Palestinian Christians led by Hanan Ashrawi have signed a scathing letter of strong criticism and denunciation against CHurch leaders who responded to the annual invitation by Israel’s president on the occasion of Christmas and the New Year. (read more here)

The letter chided the leaders for holding a reception with the Israeli president who had said that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza and at a time that they had called on the Christian community not to celebrate the holidays in solidarity with Gaza. At the end of the the letter calls on everyone who signed it to:

this statement and circulate it to all the daughters and sons of the Church in Palestine and the Palestinian pastoral and support groups outside Palestine, in the Arab world, in exile, and in countries of asylum.
-Work to disavow their humiliating step, expose their positions publicly and clearly, and demand that they apologize to our people as a whole, specifically those suffering under the guillotine of genocide in the Gaza Strip, and express remorse and repentance.

• Holding Church leaders accountable and reprimanding them directly for the sins they commit before their flock in all Palestinian and Arab churches.
  -Boycotting their reception on the eve of Christmas in Bethlehem, the city of Christ’s birthplace, according to the Western and Eastern calendars.
  Raising slogans condemning their shameful role and declaring their illegitimacy over the spiritual leadership of our people.
  -Expressing our position and voice with the slogan “You do not represent us,” through various social media means and platforms.

Below is an unofficial translation of the letter and the names of some of the signatories. The full original letter and signatories can be seen here

We, the undersigned, the sons of this occupied holy Palestinian land, add our loud voice to all other voices that condemned and are condemning the shameful and shocking meeting that took place between representatives of some Christian churches in occupied Jerusalem, who are from diverse ethnicities, countries and sects, on the occasion of Christmas, with the President The Israeli occupation authority Isaac Herzog – who had stated in one of his media appearances during the genocidal war against our Palestinian people that there were no “innocent civilians” in Gaza.

Since the Israeli occupation of Palestine is the primary source of bloodshed and oppression of our people since the Nakba of 1948, and since the same priestly group had decided to cancel the celebrations and limit them to religious rituals this year, we rule out that any of the representatives of the churches in occupied Jerusalem would have agreed to meet the president. The Israeli occupation is of its own volition, had it not been that the occupier is the one who attacks, oppresses, threatens and blackmails the churches and those in charge of them and their institutions.
We rule out that any of the representatives of the churches in occupied Jerusalem would have agreed to meet the head of the Israeli occupation of his own free will, had it not been for the fact that the occupier is the one who attacks, oppresses, threatens and blackmails the churches and those in charge of them and their institutions.

Despite this, we strongly reject all justifications for the meeting under the pretext of protocol submission with those who do not respect the protocol and insult the status quo without stopping. We consider this meeting to be contrary to the teachings of our Lord Christ and contradictory to the mood of the Christian Palestinians as a whole, who are being slaughtered by the occupation along with the rest of their people in the Gaza Strip, displaced and their civilization obliterated. Featured in the cradle of Christ.

The shameful meeting was attended by: Patriarch Theophilos III Giannopoulos, Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem; Father Korion Bagdasaryan, representative of Father Nourhan Manoogian, Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem; Cardinal Battista Pietro Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem; Father Francesco Patton, Custodian of the Holy Land; Bishop Dr. Amer Youssef Matta, Archbishop and Primate of the Roman Catholic Church in Acre, Haifa, Nazareth and Galilee, Bishop Inbakum Basaznew Wondimagnehu, Archbishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem; Bishop Dr. Anthony, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church;
Bishop Anthimos Jack Yacoub, Head of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Representative of Bishop Dr. Hossam Naoum, Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East; Bishop Sani Ibrahim Azar, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land; Bishop Camille Semaan, Bishop of the Syriac Catholic Church in Jerusalem, and Father Ibrahim Feltz, Deputy Custodian of the Holy Land.

This insulting meeting to our dignity took place while the occupation was slaughtering our people in an unprecedented genocidal war combined with a process of ethnic cleansing and a new catastrophic catastrophe in which the occupation is committing massacres against our children.
Our women, bombing our institutions, and bombing our churches, mosques, hospitals, monasteries, and schools in the Gaza Strip; It also destroys our homes in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, confiscates our lands, arrests our sons, women and children, and plunders our wealth.

We say it clearly and unequivocally that those who represent our churches are the only ones who join heart and soul with the struggles of our people, who respect, identify with, and kneel before their pain and sacrifices, who confront the colonial occupation of our land, and who fight all forms of injustice to which the children of our Palestinian people are exposed on their land.
Who opposes the great sin embodied by the fascist occupation, and who preserves the dignity of all our people from the authentic Christian sects in Palestine on the basis of rejecting humiliation, injustice, humiliation, and the permissibility of killing and destruction of all our people.

In conjunction with our demand from all our people to reject all the complicit representatives of the churches who participated in this disastrous meeting, we demand their immediate exclusion from our authentic Palestinian and Arab churches and we call on you:

To sign this statement and circulate it to all the daughters and sons of the Church in Palestine and the Palestinian pastoral and support groups outside Palestine, in the Arab world, in exile, and in countries of asylum.
-Work to disavow their humiliating step, expose their positions publicly and clearly, and demand that they apologize to our people as a whole, specifically those suffering under the guillotine of genocide in the Gaza Strip, and express remorse and repentance.

• Holding them accountable and reprimanding them directly for the sins they commit before their flock in all Palestinian and Arab churches.
  -Boycotting their reception on the eve of Christmas in Bethlehem, the city of Christ’s birthplace, according to the Western and Eastern calendars.
  Raising slogans condemning their shameful role and declaring their illegitimacy over the spiritual leadership of our people.
  -Expressing our position and voice with the slogan “You do not represent us,” through various social media means and platforms.
• Hanan Ashrawi
• Nader Habash
• Mazen Qumsieh
• Wafa Madanat
• Carol Sansour
• Basel Khoury
• Omar Haramy
• Nedal Kakish
• More names in Arabic here