Mennonites have been building relationships in Israel-Palestine longer than many other Christian denominations but lack the churchwide efforts to work for peace in the Middle
Longtime partner Al Najd Development Forum distributed locally purchased food to 230 families on behalf of MCC.
Some recipients of MCC’s one-month, $25,000 food distribution have been displaced by the violence.
“ ‘We’re the Thomas brothers, and we want to give our farm to the Mennonites,’ ” King recalled hearing. “I just about fell off my chair.”
MCC also is calling on U.S. lawmakers to oppose military intervention in Iraq and instead to send humanitarian aid for the U.N.-estimated 1.9 million internally displaced people, or IDPs, in the country.
She was returning from a regional staff retreat in Spain on May 29 when Israeli authorities detained her at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport.
According to an MCC Washington Office report, Friesen was detained for more than 30 hours, which included three sessions of interrogation. She was returned to Barcelona, where she was met by MCC colleagues before making her way back to Canada.
Twenty years ago, in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, nearly 2 million people fled into Congo. Most were Rwandan civilians, but some were the soldiers and militiamen . . .
