In a letter to Rev. John C. Dorhauer, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ in the United States, Kairos Palestine chair, Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah, and Rifat Kassis, Kairos Palestine General Coordinator, thanked the United Church of Christ for its resolution on peace in the Middle East.
“The board and staff of Kairos Palestine are delighted and encouraged to learn of the United Church of Christ’s overwhelming passage of the resolution, ‘Declaration for a Just Peace Between Palestine and Israel,’ at its Thirty-third General Synod,” they wrote.
“It’s more than a sign of solidarity. We receive the Synod’s vote as a bold act of faith and conscience, precedent-setting among denominations in North America.” Kairos Palestine chair and coordinator said, “Over many years and through many resolutions and actions, the United Church of Christ has stood with Palestinians in our struggle for a just and lasting peace.
We’re grateful for the resolution’s reference to Kairos Palestine’s A Moment of Truth: A Word of Faith, Hope and Love from the Heart of Palestinian Suffering and Kairos Palestine and Global Kairos for Justice’s Cry for Hope: A Call for Decisive Action. Perhaps others will be encouraged to read our plea – grounded in faith, hope and love – and be moved to join us in our nonviolent resistance to the sins of Israel’s brutal occupation and its apartheid policies and practices.”
They added, “As we have said to our Jewish neighbors in A Moment of Truth, ‘Even though we have fought one another in the recent past and still struggle today, we are able to love and live together. We can organize our political life, with all its complexity according to the logic of love and its power, after ending the occupation and establishing justice’.”
Sabbah and Kassis ended their letter saying, “We know that many people worked long and hard to create the resolution, to distribute it for endorsement by others, to inform and educate others, and to see it through to its passage at the Synod. Please convey our gratitude to them and your many congregations.”
Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency