{"id":545,"date":"2026-08-12T22:29:41","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T22:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/?p=545"},"modified":"2026-08-14T15:17:53","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T15:17:53","slug":"peace-and-justice-in-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/2026\/08\/12\/peace-and-justice-in-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"Peace and justice in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Wednesday 12 August. Song 59 \u2018I rejoiced when I heard them say\u2019<br><\/strong>Words \/ Music: Bernadette Farrell \u00a9 OCP Publications<br>YouTube recording:&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LHiT0OtKBb0\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LHiT0OtKBb0<\/a><br>Featured image: A modern Christian celebration of Palm Sunday in Jerusalem<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is a paraphrase by a contemporary Catholic composer of Psalm 122 (121 in Catholic Bibles). It is one of the \u2018Psalms of Ascent\u2019 presumed to be sung by pilgrims on their way into Jerusalem for a religious celebration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The message is a positive one, about the joy of worshiping God, the unity of the twelve tribes of Israel, obedience to the law, and prayers for peace. The chorus starts \u2018shalom, shalom!\u2019 (peace, peace!) and also relates that peace to the call for justice. For God, the two are inseparable. Where there is no justice, there will be no peace, and where there is no peace (i.e. when people are not living balanced whole lives in God\u2019 service) there is likely to be injustice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All this jars when we hear this week of increased, deliberate, violent attacks by Zionist \u2018settlers\u2019 in the West Bank. Whatever the international politics of the 1947 settlement and subsequent conflicts, and even allowing for the awful attacks by Hamas of October 2023 that started the Gaza war, the Biblical principles of \u2018an eye for an eye\u2019 and of justice and human rights cannot justify depriving people of water and food, spraying their fields with enough pesticide to kill the crops, or other such atrocities. As many campaigners continue to insist, opposing the Israeli government and IDF is not the same as anti-semitism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More than ever, let us pray for the Peace of Jerusalem, and for justice to be done in the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday 12 August. Song 59 \u2018I rejoiced when I heard them say\u2019Words \/ Music: Bernadette Farrell \u00a9 OCP PublicationsYouTube recording:&nbsp; https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LHiT0OtKBb0Featured image: A modern Christian celebration of Palm Sunday in Jerusalem This is a paraphrase by a contemporary Catholic composer of Psalm 122 (121 in Catholic Bibles). It is one of the \u2018Psalms of Ascent\u2019 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[253,254,91,255],"class_list":["post-545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-common-ground","tag-israel","tag-jerusalem","tag-psalms","tag-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":551,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions\/551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}