When Israel stood facing the Sea of Reeds, and the command was given to move forward, each of the tribes hesitated, saying, “We do not want to be the first to jump into that sea.”  Nahshon, leader of the tribe of Judah, saw what was happening—and jumped into the sea.  At that moment Moses was standing and praying. G‑d said to him, “My beloved ones are drowning in the stormy seas, and you are standing and praying?” Moses replied, “Master of the world, what am I to do?"  Said G‑d, “You lift your staff and spread your hand over the seas, which will split, and my people will come into the sea upon dry land.” And so it was.  Following Nahshon’s lead, the Israelites entered the sea and were saved.  The Midrash and Talmud on Exodus 14:15.  (Wikipedia:  Nachshon)     (Image:  My/Ruvim)

All or None

A reflection on Foundations of Abrahamic Faiths and Palestine

by Diana Ralph*

I am pleased and honoured to be you all here in Parkdale United Church, Ottawa.  Today, I want to reflect on genocide, justice, and the spiritual foundations of our Abrahamic faiths. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all believe that because we were created in God’s image, we each carry a divine soul.  We all strive to understand and model our lives to reflect God’s holy love. This requires soul searching and being accountable to our covenants. 

But because of fears, misinformation, and feelings of self-righteous victimhood, despite our best intentions, we sometimes go astray.  Earlier, we read Psalm 63, which, movingly expresses our thirst for connection with God. But it also includes this vengeful hope:

They who seek my life will be destroyed; they will go down to the depths of the earth. They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals. 

This murderous urge underlies all genocides.

I want to invite us to reflect on where we individually and collectively have gone astray to help us recommit to our holy purpose of building a more loving world.  Today, Christians, Muslims, and Jews are each celebrating or preparing to celebrate important holidays. 

As you know, this is the Lenten season, a time of deep soul-searching, when Christians honour and imitate the 40 days following Christ’s baptism when He fasted in the desert and wrestled with temptation, before beginning his public ministry. Lent ends on Holy Thursday, when, at the Last Supper, the Gospels say, Judas betrayed Jesus, leading to his arrest and crucifixion. 

Jesus consistently advocated for love and compassion, like the 1st Century Jewish teacher that he was. But for centuries, during Lent, European Christian leaders used false claims that “the Jews” killed Christ, to launch violent pogroms against Jews, killing and expelling whole communities.  In the name of defending and spreading the loving Christian faith, Christian leaders have also committed many other genocides not just against Jews, but also Muslims, pagans, and Indigenous peoples around the globe.  Christian antisemitism led directly to the Holocaust, and it is now again on the rise. 

What about Islam?  We are now also in the middle of Ramadan, which this year runs from February 28 to March 29. Ramadan is the month when the Quran was revealed to Muhammad. Like Christians during Lent, the world’s two billion Muslims observe Ramadan by fasting, prayer, self-reflection, charity, and mutual support. Mohammed respected Christians and Jews as People of the Book and he considered Moses and Jesus prophets. 

We in the West have been led to equate Islam with violence and terrorism.  Since 9/11,  Islamophobia has replaced Communism as the propaganda tool to divide and distract us, with disastrous impacts on Muslims here and globally.  But overwhelmingly, Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, is about love and peace. In a few specific instances,

Muslims have also committed genocides, for example, between 1876 and 1914, Ottoman Turks slaughtered up to 1.2 million Armenians.  But these are the exception.   During the 700 years of the Ottoman empire,  Muslim rulers welcomed Jewish survivors of Christian oppression. And during the Holocaust,  Muslim countries, including Palestine, gave refuge to Jews. 

For Jews, today, March 23 sits between Purim and Passover, two holidays which celebrate the liberation of Jews from oppression. Both are based on myths without any historical foundation. 

Purim, which we celebrated last week, recounts the tale of Esther, a young Jewish woman who risked her life to successfully prevent a genocide of Jews by a Persian king.  As the story ends, the Jews of Shushan launch a vengeful attack on the Persians killing 75,000 people. Written in the 4th century BCE, this revenge fantasy was a harmless bit of wish fulfillment, given the heavy antisemitism that powerless Jews faced over the centuries. But now that Israel has become a powerful nation, with strong Western backing, it has become toxic. 

I mention the Esther story because the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Christian think tank closely affiliated with Donald Trump, has launched Project Esther to attack as antisemitic anyone critical of Israel’s assault on Palestinians. It is a McCarthyistic campaign to demonize and criminalize Palestinian and pro-Palestinian politicians, teachers, students, journalists, human rights activists, and government employees. 

It tries to pressure governments to define as “antisemitic” anything critical of current Israeli policies, to prohibit teaching about the Nakba and Israeli oppression, and to designate as “terrorist” organizations that express sympathy for Palestinians. 

Passover, the Jewish holiday which celebrates the Exodus, the liberation from slavery, will begin on April 12. It is the core story defining Judaism.   Each year, the Torah requires Jews to re-tell the stirring Exodus tale. After centuries of enslavement in Mizrahim (Egypt), Moses demands that the Pharaoh “let my people go.”  The Pharaoh refuses and further oppresses the slaves. But with God’s support, ultimately all the slaves—what the Bible refers to as a “mixed multitude”--not just Israelites—escape.  Pharoah’s army chases them to the edge of the Red Sea, where they are trapped. But one man, Nahshon trusts in God and dares to jump into the swirling water. His faith prompts God to miraculously divide the sea, and the multitude cross to safely as Pharoah’s army drowns. 

Throughout the Torah (what Christians call the Old Testament), God repeatedly orders us to remember we were slaves and, therefore, that we must stand up against all forms of oppression. This tale also has inspired many other liberation movements. 

I believe we are now witnessing a real Exodus struggle.  This time, it is the Israeli state supported by the US and Canada, which stands in for the Pharaoh. Israel’s founders have always planned to appropriate all the land from the river to the sea and to expel or subjugate non-Jews.

For over 75 years, Israel has subjected Palestinian people to increasingly brutal political, economic, and military control.  And, at enormous cost, the Palestinian people and their allies have always resisted. 

Oppression enslaves not only the victims, but also their oppressors, dehumanizing them and keeping them constantly afraid of retribution from those they oppress.  That is what has happened to Israeli Jews.  The entire country is built on a preoccupation with “security” which requires brutal political, economic, and military control over Palestinian people, and fear of so-called “antisemitism” which it defines as any criticism of oppressive Israeli policies. 

Far from making Jews safe, Israel is the least safe place in the world for Jews. The October 7th massacre was a horrific, but predictable outcome of Israel’s tightening noose around Gaza. The ensuing violence has left at least 1,700 Israelis dead, almost 6,000 wounded, over 120,000 displaced, the economy shattered, the government in disarray, and bombs raining down on terrified Israeli civilians, with no end in sight. 

So, what is the path to peace there?  What do we even mean by “peace”?  Is peace merely the absence of resistance? Israel has tried to impose “peace” by outlawing and imposing collective punishment on all forms of Palestinian resistance. It assassinates, imprisons, tortures, wounds and kills non-violent demonstrators and children, and destroys their homes. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem (the Israeli human rights organization) have shown that Israel has indeed become an apartheid state, worse even than South Africa. 

Now in both Gaza and the West Bank (where Hamas does not rule), Israel is committing genocidal war on Palestinians. It has intentionally starved and displaced almost all the people of Gaza and destroyed their hospitals, universities, homes and infrastructure. The official death toll is over 61,000 people including 18,000 children.  Many more lie crushed under bombed buildings or dead of starvation, cold, and disease. 

The British medical journal, Lancet estimates that the real death toll is more than 186, 000.  This violates core Jewish values. And it will not bring peace.  Palestinians resisted long before Israel helped to create Hamas in 1987 to undermine the PLO. And this atrocity will only spur more resistance. 

Is a “two-state solution” the way to peace? This hypothetical Palestinian “state” would be like South Africa’s Bantustans—isolated, segregated islands, within a highly militarized, all powerful Israeli state. It is an unjust and unfeasible dream. Even if it could be achieved, it would not produce “peace.” There will be no “peace” without ending the oppression.  

 Fatima Maarouff recently wrote: “In light of a genocide--and a state that can cut off water, electricity, food, and fuel--don’t suggest to any Palestinian a two-state solution. The two-state solution has not worked in the last 76 years.  What we have seen is more and more land grabs and displacement and murders and now genocide.”   She implores us instead to “support our human rights, our right to exist, and [to show] that our lives and deaths matter.” She reminds us: “Our freedom doesn’t mean the oppression of another group. In fact, a true freedom for Palestine will be the collective liberation of all.” 

Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student arrested and illegally deported last week echoed this sentiment in a statement he dictated from jail. He said: “I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear.” 

Christians often tell me that they are reluctant to get involved in this conflict between Muslims and Jews.  But this is not about religion. The real conflict is between justice and injustice.    Before Israel was founded, all three faiths lived in harmony in Palestine. In fact, many Palestinians are Christian. 

Israel would not exist without the strong support of Western powers.  British, US, and Canadian antisemitic politicians funded and militarily backed the Zionist project for their own geopolitical interests, in part to get the Jews out of their countries and in part to set up Jews as their colonial agents in the oil-rich Middle East.   After World War II, when many peoples were freeing themselves from colonial rule, Israel was founded as a colonial settler nation. It now sells its weapons and spy technology, field tested on Palestinians in Gaza, to maintain dictatorial regimes around the globe. 

The US and Canada unconditionally support Israel to flout international law, and they send Israel billions of dollars for weapons to kill Palestinians.  Now Trump threatens to evict or kill all Palestinians and to turn Gaza into a US-owned resort. So, of course, you can and should get involved.

So, what keeps you from speaking out?  Perhaps you are afraid of being called antisemitic? None of us wants to be oppressive. But the pro-Israel lobby has weaponized the term “antisemitism” to keep you afraid of getting involved. Standing in support of Palestinian liberation is not antisemitic. Many Jews, like me, also get attacked for being critical of Israel. When you speak out, you may indeed be accused of being antisemitic. But please don’t fall for this bullying divisive tactic.  The enemy is not Jews or Muslims or Hamas or you or me. I believe, the enemy is capitalism, a vicious, greedy system, that fuels war, divides and hurts us all, and is making our precious Earth uninhabitable. 

We all have a stake in resisting Israel’s fascist genocide, because it is the right thing to do, because it violates everything our three faiths cherish, and because it is threatening us all and potentially dragging us into a World War III Armageddon. 

Let us recall the words of the prophet Isaiah. Rejecting fasts without substantive action, he said: “This is the fast I desire: "To unlock the fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke.”  So, for Lent this year, I’d invite you to give up your fears and to risk standing up for justice.

Since the 1960s, when Rev. A.C. Forrest published The Unholy Land*, the United Church has been at the vanguard of this struggle. For advocating for justice, he and the United Church have faced massive attacks from pro-Israel lobby groups. But that didn’t stop them. Last October, the United Church General Council took a major step forward, adopting a Principle-Based Approach to Israel-Palestine which includes support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and which rejects “Israel's apartheid system of laws and legal procedures towards the Palestinian people”. 

This month, the United Church issued another courageous statement along with other ecumenical partners urging “the Canadian Government to support a ceasefire and a negotiated resolution to this violence,” It also calls on Canada to comply with international humanitarian law and to take “leadership in calling for a corridor to provide humanitarian relief to Gaza.” Over lunch, we can discuss how to support the BDS movement and other actions you can take. 

I’ll close by offering an excerpt from the 2002 poem “Red Sea,” by Aurora Levins Morales, a Puerto Rican Jewish poet, which I read at all my Passover seders. It is particularly relevant this year:

This Passover, who reclines?
Only the dead, their cupped hands filling slowly
with the red wine of war.  We are not free. 

The blood on the doorposts does not protect anyone.
They say that other country over there
dim blue in the twilight
farther than the orange stars exploding over our roofs
is called peace.…
Back then, one man's faith opened the way.
He stepped in, we were released, our enemies drowned.
This time we're tied at the ankles.
We cannot cross until we carry each other,
all of us refugees, all of us prophets.
No more taking turns on history's wheel,
trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.
The sea will not open that way. 

This time that country
is what we promise each other,
our rage pressed cheek to cheek
until tears flood the space between,
until there are no enemies left,
because this time no one will be left to drown
and all of us must be chosen. 
This time it's all of us or none. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

+https://www.justpeaceadvocates.ca/the-unholy-land-by-rev-dr-a-c-forrest/

* Diana Ralph lives in Ottawa, taught at Carleton University, co-founded Independent Jewish Voices Canada, and is a strong  Jewish advocate for truth, justice and peace.  She preached this sermon at Parkdale United Church on March 23, 2025 and graciously responded to my request to publish it on the Pilgrim Praxis blog. 

 With sincere thanks,   Harry Oussoren