Through Global Ministries, the United Church of Christ has covenantal relationships with over a dozen partners, Palestinian and Israeli both. The list includes organizations like the YWCA of Palestine, Kairos Palestine, the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, Friends Meeting in Ramallah, and, through the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, the twice recently bombed Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. To find the complete list, go to this Global Ministries webpage and scroll down. Click on the names of each of the organizations to learn more and appreciate the reach of UCC solidarity through these partnerships. In some cases, the partnerships are long-standing going back decades; with newer organizations like Kairos Palestine, launched when they issued their A Moment of Truth document in 2009, the partnerships are more recent. In this time of unleashed violence and brutal ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population, Peter Makari, Global Relations Minister, Middle East and Europe, is keeping in close contact with, and checking in on, our partners; more than ever these partnerships matter. 

Meanwhile, the UCC nationally has been joining with other denominations, speaking out in one voice, through Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP). The most recent joint statement denounces the Biden Administration's “complicity in the deaths of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and the collective punishment against millions of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The U.S. must demand,” the statement continues, “that the Government of Israel stop the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people to prevent more death, destruction, and displacement.” 

In a statement issued just days earlier, CMEP "call[ed] for an immediate ceasefire, an end to all violence, and a rapid and substantial increase in the delivery of lifesaving aid to meet the urgent humanitarian needs of people in Gaza. CMEP call[ed] on Hamas to release all hostages and do no harm to those still remaining. CMEP also call[ed] on the international community and the United States to stop supporting further militarization and pursue every alternative means to protect all Israeli and Palestinian civilians.”

Being in solidarity with our Global Ministries partners, being faithful to those with whom we are in covenant, requires us to engage in advocacy. The CMEP statements are important articulations of advocacy, but alone, they are not enough, necessary but not sufficient. More is needed, and that more is for all of us, as individuals and as congregations, to be fierce advocates for justice. This is a Kairos time; the need is now for standing up, crying out, specifically demanding an immediate ceasefire. One efficient way to communicate with your elected officials is through the Global Ministries' Third Thursday Alert. Do that, but do more. Be in the streets, join JVP protests as an ally, hold vigils, organize a public reading of the names of those killed, engage in civil disobedience. We must act, now. This is quite simply a matter of life and death.