This morning I came across a quote from public theologian Jim Wallis who said, “the United States of America was established as a white society, founded upon the near genocide of another race, and then the enslavement of another.” Not to mention, even after slavery was abolished, the United States was an apartheid state, with Jim Crow laws being established in the south.

I would argue that there was never any right for the United States to continue to exist as it had began. It had no right to continue to kill, enslave, or oppress large numbers of it’s population. It had to change. Indeed, it was forced to change. Similarly, Germany had no right to exist as a genocidal state. South Africa had no right to exist as an apartheid state. They too, were forced to change.

When we talk about Israel’s right to exist, we must be clear that even if we believe in a state’s right to exist, we can still argue that the current policies of any given state do not themselves have rights. Again, PEOPLE have rights. Policies do not. Even if we concede that Israel has a right to exist, we can and should still demand that their policies towards Palestinians (not to mention their policies towards the states surrounding them) must change. Israel does not have the right to kill, bomb, maim, starve, oppress, imprison, and terrorize with impunity.

All of this speaks to why the question, “do you believe Israel has a right to exist” is a bad faith question. The person asking it is trying to obfuscate the real issue, to distract from the actual atrocities being committed. We can’t let ourselves be distracted. We must stay on point. One response to the question could be, “I believe Israelis have a right to exist, but that the current policies of the state of Israel do not.” Or, “I believe the people who live there have a right to exist, but the state of Israel does not have the right to behave in the way that it has been.” One could even say, “I believe Israel has a right to exist, but I also believe that right is contingent upon justice and freedom for the Palestinians.” There are any number of ways to answer the question. Personally, I wouldn’t respond to such a question. I would call it out as a bad faith question and do my best to move on to talk about the actual policies that need to change.

I know that many Christian leaders are still afraid to speak out for fear of being labeled antisemitic. Maybe you’re afraid of being confronted with questions just like this one. I won’t say those fears are unfounded. I have been labeled as such many times now, and honestly, though it hurts at first, after a while, it feels almost comical. Being called antisemitic because I believe in human rights?? Give me a break. In any case, I can tell you with all confidence that it’s better over here on this side. It’s better knowing that you are on the right side of history and justice. And the solidarity over here is amazing. It’s time to stop being afraid. We’ve got your back. Join us.

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Before I go on, if you’re not familiar with the concept of moral injury, it refers to the psychological and emotional distress that can happen when a person commits, witnesses, or fails to prevent actions that violate their deeply held moral beliefs or values. For example, a soldier in war follows orders that leads to the death of civilians. A doctor in a hospital with limited resources is forced to ration care. Or, in the case of the genocide in Gaza, the knowledge that our tax dollars have contributed to absolutely horrendous human suffering.

When it comes to that last one, there are days when I feel an almost suffocating sense of grief knowing that I have enabled the incineration of babies, the mutilation of children, the destruction of entire communities. There are times when I’m not sure I can stand it. And I almost always feel alone when I’m in that mental space.

And yet, experience tells me I’m not alone. I know there are people out there who feel the same way. I’ve spoken with them. I’ve looked them in the eye and known that none of us are alone. But I suspect this is part of what moral injury does. The weight of it alienates us and forces us into isolation. All we can feel is the heaviness of our failure to stop the horror. It presses in against us from all sides and makes us feel alien to the world itself.

This is why we need to take time for communal lament. Not to wallow in our misery, but to remind ourselves that we need not bear the weight of this injury alone. By engaging in lament as a community, the moral injury doesn’t disappear, but the burden doesn’t feel as heavy. Furthermore, when we come together in the brutal honesty of lament, we chip away at our perceived powerlessness, and are reminded of the power we hold together as a community.

To be sure, there is still so much work to be done. But every now and then, it’s worth taking a moment to recognize that we’ve all been deeply, deeply wounded by the events of the last few years. It’s worth taking the necessary time to tend to those wounds if we want to have any hope of bringing healing to our world.

If you feel the weight of this moral injury, I encourage you to try and find a space where this kind of communal lament is practiced. The UCC Movement for Palestine Solidarity has been that for me. Christians for a Free Palestine has been that for others. If you live in a large metropolitan area, you may be able to find a group that meets in person. Otherwise, online groups are plentiful.

We need each other in this struggle. The weight is too heavy to bear alone. If you are feeling alone, please reach out. Even if it’s just in the comments here.

There will be days when we feel like we can’t breathe. How could it be otherwise? If it were not the case, we wouldn’t be human. If it were not the case, we would not be made in the image of a God who weeps. Indeed, I am convinced that the more deeply we feel the weight of this injury, the more deeply we are connected with with the heart of God, whose own heart breaks with ten thousand times the intensity as ours.

In that sense, maybe it’s actually a good and powerful thing, every now and then, to let ourselves really feel the grief that we so often tamp down within us. It won’t feel good, exactly, but maybe it can remind us of a truth that the powers and principalities would rather we forget— that God’s love, which lives in us, is the ultimate power. At times it will break our hearts. But it also has the capacity to empower and embolden us beyond what we think we are capable of. Especially when we work together. May it be so.

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The answers will vary. A particular candidate wins an election. A piece of legislation passes—or fails. Something encouraging happens at work or in someone’s personal life. Earlier this year, many of us might have answered, “The people of Minneapolis.” Many of us found hope in the way everyday Minnesotans rose up to care for and protect their neighbors during Operation Metro Surge.

There is nothing wrong with any of these answers, but I do wonder if perhaps they are answering a question that is itself somewhat flawed. Because when we ask, “where do you find hope,” we turn hope into an object—something outside ourselves that we can identify, observe, quantify, and measure. And that, my friends, gets precarious, because if hope depends on the circumstances we can observe around us, what happens when those circumstances deteriorate? What happens when the election goes the other way, the diagnosis comes, or the movement loses ground? If hope is only about what we can see, then when we cannot see it, that’s when despair begins to look like the only honest and reasonable response.

The apostle Paul knew a little something about this. In today’s reading from his letter to the early Christian church in Rome, he writes, “Hope that is seen is not hope.” True hope, he suggests, is deeper than what our senses can confirm.

The early Christian community in Rome would have understood exactly why this mattered. They had been pushed out of synagogues and estranged from the Jewish communities from which the Jesus movement had first emerged. They lived under brutal Roman occupation and faced hostility that could quickly and easily turn deadly. They expected Jesus to return imminently, and yet there was no sign of his coming. Nor was there any indication that their fledgling little movement would one day become one of the world’s largest and most powerful religions. If those early Christians had relied only on what they could observe, hope would indeed have been difficult to find. But Paul insists that even in the midst of a groaning creation—something I think we here in the twenty-first century know a little something about as well—hope remains. The question, then, is not simply, “Where do we find hope?” The deeper question becomes: How do we live in hope even when we cannot see it?

Contemplative theologian Cynthia Bourgeault offers one answer to this question in her book Mystical Hope. She writes that “mystical hope is not tied to a good outcome.” Rather, she says, it has to do with presence: “that immediate experience of being met, and held in communion, by something intimately at hand.” For Bourgeault, hope is not an object that we can see, quantify, and measure. Rather, it is a reality already present in the kin-dom of God around us. Hope is an abiding way of being, rooted in the presence of God here and now. To live from this hope, and to live in this hope, is to trust that even when everything around us is seemingly falling apart, we remain held in the eternal love of God.

This, I would argue, is an essential beginning. Because if we can nurture a hope that does not rise and fall with every headline, court ruling, or personal crisis, then we will be much better equipped to move faithfully and compassionately through this wounded world. But this is only a beginning. Mystical hope can sustain us inwardly. The question is whether it can also move us outwardly. What does hope look like when it leaves the sanctuary of the heart and enters the struggle for justice?

For that question, I want to turn to a very different kind of figure: the playwright, political prisoner, and eventual president, Václav Havel. As some of you may know, Havel was the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic. Before that, though, he spent years resisting an oppressive regime, including serving multiple stints in prison. In his political memoir Disturbing the Peace, he offers one of the most powerful descriptions of hope that I know. He says, “The kind of hope I often think about, I understand, above all to be a state of mind, not a state of the world... It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.”

So far, Havel actually sounds remarkably like Paul—or like Bourgeault. But then he goes on to say this: “Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

To put it another way, hope is about taking action—not because we know we will succeed, but because it is the right thing to do and because it is what love demands. In this sense, hope is not an object. Hope is, in fact, a verb. Hope is not merely something we possess. It is something we practice. It’s like a spiritual muscle strengthened through continued use. It is one foot being placed in front of the other and, as the song says, leading with love.

This distinction matters. Because if we acted only when success was assured, some of history’s most transformative movements would never have begun. The suffragettes, for example, were told that votes for women were impossible. Those resisting South African apartheid were told that the regime was too entrenched to be overcome. Every fortress of empire presents itself as permanent. Every wall insists that it cannot fall. Until it does. It is hopeless until the first crack appears. Hopeless until pressure, applied over months or years or even generations, becomes more than the structure can bear. Hopeless until the wall comes tumbling down.

Yet it is during this time of building pressure that so many of us become discouraged. We look at the scale of injustice, we search for a clear path to victory, and we see none. So we withdraw. We tell ourselves that investing time and energy in a seemingly impossible cause is impractical. We call our retreat realism. Sometimes, however, I suspect that what we call realism is really just despair wearing more respectable clothes.

This is where Bourgeault’s concept of mystical hope once again becomes indispensable. Because if we are going to commit ourselves to struggles we may not live to see resolved, we need an inner life that is deeper than the latest news cycle. We need roots that reach beyond and beneath our immediate circumstances. We need access to what the fourteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhart called the “great underground river that is God”—the divine life flowing beneath the surface of everything that holds us in eternal and abiding love, no matter what.

There is one final lesson about hope that I want to share today, and it may just be the most important lesson there is for us. It is a lesson that I have learned from our Palestinian siblings, who often will say, whether they be Christian, Muslim, or secular: we hope because we do not have the luxury of despair.

So, for those of us with relative privilege, despair may simply amount to an acceptance of the status quo. Resignation that there is nothing we can do; we might as well not beat our heads against a brick wall. And the status quo may indeed trouble us, and even grieve us deeply, but it also may not immediately threaten the basic conditions of our lives. Six months from now, if nothing changes—or even if the circumstances of the world around us get noticeably worse for others—we will likely remain in our homes. We will continue to put food on the table. We will likely still have access to water and electricity. We will probably not be forcibly separated from our families or our country. We can turn away from the struggle for justice any time we want, and our lives would likely continue much the same as before.

But for Palestinians—and for many other oppressed communities around the world, including immigrants in our own country—despair carries a far different cost. To despair is to stop resisting. And to stop resisting could very well mean displacement, separation from loved ones, or, in some extreme cases, even death. As Palestinians often say, “to resist is to exist.” For the oppressed, hope is bound to the very work of survival. Hope is about getting up, caring for children, finding water, preserving memory, telling the truth, refusing erasure. They choose hope because they cannot afford the luxury of despair.

This is why I continue to fight for Palestine, even when the struggle feels unwinnable. Indeed, especially when it comes to Gaza, the temptation toward despair is strong. Recently, for example, Google Maps updated their satellite imagery of Gaza. The images are stunning—and not in a good way. Ninety percent of the Strip has been completely and utterly destroyed. It’s rubble as far as the eye can see. And now the president’s so-called Board of Peace is once again talking about moving millions of Palestinians into smaller and smaller tracts of land that would basically amount to concentration camps. And all of this is to say nothing of rising tensions in the West Bank after numerous lethal settler attacks that some human rights experts are calling pogroms.

Some people might say, quite reasonably, that Gaza is gone. It’s a lost cause, they say, and we need to pull our attention to the West Bank because trying to save Gaza is not realistic. And while I agree that we need to keep our attention on the West Bank, and while it’s true that most of the buildings of Gaza are gone, it’s also true that there are still millions of precious human souls remaining in Gaza. They are not abstractions, statistics, or symbols. They are people waking up each morning to search for water and food, care for their families, bury their dead, and somehow endure another day. They may not feel very optimistic, but their fight for survival is itself a form of hope. And if they can continue to cling to hope, what right do we have to surrender to despair? Who are we to declare that there is no hope when others have no choice but to practice it with every fiber of their being?

Now, I realize that Palestine may not be the issue that weighs most heavily on every heart in this room. But I do suspect that each one of us can name some vulnerable community whose liberation and well-being compels us: immigrants, transgender people, victims of racial violence, vulnerable children, those experiencing poverty or homelessness, people whose lives are threatened by war, authoritarianism, or a changing climate. And so perhaps you too know what it feels like to be trapped in what seems like a perpetually losing battle. Perhaps you too look at a world increasingly shaped by cruelty, greed, and authoritarian power and wonder whether your actions even matter.

When that happens, remember those whose very existence depends on keeping faith against all odds. Remember that the value of an action is not measured only by whether it succeeds. Remember that we are called not to control the outcome, but only to be faithful to the work. Remember the words of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish:

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others.
As you pay your water bill, think of others.
As you return to your home, think of others.
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others.
And as you think of others far away, think of yourself and say:
If only I were a candle in the dark.

Friends, each one of us can be that candle in the dark for someone else. We can embody hope—not because we are necessarily optimistic that everything will turn out okay in the end, but because we believe there are people in this world still worth fighting for, that creation itself is still worth fighting for. We can practice hope not because we know we will win, but because we know that God is present with us in the struggle. Paul tells us that hope cannot be limited to what we see. Bourgeault tells us that hope is rooted in the presence of God. Havel tells us that hope acts because something is right, not because success is assured. And our oppressed siblings teach us that hope is sometimes the very work of staying alive.

So at the end of the day, perhaps the question is not, “Where are you finding hope?” Perhaps the better question is: Where are you practicing hope? Where are you refusing to let despair make your choices for you? Where are you becoming a candle in the dark for someone else?

May we all practice hope when everything feels hopeless. May we refuse the luxury of despair. May we devote ourselves fully to collective liberation without demanding full assurance that events will unfold as we desire. May we keep putting one foot in front of the other and leading with love. May we be a people of action and, therefore, a people of hope. May it ever be so. Amen.

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It all started in the village of Tell in the northern West Bank, after an altercation between a settler and a Palestinian ended with the death of the settler. Video evidence shows that the Palestinian killed the settler in an act of self-defense, but that didn’t stop more settlers from subsequently executing four more Palestinian villagers in retaliation. Those killed were Farouq Adnan Ali Ramadan, Ibrahim Hussein Ali Ramadan, Jawad Hussein Ali Ramadan, and Imran Ahmad Ali Ramadan.

The incident has sparked widespread settler violence, as well as a wave of incitement by Israeli leaders, who are calling for military action across the West Bank. Israeli forces have shut down the nearby city of Nablus, while settler groups terrorize surrounding towns by setting fire to property and firing at Palestinians who dare try to defend themselves or their property.

When our media has mentioned any of this, it has been to characterize the incident as a Palestinian attack on settlers who were out hiking. Again, there is video evidence and eye-witness testimony that proves otherwise, and even the most basic journalistic investigation would uncover this, but when it comes to Israel, our media seems to lose all journalistic integrity and critical thinking skills.

If this were happening to white Jews of European decent, would we allow it?

Would we remain silent if the people being victimized were not Arab?

I have become firmly convinced that the largescale apathy towards the suffering of Palestinians is absolutely rooted in racism and Islamophobia. We simply don’t care as much because these people are brown.

On that note, I can’t help thinking of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. Zimmerman shot Trayvon in what he claimed was self-defense. And because of the Florida stand-your-ground law, he got away with murder. In this case, the opposite situation occurred, as the people under attack tried to stand their ground and were killed for it. Then their families and villages were punished as well.

During the course of the current genocide in Gaza, it’s almost nauseating how many times we’ve heard people say that Israel has the right to defend itself. But why is that right exclusive to Israelis? Why do soldiers and settlers get to act with impunity? Why are Palestinians punished for trying to defend themselves and their property? Why does the far more powerful nation have the right to defense when vulnerable villagers are expected to suffer in silence?

Palestinians have a right to self-defense. Palestinians are currently living under what the UN has called an illegal occupation. This means that they have the right to defend themselves from those occupying their land— whether they be soldier or violent settler. The double standard for Israelis and Palestinians when it comes to defense needs to end, and we need to bring it to an end by saying all of these things out loud, as often as we can:

Palestine has a right to exist.

Palestinians have a right to defend themselves.

Palestinians lives matter.

If we don’t say it, no one will. That means you. If YOU don’t say it, no one will. But if enough of us say it, and say it often enough, people will begin to question the unquestionable. Standard lines like “but Israel has the right to defend itself” will begin to lose their hypnotic power. The narrative can shift, but we have to be the ones to shift it. Talk about Palestine. Loudly, and often. It’s what justice and love demands.

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Less than one year earlier, in December 2024, Dr Hassan had been kidnapped from Kamal Adwan hospital as it was raided by Israeli military forces. Dr. Hassan was one of the the last persons to leave the hospital, and would only leave after ensuring that all of his patients had made it out. There is an iconic photograph of him walking out of the hospital towards an Israeli tank. Did he know that this might be his last moment of freedom?

Dr. Hassan Abu Safiya is a pediatrician. He was the head pediatrician of Kamal Adwan hospital before his arrest and detention. He has been held in detention without charge since December 2024. No evidence has been produced as to why he continues to be held in detention. During his last appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court, the Israeli military declined to produce any evidence against him, saying that the evidence was “secret.“ This is in fact a common tactic. The last time we visited Addameer in June 2023, we learned that they had been designated a terrorist organization by the state of Israel, but no evidence was shown to them or to their lawyers as to why they were charged with this designation. They too were told the evidence was “secret.”

Israel claiming secret evidence is about as credible as ICE claiming that someone they killed was a threat to their lives.

Recently new information has surfaced from Dr. Hassan‘s lawyer, Nasser Odeh, who was finally allowed to visit him in prison for the first time in months. Odeh was so disturbed by what he saw during his visit that he immediately started telling whoever would listen that Dr Hassan Abu Safiya was at imminent risk of death. A screenshot was shared from his video conference visit in which Dr. Hassan is visibly much thinner, clearly having lost much of his body weight. His body was covered in bruises and sores, indicating both torture and medical neglect. According to Odeh, Dr. Hassan was struggling to talk, struggling to breathe, and struggling to sit up. The one thing Dr. Hassan was able to say was, "this is the last time you will see me. They brought me here to kill me. I do not see myself leaving here alive. This is the end."

Why would Israel do this, you ask? Why would they hold Dr. Hassan, not to mention 14 other doctors from Gaza and countless other healthcare workers, for so long without charge? Is it because they are somehow affiliated with Hamas? (It’s worth pointing out here that Hamas was the governing authority in Gaza for over a decade, so the fact that someone might have had some contact with Hamas officials is basically meaningless. Every hospital, clinic, school, and civil organization would have had ongoing contact with Hamas, in the same way that every hospital, clinic, school, and civil organization in the U.S. has ongoing contact with governmental agencies). No, actually, there is a very clear reason why Israel is doing this. And it’s not just because they are cruel (though they are).

Naji Abbas, director of the Prisoners and Detainees Department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel, has recently been speaking out about why he thinks Israel is choosing to keep these prisoners in detention, and the reason is chilling. If Israel were to release Dr. Hassan and other health care workers, they would then be free to speak to the media and to the world about what they saw while working in the hospitals of Gaza during the height of the genocide. They know things that Israel would rather keep hidden. Israel is therefore making a calculated choice. They know that letting Dr. Hassan die in prison would be bad press. But the evidence that Dr. Hassan has to share with the world would be even more damning. So they are choosing to let him, and others, die or rot in prison for the rest of their days.

This, of course, has the added advantage for Israel of putting a chilling effect on the speech of the few healthcare workers left in Gaza. Dr. Hassan was known, before his arrest, for being very outspoken about the horrors he witnessed every day. Now, doctors and other healthcare workers know that if they speak out, they could meet the same fate as Dr. Hassan Abu Safiya. They too could die by torture in an underground Israeli prison.

There is currently a worldwide campaign pressing for Dr. Abu Safiya’s release. Dozens of organizations are pushing email and phone call campaigns, asking people to contact their Members of Congress immediately to demand that our government put pressure on Israel to release Dr. Abu Safiya and the other healthcare workers in detention. The campaign linked to below is one such effort. I ask you, if you are a regular reader of this blog, to please take action. Please email or call today. The button below will take you directly to a digital action site from the Institute for Middle East Understanding.

Dr. Hassan Abu Safiya is not only a good man, he acted heroically on a daily basis, saving lives and caring for children in one of the most dangerous places for children on earth. He deserves to be free. He deserves to live. He deserves our support. Please do what you can.

Take Action Here

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Wiener claims that he was harassed and made the target of antisemitic slurs, forcing him to leave the Pride event. The truth is that he was being called out for his support for Israel and his hesitancy to name the war in Gaza as a genocide. To be absolutely fair to Wiener, he has since used the language of genocide, but much of the critique aimed at Wiener stems from previous comments he has made in support of Israel. He wasn’t being attacked because he was Jewish. He was being confronted about things he has actually said and stances he has publicly taken (or not taken).

There are several things to note about this confrontation. The first thing to say is that Wiener is a public official, which means that he should be willing to engage with people who oppose the stances he has taken. He was targeted because he is a state senator running to U.S. Congress, not because he is a Jew. To claim that this confrontation was antisemitic is to ignore that reality.

Not only that, but Wiener is assuming that the people confronting him are not Jewish themselves. This is a dangerous assumption, since Jewish people are often at the forefront of the fight for a free Palestine. Indeed, one of the most prominent activists who employs this kind of confrontational politics is Medea Benjamin in Washington D.C., who also happens to be Jewish and takes it upon herself to confront Jewish members of congress when they fail to recognize the crimes Israel is committing in Gaza and elsewhere.

With all that being said, I think it’s important to note that one can be critical of the protesters in this instance without accusing them of antisemitism. I, for one, look at someone like Wiener, who has clearly evolved on this issue, and see him as a potential ally in the fight to end military aid to Israel, a stand he appears to be open to supporting. From where I stand, he is not someone I would have chosen to confront in such an antagonistic way. I would have chosen a different path of confrontation— perhaps setting up a meeting with him in his office to challenge him to take a bolder stance. There is a time and place to be antagonistic towards our adversaries, but personally, I don’t think this particular confrontation and the way it was handled was a very good or strategic move.

Still, this is just one in a series of confrontations that are being held up as examples of the antisemitism that Jews in general are facing, and I believe that is misrepresenting what is happening in these interactions. It is antisemitic to confront a random Jewish person on the street and assume they support Israel’s actions just because they are Jewish. That’s akin to assuming every Muslim supports Hamas’ actions just because they are Muslim. That’s just racism.

But that’s not what’s been happening. The people who have been confronted in this way (others who have spoken out recently are congressman Dan Goldman and actress Mayim Bialik) are public figures who have been very open about their views on Israel and Palestine. They are not random Jews on the street. They are people of influence, some of whom are not nearly as progressive as Wiener when it comes to naming genocide or calling for a ceasefire in Gaza (Bialik, in particular, has made some pretty horrendous comments about Palestine since October 7 and has actively opposed a ceasefire).

The bottom line is that holding public figures accountable for their stances on Israel’s actions is not hateful, antisemitic, or racist. It is actually the very essential work of speaking truth to power. For the powerful to claim that they are victims just because they are being challenged about their positions is ridiculous and should be rejected by everyone. Especially when it comes to elected officials, if they are not being responsive to the usual methods of communication, then confrontation and public shaming should absolutely be in the activist’s playbook.

Is it true that activists could be more discerning in who they target in this way? Sure. I will also concede that it is possible that some of the individuals involved in these kinds of confrontations may hold antisemitic attitudes. However, these confrontations in and of themselves are not evidence of such attitudes. They are merely evidence of the deep frustration that activists are feeling because elected officials don’t seem to be listening to their constituents who have been demanding an end to genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine in massive numbers for nearly three years.

This kind of activism is not for everyone, and we don’t all have to like it or even approve of it. But let’s be clear about what it is and what it isn’t. It’s not antisemitism. It’s not violence. It’s confrontation, and it is deeply uncomfortable, but as I’ve said before, feeling uncomfortable is not the same as being unsafe. More of our public officials should be able to tell the difference.

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I don’t want to ruin that for anyone. Most people that I know work really hard and deserve a holiday. We all deserve a rest from our labors every now and then. And we should enjoy it. But the truth is, it’s hard for me to really celebrate today. Today, when all over the world, so many people are not free. On this blog, I write primarily about Palestine, but there are many other struggles for freedom around the world. There’s Ukraine, the Congo, Sudan, Cuba, and many other places. And of course, there’s large numbers of people in the United States who are not free. Young black men locked up in prison. Immigrants in concentration camps. Trans people who are not free to be who they are. The struggle for freedom is, to say the least, incomplete.

But there is hope. All over the country in recent weeks, we’ve seen insurgent candidates winning primaries and ousting establishment candidates. And these candidates are not to be feared. They are to be embraced. Because they understand that you and I are not free until all are free. They will fight for the freedom of the family living in poverty to be able to afford to live. They will fight for the freedom of immigrants in detention. They will fight for a free Palestine, and a free Cuba, and a free Ukraine. They will fight for these things because they understand that our ultimate battle is the battle for collective liberation.

I know that a lot of people may feel disheartened this fourth of July. Maybe some of us don’t feel much like celebrating. I certainly don’t. But maybe that’s because we’re thinking about it in the wrong way.

So often, Independence Day celebrations are focused on how great America is, how strong, how rich, how exceptional— how much better we are than other countries. It’s really been about celebrating the richest, most powerful Americans, leaving the rest of us to beg for crumbs from their tables. What if, this fourth of July, we left that America behind, and celebrated US. The resistance. The dissenters who want America to be something better and more beautiful. What if we celebrated each other, including our indigenous neighbors, our immigrant neighbors, our trans neighbors. What if we celebrated the fact that despite efforts to erase us, we are STILL HERE and we are not going anywhere. What if we celebrated our courage, our resolve, our love for each other?

The truth is, there is always something to celebrate. Joy is an integral part of maintaining resistance. So I encourage you to find something to celebrate today. Find a way to practice joy. Take some time to rest, if that’s what’s needed. Breathe deeply. And then tomorrow, it’s back to the resistance, back to the ongoing fight for collective liberation for us all.

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I headed to the grocery store to pick up some chicken thighs, which have become my go-to selection for Palestinian chicken dishes. The juicy dark meat can stand up to roasting and it doesn’t dry out as easily as some cuts of white meat.

Unfortunately, when I got to the store, there were no regular chicken thighs to be found. Everything looked very picked over, and all I could find were boneless, skinless chicken thighs. I thought briefly about going to another store, but I’m the laziest grocery shopper in the world, and so I eventually shrugged my shoulders and figured the boneless, skinless version would be fine. I grabbed a package of chicken and was on my way.

Once home, I gathered the rest of the ingredients and started prepping the marinade, which included sumac (I used some Lebanese sumac that my husband had recently picked up in Finland, of all places), olive oil, lemons, and lots and lots of za’atar. I grabbed the chicken out of the refrigerator and went to open the package. That’s when I realized my mistake.

I had grabbed a package of chicken from the shelf labeled as chicken thighs, but I had not looked closely at the label before putting the chicken in my cart. As it turns out, I had bought boneless, skinless chicken tenders. Again, I contemplated going back to the store to get what I needed, but at that point it was nearing 6pm and the chicken needed to marinate for at least an hour before I could even start cooking. Again, I shrugged my shoulders and decided to pivot.

I knew that with chicken tenders, they would cook very quickly and would not soak in all the flavor like thighs would. So, to amp up the flavor profile, I turned to a previously made recipe for a tahini dipping sauce. Because don’t chicken tenders demand a dipping sauce?

I whipped up the sauce with tahini paste, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and finely chopped parsley, then added enough water to make it more of a sauce than a paste. Friends, let me just say, this sauce is fire. Drizzle it over rice dishes, fish dishes, roasted vegetables, or whatever. It has lots of umami goodness and brings a unique, nutty flavor to any dish.

After the meat had marinated for an hour, I got started cooking, and as expected, the chicken took only ten minutes to bake. I knew that the flavors would not be what I wanted at that point, but I knew cooking much longer would dry out the meat, so I took it out of the oven to plate. I served it alongside a side of some orzo with roasted broccoli, and topped the whole thing off with toasted, sliced almonds. Here is the finished product:

Truthfully, it wasn’t amazing. It wasn’t bad, exactly, but the chicken was indeed missing the depth of flavor I have come to appreciate in Palestinian food (though the dipping sauce helped a bit). I had to accept that this meal didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, but I also realized that for every mistake, for every time I missed the mark, I was training myself for future efforts. Every failed recipe, or nearly failed recipe, would prepare me to do better next time.

Isn’t that also what we learn in activism and resistance work? I don’t know if this holds true for others, but for myself, I’ve had to teach myself to be an activist. It doesn’t really come naturally to me, because I don’t love to be the center of attention and I don’t particular enjoy confrontation. Also, it’s not like there are lots of places where one can take a class on how to be an activist. Sure, one can get trained in non-violence, de-escalation, and non-cooperation, but for the most part, becoming an activist leader is the kind of thing you learn by doing, and therefore, requires a lot of trial and error before one feels confident. At least, that’s been true for me.

I wonder if more people don’t venture into activism because they simply don’t know what to do. It’s one thing to show up to a No Kings rally, but it’s an entirely different animal to plan and execute a direct action or demonstration. Most of us wait for someone else to invite us to something that has already been planned because we feel inadequate for the task. We fear that we don’t know what to do, and so we do nothing at all. But here’s the thing, when we don’t push ourselves out of our comfort zone every now and then, we can’t really expect anything to change. We have to try new things and risk imperfection— in cooking, in life, and in resistance.

In learning to cook Palestinian food, I’ve had to embrace the art of imperfection in order to learn and grow. The spices and many of the ingredients are unfamiliar. Almost every time I cook Palestinian food, I am trying something for the first time, whether it’s a technique or a particular ingredient. Sometimes it goes great. Other times, not so much. But every time, I learn something. Every time, I gain a little more knowledge, and therefore a little more confidence. The same is true in life and in resistance. We have to be willing to try new things, and sometimes, we’ll be successful. More often than not, we’ll end up with mixed results but many lessons for the next attempt.

Then again, perhaps I’m overthinking this.

Perhaps, my biggest mistake was simply that I was too impatient to get the proper ingredients and do things right. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Palestinian food, it’s that one has to be willing to put in the time. Palestinian food is cooked with love— or at least it should be— and that means being willing to put in the time to do things right. Shortcuts and hacks are not the tactics one wants to employ if one wants the result to be beautiful, and if one wants the experience of the meal to be one of being cared for and loved.

If that’s the case, that’s yet another lesson for organizing and activism. You’ve got to put in the time. You’ve got to take the time to nurture relationships and build trust. Either way, whether the takeaway is embracing imperfection or putting in the time and hard work, as it goes in cooking, it goes in resistance. Let’s make our resistance beautiful and delicious. And let’s do it all with lots of patience and love.

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There are times, however, when it feels like all the action in the world has no chance to stop where this train is headed. I recently came across a +972 Magazine article from May, documenting the Israeli seizure of land in Jenin. Those not familiar with Jenin, or with the Oslo Accords, might not recognize the significance of this land seizure, but it marks a very clear escalation in the effort to annex the West Bank.1

For those of us who have been paying attention to this in recent years, it’s an ominous development. For me, it prompts a fear deep within me that I can barely manage to say out loud— that in a few years, there may not be anything left of historic Palestine. I fear complete erasure. Perhaps the end result of all the ethnic cleansing will be something like the model of the United States— with the indigenous people they couldn’t get rid of crammed into tinier and tinier areas of resourceless land.

Maybe, given the facts on the ground, it would be wiser to walk away, to cut my losses, to recognize that my energy could be more effective somewhere else, on an issue that I might actually have a chance to influence. This anxiety is strong in my mind. Recently I missed a very important local city council meeting and an opportunity to raise my voice on a local issue that is of great importance to me because I was traveling for my work on Palestine. I can’t deny that I wondered if I had my priorities straight.

But the truth is, I could never walk away from Palestine. Palestine stole my heart, then broke my heart, and now it is my heart. I’ve also come to believe that it’s significance in the movement for collective liberation cannot be overstated. Gaza revealed the absolute moral decay of the West, and Palestine as a whole puts a mirror in front of the world to ask if it really means what it claims to believe about human rights and international law.

Furthermore, Palestinians have so much to teach us about what it means to be in this fight for collective liberation during a time when fascism is on the rise around the world. Their resilience and their persistence in living lives of faith, celebration, family, and community show us what it looks like to live meaningful lives of both resistance and joy in the face of fascism. We need those lessons here in the states. We need them desperately. We need Palestine, I would argue, just as as much as they need us. And they do need us. They need all of us.

Someday, younger generations may ask us, what did you do when Palestine was being destroyed? Or what did you do during the genocide in Gaza (which, by the way, is ongoing)? I may not be able to say that my actions made much of a difference, but at least I can say that I never stopped talking about Palestine. For better or for worse, for whatever value it adds, for whatever good it might do, even if it’s just to convince one person, I will keep talking about Palestine, because it’s the very least that I can do.

That being said, there is a longer, and more nuanced answer to this question. When it comes to recent protests in New York City outside one particular synagogue, my answer to this very same question would be, yes, absolutely. And here’s why: the protest in question was happening at a synagogue at the same time as there was an auction going on inside. And just what was on auction? Stolen Palestinian land. Being sold off to the highest bidder.

Here’s how this works, in a very general way:

Small Palestinian villages are scattered throughout the West Bank. Every now and then, at the borders of one of these villages, the sun will rise to reveal that overnight, a trailer has appeared. It’s outside the village lines, and it’s just a single trailer, but every Palestinian knows this is an ominous sight. Because maybe a week later three more trailers appear overnight. Then all of a sudden they have electricity and security cameras. Maybe a few more weeks go by, and all of a sudden there is an Israeli military outpost nearby.

Then the attacks start. Maybe a car is set on fire. Maybe someone gets beat up. Maybe agricultural land is bulldozed. There is nothing the villagers can do to protect themselves, because if they fight back, even in defense, the Israeli military will shoot them or arrest them. Concrete is poured down a well. More houses are bulldozed. And eventually, the villagers flee. Because who can live like that?

The settlers win. They take over the village. They take the land, and start to build houses, and eventually, high-rise condominiums. And who buys these luxury condos? Why, Zionists at a land auction at a synagogue in New York City.

How do I know this is true? I have literally stood in the ruins of a demolished Palestinian home. I have literally stood on a Palestinian farm and seen with my own eyes the evidence of this happening. It is ongoing. It is happening right now, as you read these words.

I will be the first to say no to the proposal of a protest outside of a Jewish temple or synagogue as a general response to Zionism. That is actually antisemitic, because it assumes all Jews bear collective responsibility for the sins of one particular political movement. However, if I ever caught wind that one of these land sales was happening in a town near me, you better believe I would be one of the first to show up to that protest.

Again, more people need to be willing to say this kind of thing publicly. We need to stop letting religious nationalists of any ilk define the terms of the conversation. If an activity is happening in the United States that is against international law and violates people’s human rights, we should all absolutely protest it. Full stop. No exceptions. And free Palestine.

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Taybeh is notable because it is the last majority-Christian village in the West Bank. Those who follow the news coming out of Palestine will know that Christians are facing extinction in the Holy Land, the very land where Jesus lived, taught, healed, and died. If Taybeh falls to settlers, it will be a huge blow to the remaining Christian community in Palestine.

I invite you to pray this prayer every day this week. And then, if you are so moved, learn more about Taybeh with the resources listed at the end of this post. After you do that, contact your elected officials in Washington DC and let them know your concerns. Ask them to take action to protect the Christian community in Taybeh. Better yet, ask them to take action to protect the entire Palestinian community in the West Bank. Make the message your own, but please consider making the call. Public opinion has shifted greatly on the issue of Palestine, and our elected leaders must be held to account.

A Prayer for the Village of Taybeh

The earth burns.
The land smolders with hate.
Creation groans under such abuse.
Your people cry out,
how long, O Lord, how long?

God of the oppressed, 
We know you hear the cries of your people.
Help us to hear them as well.
Amplify their voices in the halls of power,
in the sanctuaries of our churches
in the deep recesses of our hearts. 

May their prayers become our prayers.
May their cries become our cries.
May we weep over the destruction of their land
and the burning of their fields. 
And if we are silenced,
may the very rocks cry out for justice. 

Amen.

Further reading about Taybeh:

Israeli settlers impeded firefighting near Christian West Bank village- Reuters

Property deeds no protection for Palestinians as settler violence spreads - Al Jazeera

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That being said, I do not believe that Israel has a right to exist. Furthermore, I don’t believe there can ever be such a thing as a democratic Jewish state. At least not in the way that Israel is currently structured. Let me unpack these two statements.

First let me say that I don’t believe that Israel has a right to exist because I don’t believe any state has a right to exist. Actually, it has nothing to do with what I believe. There is nothing in international law that declares states have a right to exist. What does exist in international law is that peoples have a right to exist. Ethnic and religious groups have the right to exist. The Jewish people have a right to exist, and they deserve to live in a state that protects that right. However, that right must not come at the expense of another people, as it currently does.

Indeed, one could argue that the safety of Israelis at the expense of Palestinians has been the case since the very creation of the modern Israeli state in 1948. Israel wouldn’t exist today without the perpetration of the Nakba— Arabic for catastrophe— when approximately 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes and villages. No state has a right to displace hundreds of thousands of people for its own gain. Sure, it has happened again and again throughout history— it is the timeless story of colonialism— but that doesn’t mean it’s some kind of divinely-ordained right.

Israel as a nation-state has no right to exist. Having said that, it does exist, and the people who live there have a right to freedom, self-determination, and safety. All the people who live in the land deserve these things. Unfortunately, for over five million people living under Israeli control, they have none of those things. As I write this, an acquaintance of mine in Bethlehem has to tell his children that they don’t have water again for the third day in a row. And this is normal. Palestinians are used to having their water supply cut off with no reason and no warning. Does Israel have a right to cut off water to Palestinians while filling their illegal settlements with swimming pools and lush green lawns?

Another problem with claiming Israel has some inherent right to exist as a Jewish state is the fact that a Jewish state can never be a true democracy when over 5 million of the people living under it’s sovereignty are second class citizens, or worse, stateless people. People of other faiths and secular folks in the United States rightly balk at the idea of the United States being a Christian nation. To define ourselves so would be anti-democratic and unconstitutional. On a related note, most people also vigorously oppose the existence of Islamic states, equating such states with terrorism and the bogyman of Sharia law. Why then, do we simply allow the idea of a democratic Jewish state to exist problem-free in our minds without even the raising of an eyebrow?

Religious nationalism is religious nationalism. Zionism should not get a pass here, especially considering the facts on the ground. If the impact of a Jewish state on it’s people was a true democracy where religious and ethnic minorities had the same rights and privileges as Jewish citizens, we might be able to have a different conversation. However that is not the reality on the ground. The reality on the ground is clear to anyone with eyes to see. The reality on the ground is apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Not only does a state not have the right to impose these conditions, every letter of international law forbids it. Israel does not have the right to exist in it’s current form.

More people need to be willing to say these things out loud. The more of us who do it provides safety for others to speak— especially those who are marginalized and vulnerable in some way. The more of us who say these things out loud breaks down the weaponization of questions like, “but do you believe that Israel has the right to exist,” which is so often used to interrogate Palestinians and their allies, forcing them to throw other Palestinians under the bus before they can even begin to defend them.

Israel has no right to exist. Full stop. This is not an antisemitic statement. People have a right to exist, and right now, Israel is engaged in the extermination and erasure of millions of people who live in the land. They must not be allowed to continue their atrocities with impunity.

So what is the alternative? It’s not really for me to make a prescription, but I will say that I support those living in the land who argue for one democratic state with equal rights for all it’s residents. Maybe this would require Israel to change its name, its flag, its anthem, but none of those things are intrinsic rights. The rights of the people trump the ‘rights’ of a state. A single democratic state would require Israelis to give up their regime of domination, but ultimately, this will make them safer, as others living side by side with them will no longer have the boot of oppression on their necks. There would be no need for an armed resistance if apartheid was ended and stateless people made full citizens under the law. If the aim is self-determination for Jewish people, the best way to achieve that is to give Palestinians the same right. From the river to the sea, may all who live in the land be free.

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As I explained in my previous post, the effort to ethnically cleanse this part of East Jerusalem is being done, in part, to make way for a biblical theme park in the area. The more sinister agenda, however, seems to be to cleanse the area of all Palestinians and to make the whole of Jerusalem a purely Jewish city.

Sometimes people ask me why I say that Zionism is racist. The attempt to Judaize Jerusalem is a good example. I compare it to the days when there were segregated neighborhoods in the United States— when there were white neighborhoods that black individuals and families were not allowed to live in because of restrictive racial covenants and redlining. Even when some of these laws began to be struck down, black families that moved into white neighborhoods faced severe opposition, and were often terrorized by the white majority. The goal was to keep the neighborhoods pure, not to be contaminated by minority blood.

What is happening right now in Jerusalem is a similar sort of process, but in reverse. Jerusalem has always been a diverse city, especially in and around the old city area. Indeed, for a long time before 1948, Jews, Christians and Muslims lived side by side in the city with little conflict between them. But after East Jerusalem was occupied in the 1967 war, Israel has been slowly erasing Palestinian culture, and Palestinians themselves, from the city. Since October 7, 2023, that process has been thrown into overdrive, and homes are being demolished at alarming rates. In the first four months of 2026 alone, 185 structures have been demolished. The goal is to remove all Palestinians from the city, and to make Jerusalem a racially, ethnically, and religiously “pure” Jewish city. This is a key part of the Zionist project, and it is racist to it’s core.

All of this is happening in the shadow of the larger regional conflict, thus it receives very little attention by our western, mainstream media. Still, if you know where to look, it is being reported on quite regularly by more independent sources. One example is +972 Magazine, an independent, online, nonprofit magazine run by a group of Palestinian and Israeli journalists. They recently published a story about the erasure of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, warming that an entire Palestinian community is about to be expelled.

One of the truly outrageous elements of this process is that residents are being forced to demolish their own homes. Not because they want to, but because if they don’t, the Israeli army will charge them exorbitant fees, often thousands of dollars, and the army will then come in and demolish it anyway. So either way, the family is left without a home, and in this case shouldering a debt that often takes years to repay. To add insult to injury, as I mentioned in my previous post, families are often forced to continue to pay taxes on their demolished home.

Can you imagine? Many of these families built their houses, brick by brick, or stone by stone, with their own hands. Now, they are forced to demolish those same homes, with the same hands, brick by brick and stone by stone. Children are forced to stay home from school to help with the demolition process. Some families have been forced to do this multiple times, as the home they move to after demolishing their previous one also receives a demolition order.

One particular community called Al-Bustan is facing complete annihilation, as every single home in the neighborhood is now under a demolition order. 115 homes, housing approximately 1500 people, could soon be gone, to be replaced with a biblical theme park. The ugly irony of making hundreds of people homeless for the purpose of building a biblical theme park is almost unbearable.

In the past, communities like this were able to survive by getting the international community to put pressure on Israel. Now, however, with all eyes on Iran, the international either can’t or won’t do anything to help. Certainly, there’s little hope that the American government, in its current form, will lift a finger or say a word.

All of this is why Palestine solidarity activists are so adamant that we start electing politicians who not only will tell the truth about what Israel is doing, but who will use the leverage we have to force them to stop. This is no small thing. We are talking about the ethnic cleansing of an entire indigenous people from their land. If you think what happened to the native Americans in North America was wrong, this is our chance to redeem ourselves for our colonial past. What happened in North America is happening NOW in Israel and Palestine. We have a chance to stop it, but we MUST elect politicians who are not afraid to say that Israel is an apartheid state, that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, and that any further military support to this county MUST be predicated on an end to this process of ethnic cleansing. This should not be considered a radical stance. It is the only moral stance to take. When it comes to this issue, it is not complicated. Stop demolishing homes. Stop forcing people off their land. Stop the ethnic cleansing.

Some residents of the area remain defiant. As the +972 article explains, some residents are still refusing to demolish their homes, despite knowing the fine they will receive and the inevitable arrival of Israeli bulldozers at their doorstep. Still, they say that even if that happens, they will live in tents on their property. As it is written on the wall of one demolished home in the area, “We are staying here. We will not leave.”

May we be inspired by the sumud of our Palestinian siblings. And may we not stand by idle while this travesty of justice continues to unfold. Contact your elected officials, especially if your elected officials are democrats, or if you happen to be one of the rare folks whose republican representatives are not afraid to defy Trump. These calls and emails do move the needle, however slowly, and we need to keep bending the arc of justice before time runs out for the Palestinian people. Don’t be the person who did nothing because you don’t think it will make a difference. Be the person who did what was right, not necessarily because you are optimistic about results, but because hope is a verb, and we must put it into practice.

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The first time I learned about the Nakba was back in 2007, though it hardly made an impression on me at the time. In my Liberation Theology class at Yale Divinity School, we were assigned Justice and Only Justice by Naim Ateek, a Palestinian Episcopal priest and one of the founders of Sabeel, the Palestinian Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that the book barely registered with me then. I simply lacked the context to fully understand what I was reading.

Fast forward to the spring of 2023. I was preparing for my first trip to the Holy Land and picked up Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour. That, I would say, is when this journey truly began. Not long afterward, I traveled to Israel/Palestine for the first time and met Palestinians who had personally experienced the Nakba. I listened to an elderly Palestinian woman named Cedar recount her own story of displacement. There is scarcely a Palestinian anywhere in the Holy Land whose life has not been shaped in some way by this historical tragedy.

Currently, I am re-reading the essential text The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé, a rare Israeli historian willing to confront the darker realities surrounding Israel’s founding. Written in 2006 after extensive research in Israeli military archives, the book recounts the story of the Nakba village by village, without shying away from its most brutal details. Palestinians were not only expelled; many were massacred in places like Deir Yassin, where more than 100 men, women, and children were killed, and Safsaf, where dozens of Palestinians were reportedly lined up and executed.

It is chilling to consider how a people who had themselves endured the horrors of the Holocaust only a few years earlier could then participate in acts of violence against another vulnerable population. In his book, Pappé quotes Zionist soldiers describing atrocities they witnessed and, at times, committed. One recalls fathers being shot in front of their children. Another describes villagers being forced to bury bodies in mass graves before being executed themselves.

Some attribute this tragic reversal to the political exploitation of a deeply traumatized people. Perhaps there is truth in that. The Jewish community was reeling after the Holocaust, desperate to secure safety for themselves and their children. Combined with the rise of political Zionism and the refusal of many countries to accept Jewish refugees after World War II, this desperation contributed to circumstances in which some Jewish refugees acted in ways they might not have otherwise. Had countries like the United States and Britain opened their doors more fully to Jewish refugees instead of supporting their relocation to Palestine, the modern history of the region might have unfolded very differently.

Unfortunately, Nakba Day does not merely commemorate a tragedy from 78 years ago. For many Palestinians, the Nakba is ongoing. It continues in Gaza amid the devastation of genocide, which, though slowed down since the October 2025 ceasefire, has not fully ceased. It continues in the West Bank, where dozens of Palestinian villages have been depopulated since October 7, 2023, and where Palestinians continue to lose homes through settler violence, land seizures, and demolitions carried out by the Israeli military.

For decades, the world has watched the ongoing suffering of Palestinians with little meaningful intervention. Occasionally there are half-hearted attempts to restrain Israeli policies, but more often the international community responds with indifference or paralysis. Meanwhile, many supporters of Zionism continue to reject the argument that the ideology itself bears responsibility for this continuing humanitarian crisis.

When I first traveled to Palestine, I was struck by the way Palestinians spoke about Zionism. I knew liberal Zionists back home who, I was certain, would be horrified by the stories I was hearing. For years, I tried to better understand Zionism, convinced it could not be as morally compromised as some critics claimed. Indeed, my own Jewish friends back home assured me that Zionism was merely the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination and safety. I wanted to believe them.

Over time, however, my perspective has come to align with the observation of Palestinian American scholar Edward Said, who wrote that the truth about Zionism is best understood from the standpoint of its victims. In other words, Zionism must ultimately be judged by its impact on Palestinians. From that perspective, I have come to see it as a deeply destructive ideology—one rooted in exclusion, dispossession, and, at times, violence. Reading the diaries and writings of early Zionist figures such as Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion only reinforced for me how longstanding some of these dynamics have been.

All of this is why, on this Nakba Day, I come out fully and unabashedly as an antizionist. Some claim the very idea of antizionism is antisemitic, though the growing number of antizionist Jews, especially among young progressive Jews who understand intersectionality, belies that claim. To be antizionist is to be antiracist, and one cannot fully embrace antiracism without also being antizionist. I also believe that antizionism is the only stance that can bring about collective liberation for both Israelis and Palestinians.

I do not believe the future must be defined forever by violence, segregation, domination, and fear. I believe another future is possible—one rooted not in ethno-nationalism, but in equality, shared humanity, and solidarity. A future where Palestinians are free, where Israelis are free from the logic of militarism and supremacy, and where justice is not reserved for one people at the expense of another.

On this Nakba Day, then, remembrance must become more than memory. It must become solidarity. It must become resistance to dehumanization in all its forms. And it must become a refusal to look away while another generation of Palestinians is displaced, erased, and buried beneath the weight of the world’s indifference.

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• Ask House members to become co-sponsors of the Block the Bombs Act, which would put conditions on military aid to Israel, requiring them to first comply with international law.

• Ask senators to become co-sponsors to Bernie Sanders’ Joint Resolutions of Disapproval, which would condition certain military aid to Israel on compliance with the Leahy Law and Foreign Assistance Act.

• Ask senators to support restored funding to UNWRA.

• Ask all members to support reopening the humanitarian corridor from Gaza to the East Jerusalem Hospital Network. Over 90% of hospitals in Gaza are destroyed or badly damaged, and thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, including over 4000 children, are in dire need of access to medical care. They must be allowed to have access to nearby hospitals in East Jerusalem.

Looking at the list of demands, my heart sank. I knew that my Indiana congressional members would never support the first three asks, and the last ask was even a bit of a stretch. The idea that any of our MAGA legislators would go out of their way for Palestinians in Gaza seemed almost unfathomable. I felt even more demoralized when the advisor to our Indiana delegation said that we should appeal to the members’ humanity and morality.

In that moment I thought of what a friend and colleague once said on a webinar— “governments are not moral entities.” If governments are not moral entities, and it seems pretty clear that they are not, the people who serve them will not be motived by morality. They will be motivated to serve the entity that gives them power and feeds their ravenous egos, and as long as they continue to get fed, they will be more loyal to that entity than to the moral needs of their own soul. Appealing to their humanity, therefore, will get you absolutely nowhere.

Unfortunately, it was not really up to me. This was a group effort, and I wasn’t about to be the asshole who screwed up the well-orchestrated meeting by going off-script in a rage. I would be a good little soldier and follow the script.

Our meetings with Senators Young and Banks were in the morning, and we approached the first meeting with some trepidation. What would the aid be like? Would they take us seriously? Would they even pretend to hear what we had to say?

At Senator Young’s office, we met with a man who was much older than the typical congressional aid. He explained that he had formerly been with the State Department but had lost his job in the mass firing that took place in that department. I thought for a moment that this might make him more sympathetic to our asks, but that was not the case. Not only did he barely write down any notes, he interrupted our ask for the restoration of UNWRA funding with a condescending remark about the alleged connection between UNWRA and Hamas— a connection which has largely been debunked.

At Senator Banks’s office, we were met with a young aid who was friendly but a bit clueless. She did take plenty of notes, and at least made an effort at appearing sympathetic to our cause. We focused most of our attention on the fourth ask— reopening the humanitarian corridor to the East Jerusalem Hospital Network. Here again, we appealed to the senator’s humanity. Who could oppose a humanitarian corridor for injured and sick children to access critical medical care?

After these two meetings and a quick stop at the House cafeteria for lunch, we gathered with our fellow summit participants for a vigil outside the Cannon House Office Building. As we sang and prayed, we noticed police officers starting to multiply off the the side, and about 20 minutes into the vigil, an officer interrupted us and told us if we did not disburse we would be arrested. Some people scattered at this announcement, but most of us, including all of the clergy, remained in place. The police officer continued to get in our faces, trying to intimidate us, but we called his bluff and remained unfazed. Eventually, he backed off, we finished our vigil, and all disbursed without incident.

Next was our meeting with Representative Marlin Stutzman. Walking into the office, one of the first things I noticed was a picture on the wall of Rep. Stutzman with Benjamin Netanyahu, along with a letter of commendation for his loyal support of Israel. Not a great sign, but also nothing surprising. The meeting was quick. The aid was brutally honest with us and said that the congressman would not support the first three asks. We then simply reiterated the need for the opening of the humanitarian corridor and said our goodbyes.

Overall, for me, it was not the most encouraging day, but I was still glad to be a part of the summit. While we may not have changed the minds of any Indiana congress members that day, I feel certain that our combined presence was important, particularly for those Democratic congress members who are still dragging their feet on holding Israel accountable for it’s crimes. It’s important that we keep up the pressure, especially as public opinion on Israel continues to shift in both the Democratic and Republican parties.

I encourage you, wherever you are in the country, to contact your own legislators and make these same asks. It literally takes five minutes to send an email or leave a voicemail. It’s critical that we keep Gaza in the forefront, even as other atrocities dominate the media. We must continue to fight for recognition of and accountability for this continued genocide. Silence is complicity. If you have yet to speak out, now is the time. Free Palestine!

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It is this reality that motivated me to come to DC, where I’ve been since Tuesday afternoon for the Joint Christian Advocacy Summit hosted by Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP). CMEP has hosted these kinds of lobbying events in the past, but this year they invited over a dozen other organizations to join in sponsoring the event, bringing together Christians from all denominations to speak up for our Palestinian siblings in the halls of congress. The organization I help lead, the United Church of Christ Movement for Palestinian Solidarity (UCC MPS) was one of the co-sponsoring organizations, and so Monday night I boarded a train in Waterloo, IN, at 10:45pm, and settled in for what I hoped would be a full night of sleep on the way to DC (surprisingly, I slept almost the entire 14-hour ride).

The summit started on Tuesday evening with several notable speakers, including the Pulitzer prize-winning poet Mosab Abu Toha from Gaza. He read several poems from his recent collection Forest of Noise, much of which was written during the ongoing Gaza genocide. He also shared with us the staggering number of family members that he and his wife have lost over the last two and half years. Imagine losing multiple families members in one year, maybe two or three, and how devastating that would be. Mosab and his wife have lost over 100 family members in the genocide in Gaza— a number that is pretty much unfathomable to someone like me.

Next we heard from keynote speaker Rev. Khader El-Yateem, a Palestinian Lutheran pastor who now lives in the United States. Rev. Khader was born in Bethlehem but emigrated to the United States in 1992. On Tuesday evening, he shared part of his story with us, which included an account of being arrested at age 18 and held in prison for over 50 days, during which time he was beaten and tortured. Sadly, this kind of story is all too common for Palestinian men, even those as kind and gentle as Rev. El-Yateem.

We heard from a number of other speakers over the course of the next day and a half, but one of the more moving moments was the keynote conversation between author Peter Beinart and activist Moshen Mahdawi. Both men are notable figures in the Palestine solidarity movement.

Beinart, once a supporter of Israel, is now a fierce critic of the state. His recent bestselling book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, has been met with both admiration and distain, depending on where one stands on the Israel-Palestine question. Personally, I thought it was insightful, eye-opening, honest, and even vulnerable. And while it does not represent the majority Jewish opinion on the matter, it’s an important minority perspective, and it’s one that is only growing, especially amongst younger Jews. It’s one of the best, most thoughtful books out there on the subject, and I certainly recommend it.

Moshen is a recent graduate from Columbia University in New York City, where he was active with the student protests of 2023-2024. His name became well-known when he, like many others in this country, was arrested by ICE at his own citizenship interview. Unlike some other Palestinian activists who were detained for months, Mahdawi was released after only two weeks in detention. Still, his status in the United States remained tenuous, and his future uncertain.

Sadly, we woke up on Thursday morning to the news that Mahwadi had received a deportation order. Whether or not he knew this while he was having a public conversation in front of hundreds of people, I don’t know for sure, but it seems he likely did. I think back to his calm demeanor on the church chancel and can’t imagine the inner strength it must have taken just to hold it all together, let alone be as articulate and composed as he was. In any case, this news just reinforces why it is important for me to be here, along with hundreds of other Christians, to lobby for Palestine.

In my next post, I’ll share more about my day on capital hill. For now, I will end this reflection by sharing that I’ve had my ups and downs during this summit. I’ve had moments of feeling inspired and moments of feeling utterly exhausted. And it’s only been three days! But overall, as the final day comes to a close, I can honestly say that I’m glad I was here. I spent time with friends, met some new ones, and got to breathe a collective deep breath with comrades. I had the opportunity to speak truth to power and I took it, for whatever that is worth, and I believe it’s still worth something. As my spouse reflected back to me on the phone earlier this evening, if nothing else, at least I punctured their tidy little bubble for 20 minutes of their day (truly, they are in a highly cultivated bubble— FOX news was on in every office I entered today).

At the very least, I was an annoying little fly buzzing around their heads, reminding them of their own complicity. Maybe that, on it’s own, isn’t much. But maybe, collectively, all of us together helped bend that moral arc just a little bit closer to justice. And so I’m glad I was here. I’ll keep showing up as long as I can. And I hope next time there can be even more of us.

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I would argue that it has a whole lot to do with decades of bad interpretation of the book of scripture we just heard from– the Book of Revelation.

Now perhaps upon hearing this morning’s scripture passage, you started to feel a little bit squirmy. Perhaps you are wondering where on earth today’s sermon could be going and how on earth there could be any good news to be found within it. After all, this is some real fire and brimstone kind of stuff. And while it may not be uncommon to hear a sermon on the book of Revelation in a more evangelical-leaning church, it’s not a book that we progressives have spent much time talking about. It’s violent. It’s confusing and at times disturbing. It’s a little bit trippy. And quite frankly, it can seem pretty far removed from the realities of our lives.

But I have to tell you, I have felt for some time now, that we progressives have really dropped the ball when it comes to providing a more thoughtful perspective on Revelation. And unfortunately, the vacuum that we have left behind in ignoring this complex piece of scripture has allowed some pretty toxic interpretations to arise– interpretations which are now being used to justify everything from the genocide in Gaza to the war in Iran.

So friends, I propose to you this morning that we need to talk about the book of Revelation– what it is, what it isn’t, how it’s being used by Christian nationalists in government, and how that has led to some of the horrifying realities currently being played out on the world stage. We also need to be reminded that there is another story to be told here– one that isn’t so scary, but rather, hopeful. It’s a story of collective liberation that recognizes that none are free until all are free, and that literal chains are not always the only thing keeping us in bondage.

Before we get into all of that, however, I need to back way up and say a word about our scripture for this morning. I’m not going to get into all the gory details, but essentially, the fate you hear being described in this passage– the downfall of Babylon– is not, contrary to popular opinion, about the end of the world. For more conservative readers, the sins of Babylon are representative, not of a specific city or country, but rather, the general spiritual confusion and corruption of all humanity (think back to the parable of the Tower of Babylon). Therefore, for them, the downfall of Babylon marks the beginning of the end of human civilization as we know it– in other words, the apocalypse. But a more contextual reading reveals that the author of Revelation, John of Patmos, likely did have a very specific location in mind.

Take for instance, the reference to Babylon in chapter 17, which indicates that it is located atop seven mountains. That description clearly indicates one particular city– a city which John of Patmos would have had plenty of opportunities to encounter and observe. Not only would John have lived through multiple revolts against the government of this city, he also would have seen the excesses of that same government, in all its grotesque glory, in his travels throughout Asia Minor. In our scripture for this morning, John calls out Babylon for its oppressive and unjust ways, naming it as a place where prophets and saints have been murdered.

So friends, can you guess what city we are talking about– a city located atop seven hills, rich with excess, and its government responsible for the persecution and murder of many Christians in the early days of the church?

If you haven’t already guessed, Babylon, in this case, is a stand in for Rome, though not just the city of Rome, but indeed the entire Roman empire. As it turns out the book of Revelation is something of an anti-imperialist manifesto, imagining a day when God’s justice would end the brutal and oppressive reign, not only of Rome, but of all human imperialist aims.

So how did we go so wrong? If the book of Revelation was originally a metaphor about God’s defeat of imperialism and colonial domination, how did it end up getting co-opted by authoritarian Christian nationalists who wish to use it as fodder for their own imperialist wars overseas?

Well, that’s kind of a long story, but we can start to answer that question by looking back to 19th-century American Christianity and the rise of something called dispensationalism. Dispensationalism is a framework for interpreting the Bible which argues that history is divided into time periods called ‘dispensations.’ Typically in dispensationalism there are seven of these eras, the last of which is called the Millennial Kingdom, which envisions the 1000-year reign of Christ, ending in the final judgment of the world.

Many of you are likely familiar with this framework even if you’ve never heard the word dispensationalism. It’s the framework that has given us some real gems in popular culture, such as the movie, A Thief in the Night, and books like The Late Great Planet Earth and the more recent Left Behind series. It is largely from this dispensationalist framework that we get a popular interpretation of Revelation as a prophecy of an apocalyptic end-times battle between good and evil. It’s also largely from this framework that we end up with one of the more toxic theologies within the modern religious landscape, a theology which arose directly out of dispensationalism– Christian Zionism.

Christian Zionism took the idea of the Millennial kingdom from the dispensationalists and essentially built an entire worldview and ideology around it. One of the key interpretive moves of dispensationalist Christian Zionists is to say that in order to bring about the second coming of Christ, the modern state of Israel must be restored to its former biblical glory. This means, in part, that its current borders must be expanded to its original, biblical borders, which includes all of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as parts of Lebanon, Jordan, and beyond. They also believe that the temple in Jerusalem must be rebuilt on the site of the Dome of the Rock. This is problematic because the Dome of the Rock is currently the site of the Al Aqsa mosque compound– the third holiest site in Islam.

So to spell it out, for dispensationalists and Christian Zionists, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the destruction of the third holiest site in Islam is not only acceptable, it is actually a requirement for the second coming of Christ.

Now in case you are wondering, there is no passage in Revelation, nor anywhere else in all of the New Testament that makes Jesus’ return contingent upon the re-establishment of the temple or the biblical kingdom of Israel. Still, countless numbers of Christians have been conditioned over decades to believe this interpretation and to embrace this worldview. That conditioning is why, for years, dispensationalist evangelicals and Christian Zionists have cheered on the efforts of Israel as it effectively annexes large swaths of land in the West Bank of Palestine. Mike Huckabee, our current ambassador to Israel and a self-proclaimed Christian Zionist, has recently said it would be okay if Israel took all of the West Bank for itself. That conditioning is also why many Christian Zionists not only did not condemn the genocide in Gaza but supported it, seeing it as moving the world one step closer to Israel’s great rebirth, and thus one step closer to that day of final judgement. It’s why Greg Laurie’s congregation cheered the day after October 7, 2023 when he told them their redemption was drawing near. And now, it’s why those same Christian Zionists are cheering on the war in Iran.

Some of you may have heard that as the war was first starting, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation received hundreds of complaints from U.S. service members alleging that military commanders were framing the Iran war as part of a “biblical plan.”

Troops reported that officers were claiming that the war was a divine mandate and a necessary step for the eventual return of Jesus Christ. Now it’s clear that some members of the current government really do believe in this so-called divine plan. They too have been conditioned by years of bad-faith biblical interpretation. More dangerous than them, however, are the members of the administration who don’t actually believe in any of this, but who are merely taking advantage of millions of people’s sincerely held religious beliefs to play out their own imperialist, colonial agenda, that is less about the second coming of Christ and more about amassing power and wealth for themselves.

All of this has led us down a path to multiple wars in the middle east and now, distressingly, our deep complicity in the Gaza genocide. Unfortunately for the powers that be, however, their idolatrous interpretations miss a pretty crucial point– that the book of Revelation itself is actually a direct refutation and condemnation of the very policies and tactics our government currently employs.

Just consider again our passage for this morning. The passage points the finger at Babylon– i.e. the Roman Empire– for killing not only saints and prophets, but “all who have been slaughtered upon the earth.” And so I ask you this: might there be another empire in our world today that has not only murdered its own prophets, but been responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocents in countless wars and conflicts since WWII?

Catholic radical James Douglass wrote in 1972, that this particular passage from Revelation could be rewritten for our modern age, and he paraphrases it as follows:

“Never again in you, America, will be heard the songs of bankers and generals, the music of drum and bugle marching abroad… Your corporate heads were the princes of the earth, and all the nations were under your spell. In America you will find the blood of prophets and saints.”

Now, admittedly, this doesn’t exactly sound like good news for America, at least, not for those with any kind of power and privilege. But I guarantee you it sounds like very good news for the majority of the world’s poor, colonized, and oppressed. And I should probably clarify here that the downfall of the American empire– an inevitability, if history is any indication– doesn’t necessarily mean that the United States itself must collapse.

What it does mean is an end to American dominance and hegemony overseas. It means an end to our military industrial complex that makes billionaires out of warmongers and turns entire populations of people into refugees. It means an end to unfair trade deals that favor the US and hurt the economies of developing countries. It means an end to extrajudicial killings and kidnappings and an end to secret military interventions abroad. It means the removal of hundreds of military bases around the world, including some in countries we have no business trying to control. The end of the American empire means liberation for millions upon millions of people, around the world and here at home.

The book of revelation, as it turns out, is a wealth of good news. It is in fact the same good news that we hear in Mary’s song of liberation– otherwise known as the Magnificat– in which she also describes the overthrow of empire, proclaiming that the powerful will be torn down from their thrones as the poor and lowly are lifted up. It’s the same good news that Jesus speaks to the crowds in his sermon on the mount when he says that the meek will inherit the earth and peacemakers shall be called children of God. The good news of Revelation is that the God of love will not tolerate the eternal endurance of a prosperity built on the exploitation of the world’s poor. The good news of Revelation is that God comes to live among God’s people through the non-violent way of the lamb, which will eventually overthrow every violent empire.

It’s important to mention here that even though this passage may sound like bad news for the oppressive powers of empire in our world, there is actually some good news here for them as well. With the toppling of empire, the oppressor is also freed– freed from the chains that keep them enslaved to the idolatrous, death-dealing ways of empire and which dims the light of their own humanity. The end of empire and its way of domination over others allows the oppressor to once again access parts of their own humanity that had been lying dormant, at risk of shriveling up completely. The good news of Revelation is that it sets the stage not only for the liberation of the oppressed, but for the collective liberation of all humanity.

The truth is, empires will come and go, and the American empire is no exception. It’s also true that the end of American hegemony overseas will likely give way to some other world power. This endless cycle of empires rising and falling, however, doesn’t mean that Revelation is just some fantasy that will never truly come to pass. The message of Revelation still applies, because as Jesus told his disciples, the kin-dom of God is already at hand. The message still applies because as we know, the truest form of liberation is the liberation that happens within the deepest recesses of the self. We can renounce our citizenship in empire today in order to embrace our citizenship in the kin-dom of God for all the days to come. And while we may not see a free Palestine tomorrow, and while we may yet continue to see the powers that be play out their horrific war and power plays for years to come, we still have the power, right here, right now, to decolonize our hearts and minds– freeing our souls from cooperation with worldly powers of domination. We can choose to reside today in that place that is described so beautifully in Revelation chapter 21: a place where God dwells among mortals, a place where God is already making all things new.

Friends, we don’t have to wait for Armageddon to be free. We don’t have to wait for the end of the world to be made new. The revelation of Jesus Christ– the lamb of God– has already been given to us. It has been entrusted to us. We hold its power in our hands. Therefore, may we choose the path that has been revealed to us. May we choose liberation over enslavement. May we choose the lamb that was slain over the empire that slays. And in doing so, may we experience our own liberation and pave the way for the collective liberation of all creation. May it ever be so, Amen.

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In those days, I lived nearly 1000 miles away from the ocean. And yet, it was relatively easy for my family to get to the shore. All it really took was a mini-van, a little bit of gas, and a whole lot of patience on the part of my parents. Contrast the ease of our travels with that of Palestinian families living in the West Bank. Many Palestinians in the West Bank have never seen the ocean, even though they live less than two hours away from the pristine beaches of Tel Aviv. Even closer is the Mediterranean coast of Gaza, but even though that is Palestinian territory, most West Bank Palestinians are not able to go there unless they get a special permit— nearly impossible these days.

On my first trip to Palestine, we met a circus artist who was a skilled acrobat and climber. He told us of how he used his circus training to scale the apartheid wall so he could finally see the sea— an act so illegal that I’m almost afraid to mention it, since if he was ever caught doing such a thing, he would immediately be thrown in prison.

Most Palestinians, at least in the West Bank, are deprived of a quintessential human experience— standing on the beach, looking out at the vastness of the ocean, listening to the sound of the waves slapping against the shore, watching small children play in the sand, while further down the beach, old men try their luck at fishing.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered a whole section within my Palestinian cookbook of seafood dishes. To be sure, author Sami Tamimi is quick to point out that it’s hard to find fresh fish in the West Bank. In days past, West Bank Palestinians could get permits to travel to Israeli coastal towns like Haifa or Akka (these kinds of trips are rarely, if ever, allowed anymore), and Tamimi describes just those kinds of trips with his family in the introduction to his chapter on fish. One of the most popular Palestinian dishes from these coastal towns is something called sayyadieh, or ‘fisherman’s dish.’

Traditionally, sayyadieh is made with whatever has been freshly caught that day. Living, as I do, in the landlocked state of Indiana, my access was limited to what I could get at the local grocery store, so for my version I used cod and shrimp. The cooked seafood is folded into rice spiced with cinnamon, allspice, and cumin, along with sweet caramelized onions. The whole dish is then smothered in tahini sauce and garnished with toasted pine nuts and chopped parsley.

This dish was absolutely, flat out delicious. The spiced rice was magical. The tahini sauce was to die for. The dish as a whole was one of my favorite Palestinian dishes that I’ve made to date.

I was happy with the results, but also felt somewhat sad after enjoying this delicious dish, knowing that the ingredients I had such easy access to were not available to many Palestinians.

Even in Gaza, which is located right on the Mediterranean Sea, fishing is practically non-existent. Israel has always restricted Gazans’ access to the sea, but things have gotten so much worse since October 7, 2023. Currently, Israel has enforced a "no-go zone" along Gaza’s coast, effectively banning all fishing, swimming, and all maritime access since January 2025. The Israeli military considers the waters an active combat zone and uses lethal force, including gunfire and drones, against those attempting to enter the sea. Starving Palestinians cannot even go fishing for their daily sustenance without risking their lives. Not to mention, the water around Gaza is polluted with sewage and all sorts of chemical toxins from the war, and one might not necessarily want to eat the fish that comes out of that part of the sea. Of course, when you are starving, one does not think much about toxins. One thinks only about keeping the body going for another day.

In his cookbook (written before October 2023), Tamimi mentions the hardships faced by fishermen in Gaza, and puts his own spin on the common proverb, “give a poor man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and you will give him an occupation that will feed him for life.” Tamimi adds the phrase, “put that man under occupation and take away his means to fish, and both for a day and all his lifetime he will remain hungry.”

Since October 7, the fishing industry in Gaza has all but collapsed, just one more aspect of Palestinian life and culture that has been destroyed in the last two and a half years. While cooking Palestinian food is hardly something that is going to effect change on the ground, it’s my little way of holding out hope that one day, all Palestinians will once again have access to the sea. It’s me, lighting a proverbial candle and holding out the light for those who are in a place of deep darkness and despair right now. It’s my little way of saying— ‘I see you, Palestine. I love you. And I won’t stop fighting for you and for your culture.’

All eyes on Palestine. We cannot look away.

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This shut down couldn’t have come at a worse time of year. For Muslims, they were about to celebrate one of their holiest days of the year– Eid al Fitr– the end of Ramadan. This year however, Muslims were barred from entering Al Aqsa, the third holiest site in all of Islam, on this incredibly sacred occasion.

A few weeks later, the traditional Palm Sunday procession started to make its way to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher– the alleged site of Jesus’ tomb– but was stopped along the way and not allowed to continue on to the church. This time, it was Christians that were barred from their holy spaces on one of the most holy days of their liturgical year.

After a whole lot of outcry from Christians in positions of power in Washington DC, including Israeli ambassador Mike Huckabee, Israel relented, and generously allowed the priests to enter the church to celebrate Easter mass, without any parishioners or worshippers, of course. Lay Christians– that would be all of you– were still barred. Can you imagine trying to come to church on Easter Sunday and being told, ‘sorry, you can’t come in. It’s a security risk?’

Christian and Muslim Palestinians were barred from celebrating their holy observances. Or so the empire likes to think. While I am hardly an expert on Palestinian culture, I know enough to be able to imagine that even though they may not have been allowed to gather in their traditional houses of worship, Palestinian Muslims and Christians still gathered, not unlike in the days of the early church, in their homes and in other community spaces, to observe together the deep meaning of their faith. I’ve been to enough homes in Palestine to know that they understand the art of gathering. The art of hospitality and feeding and sharing. The art of showing up for the sacred.

In our scripture passage this morning, the man at the tomb asks the women, why do you look for the living among the dead? This sacred season, in the Holy Land, we could ask much the same question of those who think that by merely barring entrance to a pile of ancient stones they could somehow bury these sacred traditions, and by extension, bring despair upon the people who practice them.

But they would be so very, very wrong. Because life isn’t found inside the buildings– as beautiful, and as historically and culturally significant as they are. Life is found in the people. The people are the living stones– the very people who have been carrying the faith forward, literally, since that very first Easter in Palestine.

And so for every gathering that happened yesterday, whether in a home, around a fire in a courtyard, in a school, or even amongst the rubble in Gaza, I have no doubt, that the living Christ was among them, and they still got to say to one another, Alhamdulilah, Christ is risen, indeed.

It is wrong to bar worshippers from their holy spaces on some of the holiest days of their sacred calendar. It shouldn’t be happening, and the international community should not stand for it. Nevertheless, it’s not an obstacle that is insurmountable. It’s not a tomb that is inescapable. I have no doubt that the people of Palestine celebrated well, Muslims and Christians both, in their homes, with their loved ones, around a table piled high with maqluba– that’s seasoned chicken, spiced rice, and a wealth of roasted vegetables, served by flipping the pot upside down and hoping that nothing sticks when you lift it up to reveal the feast underneath.

No, this was not an obstacle that was insurmountable, because those with true faith know not to look for the living among the dead. They also know that though the powers that be might have attempted to bury them, along with their sacred observances, they are, of course, not just living stones, but living seeds. And they will burst forth with new life, over and over again.

I share all of this this today to say that even in the most dire circumstances, we can still celebrate life and faith. Even when we feel surrounded by cruelty and indifference, we can still celebrate life and faith. Even when we feel that we are being buried under mountains of injustice, we can still celebrate life and faith. Because look around you, friends– these are the living stones of this community. YOU are the living stones of this community. And even if they do try to bury us, my friends, make no mistake. We are seeds, and like Jesus himself on that original Easter Day, we will rise.

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I think about the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, just a few miles away, which supposedly houses the actual tomb where Jesus was laid. I remember being in that church and feeling so small, so insignificant, walking through the space and taking in the centuries of history it has existed through. I remember the many religious pilgrims who flocked to that space before October 7, and I distinctly remember how empty the church felt when I visited two years later, in May of 2025.

But it’s not just the dead stones I’m thinking about. I’m also thinking about the living stones, the faithful Christians of Palestine, who are being barred from worshipping in this holy space this Holy Week. This is a grievous and cruel act by the Israeli government, though important to recognize that it’s not just the Christians who are being persecuted in this way. A few weeks ago, Muslims were prevented from entering the third holiest space in all of Islam- the Al Aqsa mosque— on one of the holiest days of their religious calendar, the celebration at the end of Ramadan called Eid al-Fitr, the festival of breaking the fast.

How can we call this the Holy Land when millions of its people are prohibited from worshipping in their holy spaces on some of the holiest days of their religious calendars?

The truth is, for me, these kinds of spaces, while I can appreciate their beauty and historical significance, are not where I necessarily feel closest to God. The first year I visited Jerusalem, I didn’t even try to enter the tomb of Jesus, because the line of religious pilgrims (and straight up tourists) was so long. I just didn’t really see the point of waiting in that line when I could be exploring the nooks and crannies of the church, which were chock full of fascinating historical artifacts and art. I watched in curiosity as others knelt and kissed the slab that was but a reproduction of Jesus’ actual burial slab, but didn’t feel moved in that way myself.

This is not to say that I didn’t experience the presence of the holy on my trips to Palestine. I did. But not in the buildings of stone. I felt the presence of the holy when we were with the people and on the land, at places like Tent of Nations, on Iyad Burnat’s farm in Bil’in, walking through the village of Battir, or sailing on the sea of Galilee at night.

In the so-called Holy Land, the landscape is sacred, but that too, is being destroyed. Olive trees that are hundreds of years old are being uprooted all the time. Agricultural land is bulldozed to make room for settlements and military outposts. The sacred landscape is also a scarred landscape, tortured and crucified just like Jesus himself.

This year, during Holy Week, my spiritual practice will include prayers for the people of Palestine, and for the land itself. I pray that the churches will be opened to the people, but even if that doesn’t happen, I pray that the people of the land will still experience God’s presence and promise of resurrection. I pray that they may find that presence on the land itself, in their homes, and within their hearts. May they know the presence of God that liberates them from the internal occupation of their minds and hearts by worldly powers, even if they cannot be liberated (yet) from the occupation of their land. And may there be a free Palestine, from the river to the sea, soon and very soon.

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