Editor’s Note: Bishop Andrew Asbil of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto led a Canadian group on a pilgrimage with the Friends of Sabeel Liberation Theology Centre in East Jerusalem in late November. The Friends of Sabeel is an international and ecumenical response to the call of Palestinian Christians for solidarity.  “Happening Now in Palestine” gathers daily reflections by some members of the group – “stories, moments and insights that invite us to listen, learn and pray alongside those who travelled.”

The Rev. Dr. Christopher Brittain, Dean of Divinity at Trinity College in Toronto, was appointed in 2025 as Canon Theologian for the Anglican Diocese in Ottawa. After taking part in the pilgrimage, he shared this reflection, and he and the diocese graciously granted Perspective permission to reprint it.

The entire series can be accessed on the Anglican Diocese of Toronto website: https://www.toronto.anglican.ca/happening-now-in-palestine/

The first full day of the [Toronto] diocesan delegation’s visit to the Holy Land began, fittingly, on the Mount of Olives, where we visited the Princess Basma Centre for Disabled Children. Run by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, this amazing institution is dedicated to treating Palestinian children with disabilities. It also works intentionally to teach and empower parents to understand and better support such children. I was deeply moved and inspired by the experience.

“Basma” means “smile” in Arabic, and this facility was full of displays of joy: smiling children, smiling hospital staff and teachers, and smiling parents. While there, the delegation watched a video of a satellite program in Gaza that is run by the centre. In a small cardboard hut, a nurse and a therapist treat children with various disabilities in the context of what continues to be a war zone.

Watching this video, and hearing stories of how difficult it was for Palestinians living in the West Bank to access this care facility due to being denied the necessary entry pass for Jerusalem or due to checkpoints being closed, brought to my mind these words from the prophet Isaiah: “The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain” (Isaiah 11:8). The Princess Basma Centre offers one example of this image being lived out faithfully in a perilous context.

Later that afternoon, we travelled to West Jerusalem to meet with the biblical scholar and Jesuit priest David Neuhaus. Born in South Africa to a Jewish family, at the age of 15 Dr. Neuhaus was sent by his parents to a school in Jerusalem. He told us that, upon arrival, he saw that apartheid South Africa and Israeli society shared much in the way that significant portions of the population were treated as second-class citizens. Despite this impression, he became so attached to the region that he made it his home. After converting to Christianity and joining the Jesuits, he eventually settled at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem.

Our conversation with Dr. Neuhaus was challenging—not only due to his blunt description of the injustices imposed on Palestinians, but also because he highlighted ways Christianity is sometimes used to reinforce such acts. More than one of us sat up straight when he declared, “The Bible can be vicious poison.” His point was to emphasize the ways in which scripture is frequently used in narrow and self-serving ways to justify injustice and violence. His concern was particularly with how the Bible is employed as a weapon by some in the State of Israel to justify the displacement of Palestinians from their land.

Yet, even as Dr. Neuhaus criticized the treatment of Palestinians by the State of Israel and by the aggressive settler movement in the West Bank, he also acknowledged that “anti-Semitism is real.” That this terrible reality continues to fuel the crisis situation in Palestine is tragically poignant in the wake of the news of the [Dec. 14] attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Australia.

When asked where he sees signs of hope, Dr. Neuhaus soberly suggested there were few positive signs for the future in the Holy Land. Instead, he finds encouragement by looking to the past: “It’s not always been like this.” He reminded us that until around 1936, Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land lived as neighbours and in peace. Remembering that the present conflicts and atrocities don’t define what is possible in Palestine and Israel, he suggested, can nurture a prophetic imagination.

These words echoed what one of the leaders of Sabeel, the organization hosting our visit, shared with us. He suggested that faith in the empty tomb is not something that encourages us to pray, “Lord, Lord, great are my problems!” Instead, we are called to pray, “Problems, problems, great is our God.”

Although this was only the delegation’s first day of encountering the struggles of Palestinians in the region, it was already clear to everyone in our group that we were going to be deeply impacted by what we were witnessing. Later that evening, this realization began to sink in as we were walking through the Christian Quarter of the Old City. Some in the group decided to get a small tattoo on their arm to mark this profound moment in our lives. Whether it was visible or not, we had already recognized that this trip was going to change us permanently.

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River Through the Desert was first developed by Dean Richard Sewell and the staff at the college during the pandemic when travel was restricted and is now being re-issued for this Lent when the situation in Israel-Palestine is still uncertain. The six-week study of readings, reflections and videos was intended to provide a taste of the beauty, wonder and inspiration of the Holy Land. The videos take viewers to the sites of some of the most significant moments in Jesus’s life with reflections from Dean Sewell.

It is available on the diocesan website as a free resource. Donations to the Canadian Campaign for St. George’s College Jerusalem will be gratefully received.

Related story: 

Archbishop, dean share views from Jerusalem in online fundraiser for St. George’s College

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On a personal level, the partnership also opened the door to a strong friendship that has grown between Archbishop Hosam Naoum and Bishop Shane Parker over the years. At Christmas, that friendship brought another special visitor from East Jerusalem to Ottawa.

Tareq Qirreh is an 18-year-old student who came to the University of Toronto in the fall to begin a science degree as the first part of his plan to go to medical school, specializing in immunology or neuroscience.

Tareq was a student at St. George’s School (adjacent to the college) from kindergarten until he finished high school. In his last year, he was the Secretary General of the school’s model/simulation of the United Nations. When Archbishop Hosam learned that he had applied and been awarded a scholarship to study at the University of Toronto, so far away from his family, he asked Bishop Shane to offer support to him. The bishop met Tareq in Toronto in the fall and invited him to spend the Christmas holidays with his family in Ottawa.

Tareq graciously agreed to a conversation with Crosstalk to share a bit more about what life is like for Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem these days.

How is your family doing back home?

“They’re doing fine, but I miss them. Sometimes it’s really hard. When Iran was bombing East Jerusalem and all of these places, it really felt bad not to be there with my family.

Were you worried for them?

“Not really that worried because we are kind of accustomed to it, but when you are away you feel that you kind of left them and they are experiencing that.”

Do you have brothers or sisters?

I have one brother and two sisters. I am the second youngest. My younger sister is three years younger than me; she’s still in high school. My other sister, she’s studying law, and she’s two years older than me, and my brother is four years older than me.

How did you decide to apply to Canadian universities?

“I was looking for places that can give me a certain type of education in life sciences. … Israeli universities don’t have … immunology as an undergraduate program and not neuroscience. They have really general programs, and I wanted something to be more specific and more rigorous, and I only found that in North America.”

Is your scholarship for all four years of your degree?

Yes, but it only covers about 60% [of the very high tuition for international students].

What is it like to be a Palestinian Christian in East Jerusalem?

I have lots of bad experiences in terms of discrimination. It feels that you always have to prove yourself more than other people would prove themselves just for the same treatment, just because your identity is holding you back. Not only as a Palestinian, but also as a Christian. Lots of people in Canada don’t know that. Christianity is the prevalent religion here, but actually, we’re a small minority in Palestine.

Has discrimination increased since the war started?

Generally, on an average day you will not really encounter that much discrimination, but sometimes things just happen. [One day last year] I saw three policemen. I was going to take a governmental exam, something really significant in … our curriculum, if you fail it you have to repeat the whole year. They stopped me and they asked me, ‘Are you a terrorist? … Mukharrib it literally maybe translates to destroyer. …One of them pushed me to the ground. The other one told me to stand up and then pinned me to the wall and he raised his gun as to intimidate me….One of them cursed me in Arabic, he cursed all Arabs…. I told them I have a test. They held me for 30 minutes and then they let me go take the exam. I had only five minutes, I was running to the school….

After that, whenever I saw a policeman, I would just go the other way…. When I thought about it recently, I thought why is it that a Palestinian Christian has to worry more about the policemen rather than the contents of a hard exam?

“Even at the airport, if you’re a Palestinian. I don’t have, for example, an Israeli passport, despite being born in Israel technically. I have a Jordanian travel document, and I have an Israeli travel document. When you go to the airport, they just hold you for longer, and they do all of the scanning and all of the stuff that they would do for people who hide drugs and stuff like that.

So, you aren’t an Israeli citizen?

I am a permanent resident.

Even though you were born there?

“Yeah, and my parents were born there. My parents’ parents were born there. I know that, for example, my mother’s family, they live in the old city. They’ve always lived there.”

How are you finding your time in Canada so far?

“It’s really cool. People are so hospitable. My friends from back home, they kind of scared me. I took it with a grain of salt, but they told me when you study abroad you’re going to be discriminated against in some sense because you’re Palestinian. But I’ve never experienced that in Canada. Actually, when I first came here and I went to the University of Toronto Scarborough, it’s a big campus, so I was lost. I asked a guy [for directions]. He asked where I’m from. I told him. I was reluctant but I just said it anyway. Then I just saw a big smile on his face, and from that moment I just knew I was welcome in Canada.”

Aside from this trip to Ottawa, have you had a chance to see and do different things in Canada?

“I really studied extremely hard the first semester, but we went to downtown Toronto a lot, me and my friends, and just that I love how diverse it is. You can try any cuisine you want.”

Bishop Shane has established a fund to assist Tareq Qirreh. Please contact the Bishop’s Office if you wish to help out.

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The archbishop said the diocese of Jerusalem, which also includes Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, is bleeding.

The suffering of Palestinian Christians was at the heart of a joint letter the archbishop issued with Archbishop Justin Welby, who followed through with a planned pilgrimage before he steps down as Archbishop of Canterbury in January. An excerpt is below. In his Charge, Bishop Shane encouraged everyone to “pray, donate and reach out to individuals and agencies who are either struggling or serving to alleviate the effects of obscene violence in the land of the Holy One. PWRDF, UNICEF and Canadian Red Cross … seek to bring relief to those who are suffering.” He relayed Archbishop Hosam’s plea to pray fervently for peace, justice, and reconciliation for all Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the land where Jesus walked.

“The current war continues to be a huge struggle for many of us, for our ministry and our people, so thank you again for allowing me to share this with you and very much for being such wonderful friends. May God bless you all,” Archbishop Hosam said in his video message.

Bishop Shane has been asked to serve on the North American Committee for St. George’s College, Jerusalem and to chair a Canadian campaign to raise $250,000 across the country to pay the Palestinian staff of the college.

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From our Bishop: An appeal from our partners in Jerusalem 

Archbishops launch Advent appeal for the Diocese of Jerusalem

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The College is an integral part of the ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem. It is nestled within the bustling St. George’s Cathedral Close, alongside the diocesan Cathedral, guest house, administrative offices and episcopal residence—and beside St. George’s School for children from kindergarten age to high school.

I first took a course at St George’s College Jerusalem in 2004—my first visit to Israel and Palestine. That was also when I met Archbishop Hosam Naoum, who was then the Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Nablus on the West Bank. I quickly discovered that the College provides a unique gateway to the Land of the Holy One and those who live there.

The College’s staff offer skilled guidance and information to enable pilgrims to see, feel, and understand the biblical and contemporary richness of the land and the Christians, Jews, and Muslims who live there. The College is wholly committed to building awareness and reconciliation through pilgrimage, education, and dialogue.

The College normally draws dozens of pilgrims from across the Anglican Communion to the Land of the Holy One each year, and many local Christians—a tiny and threatened minority—provide services and goods to pilgrims. Everyone benefits when pilgrims are on the land.

The warfare that has intensified in the Middle East since October 2023 has had a devastating impact on the ministry of the Diocese of Jerusalem. Archbishop Hosam Naoum has said “my diocese is bleeding at this time” and he has appealed to Anglicans from around the world to offer prayers and practical support.

Violence and uncertainty have created a major crisis for St. George’s College. While the College has strived to adapt with creativity and resilience, producing videos for virtual pilgrimages, developing curricula, and maintaining the facility, the situation is dire for the staff and their families.

The $2 million annual budget of the College is primarily supported through earned revenue from pilgrims’ fees, gift shop sales, and other lodging fees. This revenue stream has been totally disrupted. It is highly unlikely that pilgrimages will resume in 2025, and there are insufficient funds to provide regular salaries for the College’s staff and essential operations.  While many of the Diocese of Jerusalem’s health and educational institutions have regular streams of revenue from donor networks, the College does not.

The North American Committee for St. George’s College Jerusalem provided some emergency funding in 2024, and is now appealing to all Anglicans and friends of the College to help provide essential support in 2025. I have been asked, as a member of the Committee, to chair a fundraising drive called Let Light Shine: The Canadian Campaign for St. George’s College Jerusalem.

The campaign will run until April 2025, and the objective is to raise $250,000 from Canadians who care about our sisters and brothers in the Diocese of Jerusalem. This amount will cover the now-reduced salaries of remaining staff at St. George’s College in 2025.

This campaign is very much part of our Diocese of Ottawa’s long partnership with the Diocese of Jerusalem. I maintain close contact with Archbishop Hosam and with the College’s Dean, the Very Reverend Canon Richard Sewell, who spoke at our Synod in 2023. They are deeply dedicated and committed to the College as a vital ministry of their diocese. Please join me in solidarity with them to help St. George’s College Jerusalem in its time of need.

We are asking all our friends around the world to come together to help St. George’s College and to walk with us during these dark times of war and distress. We ask you to be companions on the way so that we may continue to work and serve Christ in the ministry of pilgrimage and love and light. We thank all our friends and partners who have come through the doors of St. George’s College and for those who will come in the future. We ask you to join hands with us and to be so generous so that we can continue to celebrate St. George’s College as a beacon of life and love in Jerusalem and from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.

The Most Reverend Hosam Naoum, Archbishop of Jerusalem and The Middle East

Learn more www.StGeorgesCollegeJerusalemNAC.org/canada

Donate now: www.CanadaHelps.org/en/dn/124044

The post An appeal from our partners in Jerusalem appeared first on Perspective.

I am now living through my second Advent season in a time and place of war. Last year, following the explosion of violence on October 7, came the onslaught of Israel’s forces raining down hellfire upon the people of Gaza. None of us could have imagined that 12 months later, almost half the hostages would remain in captivity, dead or alive, and that in excess of 44 000 people would have died in Gaza. Not only that, but our fears of a spreading conflict has indeed come to pass. Lebanon has also experienced something of the decimation of lives and infrastructure which has continued in Gaza virtually unbroken for fourteen months. Israel’s citizens feel that they are in a time of extreme jeopardy while Palestinians and Lebanese are dying in their thousands.

How on earth do we contemplate the season of Advent and onwards into Christmas when our hearts are so weighed down by death, destruction and fear? It might be a relief to know that the traditional themes of Advent, far from avoiding the tough issues, take us directly into the heart of them. Before the cosier, modern Advent themes of hope, peace, joy and love were introduced, Christians were prevailed upon to contemplate the ‘Four Last Things: death, judgement, heaven and hell.’  That much better reflects the present reality in the Holy Land. Obviously, I’m not going to do-down love, joy, peace and hope, but the problem is the prevailing sentimentality of Christmas also bleeds into Advent. The four modern themes are important but in the present context, the traditional themes are probably ones that will resonate with people enduring the horrors of war. When the times are especially hard, our theology must be robust enough to deal with deep questions which arise from the dark heart of human nature.

When sharing my experience of living in Jerusalem over this past year of a brutal war, in which civilian deaths and deaths of women and children are continuing at horrendous levels every day, the question of where to find hope is the most persistent question. No Christian can hold on to their faith and abandon hope, but it is concerning when people rush to the comfort blanket of hope before truly taking in the awful reality of the suffering which is being endured in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon (and elsewhere, of course). Hope cannot simply be a synonym for optimism. Christian theology asserts that hope is eschatological. In other words, a belief in the victory of light over dark and life over death has to be seen in the context of the ultimate horizon. While we struggle for justice and peace in this world, in our own time, the reconciling of all things will not be fully known until the Second Coming of Christ and the Final Judgement takes place.

The Collect for the first Sunday of Advent invites worshippers to engage with the Advent of Christ who ‘came to us in great humility’ and also to consider he who ‘shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead.’ While wisdom requires that I must fear the judgement of Christ myself, I find myself yearning for the loving and just judgement of the returning Messiah to bring divine order to the human chaos and destruction which is running amok and covered 24 hours a day on Al Jazeera. In order to contemplate hell, all that is needed is to watch the terrifying events in Gaza. One might argue that if hell is before our eyes, what need is there to bring it to mind in worship or in our spiritual reflections? In my view, it brings all of it into the orbit of God’s love and grace which ultimately redeem and reconcile all of this.

In the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri explicates the nine circles of hell and the wicked, violent and corrupt who languish there before passing through purgatory and potentially onwards towards all the beauty of paradise. There, the encapsulating vision of eternal light and beauty entrances the poet. And he sees at the very centre of all the circles of creation is the ‘Love that moves the sun and all the other stars.’ This suggests that God’s love is the universe’s gravitational force. I did contemplate that part of my Advent reflections might be to consider who I want to place in the various circles of hell in the spirit of Dante but in the end, I decided that might not be elevating. Better to move from the Four Last Things to the Incarnation.

Every time I do my Old City run, as I take the road through the Kidron Valley, my eye is drawn to the magnificent mosaic on the west front of the Church of the Agony, in the Garden of Gethsemane. It depicts Jesus, kneeling beneath an image of God the Father, pleading to the Father for graceful judgement. To Jesus’s left, the poor and humble look to Christ with confidence. To his right, the rich and powerful ones look down, with shame. In the Valley of Judgement, we are reminded that Jesus’s Second Coming is for the Reckoning; we would all do well to beware and prepare.

As Advent proceeds seamlessly into Christmas, we are reminded that the Christ of Judgement is the same babe of Bethlehem over whom we coo and sentimentalise. This Advent, I am more aware than ever before of T S Eliot’s sober observation in the mouth of a journeying Magi,

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different;

This birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

Christmas in a time of war will be infused with the focused reality of Advent’s traditional themes. In Israel and Palestine, which we can still just about manage to call the Holy Land, our celebrations are set in the context of the hell that is Gaza and images of death are never far from mind. Christ’s judgement of humanity is not some distant concept best kept to the theological wings but stands centre-stage in the void that is the world’s indifference in the face of horrors committed without restraint provoking little condemnation. But the image of heaven must ultimately prevail because the incarnation is God’s fulfilment of the promise that Light comes into the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it.

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Restrictions on aid delivery and movement of people in Gaza have caused shortages of essential supplies, including food and medical care. Poor sanitary conditions have led to disease outbreaks, which have been increasing the need for medical services and straining medical staff. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, an estimated 40,000 Palestinians have died and 1.9 million have been displaced.

With this ongoing violence, displacement, supply shortages, and loss of livelihoods affecting communities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the Diocese of Jerusalem (which encompasses all of Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon) identified five of its pre-existing ministries that were well positioned to make a difference. In addition to supporting health services at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, this project also enabled people in the West Bank to access healthcare at St. Luke’s Hospital in Nablus and Penman Clinic in Jenin, along with maintaining access to school for children at the National Kindergarten in Nablus and St. George’s School in East Jerusalem.

The project supported 1,502 at-risk families and successfully reduced mortality rates through early detection and intervention and provided quality education for 125 children.

Support of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza has made it possible for medical staff to provide critical care to those in need. The Diocese of Jerusalem shares the story of Ahmed, 35, one of the many patients who was injured during an Israel Defence Force military operation in Gaza. Ahmed underwent urgent surgery at Al-Ahli Hospital, where the medical team made every effort to save his leg. Thanks to their expertise and dedication, the operation was a success, and Ahmed received the necessary physical therapy to recover. The hospital provided all treatment and care, free of charge.

Yaser, a father of five, struggled to provide for his family after losing his job due to the war. When his youngest son, Saed, fell ill with a severe respiratory condition, the family turned to St. Luke’s Hospital. The hospital provided Saed with necessary treatment, including medication and respiratory therapy, at no cost. Saed recovered, and Yaser, grateful for the hospital’s care, offered his time and skills to help with repairs and maintenance of the hospital building.

The National Kindergarten in Nablus provides early childhood education and care to local families. Despite the challenges posed by the war, the kindergarten has continued to operate, offering a safe environment for young children. Recently, the kindergarten welcomed Mustafa and Malak, four-year-old twins who needed a supportive and stimulating environment. With the help of the kindergarten, the twins have begun to thrive, and their family has expressed gratitude for the support and care they have received during this time.

Besides supporting the Diocese of Jerusalem, PWRDF has allocated $100,000 from its equity in the Canadian Foodgrains Bank to a food assistance project in Gaza, led by the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). This project is a result of the Humanitarian Coalition’s fundraising campaign in the fall of 2023 and has already begun distributing essential food packages to those in need.

How you can help
Please continue to pray for the people affected by this conflict. You can also donate to PWRDF’s Gaza and West Bank Emergency Appeal found on our Give Today page. You can also donate by phone at 416-822-9083 (or leave a message toll-free at 1-866-308-7973 and PWRDF staff will return your call) or by mail. Send your cheque to PWRDF, 80 Hayden Street, 3rd Floor, Toronto, ON, Canada, M4Y 3G2. Please indicate “Gaza and West Bank” in the memo field.

 Photo and article courtesy of PWRDF.

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In the morning, more than 150 people gathered at Minto Park where United Church minister the Rev. Theresa Burnett-Cole of Glebe-St James offered a prayer. After a land acknowledgement, those gathered were invited to follow the Indigenous participants, Palestinians and leaders from the Anglican, Lutheran, Mennonite, Antiochian Orthodox, Presbyterian and United churches as they walked up Elgin Street toward Parliament Hill.

The Gaza Ceasefire Pilgrimage is an international initiative that encourages people to walk the length of Gaza, about 41 kilometres, in prayerful solidarity with people there who are trapped in catastrophic conditions of war and famine. KAIROS staff reported that 150 Christian congregations have participated in Gaza Ceasefire Pilgrimages across Canada, collectively walking about 10,000 kilometres. Those walking to the vigil in Ottawa carried banners, kites, peace doves and photos of groups from across Canada who had participated in pilgrimages.

Vigil at Parliament Hill

When they arrived at Parliament Hill, Leah Reesor-Keller, interim executive director of KAIROS Canada, moderated the vigil.

The first speaker was Rula Odeh, chair of the board of Canadian Friends of Sabeel and a Canadian-Palestinian Christian. “Palestinian Christians have been a continuous presence in the Holy Land for over 2000 years, and we as Christians and churches cannot give up on our brothers and sisters from the cradle of Christianity,” she said. “They need us to amplify their voice in our churches and ecumenical initiatives. They need us to be there for them with bolder, stronger and faster actions.” Later in the vigil, some of her family members led the crowd in singing the hymn ’Dona Nobis Pacem,’ which Odeh explained was a favourite song of her 90-year-old Anglican father who was displaced from his home in 1948.

Bishop Andrew Asbil of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto represented the Anglican Church of Canada, reading a statement from Archbishop Linda Nicholls, who was unable to attend. ”My heart breaks with the pain of the unrelenting tragedies unfolding across the land of the Holy One as no end is yet in sight,” she wrote. “The bombardment of Gaza and the destruction of Hamas will not bring peace. The attacks on Israeli settlements will not bring peace.” She echoed what Pope Francis said in a recent meeting with Anglican archbishops. “Wars are always, always, always defeat.”

“The initial horror of the attack on Oct. 7 has been added to by the unceasing attacks on Gaza that have killed so many women and children, given licence to increased violence in the West Bank and utterly destroyed the infrastructure of Gaza. Listening to the news every morning—the rising death tool, the agony of families of hostages, the attacks on hospitals leaving little or no medical aid, the deaths of humanitarian workers, and the inability to find ways to bring humanitarian aid to those most in need leaves us in a permanent state of keening lament at human evil.”

Perhaps looking ahead to the church leaders’ meetings with government officials later that day, she added, “We must demand more from our government to do what it can to add its voice to that of international bodies for justice and peace, and to use its economic and political influence wherever possible. To do nothing is to be complicit.”

Thanking all who gathered that day, she concluded her letter: “The Anglican Church of Canada stands with all who are seeking an end to the violence, a permanent ceasefire, immediate provision of humanitarian aid, an end to all exports of arms to Israel and intermediaries, the release of all hostages, and a return to discussions that will lead to justice, recognizing the continuing need to address the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and the need for peace that will lead to the thriving all who live in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.”

The Rev. Ian Ross-McDonald, general secretary of the Presbyterian Church’s Life and Mission Agency, had just returned with United Church clergy from a week of meetings with Palestinian Christians, church leaders, NGOs, United Nations agencies in the occupied territories of Palestine. “The people we met desperately want peace, and they look for ways that Palestinians and Israelis can live together in the land,” he said.

“Palestinians also told us that they feel abandoned,” he said. “After 76 years of isolation, hardship and betrayal, and the incremental loss of culture, communities, and lives, now we are witnessing the wholesale destruction, not just of the infrastructure, but of the population of Gaza, by trauma, transfer out of the area, and killing. Indiscriminate bombing, no warnings given to civilians before attacks, food and other aid is blocked from entering the area, and people are constantly forced to move…. Repeatedly, we heard that Palestinians described the ways that they are being treated as dehumanized.”

And he relayed their difficult questions. “’Where is the Church? Where is the Church’s courage and integrity?’ they asked, “Why is there little more than silence from so many of the Church’s pulpits and public platforms?”

Ross-McDonald said the people they met repeatedly asked the Church to name honestly and accurately the unvarnished reality of what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank. “Naming things as they are is difficult and uncomfortable work for the Church, but people of faith have the resources, they have the moral responsibility, and the holy vocation to do exactly that. … Palestinian Christians would have the church engage in risky truth-telling, meaningful advocacy, and prophetic action and decisions. Or as the words in the Lutheran Church at Bethlehem put it, they’re asking the churches to proclaim the gospel of liberation and to lift up a culture of life and of hope.”

After the vigil, those in attendance were invited back to St John the Evangelist for refreshments and to watch the livestream of the press conference at Parliament, which included Bishop Andrew Asbil; the Rev. Dr. J Dorcas Gordon, principal emerita of Knox College of the Presbyterian Church; the Rev. Susan Johnson, national bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada; the Rev. Douglas Klassen, executive minister of the Mennonite Church, Canada; the Rt. Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne, moderator of the United Church of Canada; and Leah Reesor-Keller of KAIROS.

View from Jewish Federation of Ottawa

When contacted by Perspective, Jodi Green, spokesperson for the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, said that the Jewish community in Ottawa also wants to see an enduring peace in the Middle East. She cautioned that any calls for action need to be bilateral and anything that “leans towards Israel having to take actions that are not bilateral from the Palestinian side as well threatens the democracy and the safety and the security of Israelis.”

Green noted that any time there is conflict in the Middle East, there is a rise in antisemitism and hate crimes locally, and there has been a dramatic spike in crimes reported since October 2023. There was a bomb threat against a Jewish day school in November. As anecdotal examples of the hate experienced by individuals, Green said someone made a swastika in the snow at her home this winter, and a Grade 7 student in her synagogue’s youth group has been regularly taunted and called a Nazi Zionist at her school. People feel very unsafe and most Jewish institutions have increased security measures this year, Green said.

Advocacy efforts

Andrea Mann, director of global relations for the Anglican Church of Canada, was among the group of church leaders from the Anglican, Evangelical Lutheran, Society of Friends, Mennonite. Presbyterian and United churches who, along with staff from Kairos Canada, met with 10 MPs (Liberal, Conservative, NDP and Green), including three parliamentary secretaries and members of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. Their goal was to communicate the calls from the Gaza pilgrimage directly to the parliamentarians.

She reported that there was a consensus among all those they met with that steps toward a sustained ceasefire and effective humanitarian aid are urgently needed now. There was also agreement that Canada has a role to play in working “toward just peace as a middle leader among states globally and a historic supporter of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court and a defender of international law and international human rights.”

The church leaders affirmed the government’s resumption and increase of funding to UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.

There was an acknowledgment that the Palestinian reunification program hasn’t worked well yet and needs to be reworked if it is to be effective in helping members of Palestinian Canadians’ families come to Canada. Mann said that it is also important to note that many people in Gaza would prefer to stay in the region because they want to return to Gaza.

Church leaders also heard that the situation and experience of Palestinian Christians in Gaza, and the West Bank, and Israel are not well-known or reported in secular media, so “more information is needed about the context and needs of this very small faith minority in the midst of this situation.”

The church leaders also heard repeatedly that in the hyper-partisan situation on Parliament Hill, sustained pressure upon the government is needed to keep moving the needle. The leaders were encouraged to keep up their efforts and to remind people in their churches to go to their MPs’ offices as constituents and make their desires known for Canada’s role.

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