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Israel, the UNRWA and Palestinian Refugees

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Erin Grimm

I’m watching a course I bought from Palestine Nexus (link below). From it, I learned that Israel itself wanted the UNWRA because it didn’t want holocaust refugees treated the same as the refugees Israel was causing.

I also have to say how much watching this course has humanized what a Palestinian refugee is. This is a very harrowing and sensitive subject. Because my Oma was a war bride and refugee from WWII, this shaped what I thought a refugee is.

I thought of a refugee as a person who leaves their country and gets a new home. Yestreday I was crying thinking about my callous idiocy about applying this to Palestine.

When they talk about Palestinian refugees in refugee camps I keep thinking (unconsciously) about why they’re still calling themselves refugees if it’s been a generation. Like the kids in my classroom were refugees, but we wouldn’t call their future children refugees. But this class helped me see that this is an unresolved crisis. That the name still applies—across generations.

I wish to God more people could watch these humanizing and yet unsentimental lectures. It also has all the right pronunciations.

I watched this twice in one day, crying the second time as I contemplated the bleeding wound and pillaging of Palestinians, especially in Gaza. I’m referring to the second class in this class series:

https://palestinenexus.com/course

About Christian Minus Christianity

Christian Minus Christianity is a budding community created to challenge imperialism, nationalism, and racism in many forms of US-American Christianity. It is a work of contextual theology created from the perspective of a white Christian of conscience.

Palestinian theologian Dr. Yousef Kamal AlKhouri, academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College, wrote about this project:

“I do think it’s important to dismantle imperial Christianity in a form, and for the reign of God to liberate the oppressed and God’s entire creation from systems of supremacy, exploitation, and destruction. I also believe that every theologian and Christian are doing theology from their own context, wherever they are. All theologies are contextual.”