Anti-Israel group at Union Seminary holds ‘service’ blaming Israel, uses genocidal ‘river to the sea’ slogan

An anti-Israel group at Union Theological Seminary in New York hosted an event attacking Israel and blaming the United States and Christian churches for supporting the Jewish State. 

The Union Theological Seminary Students for a Liberated Palestine (SLP) posted on Instagram, claiming that the group hosted its second “Palestinian Liberation Service at the 3rd encampment to arise at Columbia University” on June 2.

The post was also shared by Columbia’s chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine. 

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The demands of the third encampment at Columbia, according to the SLP, included: “Financial Divestment,” an “Academic Boycott,” “Stop[ping] the Displacement in Harlem, Lenapehoking, and Palestine,” and “Cops and Billionaires Off Campus.”  

Outlining the events of the “service” that was held, the SLP wrote: “UTS-SLP led a service that held the recent and continual horrors of the genocide in Palestine, including the May 26th Rafah Tent Massacre, where over 40 Palestinians, sleeping in tents, were martyred in an Israeli airstrike backed by the United States.” 

The group continued:  “Over 200 people were injured . . . Hospitals across the Gaza Strip are unable to operate at full strength to respond to the many massacres due to the constant Israeli isolation, targeting of infrastructure, and the blocking of aid into the Gaza Strip. Only 14 out of 35 hospitals in Gaza are partially functioning.”

The SLP went on to attack churches in the West, writing that it “called out the complacency and complicity of the Western Churches and their institutions for refusing to say genocide, Palestine, and settler colonialism, denounced Christian Zionism and colonial Christianity, and brought forth the teachings of Palestinian Christian Liberation Theology. We raised the central message of Jesus, of loving God and loving our neighbors, and stating that Jesus is with the marginalized, the oppressed, and with Palestinians.”

The group revealed that the service included “communion elements” and a “heart carved by a Palestinian artisan from a Palestinian olive tree, one of 8,000 that were spread out to church congregations around the world after a service in Bethlehem, in the land of Palestine on Dec. 28th, 2023, on the Day of the Holy Innocents. It is a day of remembrance for the massacre of children by King Herod as he searched for the baby Jesus.”

The group blamed Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians, and claimed that the Jewish State has killed more than 15,000 children “with the backing of the United States and the West.”

Anti-Israel groups frequently cite Palestinian casualty statistics from the Gaza Health Ministry, which, according to experts, artificially inflates such statistics to cast Israel in a negative light for propaganda purposes. 

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The group concluded the post by saying: “The hearts of Palestinians are always among us, and it is our responsibility to act, to move beyond being only a witness, to escalate, and to support Palestinian resistance in the many ways that exist till Palestine is Free from the River to the Sea.”

“From the River to the Sea” has been seen by many as a genocidal call for the murder and ethnic cleansing of Jews in Israel. 

Campus Reform has reached out to the SLP for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.