Instead of our usual news round-up, If Americans Knew today offers excerpts from a new document approved at an international conference in Bethlehem on November 14, 2025. The conference was attended by over 300 local Palestinians and internationals from 23 countries.
The full document, “Kairos Palestine II: A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide,” can be found here; the original Kairos document (2009), “A moment of truth: A word of faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering,” can be found here.
At a time when peace and hope seem impossible, Christians from the Holy Land bring us these words of comfort – perhaps the most honest, authentic, and hopeful message of its time – and a call to all people to work for justice.
Kairos Palestine – The Palestinian Christian Initiative
A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide (excerpts)
We [Palestinian Christians] look toward the day when we shall live free in our land, together with all the inhabitants of the earth, in true peace and reconciliation — founded upon justice and equality for all God’s creation, where “mercy and truth meet, and righteousness and peace kiss each other.” (Psalm 85:10) 14-11-2025 (emphasis added).
We [Palestinian Christians] live now in a time of genocide, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement unfolding before the eyes of the world. This moment — a moment of truth — demands from us a new stand unlike any before it…
Today, we renew our stand for truth and our commitment to fundamental religious, theological and moral principles. We look at our reality and take a renewed stand, responding to the voice of the Holy Spirit deep within us, listening to the call of faith in this time of genocide…
Zionists do not want us to remain on our land. Their plan for us is displacement, death, or submission. The genocidal war on Gaza is the continuation of the Zionist project to seize all of Palestine, emptied of its Palestinian people…
While people of the world have stood in solidarity with us, the genocidal war has laid bare the hypocrisy of the Western world...In truth, the Western world has sacrificed us, revealing racism and double standards toward our people.
This war has also exposed another reality of Zionism — whether Jewish or Christian — in its justification of violence and killing. We Palestinian Christians are deeply shocked by the positions of many churches that either adopted the colonizer’s narrative or remain silent in the face of the genocide of our people.
Israel commits these crimes by invoking the events of October 7, 2023, claiming that its actions are an act of self-defense — forgetting that the Hamas attack of that day was itself born out of decades of injustice, oppression and displacement since the Nakba of 1948, and more than sixteen years of an immoral, suffocating blockade on Gaza.
To point to these historical realities — and to the right of a people under occupation to resist their occupier and oppressor — is to acknowledge that the events of October 7 occurred in a particular context. Mentioning the context does not justify the killing or capture of civilians, the violations of international law and norms, and war crimes.
The claim of “self-defense” cannot stand. How can a colonizer defend itself against those it has colonized and expelled from their land? International law — if it still retains any moral weight — refutes this claim…
In recent years, Israel — supported by the United States and other major powers — has constantly attacked the core principles and legitimate rights of the Palestinian people…
Christians in Palestine and in the diaspora are an inseparable part of the Palestinian people. Their challenges are the challenges of the nation as a whole. The reality of the Church is directly affected by everything that happens on the ground…
We must call things by their proper names: Israel is a colonial, settler, and exclusionary entity built upon the displacement of the indigenous population and its replacement with new settlers. For this reason, we reject the very concept of “conflict.” The reality on the ground is tyranny and an oppressive regime of settler colonialism and apartheid. Any denial of this reality is an evasion of manifest truth — one that reinforces and perpetuates the injustice…
This is the moment of truth. We affirm that what has been built upon falsehood and historical injustice can never yield peace or sustainability. True solutions begin with dismantling oppressive, racist systems.
Only then can we speak of a new horizon that we dream of and long for — one in which we remain in our land together with all who dwell in it on the basis of justice, equality and equal rights, free of supremacy and domination…
At a time when Palestinian resistance and global solidarity movements are criminalized, we reaffirm the right of all colonized peoples to resist their colonizers…
We value the global movements of resistance, advocacy and popular pressure that work to hold governments and international bodies accountable…The strategies of boycotts, divestment and sanctions are, in our view, effective forms of creative resistance rooted in the logic of love and nonviolence as affirmed in our original document…
We feel the weight of history upon our shoulders and we are determined to preserve the Christian witness in this Holy Land…We are indigenous citizens who embody human values and seek to work and build our homeland alongside all our partners within it. We are the sons and daughters of the first Church — descendants of the apostles and the saints of the first Christian centuries — those who cultivated this land, built its cities and villages and drank from its waters.
We are witnesses to the Resurrection and to the empty tomb from which the light of life burst forth. We believe that the final word belongs not to death, but to life. Not to darkness, but to light. Not to injustice, but to truth. We proclaim with the Apostle Paul: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8–9)…
Genocide is a cumulative process — one that began in the minds of the settler-colonial powers of Europe when they denied the image of God in others and legitimized death, domination and slavery.
We consider the State of Israel, established in 1948, to be a continuation of that same colonial enterprise built on racism and the ideology of ethnic or religious superiority…
We call for a global theological movement built on the pillars of God’s Kingdom — a movement that arises from the contexts and struggles of peoples suffering from colonialism, racism, apartheid and the structural poverty produced by corrupt economic and political systems that serve the interests of the world’s empires…
Christian Zionism calls on a tribal, racist god of war and ethnic cleansing, teachings utterly alien to the core of Christian faith and ethics. Christian Zionism must therefore be named for what it is: a theological distortion and a moral corruption. ..The time has come for the churches of the world to repudiate Zionist theology and to state clearly their position on Palestine: this is a case of settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing of an indigenous people.
We condemn all who exploit and support the charge of antisemitism to silence the Palestinian voice of truth…
More than ever, now is a time for costly solidarity. By its very nature, true solidarity is costly. It has a price. It is a faith-based stance, a human commitment and a moral responsibility…
In this spirit, we honor the growing number of Jewish voices that oppose the war and confront Zionism from moral, faith-based and human conviction…
Our aim is to live as sons and daughters of God in our homeland without barriers, walls, military occupation and apartheid—but in a world in which justice, fairness and equality rule.
