives other Christians the ability to speak in languages that only angels can understand. God often chooses to heal diseases in people and help people out in other unexpected ways that temporarily change the structure of the physical world.

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I’ve just finished editing a book that will be coming out next spring, Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012). It’s a collection of many of the presentations from the Christ at the Checkpoint 2010 conference. Here’s the preface that I wrote for it.

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This book is a work of love. The Palestinian Christians who organized the conference at which these essays were presented are motivated by their love for God, their love for Israelis, and their love for their fellow Palestinians. In March 2010 the Christ at the Checkpoint conference in Bethlehem brought together evangelical theologians, biblical scholars, pastors, activists, and others in an unprecedented way to discuss the situation in Palestine and Israel. Many others from various Christian traditions have reflected on these issues, as have many from the Jewish and Muslim faiths. But Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace was organized and hosted by Palestinian evangelicals. The goals of the conference were and are stated as follows.

The aim of Christ at the Checkpoint is to provide an opportunity for evangelical Christians who take the Bible seriously to prayerfully seek a proper awareness of issues of peace, justice, and reconciliation. The conference will: 1) Empower and encourage the Palestinian church. 2) Expose the realities of the injustices in the Palestinian Territories and create awareness of the obstacles to reconciliation and peace. 3) Create a platform for serious engagement with Christian Zionism and an open forum for ongoing dialogue between all positions within the Evangelical theological spectrum. 4) Motivate participants to become advocates for the reconciliation work of the church in Palestine/Israel and its ramifications for the Middle East and the world.[1]

The love in the lives of these Palestinian Christians is manifest in their courage to address these issues in public. Their prayerful work for peace, justice, and reconciliation is loving work – love not only for the people in their Middle East context but also love for the world.

This book is a work of Godly Love. The study of Godly Love is an emerging interdisciplinary field devoted to examining benevolent action in the world. Godly Love is defined as

the dynamic interaction between divine and human love that enlivens and expands benevolence (see also Poloma and Hood 2008:4). This perceived interaction provides the framework for a scholarly investigation of the Great Commandment: love God and love neighbor as self. Godly Love is not a synonym for God’s love. It is rather an attempt to capture a process of interactions between an individual’s “vertical” relationship with God and “horizontal” relationships with other people in which benevolent service becomes an emergent property. This is not to suggest that all benevolent service necessarily requires a vertical dimension. But the Flame of Love Project is predicated on the assumption that God is a “significant other” (Pollner 1989:92) for at least some people and that perceived interactions with God play an important role in the nature and extent of their expression of compassionate love.[2]

Several of the organizers and presenters at the Christ at the Checkpoint conference are exemplars in a theological and social scientific study of Christians engaged in high-risk peacemaking, justice seeking, and social action.[3] These Christians certainly perceive God as a significant other who empowers them as they work for reconciliation, justice, peace, and transformation in Israel, Palestine, and beyond. I see their organization of the Christ at the Checkpoint conference as a work of Godly Love flowing through them into the world. They are followers of Christ passing through checkpoints in the West Bank, seeking to loving those who have created and who maintain the checkpoints.

Love is not always easy. Love is not sentimentality. As Sami Awad states so clearly in his presentation,

My favorite point: Engage in continuous acts of love to your oppressor. For it is not a choice we have as followers of Jesus to love the other and the enemy, but it is a commandment that we are to abide in. I will not accept any argument that says that engaging in actions of expressing God’s love to the other undermines or underestimates our goal and aspirations as Palestinians or that it makes us look as if we are weak or vulnerable. It is only in strength that you can express love.

Yohanna Katanacho’s academic presentation argues for a peaceful, rather than violent, eschatology in the Psalms and his commitment to loving enemies and peacemaking is inspiring.

I didn’t know how I could relate to the Jews. I read my Bible. Matthew says, “love your enemies” and when I was looking at that it wasn’t like multiple choice, who is my enemy? The answer was clear for me. And I didn’t know what to do. I would go in the streets and there would be Israeli soldiers stopping me and telling me, “Come and give us your ID card. We want to see it.” I would pull out my ID card and many times they would ask me to stand in a corner for one or two hours; it was humiliating. It was a way in which they provoked my anger, provoked my hatred and, and just, all the time nourished that hatred. And I go to the Bible and read again and the Spirit of God was whispering in my ears one time after the other, “Love your enemies. Love your enemies.” And eventually I gave up, I said, “Lord I can’t. I don’t know what to do. How can I love my enemy? I’m living in a context that is horrible. The hatred is being nourished all the time.” And the first thing, as if God was again whispering in my ears, God says, “Witness to them. This is the way you love them. Witness to them.” So I said okay, you know I will follow my spiritual pilgrimage. I don’t know where God is leading me but I’ll take a small step of obedience. I went to a restaurant and they had a flyer called Real Love and on the flyer was a quotation from Isaiah 53. And it was written in Hebrew as well as in English. So I decided to take that flyer, put it in my ID card, and when the soldiers ask me, “Give us your ID card,” I will pull it out and give it to them and in this way I will obey my Lord. In the sense that, you know, God said, “Witness to them.” I said, “Lord, this is what I’m doing.” So the soldiers would call me and say, “Come, give us your ID card.” I would pull my ID card, give it to them, and they would open it and say, “What is this?” And I would say, “This is how God wants me to relate to you.” I didn’t want to lie, I didn’t want to tell them this is how I feel about you because I really didn’t feel any love in my heart, but I also wanted to obey the Lord. So they would look at it and say, “Ah, this is from the Hebrew Bible.” And they would read it and then we’d have a discussion and they would let me go. Sometimes they would ask me more questions and I did that so many times to the extent that without observing my heart and mind and emotions started changing, but I didn’t pay attention. God was shaping my heart and I would walk in the same streets, seeing the same soldiers, and I would pray in my heart, “Lord, please let them stop me. Because when they stop me I can share your love with them.”[4]

Yohanna’s experience reveals one way that interactions between divine and human love can enliven and expand benevolence in the world. Rather than choosing violence or passivity, Yohanna’s experience of God’s love and leading in his own life led him to pass that love on to his enemies even in a context of oppression. This is Christ’s love at the checkpoint. The stories, theologies, and arguments in this book written by Palestinian Christians reflect perspectives of children of God who have passed through many checkpoints and who have brought much love into the world even when the opposite could reasonably be expected of them.

But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you…. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same…. But love your enemies…. (Luke 6:27-28, 32-33, 35a NASB)

This book is a work of Godly Love because the Palestinian Christians who organized this conference and commissioned this book do not just love those who love them, as so many tend to do. They also seek to live lives of love that include all of those around them.

This book is a work of justice and “justice is what love looks like in public.”[5] Justice is righteousness. Justice is holiness. Justice is right relationships with and right treatment towards other people. “Loving kindness and truth have met together; Righteousness/justice and peace have kissed each other” (Psalm 85:10 NASB). Love, truth, righteousness, justice, and peace go together. Hate, lies, unrighteousness, injustice, and violence tend to go together as well. The essays in this book are concerned about what followers of Jesus ought to think and do about issues of land, economics, and politics. Scripture is replete with references to land justice, economic justice, and political justice. Social righteousness – righteousness in society – is a continual call in Torah, from the Prophets, from Jesus, and beyond. Social righteousness is needed today in Israel and Palestine, and the Christians who have written this book – including the dispensationalists – agree that working for justice in society is a call from God to which we should respond.

This book is a work of Godly Justice. The Christians who have written this book believe that God is a just God. God is a God who desires that humans practice justice. “For what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Where people work for justice, God is at work. Where people are less oppressed, God is at work. Where resources are divided fairly, God is at work. Where land is not stolen, God is at work. Where water is shared evenly, God is at work. Where matrices of control are dismantled, God is at work.

If we experiment with the definition of Godly Love a bit we could have an inviting definition of Godly Justice, and I submit that the work in this book aspires to embody Godly Justice in the world. “The dynamic interaction between divine and human love justice that enlivens and expands benevolence peace.” In fact, the title of the book The Love That Does Justice captures well the theological understanding of a God who desires justice and who inspires people to work for justice in loving ways.[6] The imperative to love God and love others draws us to consider what that kind of love looks likes in public, and as many of the essays in this book argue, it looks like justice.

This book is a work of peacemaking. The authors of this book do not all agree with each other on everything that is presented in this book. We are not speaking with one theological voice or one perspective on biblical studies and the land. The fact that I have edited this collection of presentations and essays does not mean that I endorse all the arguments contained herein, and there could not be one editor who could since there are contradictory positions offered. This book is a book of arguments, even arguments on different sides of these issues. But that was part of the goal of the conference, and peacemaking does not mean that we must only work with those with whom we completely agree, peacemaking is actually quite opposite from that. Peacemaking means arguing and disagreeing and working things out. This book is a work of peacemaking because it presents evangelical voices who desire justice and peace for Israelis and Palestinians, yet who do not all offer the same perspectives. There are dispensationalists and non-dispensationalists, and both the dispensationalists and non-dispensationalists do not even agree among themselves. I am not a dispensationalist and I disagree with some of the theological and biblical arguments of other non-dispensationalists in this book. Yet it is crucial that the nuances of these evangelical arguments be shared if evangelicals are to participate in peacemaking and justice seeking in the land of the Holy One.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.” Sometimes my oldest daughter will tilt her head just so and shoot a cute look, and she looks just like her momma. I can see her momma in her when she acts that way. And that’s what Jesus said about peacemakers – people can see your ‘Father’ in you when you make peace, you’re acting like God when you’re a peacemaker. This book seeks to help make peace between not only Israelis and Palestinians, but between Christians who are at odds with each other on these most crucial issues. Peacemaking is not about avoiding conflict, it requires engaging in the most contentious of conflicts with patience, humility, and love.

This book is a work of Godly Peacemaking. According to most Christian theologies, God is a peacemaker. God loved the world by sending Jesus (John 3:16), and while we were still enemies Christ reconciled us (Romans 5:10). When people work for peace in difficult situations God is with them, for this is who God be – God works for peace in the midst of conflicts. People often ask, “Where is God?” I believe that God is in the work of the people who are working for peace in Palestine and Israel.

Continuing the experimentation with the definition of Godly Love leads me now to consider a definition of Godly Peacemaking, “The dynamic interaction between divine and human peacemaking that enlivens and expands _______.” What does Godly Peacemaking enliven and expand? When conflicted peoples who are in conflict listen to one another, hear one another, learn from one another and change their injurious behaviors in response to the needs of others, there can be greater justice in the world. Godly Peacemaking enlivens and expands justice.

The theme of the conference and this book is Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace. In conclusion, I’d like to explore some words in the title for their potential since they illumine what God is doing through this movement. For Christians, Christ is God – and God is love. It is theologically appropriate to say that Christ is love. So we could consider that Christ at the checkpoint is God at the checkpoint, Christ at the checkpoint is love at the checkpoint, Christ at the checkpoint is Godly Love at the checkpoint.

The “Checkpoint” is an intersection of Israeli fears, desires for security, and attempts to control the behavior and resources of others, with Palestinian frustrations, desires for freedom, and resistance to injustice. The checkpoint is a place of both power and disempowerment. The checkpoint is a place of competing claims and conflict. Christ at the Checkpoint is Godly Love in a place of conflict, as clearly revealed in the testimony shared by Yohanna Katanacho.

Theo-logy is God’s (theos) word (logos), the study of God, or words about God. To claim to know the way of God is audacious, yet that is what Christians claim is possible through Jesus Christ. What words we say about God and what lives we live because of God reveal our theology, and I think it is a fair claim to say that the best words about God are words that bring about justice (righteousness) and peace. And this is exactly what Godly Love looks like in a place of conflict. Godly Love – the dynamic interaction between divine and human love that enlivens and expands benevolence (justice, peace, reconciliation). Godly Justice – the dynamic interaction between divine and human justice that enlivens and expands peace. Godly Peacemaking – the dynamic interaction between divine and human peace that enlivens and expands justice. As you read Christ at the Checkpoint I invite you to attune yourself to the possibility of experiencing Godly Love in a place of conflict and hearing words about God that bring both righteousness and peace.

“Do not rejoice when your enemies fall,
and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble.”
Proverbs 24:17

We feel compelled to respond today to the killing of Osama bin Laden by the United States and to the jubilant response across the nation.

A nation has a right to defend itself. From the perspective of the fundamental national security of the United States, this action is legitimately viewed as an expression of self-defense.

But as Christians, we believe that there can no celebrating, no dancing in the streets, no joy, in relation to the death of Osama bin Laden. In obedience to scripture, there can be no rejoicing when our enemies fall.

In that sense, President Obama’s sober announcement was far preferable to the happy celebrations outside the White House, in New York, and around the country, however predictable and even cathartic they may be.

For those of us who embrace a version of the just war theory, honed carefully over the centuries of Christian tradition, our response is disciplined by belief that war itself is tragic and that all killing in war, even in self-defense, must be treated with sobriety and even mournfulness. War and all of its killing reflects the brokenness of our world. That is the proper spirit with which to greet this news.

This event does provide new opportunities for our nation.

President Obama’s respectful treatment of Islam in his remarks, and his declaration that Osama bin Laden’s body was treated with respect according to Islamic custom, offers all of us an opportunity to follow that example and turn away from the rising disrespect toward Muslims in our nation.

A second opportunity is for the United States to reconsider the questionable moves we have made in the name of the war on terror. From our perspective, this includes the indefinite detentions of scores of men at Guantanamo Bay, the failure to undertake an official investigation of detainee interrogation practices, the increase in Predator attacks in Pakistan, and the expansion rather than ending of the ten-year-old war in Afghanistan.

We also now have the opportunity for national reflection on how our broader military and foreign policies–including the placement of our troops throughout the largely Muslim Arab world, our posture on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and our regular military interventions around the world, create a steady supply of new enemies.

There can never be any moral justification for terrorist attacks on innocent people, such as the terrible deeds of 9/11. But we must recognize that to the extent that our nation’s policies routinely create enemies, we can kill a Bin Laden on May 1 and face ten more like him on May 2. Might it now be possible for us to have an honest national conversation about these issues?

May we learn the right lessons from the news of this day. For Jesus’ sake.

by John Harris, Christian Peacemaker Teams

Osama bin Laden, organizer, crusader, defender, soldier, terrorist, son, husband, and father has died last night at the young age of fifty-seven. He was assassinated by the US military at a compound in Pakistan after being on the most wanted list for some twelve years. He will be remembered primarily for his attack on the World Trade Center and US Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Born to a multi-millionaire businessman in 1957, he soon thereafter became the son of a divorced and remarried mother. She had been one of twenty-two wives of Osama’s father. Osama’s father not had only many wives, but multiple wives. He would divorce the older ones and marry younger ones. This man later died in a plane crash when Osama was ten.

Osama, having been born into the wealth of his family, found himself to also be a multi-millionaire at a young age. But he was more attracted to religion and poetry. He traveled to Afghanistan in the 1980s where he would become a leader in the struggle against the invasion of the Soviet Union. With his connections to money in Saudi Arabia, he became a leader and an organizer in the rebellion against the Soviet invasion. He would later work with the US government, receiving economic and military assistance to defend the Afghan people against the Soviets.

Osama bin Laden believed firmly that his religion, Islam, demanded not merely a personal religion, but an entire way of life. This included religious/political law, commonly known as Sharia law. He continued his efforts to extend the influence of Sharia law to Muslim people groups and nations. He believed, like so many millions around him, that the Muslim world should be able to practice self-determination and not be subjugated to either a Communist worldview or a Western capitalist worldview. The Islamic system, he believed, was a system from God that guarded against secularism, Communism, and a free-enterprise system that incorporated usury and economic exploitation of the poor. While supporting what can be called traditional family values, it did away with alcohol, drugs, pornography, abortion, and the like. Sharia law, to Osama, offered a world of hope in God, a world where God is lifted up and praised, where banks and businesses would not make money off the backs of the poor, and where families could live safely with honest work and pay, able to praise and follow God according to the Holy Scriptures.

With his emphasis, therefore, in Muslim self-determination, he would also campaign against Western influence on the Muslim world. Eventually, this would lead to his creation of Al-Qaeda, a group whose goal was to establish Islamic governments in the Muslim world and, therefore, to drive out the influence of US and other Western forces who had successfully established a presence there. In a similar fashion to the conjecture of the Western nations, Al-Qaeda believed in the use of force to conquer its objectives.

Paralleling the ambition of American heroes like Samuel Adams (The Sons of Liberty) John Brown (The Raid on Harper’s Ferry), and Robert McNamara (The Firestorms on Japan, The Vietnam War), bin Laden and Al-Qaeda propagated both the belief and practice that terrorism is justified, even when it includes women and children. This is his legacy. Amongst Al-Qaeda’s actions to bring about this self-determination were the 2001 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the US Pentagon, a day that needs no explanation to any US reader.

Over 3000 people were violently killed on that day. These numbers included women, children, janitors, mail carriers, and the like, people Jesus Christ would refer to as “the least of these.” Ten years later, he would fall to his own death, served to him by those that agreed, in practice, with his methods, but not when used against them.

I have mixed feelings regarding the death of bin Laden. He was my enemy whom I love. I cried while watching the President’s disclosure and the subsequent dancing in the streets. It was not a cry of joy, but of sorrow and complexity. Early today, I was reminded of a Bible verse: “Do not rejoice when your enemies fall, and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble” (Proverb 24:17).

I have spent major portions of my life battling against much of what bin Laden did and what he stood for.

Each summer for the last five years, I have lived in Al-Khalil (or Hebron in Hebrew), a major Arab and Muslim city in Palestine. T-shirts with bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, while not popular, were available for purchase at the clothing market around the corner from my apartment. When elections were last held in that city, the political party Hamas won the majority of the votes.

Both Hamas and Al-Qaeda share a common birth from the Islamic Revival of the 1970s, a movement promoting the idea that Islam is the answer for all of life’s issues, from dress to food to Sharia law. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian movement, provided the foundational philosophy for both Al-Qaeda and Hamas. The results of these movements include caring for the poor, providing a quality education for all, a more conservative approach to lifestyle, clothing, and marriage, a political system based on the Holy Scriptures, and militant Jihad, or Holy War, against the infidels.

Al-Khalil is a place of great despair and war. It has great poverty. I watch often as the small children go to the local Muslim charity to gather soup for their families. As a human rights worker there with Christian Peacemaker Teams, I often intervene when local Jewish settlers ransack their homes, when Israeli military detain their fathers, and when men in sheets attack them on their way to school. And I am always lovingly invited to the local mosque by my barber Jamal.

One day, a young boy, maybe six years old, followed me through the marketplace as I returned home. He said, “Do you have a father? What is your father’s name?” I responded, “My father’s name is Paul.” After a continued conversation about our families, he would say, “We both have families. We both have fathers and brothers and sisters. Are you a Muslim?” He knew I wasn’t. “I would like you to come to the mosque with me and learn about God. God is a good God that takes care of us. Don’t you want to become a Muslim?”

If this sweet boy’s family is the average local family, they would have cast their vote for Hamas in the last election. And if this child was from the section of town in which I live, there is a good chance that he and his family receive assistance from local Muslim charities. There is a good chance that his relatives have been killed as a result of the ongoing war with the Israelis.

Al-Khalil, due to the social, economic and political circumstances, is a place where suicide bombers are created. I don’t promote it; I understand it. It is a result of the cries of the poor and oppressed. The influences of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, while providing a great beginning for freedom, self-determination, and dignity, also mislead “the least of these” into bearing the sword.

I often think of this young boy. I pray for his family and his community. I pray that his people, like the Israelis on the other side of the Green Line, can have self-determination. I dream of the day when all God’s children can live in both peace and prosperity. This, I believe, is God’s plan from the dawn of creation.

I also pray that he can live in a democratic society where his civil rights and civil liberties are guaranteed. While people like Osama bin Laden have brought great courage and respect to many Muslims seeking self-determination, they have brought along with it the subjugation of women, the denial of basic rights for political and religious dissidents, and a very narrow view of what it means to have a Muslim society. And to their detriment, they bring the idea that killing women and children is justified to put God’s plan into action.

Sounds like Herod the Great who killed all the infants after the birth of Jesus. Sounds like the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On 9-1-1, the Western media showed video footage of street celebration in Palestine. We were disgusted. (It is a wonder that we repeated their actions last night.)

The day after 9-1-1, Hillary Clinton got on CNN and told America that they hate us because of our freedoms. Ask any Arab why we are hated by so many. They will tell you that we are hated for our foreign policy in the Islamic world.

I wish to this day that I could bring Hillary to Al-Khalil to meet the little boy that sought to lovingly convert me to Islam, to see what the war of Israeli imperialism has brought to his family and community, and for her to tell him that the United States, under the direction of her husband as well as her current boss, donates two billion dollars a year, mostly in weapons, to the Israeli government. Hillary forever lost my vote that day, as she became a self-appointed leader in the disinformation campaign, just like Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Why do people like Ron Paul and Ralph Nader get this while Rudolf Giuliani and the rest of us remain, along with Hillary, ignorant and in denial.

So today, we remember Osama bin Laden, born into a broken and dysfunctional home. Born into a wealth created by the bottom line of a free market economy. Born into a region crying out for self-determination and common decency. Born into a time when those in his own religion were providing simple answers to complex situations, solutions that included anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance. Born into a world that, in many ways, denies the face of God in the poor, the dispossessed, and the abused. We pray for his wives and his children.

We also remember the victims of the 9-1-1 bombings, and for their spouses and their children.

We remember all of us born into corrupted wealth and broken homes.

We pray for those of us who rejoice when our enemies fall.

And we pray for a world where there is authentic self-determination, where all live in both peace and prosperity, according to the desire of God our Creator. We pray for a miracle of God that can make all things right.

Pentecostals Criticize Airstrikes in Libya

Dallas, Texas, March 24, 2011 – Pentecostals & Charismatics for Peace & Justice (www.pcpj.org) has issued a strong statement criticizing the war in Libya and affirming nonviolent social change.

“Airstrikes authorized by resolution of the United Nations Security Council and by allied governments of European and North American countries are presently underway in Libya. We, the leadership team of Pentecostals and Charismatics for Peace and Justice (PCPJ), write this statement fully aware that by virtue of our citizenship in the United States we are complicit in the actions of the current administration.

We are also aware of the violence the Gaddafi government continues to perpetrate against the people of Libya. However, the actions taken under authority of the Security Council and by the hands of the governments of European nations and the United States re-inscribe the colonial past and neo-colonial present these governments enacted. Therefore, we stand with those who nonviolently oppose the Gaddafi government in Libya.

We simultaneously condemn the violence, injustice, and oppression manifest by the Gaddafi government, and oppose the increased violence now manifest by the United States, French, Italian, British, and allied governments. We affirm that a true, lasting, and just peace cannot be created by violence, and we question the motives of these governments who now claim to be defending civilians.

Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa, and the ninth largest oil reserves in the world. The control of this oil will most likely shift to US and European corporations when Gaddafi is removed. We name and reject this re-inscribed colonial violence in the name of freedom in nations with vast natural resources.

In the tradition of the biblical prophets, we testify, “‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6 NRSV). As the United States executes wars in three largely Muslim countries, we strengthen our commitment to justice and peace through nonviolence throughout the whole of God’s creation, and we pray and call for a cessation of all hostilities, violence, and economic exploitation in Libya.

In the name of Jesus and the in the power of the Holy Spirit, Pentecostals & Charismatics for Peace & Justice Leadership Team”

Contact:

Rev. Sam Martinez
sam@pcpj.org This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Phone: (214) 341-0700

Rev. Paul Alexander, PhD
paul@pcpj.org This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Phone: (484) 887-0082
###

“The Government Is Drowning Us All”

Uri Avnery attacked by rightist thugs

A disaster was averted yesterday (June 5) at Tel-Aviv’s Museum Square, when rightists threw a smoke grenade into the middle of the protest rally, obviously hoping for a panic to break out and cause the protesters to trample on each other. But the demonstrators remained calm, nobody started to run and just a small space in the middle of the crowd remained empty. The speaker did not stop talking even when the cloud of smoke reached the stage. The audience included many children.

Half an hour later, a dozen rightist thugs attacked Gush Shalom’s 86 year old Uri Avnery, when he was on his way from the rally in the company of his wife, Rachel, Adam Keller and his wife Beate Siversmidt. Avnery had just entered a taxi, when a dozen rightist thugs attacked him and tried to drag him out of the car. At the critical moment, the police arrived and made it possible for the car to leave. Gush spokesman Adam Keller said: “These cowards did not dare to attack us when we were many, but they were heroes when they caught Avnery alone.”

The incident took place when the more than 10 thousand demonstrators were dispersing, after marching through the streets of Tel Aviv in protest against the attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

Not only was this one of the largest peace demonstrations for a long time, but also the first time that all parts of the Israeli peace camp – from Gush Shalom and Hadash to Peace Now and Meretz – did unite for common action

The main slogan was “The Government Is Drowning All of Us” and “We must Row towards Peace!” – alluding to the attack on the flotilla. The protesters called in unison “Jews and Arabs Refuse to be Enemies!”

The demonstrators assembled at Rabin Square and marched to Museum Square, where the protest rally was held. Originally, this was planned as a demonstration against the occupation on its 43th anniversary, and for peace based on “Two States for Two Peoples” and “Jerusalem – Capital of the Two States”, but recent events turned it mainly into a protest against the attack on the flotilla.

One of the new sights was the great number of national flags, which were flown alongside the red flags of Hadash, the green flags of Meretz and the two-flag emblems of Gush Shalom. Many peace activists have decided that the national flag should no longer be left to the rightists.

“The violence of the rightists is a direct result of the brainwashing, which has been going on throughout the last week,” Avnery commented. “A huge propaganda machine has incited the public in order to cover up the terrible mistakes made by our political and military leadership, mistakes which are becoming worse from day to day.”

Lying About The Gaza Flotilla Disaster

It’s been one lie after another in the US media about the Israeli attack on the Gaza-bound relief flotilla. No matter that the Israeli media views the whole incident as a debacle for Israel, in this country the Israel-can-do-no-wrong crowd is on overdrive defending the operation. As usual, facts don’t matter to them.

Except they do.

The first thing you need to know about the Gaza flotilla disaster is that the intention of the activists on board the ships was to break the Israeli blockade. Delivering the embargoed goods was incidental.

In other words, the activists were like the civil rights demonstrators who sat down at segregated lunch counters throughout the South and refused to leave until they were served. Their goal was not really to get breakfast. It was to end segregation.

That fact is so obvious that it is hard to believe that the “pro-Israel” lobby is using it as an indictment.

Of course the goal of the flotilla was to break the blockade. Of course Martin Luther King provoked the civil authorities of the South to break segregation. Of course the Solidarity movement used workers’ rights as a pretext to break Soviet-imposed Communism.

The bottom line is that the men and women of the flotilla had every right to attempt to destroy an illegal blockade that Israel had no legal standing to impose and which was designed to inflict collective punishment on the people of Gaza. (There is no truth to the story that Israel would have delivered the goods on the ships to Gaza if asked; the Israelis never made that offer and, judging by years of precedent, would have blocked any delivery).

As for the Israeli argument that its soldiers were attacked, that is ridiculous. Israeli commandos were ordered to board a civilian ship in international waters and the government that sent them claims that the resisting passengers attacked them without provocation. This is like a carjacker complaining to the police that the driver bashed him with a crowbar that was under the seat. Neither carjackers nor hijackers should expect their victims to acquiesce peacefully.

Here are the facts about life in Gaza today — facts that only can be changed by breaking the blockade. These data come from the American Near East Relief Association (ANERA), which provides relief to Gazans to the extent permitted by the Israeli (and American) authorities. ANERA is neither “pro-Israel” nor “pro-Palestinian.” It has no political agenda at all. It merely determines what human needs are and tries to respond to them.

8 out of 10 Gazans depend on foreign aid to survive.

The World Food Program says Gaza requires a minimum of 400 trucks a day to meet basic nutritional needs – yet an average of just 171 trucks worth of supplies enters Gaza every week,

Clothes that were held in the port of Ashdod for over a year were released into Gaza but arrived covered with mold and mildew, unusable.

95% of Gaza’s water fails World Health Organization standards leaving thousands of newborns at risk of poisoning.

Anemia for children under the age of 5 is estimated at 48%.

75 million liters of untreated sewage are pumped into the Mediterranean Sea every day – because piping and spare parts are not permitted.

During the 2009 bombing:

More than 120,000 jobs were lost as Gaza’s industrial zone was destroyed… 15,000 homes and apartments were damaged or destroyed… 1/3 of all schools were destroyed.

None of these can be rebuilt, because construction supplies are kept out by the Israeli authorities.

Also, check this out from The Economist. It is a partial list of commodities allowed into Gaza and commodities banned.

So what is the blockade about?

It is not about stopping terrorism. Hamas has repeatedly offered Israel an indefinite cease-fire in exchange for lifting the blockade. And, on a half dozen occasions, Israel accepted the deal but did not live up to its side of it. In fact, the 2009 war began after Israel ignored its commitments under the Gaza cease-fire agreement, continued the blockade, and then provoked the resumption of attacks on Sderot through a series of targeted assassinations of Palestinians (Israel claims that no cease-fire agreement curtails its right to kill any Palestinian it deems to be a terrorist).

Israel asserts that it will not accept any long-term cease-fire agreement with Hamas because Hamas does not recognize its right to exist.

But Israel does not need the permission of anyone — let alone Hamas — to exist. All it needs from Hamas is an end to violence and that is precisely what Hamas is offering, in exchange for lifting the blockade.

This is not to say that Hamas need never recognize Israel. It should. But it is ridiculous to insist on recognition as a precondition for anything. Recognition would be the end result of negotiations, not a precondition for it.

But that is not what Israel wants. It wants to destroy Hamas because it is a terrorist organization. And that makes sense until one realizes that the African National Congress, Sinn Fein, the Israeli Irgun, the Algerian FLN and a host of other resistance movements were called terrorist organizations before negotiations brought them to power. Former Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir were both unabashed terrorists prior to their entrance into respectable politics. And so what? If dealing with terrorists — as Israel has repeatedly done with Hezbollah — will help achieve a worthy goal, why not do it? After all, if negotiations fail, one can always walk away.

But Israel will not change its self-defeating policies until we change ours. And there is no evidence that is happening (at least, not until after the November elections, for obvious reasons).

For now, our policies are joined at the hip with Israel’s. We support the blockade of Gaza. We oppose any efforts at reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. We even back Israel’s opposition to the Arab Peace Initiative, which offers Israel full peace and normalization of relations with every Arab country in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

Enough is enough. The Obama administration needs to join the rest of the world in demanding an end to the Gaza blockade as a first big step toward the resumption of negotiations.

The attack on the flotilla was one of the most disastrous blunders in Israel’s history. At last, the whole world sees Israel’s policy of collective punishment for what it is — a means to perpetuate the occupation forever. Only the United States government has chosed to close its eyes.

The occupation is killing Israel. And we are on the sidelines letting it happen.

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