A Response from RISE Leadership
to the Crisis in Gaza and Israel

In the face of horrific and ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine, we, the leadership at RISE, find ourselves struggling to know how to respond.

We love our Palestinian and Israeli siblings dearly. We grieve deeply for the deaths of both Israeli and Palestinian people. We desperately long for peace and simultaneously hope for true justice to be ushered in. We abhor all forms of violence, whether that is terrorism, state sanctioned oppression, systemic injustice, attempts at ethnic cleansing, and all forms of religious hatred.

We believe that the Palestinian people have the right to live in their homes free of oppression from the Israeli government. We believe that Israeli people have a right to live in their homes without fear of violence.

We believe that the policies of the Israeli government have, for decades, threatened the life, dignity, and freedom of Palestinian people. We believe that the brutally violent response to that oppression from organizations like Hamas, while perhaps fueled by a genuine desire for freedom, is absolutely inexcusable and to be condemned. We also believe that parties outside of Israel and Palestine, including our own government here in the US along with the rest of the global community have not consistently acted in good faith for true peace or justice and have often used the ongoing conflict in the Middle East as a political pawn to better themselves at the expense of both Israelis and Palestinians.

We believe that there *are* good people within Israel and Palestine who genuinely seek creative paths towards a peaceful co-existence between the many peoples who call “the Land” their home. We believe that those people should be offered every opportunity possible to make that dream come true.

And we hold all of these beliefs and feelings simultaneously. Friends, we all want an easy answer. But there is no easy answer. There is, instead, the incredibly hard and often exhausting work of pursuing justice and peace.

We pray that God will open a path for the peacemakers to lead their people to peace.

We pray that true justice will be done and all forms of oppression cease.

We pray that God will forgive those of us who tout easy answers and shout empty slogans from a distance.

We pray, as a central part of God’s dream of a Mended Creation, that we would see in our lifetimes a mending Palestine-Israel.

We join in deep grief and sadness with the thousands of families suffering in Israel and Gaza as a result of lost loved ones, missing family members, and trauma upon trauma.

God have mercy on your beloved children, Palestinian and Israeli both.