A pastoral letter on October 7, 2024
Beloved brothers and sisters of the global Anabaptist/Mennonite communion:
With heavy hearts, we mark the one-year anniversary of terrible events that signalled the beginning of a new cycle of violence in the Middle East. We are heartbroken at the number of lives taken a year ago and since. We grieve the repression, the disregard for human rights, and the dispossession over decades that led up to the current crisis.
A year ago, Hamas fighters breached the militarized boundaries of the Gaza Strip and committed heinous acts in Israel. This attack left 1 200 Israelis dead, including nearly 400 soldiers. Some 250 Israeli civilians and security personnel were taken to Gaza as hostages. Israel responded with a horrifying year-long campaign of collective punishment on Gaza, targeting hospitals, schools, places of worship and journalists. The death count in Gaza is more than 40 000 and rising, with thousands missing or unaccounted for. Israel has prevented food and medical aid from entering the strip. Most recently, Israel has unleashed a ferocious military assault on neighbouring Lebanon.
As Christians dedicated to Christ’s way of peace, we reject war as a way to resolve differences. We stand with all who suffer today, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian. At times, we feel helpless – even complicit – as trauma and prejudice accumulated over generations spill out in waves of hatred and destruction.
Jesus, the Prince of Peace, teaches us that war does not lead to human flourishing. Courageous love of enemies and nonviolent pursuit of justice for all is how we aspire to follow Jesus. Love trains our hearts to see God in the human “other.” Love gives us the courage to seek justice and to live rightly with one another. As followers of Jesus, we pray for that courage to love with transformative power. For it is love that offers a fundamentally different reality and future than the cycles of violence that oppress, suppress and kill fuelled by lust for power and mechanisms of death.
The global Anabaptist/Mennonite communion reiterates our call of October 2023 for all parties in this conflict to lay down weapons and begin the hard work of peacemaking. We call for the release of captives – both the Israeli hostages held by Hamas and the Palestinian prisoners held illegally in “administrative detention” by the Israeli state. Where possible, we resolve to speak to our own governments and fellow citizens who may be giving uncritical support that perpetuates the ongoing conflict.
Justice must accompany peace, and all parties in this conflict have grievances. We confess our failure to listen well and to seek justice, to acknowledge the inadequacy of our wisdom. So, we call on the Holy Spirit to teach and equip us to act with humility and courage as we speak and act.
We pray not only for violence to cease, but for lands of the Bible to become a place of human harmony and diversity, where neighbours “sit under their own vines and their own fig trees” with no one to make them afraid (Micah 4:4). We reaffirm our conviction that “The Spirit of Jesus empowers us to trust God in all areas of life so we become peacemakers who renounce violence, love our enemies, seek justice, and share our possessions with those in need” (Mennonite World Conference “Shared Convictions” #5).