'A state that proclaims itself a democracy while insisting that the state belongs solely to a single ethnic nationalist settler group.'
By Rod Such: Why Palestine Matters: The Struggle to End Colonialism, a new study guide distributed by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA), represents a significant breakthrough for faith-based groups acting as advocates for Palestinian rights. The guide pinpoints settler colonialism as the underlying basis for Israeli apartheid while also advocating vigorously for an intersectional approach to unify struggles for human rights.This is the third study guide related to human rights in Palestine published and issued by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) – the first being Steadfast Hope (revised edition 2011) and the second the aptly named Zionism Unsettled (2014).
The latter faced significant pushback from the liberal Zionist organization J Street for exposing the ideological roots of Israel’s human rights violations and led to the withdrawal of the publication from the church’s website. As IPMN notes, it speaks “to” and not “for” the Presbyterian Church.