Steve France, a PJN representative at the Summit, wrote this report for PJN on the Go, published May 14, 2026: “I can say that this was the most energized and inspiring [Washington] Summit that I have experienced during my time at CMEP,” Kyle Cristafalo, director of advocacy and government relations of Churches for Middle East Peace, said the day after its Joint Christian Advocacy Summit in Washington concluded.

Attendance at the May 5-7 annual gathering doubled its previous levels, Cristafalo said, estimating “about 300 attendees,” with 15 exhibitor tables, and participation of at least 35 denominations and sponsoring organizations. This compared to a norm of 100-125 attendees in years past. He attributed the jump to CMEP’s move to organize jointly with other Christian groups for the first time, which “allowed cosponsoring groups to feel more ownership over the event and encouraged increased participation within their respective communions.” 

The Summit culminated in a day of attendees lobbying their respective state congressional members from at least 28 states and DC, along with a lively final demonstration in front of the Cannon House Office Building that overflowed to the point that the police ordered participants to disperse on pain of potential arrest.

Notably, the assembled Christians were particularly inspired by the conversation between commentator and author Peter Beinart – an observant Jew who is beloved of the Palestine solidarity movement for calling out Israel’s apartheid and genocide — and Mohsen Mahdawi, a practicing Buddhist Palestinian student leader of the Columbia University protest movement, where he worked with Jewish groups to create a reconciliation outreach to critics of the Palestinian cause.

With CMEP executive director Mae Elise Cannon moderating their encounter, each told his story. Mahdawi described growing up in the Far’a refugee camp near Jenin in the West Bank, enduring severe structural and physical Israeli violence and living into the generational Palestinian struggle for justice. Beinart, raised in a strongly Zionist family, told of his gradual awakening and disillusionment as he discovered the abyss of Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israel. The key objective for both men was the same but from opposite sides of the confrontation: to center Palestinian voices. Only by hearing their voices will the dehumanization of Palestinians be overcome.

As PJN member Cliff Cutler of Grace Church, Salem, Mass., explained, “Mahdawi declared humanity is foremost. Trauma needs a safe place to tell one’s story and a community to hold it.”Both Cutler and Leila Richards, a Pittsburgh Presbyterian, were struck by Beinart’s observation that the Jewish narrative following the October 7 Gaza incursion was “Jews are the world’s eternal victims, and this is just the latest example,” even comparing it to the Nazi holocaust. A more apt comparison, Beinart said, is to native American attacks in response to massive U.S. encroachment on their lands.

A dramatic example of U.S. governmental silencing of Palestinians occurred just after Mahdawi addressed the Summit, as he was informed that the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals had reinstated deportation proceedings against him. His response was, “The government is trying to punish me because it opposes my peaceful advocacy for human dignity and equal rights for Palestinians. But I remain unafraid and faithful that justice will prevail in America and in Palestine.”

PJN member Melissa Yarbray of St. Margaret’s Church in Palm Desert, Calif., said the impact of centering Palestinian voices “came alive for our nine-person lobby team in a meeting with staff of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA). His staffer seemed bored as we began to present. But he quickly leaned in to listen when one of our Palestinian members personally asked for help getting urgently needed aid, and medical access to his people and an end to the bombs.”

In an entertaining performance to prepare attendees for their congressional visits, two expert lobbyists of the solidarity movement brought audience members on stage to gamely role-play opposite the two veterans posing as jaded legislative staffers: Josh Paul, who famously quit his high-level State Department post in protest in October 2023 and lobbies continuously on Palestine-related issues for A New Policy, the NGO which he afterward co-founded, and Hassan El-Tayyab, the multi-talented Legislative Representative for Middle East Policy of the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

Yarbray, who is California coordinator for CMEP, stressed that “being with so many denominations, and clergy and religious leaders was exciting. Hearing about their challenges and struggles with issues we confront gave us perspective and encouragement. It was powerful to hear the problems and struggles many clergy experience in advocating for Palestinian justice in their congregations.” Cutler highlighted the close collaboration of PJN with its Lutheran counterparts, the U.S. Lutheran Palestine Israel Justice Network (US-LPIJN), as they shared an exhibitor table with information about both groups and the needs of Palestinian justice and peace. He counted eight Lutheran bishops in attendance, a fact that Episcopalians can only envy.

It seems likely that CMEP and friends will again team up together next year. Indeed, at a concluding prayer breakfast, they set a goal to draw more than 500 participants to Washington in 2027. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), joining virtually, solemnly endorsed the effort, telling the breakfasters to “go forth and multiply.”

The Rev. Cliff Cutler, EPF-PJN, has released this statement on 3/6/26: “Kairos Palestine II: A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide” is the subject of a joint Episcopal-Lutheran Justice Network Webinar to be held on Tuesday, March 17, at 7 p.m. Eastern time. To register and receive the Zoom invitation, please email: David Grafton at dgrafton@hartfordinternational.edu.

This second Kairos statement was released in November, 2025 at the 16th Annual Kairos Palestine Conference in Bethlehem. A Study Guide was developed by The Palestine Justice Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA), with United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR), and Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA). The March 17 Zoom session, lasting 90 minutes, will be hosted by the Episcopal Peace Fellowship – Palestine Justice Network and the US-Lutheran Palestine Israel Justice Network. Moderators are the Rev. Elizabeth G. Maxwell, Rector, Church of the Ascension, NYC (Episcopal); and the Rev. Mark B. Brown of the Admin Team of US-LPIJN (Lutheran). The Kairos Palestine II document speaks to “an age in which ‘might makes right’…This moment in human history demands a faith-based stance – one that speaks truth to power and tyranny without compromise or evasion.” – A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide – section 1, paragraph 23.

The Zoom learning session begins by hearing from two of the authors of Kairos Palestine II: Rafit Kassis, author, activist, and General Coordinator of Kairos Palestine, and the Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, author, theologian, and pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hope in Ramallah. Kassis tells why a second Kairos paper is necessary. The first had been written sixteen years ago in 2009. Then, there were wars in Gaza every few years but with negotiations in between. Violence was severe though the conflict was with limits, and a two-state solution was still imagined as viable. Now, one sees international law openly ignored, and genocidal war taking place without limits. Gaza has experienced near total destruction. Settler terrorism is rampant. Survival is at stake. A moral call from this catastrophe demanded a hearing. It is a document, Kassis says, “of moral urgency.”

Munther Isaac confides, “friends, let’s be honest.” This language of a two- sided conflict is a problem in most mainline churches. The Kairos II statement rejects the very concept of conflict, that there are two sides to the story. “The reality on the ground,” it says, “is rather tyranny and an oppressive regime of settler colonialism and apartheid.” Isaac opines, “If it’s a conflict, you can hide behind this language and pray for peace. But it’s not.” Name the genocide, he demands, concluding: “We renew our call for churches to stand in solidarity, to come and see… We call you to walk along side us. Come to Palestine, not as pilgrims, but as accompaniers. It’s time for costly solidarity.”

The second portion of the Webinar engages the Study Guide to Kairos II. Participants will be guided by the Reverend Melody Hession, assistant to the bishop for public policy in the Delaware-Maryland Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She will invite three participants to be readers of a conversation from “Readers’ Theater” in the study guide. Readers will use short scripts portraying various understandings about Israel and the Palestinians to help the audience begin to comprehend this pivotal moment of Palestinian truth-telling. The conversation ends with a prompt to encourage dialogue.

While the first two portions of the webinar will be recorded, this final time of dialogue, questions, and comment will not. Stopping the recording will free participants to speak their minds and raise the questions that are on their hearts. Liz Maxwell will moderate this final section of the webinar focusing on discussion.

The Webinar brings us face to face with the urgent call of Palestinian Christians in this time of existential threat. Though justice networks of the Lutheran and Episcopal churches bring you this webinar, all are invited to join. We struggle similarly to know and to hear and to act on the Palestinian story of apartheid and genocide. Again, to register and receive the Zoom invitation, please email: David Grafton at dgrafton@hartfordinternational.edu.

Kayla Robbins, 4 April 2024:  A week before Holy Week, a few friends and I traveled to Washington DC and went on hunger strike for a mere five days in solidarity with the people of Palestine, joining over 150 clergy and practitioners of a multiplicity of faith traditions around the country. We fasted and protested on Capitol Hill, at the White House, outside the Holocaust Memorial Museum, at the Israeli Embassy, and at the National Cathedral.  We spoke and prayed with the Episcopal Bishop of Washington and the chief military advisor of Sen. Jon Tester, the Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Committee in the Senate. Holy Eucharist was celebrated on Wednesday in front of the Israeli Embassy, a site of much horror and, quite recently, an act of singularly beautiful and devastating courage carried out by Airman Aaron Bushnell.  Finally, we broke our fast on Friday night with a new Muslim friend at a Palestinian restaurant in Falls Church, VA with much gratitude, joy, and renewed courage.

All week, we abstained from food, wrote, advocated, and prayed for the absolute and unequivocal liberation of the Palestinian people, as well as for the absolute and unequivocal freedom of the whole cosmos from the moral ugliness of empire, domination, and theft of land and life that curse our shared being together.  Of course, I experienced hunger and (especially) cold during those five days of my fast, but it is truly nothing compared to the forced starvation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children on the other side of the globe. In my oscillating periods of extreme fatigue and exceptional mental clarity, I had much time to think long and hard about what we were doing and what love demands of us still.  I reflected largely on violence: colonial, Israeli, American, mine, and yours.

As Eastertide is upon us, I continue to reflect upon a terrible mystery under which I have found myself grappling since Advent; namely, the brutality of violence that corrupts and destroys both its perpetrators and recipients alike. It’s the force with which men terrify women, with which adults bend low children, and with which the very rich exploit and crush the very poor. Jewish philosopher and mystic Simone Weil wrote of force as the mechanism by which a person is turned into a thing.  Most literally, it is force that converts a living, breathing being (subject) into a corpse (object), but force is also at play every time a person is treated as a means to an end – the victim’s desires, wellbeing, or humanity disregarded for the sake of another’s gain, pleasure, or mere convenience. The use of force is everywhere, all the time. It is on full display in all of its hideous monstrosity and murderous rage in Palestine now.

There is a kind of conservative “logic” that demands we not only accept but even enthusiastically embrace this brutal state as the way things inevitably are. As we protest, pray, and watch countless videos of bulldozed corpses, fathers screaming and carrying the remains of their children in plastic bags, and mainstream news media covering it all up here at home, it is easy to sink into a nihilistic disposition that concedes to force as the law of the cosmos. There is even a twisted sort of internal effort involved – “guts” if you will – in the capitulation to this worldview, hence its allegedly moral appeal. To this kind of “realist” it is, in fact, a Hobbesian universe in which the game is every man for himself, and the rules are endless brutality. Such a nihilist is the kind of person who insists upon the inherent moral virtue of taking cold showers in the morning simply because they are cold.

The left too has its own version of such remorseless, Puritan ideology which invokes “the way things really are” as justification for its claims. Beauty and pleasure from this perspective are but bourgeois preoccupations that numb us from the horrors of the world. To such a person, the way that things really are is also rather nasty, brutish, and short. This perspective, popularized by the second generation of neo-Marxists who survived the fascist gulags and concentration camps of the Second World War only to be confronted with the fascism of the free market of the latter twentieth century, equally affirms that the world is ontologically a violent place. It insinuates that to refuse to accept this perspective not only reveals a lack of intellectual and moral courage, but also perpetuates injustice (as if all we have to offer to the oppressed is our own severity, misery, and co-suffering). Yet, when our sin-sick and suffering world is viewed through radical “Easter Eyes”, such an essentialisation of force as fundamental to our human nature becomes not only morally untenable, but also incoherent and profoundly unreasonable.

The Holy Scriptures shout the goodness of all creation. We worship a creator who is Himself the Source of all Goodness. Therefore, if what He made was not good, it simply would not be. The connection between Goodness and Reality could not be plainer when one is attentive to the most basic creeds and doctrines of the Christian faith. It is precisely because humankind is so very good and, by virtue of its existence, infinitely lovable, that the veritable realities of force, violence, and injustice are in a sense, much less real than the originary goodness for which we were made. As Roman Catholic theologian James Allison writes, “The violence that was chronologically original (and seemed to us to be simply natural) is discovered to be logically secondary to an anterior self-giving and creative order.”

Perhaps it takes “guts” to look the horrible realities of human cruelty, indifference, and violence in Palestine and capitulate to our inability to stop it. But it takes faith and authentic, human courage to trust that the ground of capital R Reality pulses ever presently underneath it all; transforming, healing, and binding up that which has been rent apart by violence. If force is that which turns a subject into an object, a living person into a corpse, it is the Prince of Peace himself, through his own incarnation and resurrection that revives a sin-ridden corpse back to life by infusing it with his own flesh and blood. This is the meaning of Easter, of Christmas, and every day of the liturgical year from the beginning of time itself. Thus, to accept lower case realities of human depravity and suffering as the final word can be viewed as naught but despairing nihilism.

This brings us back to the Israeli State, which has egregiously violated all human dignity after nearly seven decades of theft of Palestinian land and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people. This Easter, I am compelled by the teachings of the Church and by my own conscience to believe that this genocidal regime will fall. I will not cease to pray, advocate, and hope in the waiting. Change is long, and hearts immobilized by the bitter ice of apathy and helplessness melt slow. Such hearts often must break. When a heart is bound to capital, to racism, to colonial propaganda, hopelessness, and broken agency, it freezes.  It loses the capacity to move the person to love justice, proclaim the truth with courage, and gaze upon the other with mercy. Yet what a mystery and a gift it is that our Savior is one who loves our hearts, melting them in the purgatorial fire of enduring and eternal Love. Hearts around the country are breaking for Palestine by the grace of God; day by day, resentment by resentment, and prejudice by prejudice. I myself will break my own heart every day until I die if that is the cost of binding it with the cords of faith to the Truth who is Christ Jesus. The people of Palestine are being wiped off the face of the earth by a murderous and genocidal regime. That is truth. The American government has remorselessly and pathologically abetted such murderous hatred. That is truth.

All empires will fade, and Christ is Lord. That is truth. May we never cease to proclaim this, body and soul, as long as we have breath in our lungs.

Harry Gunkel, 23 December 2023:

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Toys in every store…”

It is no profound observation that Christmas has become commodified and sanitized in our media-driven, possession-riddled world. That should probably not surprise us much because the essence of the Nativity is Incarnation – the divine becoming present amidst humankind – a Mystery of profound and cosmic consequences. No wonder we shy away from it and focus on the Who, When, and Where of the birth narrative, rather than the What. But with the current events in the Holy Land, Palestine and Israel, looking away will simply not do in 2023. If ever there was a time that begs us – compels us – to lean into the Mystery of Incarnation and try to make sense of it, this is it. Where can we find divine Incarnation in Gaza?

I recently saw this Advent message: “We are invited to journey with Joseph and Mary, considering their amazing calls to serve and how they responded in faith and obedience. We are invited to expect a great light and to find it lying in a manger.” Luke’s Gospel tells us that an Imperial decree required Mary and Joseph to go to Bethlehem to be “registered”. The circumstances of the nativity arose from a population transfer for the purpose of surveillance; there is no mention in the Gospel of faith or responding to any call other than imperial diktat. The “manger” scene has been so cleansed and pastoralized that its reality has been lost. Jesus’ birth most likely occurred in an underground space, cold, damp, dirty, infested with vermin, and co-habited by animals and their byproducts. Jesus’ birth was into hardship. The manger scene much closer to reality is the crèche this year at Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem with the Christ child nearly completely buried in rubble, the Christmas of 2023 in Gaza.

And where is the “great light” to be found in Gaza this year where families are living in darkness and in wreckage without electricity? Of course, the Advent message referred to spiritual light, but Incarnation is not a magic spell or sparkly dust that can be dispersed to sanctify the world. Surely it is something in the flesh, something lived and experienced. I do not know where to find that in Gaza, and I will not insult the people of Palestine or belittle their incalculable suffering by claiming for them that Incarnation must be in their hope, in their faith, or in their resilience. I imagine people in Gaza now are experiencing lots of things: fear, sickness, hunger, grief, and anger. At this moment, it is difficult for me to imagine much hope in that mix. My friend Kareem in Gaza recently wrote, “reading about genocide is different than living it. I lost hope in humanity”. The people of Gaza, those still alive, have been made homeless, then told to move to the very edge of their land, and then further still (to where?!) if they want to avoid bombing. Asking them for resilience in the face of such monstrous crimes seems yet another cruelty. I will not tailor a spirituality for the people of Gaza that suits my needs and not theirs.

I wonder where the Incarnation is this year in the White House, in the U.S. Congress, in London, Berlin and Brussels where world leaders are enabling, weaponizing, and funding Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing; or in the corridors of the New York Times, CNN, and BBC who are cheerleading for it? How is the story of the Nativity heard in those places, as a call for more power and militarism, more wealth, more land, more domination? Where do leaders and influencers see themselves in the nativity narrative, as the Christ child or as the imperialist? Is their Christmas story one of peace or of Empire?

Many will say, “God is with the people of Gaza in their pain.” I hope that is true, I want it to be true and for it to bring solace, but I’m not really sure what it means. Does it make their pain less? If it were me, I’d wonder, if God is with me in my pain, why can’t God stop this happening? But I hope that there is comfort and that that comfort will endure because this isn’t over yet. I hope God will be with them as more people die and when they are forced onto strange new lands, becoming refugees again, some for the third time. I hope there will be comfort when their former lands and homes in the Gaza Strip are turned into one of the world’s largest military bases or when colonists are settled there in the newly created land without people so they can make it bloom.

Maybe I’m looking at it in the wrong way. Maybe Incarnation won’t be found in large, global peace movements or in conversion of governments into instruments of good. Maybe the Divine will be found this season in Gaza in the love that is keeping families together in the dark as they share what little there is to eat, in their helping each other as they trek in search of safety, as they join their neighbors to dig through the rubble, or as they give thanks for one more day together. Maybe that’s the only thing left to them that is life-affirming and can’t be taken away. And isn’t that redolent of many people who Jesus encountered in his ministry?

Maybe it is also in the love that those of us out here in the world are sending their way, willing them to feel our support as we attend rallies, write and tell the truth about them, and wear our keffiyehs. Maybe our Christmas this year will not be in the hymns or candles or gifts, but in our support for each other in our own fear and grief and rage, in our lost jobs and lost friends, and in our constant anxiety wondering who of our friends is still alive.

The circumstances of the Nativity were messy and overlaid with politics, and for 2000 years we have insisted on making it silent, tranquil, pastoral, and bathed in a golden light. Jesus was not born a prince; he was not born into the aristocracy or halls of power. He was, in the vernacular, born on the wrong side of the tracks among a people who lived under the boot of empire. He ended up executed by that empire for his dissidence. Many of us have lost track of that story, caught up in a Church and its hierarchy, canons, and rubrics, or preoccupied with myths of nationalism or ecumenical guilt. Have we traded the abundant theology of the Divine among us for theologies of scarcity and borders?

Christmas is in Gaza this year, one of the places least festive, least joyous in the world. We will find Christmas there because its suffering is where Jesus points us throughout his life and ministry, because it is a place where we can go to do justice and right.

My favorite Christmas song is Robert MacGimsey’s, Sweet Little Jesus Boy:

Sweet little Jesus boy

Born a long time ago

Sweet little holy child

And we didn’t know who you was

30 October 2023:  Dear PIN supporters: These days since October 7 have been hard ones, among the hardest we’ve had. We are experiencing extreme emotions and are encountering a barrage of reactions to the crisis in Gaza, both from without and from within our own Episcopal Church and EPF families.  Among the most challenging and vexing questions is, how do we react to the use of violence in the Palestinian struggle? EPF PIN Executive Committee Convener, Dr. Tom Foster, offers personal reflections and confessions. Tom speaks here for himself, but we believe it is an important perspective for all of us in PIN to consider, and so we use this PIN outlet to share it with you.  We invite your responses.  J. Harry Gunkel

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes.  And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him.  He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; for he had been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him.  Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.  When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; and he shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?  I adjure you by God, do not torment me.”  For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!”  Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”  He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.”  He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.  Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; and the unclean spirits begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.”  So he gave them permission.  And the unclean spirts entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.  Mark 5:1-13

Years ago, I owned a book called Christian Uncertainties.  It’s no longer in the house; I must have given it away.  As I recall, the author posed hard questions that arise when one moral principle collides with another.  Witnessing now the carnage that Israel has unleashed on Palestinians in Gaza in response to the October 7 Hamas raid and confronted with the many pleas from people of good will to condemn Hamas and to reject all violence, I find myself wrestling with an uncertainty.  I will place the unconditional commitment to nonviolence among the Christian uncertainties.  I will not join the chorus that condemns Hamas and rejects all violence.  I choose to distinguish between mourning and condemning.  I must mourn without the demand to condemn violence committed by an occupied people.

Since my adolescence, I have longed for the moral clarity that pacifism seems to offer.  Although I have profound respect for pacifists, their clarity has never been, is not now, and I suspect never will be available to me.  I cannot claim the clarity of pacifism and remain steadfast in solidarity with and in a commitment to self-determination of an oppressed, marginalized people who suffer the daily violence of occupation.  To rank pacifism as the more fundamental, the deeper, the more true moral principle imposes limits on a commitment to self-determination.  It imposes conditions on solidarity.  Do I have the right to judge the tactics of a people struggling for liberation, while I suffer none of their decades-long oppression?

A friend has helped me to ponder the demonic character of the sterilized violence of contemporary conventional military action.  A missile fired miles away from its target, a bomb dropped from the sky by a uniformed, well-trained pilot – this is the way we are to understand proper warfare.  If the Israeli pilot never looked in the eyes of the Palestinian child buried under the rubble, is that somehow less disturbing than a death from a rifle shot at close range? Is one of these children less precious than the other?  But somehow the distance and formality of the one murder gives rise to language like self-defense while the other is deemed savage terrorism.  Every element of our discourse is hopelessly colonized.

And in this context and as I consider the condemnation of Hamas, I reflect upon the scale of the violence.  The Palestinians have no aircraft.  They have no airport.  They have no warships.  Palestinians have no anti-aircraft capability, no tanks, no air-raid shelters.  They have none of the means of “respectable” warfare.  This is not a war.  It is the slaughter of a people defenseless against jet fighters and collective punishment for refusing to abandon resistance.

Finally, I am reminded once again of our own settler colonial history and the lens through which many of us now view that shameful national original sin of ethnic cleansing and genocide.  Through that lens, few of us would condemn the violent resistance of the indigenous population.  Acknowledging that it is excruciatingly difficult and gut wrenching, can we view Palestine through that same lens?

No justice, no peace is a bumper sticker, a chant.  But it is also simply true.  For now, I will mourn all lives lost in Israel/ Palestine.  I will lament the conditions that have given rise to this unspeakable violence.  But I will not condemn the armed resistance of an occupied, displaced people trapped for 16 years behind a brutal blockade.

Tom Foster