Mennonite Central Committee issues a “Cry for home”

Mennonite Central Committee Canada (MCC), a Christian relief, development, and peacebuilding agency, has recently launched an educational campaign called “Cry for Home” focussing on the ongoing human tragedy in Israel/Palestine.  I interviewed Rick Cober Bauman, Executive Director of MCC Canada about the campaign. Read more and watch the short video interview…

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Canada is part of a worldwide ministry of Anabaptist churches. It carries out a wide range of humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding projects, responding to basic human needs and working for peace and justice around the world. It carries considerable heft, with its North American budget estimated to be around $100 Million US.

MCC has been present in the middle east since 1949, initially assisting Palestinians expelled in 1948 to make way for the new State of Israel.

Today, MCC works with Palestinian and Israeli groups working for justice and peace in a variety of ways. It provides important services to Palestinian refugees many of whom live in large refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as in the occupied territories.

Since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, MCC has accepted invitations from Palestinians to walk alongside them as they search for justice, peace and freedom. MCC supports the efforts of both Palestinians and Israelis committed to nonviolence and to a future of peace, justice and reconciliation for both peoples.

MCC Canada has just launched a campaign aimed at its supporters entitled “A cry for home’. Its objective is to bring attention to the fact that while for most of us, having a ‘home” is a given, that is not the reality for Palestinians — or even for some Israelis.

Living under Israeli occupation, Palestinians regularly experience demolition of their homes, confiscation of their land, restrictions to their movement because of checkpoints, walls, and permit systems.  They live with severe water shortages. Many of those who resist — even those who resist non-violently — face military detention and imprisonment.

The campaign includes some videos, and other educational materials on the detention of Palestinian children by the Israeli military and on the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

I recently interviewed Rick Cober Bauman about the campaign.

The MCC “Cry for Home” campaign began in September 2017 and will continue for 3 years. For more information check out Cry for Home on the MCC Canada website.

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Canada Talks Israel Palestine (CTIP) aims to promote a serious discussion in Canada about the complicated and emotional Israel/Palestine issue. We invite comments from readers. Both Zionists and non-Zionist opinion is welcome as long as it is expressed in a respectful way. If you support our educational mission, why not join? Or make a donation? Or learn more about what we do?  Contact us at membership.ctip@gmail.com.

 

7 comments

  2. Great that MCC is conducting a campaign in Israel Palestine on “Cry for Home” focussing on Israeli illegal and inhumane practises detracting from domestic security in the Occupied Palestinian territories. These range from demolition of homes of families of “terrorists”; targeting of Palestinian homes in war and military operations in Gaza, forced evction and sales of Palestinian homes in sensitive areas like East Jerusalem; housing discriminaion and segregation in Israel proper and the settlements; detention and harassment of hundreds of Palestinian children; and draconian and disproportionate imprisonment of Palestinians resisting the occupation by military tribunals.

    Hopefully, this MCC campaign will help to reveal and reduce these terrible practises and help to create a just (likely two state) solution for Israel and Palestine where such measures will no longer exist and equal human rights will apply to all citizens.

    George Jacoby

  3. I think the Mennonites are genuine as a pro-peace organization. I do believe Rick Cober is sincere in wanting an outcome that provides for joint security. The problem is the MCC is so fundamentally hostile to Israeli and Jewish interests that they are merely an anti-Israeli partisan organization. So in the video he ends up sounding like is he wants to be partisan without being seen as partisan. To fix the Canadian Jewish hostility towards the MCC initiative is not a messaging problem, the problem is their positions. The MCC base their view of the conflict on the Kairos Palestine POV which is ferociously antisemetic (not merely antizionist). The study guide the church produced ( http://mennoniteusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Kairos_StudyGuide_Menno_9_Digital-2.pdf ) while not having quite as much open antisemitism is similarly simply biased to the point of being dishonest.

    1. Thanks for your interest in MCC’s work in Palestine and Israel. We know this is an area that raises a lot of hard questions for people and we’re happy to talk further about this with you. You can find a list of our offices, as well as our toll-free number at mcccanada.ca/contact.

    1. @New Canadian

      The article is rather nonsensical. I’ll just pick a sample sentence, “Liberman’s logic seems to be that as long as the Palestinians are simply occupied and governed by a different set of laws, with far fewer rights than Israelis (as opposed to denying them a state but giving them a vote in some expanded version of Israel, which the Israeli right considers national suicide), then it is not really apartheid. ”

      That’s not Lieberman’s logic that’s the very definition of occupation. An occupation occurs in territory outside a country that it doesn’t lay claim to. Territory that Israel is occupying is not part of Israel. If you consider the territory part of Israel it isn’t occupied. The definition of an occupation is the imposition of martial law. Neil Macdonald simply doesn’t know what the word “occupation” means. Which isn’t that unusual. The UN has helped to create this confusion by its policy of non-recognition. Non-recognition amounts to pretending things that are true aren’t because politically you would prefer they not be true.

      The second clause is just incorrect. It is the left that is most hostile to national expansion and the citizenship.. The further right you go in Israel the less support for the two state solution and thus the less hostility there is towards extending civil rights, especially in Area-C. As you go left you have more support for the 2SS, and thus more hostility towards annexing type activities like extending civil rights.

      The Israel/Palestine discourse is not helped by this sort of gibberish passing for analysis.

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