December 23, 2011
The Kairos Palestine
Document calls on churches to pay attention to Israel’s occupation.
In his book Kairos
for Palestine, Rifat Odeh Kassis deals
with a topic that is as fresh as the destruction of a Palestinian home by
Israeli-driven, US-built bulldozers, and as ancient as the use of the term kairos,
derived from an ancient Greek word which refers to a specific moment
in time.
Why does this wanton
destruction of private Palestinian homes continue unabated?
The answer is simple:
Israel controls the narrative that justifies its conduct by reporting the
demolition of a Palestinian home as a “necessary step” for the “security” and
well-being of Israel.
The Israeli narrative
keeps the Western world locked into a permanent state of ignorance, following
the pattern of previous Western colonial invaders and occupiers.
The Israeli narrative,
carefully honed by Israel well before Israel’s 1947-48 war of conquest, has
skillfully made the case that Israel is a state whose inhabitants deserve their
own state as victims of oppression and genocide. They chose the ancient
biblical lands of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) on the grounds that the
land was “given to them” by Yahweh (the Hebrew word for God).
That narrative ~ mixing
ancient biblical beliefs with modern political strategy ~ has so totally
dominated the perspective of the Western world outside the Middle East, that it
has emerged as the only view of reality known to the West. It is in this
narrative that Israel is the “victim” and the Palestinian people are an enemy
that seeks to drive Israelis “into the sea.”
It has been Israel’s goal
since it gained UN recognition as a state in 1949 to control this narrative and
prevent any contrary narrative from obtaining a hearing. The occupation of the
Palestinian people is sold to the West as a necessity. Palestinians in this
narrative are perceived as a threat to the well being and security of
all Israelis.
The large majority of
Americans have accepted this narrative as the only available reality. They
permit their government to function as a financial backer of Israel, and to
politically support Israel in world forums. American politicians function
within a bipartisan political operation which accepts and promotes the “Israel
is a permanent victim” narrative.
This narrative obscures
the political reality that Israel serves as an important part of the American
empire, which seeks to control the people of the Middle East through military
power and political deceit.
The invasion of Iraq and
Afghanistan and the current role the US plays in Libya and in the agitation for
war against Iran, are the most recent examples of this power and deceit.
The Palestinian narrative
traces its history through Arab history, from which Palestinians emerged as an
important part of the Ottoman Empire. Following Arab support for the Western
allies in their war in 1917-18 against Germany and Turkey, Palestinians were
assured they would retain their homeland in their corner of the Ottoman Empire.
The Palestinian narrative
in the modern era emphasizes the Nakba
(catastrophe), the ethnic cleansing that led to Israel’s establishment. That
narrative has been denied a part in American discussions of the
Middle East.
ISRAELI PROPAGANDA SATURATES AMERICAN SOCIETY
It is the Israeli
narrative that enables Israel to be an important American ally in the Middle
East. That narrative saturates American society through the media, the economy,
political structures, nongovernmental institutions involved in education and
religious groups.
The Zionists were amongst
the last of the western colonial invaders to arrive in the Middle East to
conquer a land and exploit its population. This invasion was built on military
power and deceit, the twin sins that continue to shape the US/Israel alliance
in the Middle East.
Kairos for Palestine traces
the history of what led to the Palestine Kairos Document that emerged from the
situation created by that alliance. It tells the story of the Christian
churches’ effort to communicate the suffering imposed by Israel on Palestinians
and it does so from a Christian perspective.
The document originated
within the Christian churches working inside Israel, the occupied West Bank and
Gaza. It is a community-created document written out of the experience of the
Palestinians. It calls upon Christians everywhere to wake up to the conditions
under which all of the people of Palestine ~ Christian, Muslim and
non-religious ~ and respond appropriately to gross injustice created by the US/Israel
alliance of empire-building through oppression.
The political strategy of
boycott,
divestment and sanctions (BDS) is a separate
project from the Kairos Document. The two run parallel, however, as different
ways in which Palestinians address the outside world.
BDS is a strategy of
nonviolence that advocates economic pressure on Israel to halt its oppressive
military occupation. It calls attention to the manner in which outside
corporations endorse that occupation and profit from it.
BDS originated as a
political movement in July 2005 as a “call from Palestinian civil society.” It
was signed and sent out from a large number of civil society groups within the
West Bank and Gaza. It is important to note that, unlike the Kairos Document, BDS
is a strategy which the civil society of Palestinians has developed.
Kairos Palestine, which
is the primary focus of Kassis’ book, originated in Bethlehem as a statement
from Palestinian Christian leaders. The document was released in December 2009.
It is a theological document of faith, not a proposal of strategy. Circumstances
since the original document was written in 2009 have grown even worse as Kassis
explains (9):
Jerusalem is being
forcibly de-Arabized and systematically Judaized with unprecedented speed and
aggression: Life for Palestinians there becomes less and less bearable as house
demolitions, evictions, arbitrary arrests and interrogations, residency
revocations, and the imprisonment and house arrests of children all increase.
The siege on the Gaza Strip remains and intensifies unabated.
The Israeli government is
forgoing its longstanding public relations campaign ~ its ongoing propaganda as
the only ‘democracy’ in the Middle East ~ and reverting instead to openly
racist laws like the one that seeks to criminalize individuals and organizations
that call for boycott.
BDS, with its secular
origins, is not promoted by the Kairos Document, but BDS has been adopted by
some Christian groups as a practical strategy which Palestinians propose the
West adopt as a means toward putting economic pressure on Israel to give up its
oppressive control of the Palestinian people.
Resistance of Americans
to BDS illustrates how effectively the Israeli (“we are the victims under
outside threat”) narrative works to prevent Americans from hearing the call of
either the Kairos Document, or the economic strategy of BDS.
CONFRONTING APARTHEID
The modern use of a
Kairos statement by an oppressed population dates back to the first edition of
a statement from South African Christians in 1985, a document intended, Kassis reports,
“to provide an alternative discourse to the dominant theological thinking” of
the day. This South African document confronted the apartheid structures
maintained by the minority white population of that society.
Subsequent Kairos
documents have emerged in Kenya, Zimbabwe, India and Latin America, each in
ways appropriate to the historical moment addressed, all insisting that the
Christian faith calls for the oppressors to acknowledge the sinfulness of their
oppressive conduct. The various Kairos documents all pursued the same goal, a
prophetic call to those in power to acknowledge that the New Testament commands
them to halt their oppressive conduct and identify with the oppressed.
Kassis writes (83) that
these Kairos documents all emerged from similar contexts: oppression, injustice
and the denial of equality and human rights.
They are also “united by
their timing, by the kind of moment at which they came into being. They aren’t
written at any time; rather they are created when there are no options than
true participation in a process of collective change.” To use a theological
term, kairos “speaks to the qualitative, not sequential, form of time;
for example, the New Testament defines it as “the appointed time in the purpose
of God.”
Kassis adds that this
moment is one in which God acts. It is a moment, as well, in political terms,
that implies “a crucial time, an appointed time, in which the message of the
text is delivered” (83).
Adopting a more modern
form of expression, Kassis concludes that “the message of the Kairos is both
the SOS signal of a sinking ship and a call for hope in the face
of despair.”
The Palestine Kairos
Document, Kassis explains, arose from a dialogue within Palestinian Christian
communities, in short, not from outsiders, but from those who suffer under
occupation, which is to say, oppression and captivity.
The Kairos Document
emerged from a Palestinian dialogue among a group of 15 interdenominational
Palestinian Christian leaders.
After two years of work,
prayer, many meetings and discussions, along with debates and draft, the
leaders produced a final draft of the document, which they called “A Moment of
Truth: A Word of Faith, Hope and Love from the Heart of
Palestinian Suffering.”
The final document was
released to the public at an event in Bethlehem on 11 December 2009. Kassis was
deeply involved in preparing the final document. With its release, Kassis was
selected to serve as the General Coordinator of the Kairos
Palestine Group.
He began his career as an
activist and religious leader in 1988 when he served as director of the YMCA
rehabilitation programs in the West Bank, the first of many assignments he has
handled since.
In 2005 he became the
international manager of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Ecumenical
Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel.
From September 2007 until
March 2009, Kassis was the WCC’s general secretary’s special advisor on the
Middle East. His current task is to write about and explain the significance of
the Palestine Kairos Document.
DEMAND TO PAY ATTENTION
The kairos moment
places a demand not only on Christians, but on people of other religions or no
religions, to pay attention to the message that Israeli occupation is
“oppression” in the same way South African apartheid and Latin American
economic oppression of the poor were oppressive.
The challenge to readers
of this book is for its readers to bridge the gap between the Christian
theological language of a “right and opportune moment” and the universal cry
for justice for those who suffer and are oppressed.
However the reader
understands the term kairos, the impossible-to-refute “facts on the
ground” in Israel and Palestine, are clear; this is the “right moment” for the
world to recognize and acknowledge that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is
unjust, immoral, illegal and destructive.
Read this book, learn from it, and
use it for small group discussions, and as an instrument with which to fight
the wall of ignorance that endorses Palestinian suffering.
It is a book that
demands that attention must be paid to the conduct of the governments in Israel
and in the United States, the two military powers who have the power to
maintain or end this suffering.
James
M. Wall is a contributing editor of The Christian Century magazine, based in Chicago, Illinois. From
1972 through 1999, he was editor and publisher. He writes a personal blog, wallwritings.wordpress.com, which he began in April 2008.
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