BACKGROUND Many of you know that in 1998-1999, I was a Fulbright Scholar working at the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (RIIFS) under the patronage of His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal, King Hussein’s brother, in Amman, Jordan. In the ensuing years I was invited back three different times to give lectures to…
ICMEP Statement on Nakba Day 2022 ICMEP Condemns the Murder of Shireen Abu Akleh and Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinian People Today, May 15, marks the 74th anniversary of the Nakba (“Catastrophe”), the forced displacement by Israeli forces of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, the destruction of a Palestinian homeland in 1948. It is…
The US and Palestine — A Challenge for the Church [Our friend and much-respected pastor of the North Manchester Church of the Brethren, Kurt Borgmann, received a Lilly Grant for a sabbatical. As part of the grant, both pastor and congregation agree to explore an issue/question of their choosing. Kurt decided that his three months…
I want to share with you a poem by our friend (and 2019 ICMEP Gala speaker and Champion of Justice Award recipient), Susan Abulhawa. Susan is a Palestinian-American author (her acclaimed Mornings in Jenin has been translated into 32 languages and sold over a million copies), poet, and activist. She is the founder of Playgrounds…
For 17 years, the mission of Indiana Center for Middle East Peace has remained the same – “We are a voice of conscience for peace, justice, human rights, and intercultural encounter.” Every one of our board members, and all our many supporters and friends throughout the years focus like a laser beam on these core…
“Freedom is a process by which you develop the habit of being inaccessible to slavery.” Alla Gutnikova is a young Russian Jewish woman, one of four Russian student journalists (the other three, Armen Aramyan, Natasha Tyshkevich, and Volodya Metelkin) who worked from DOXA, an independent Moscow student magazine. The four were recently sentenced to two…
The Celebration of the Holy Fire and Easter are two of the most solemn yet joyful celebrations for the churches of Jerusalem, especially the Orthodox Church. This new set of unilateral restrictions, greeted by nary a peep from sister churches around the world, is just the latest piece of evidence of Israel’s matrix of control…
Artwashing, Sportswashing, Foodwashing, Veganwashing, Pinkwashing, Faithwashing See also Red, Blue, and Purple Washing. In my last blog, I talked about greenwashing in the context of the Sierra Club’s backtracking on its decision-reversal and reinstating their educational tours to Israel. Here I want to discuss other ways Israel attempts to wash its dirty laundry. Remember the…
The Sierra Club is one of the most pre-eminent progressive environmental preservation organizations in the world, so when it made the decision last week to cancel its educational tours to Israel this spring, we hailed it as a principled decision that recognized the inextricable connection between environmental justice and human rights. It was made after a…
This post is Michael’s sermon for Sunday, 13 March 2022, at Emmaus Road Mennonite Fellowship At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing…