November 3, 2025 – United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR), the United Methodist grassroots movement for Palestinian rights and liberation, learned last month of an Israeli propaganda campaign that will target Christians in several U.S. states. Using technology known as geofencing, they plan to identify members of certain congregations and the student and faculty of Christian colleges, to regularly expose them to propaganda filled with anti-Palestinian racist tropes and distortions of scripture.
Disturbing as this action is, it suggests a desperate and doomed effort to reverse the powerful shift we are seeing in U.S public opinion about Israel and Palestine.
As many recent polls have shown and political analysts have noted, the tide is turning in Americans' understanding of the Palestinian struggle. That turning includes millions of Christians in the U.S. who today are questioning the misinformation about Palestine/Israel they have heard for decades. They are coming to understand that it cannot be God's will that we justify or support genocide and apartheid and a brutal military occupation.
Although some United Methodist congregations have been identified as targets, it is doubtful the Israeli government's agitprop will have a significant impact on the denomination overall. The United Methodist Church has a strong history of supporting Palestinian human rights and working for a just peace in the Holy Land. United Methodists have taken numerous prophetic actions to oppose Israel's ethnic cleansing and oppression of the Palestinian people, most recently by divesting from Israeli government bonds due to Israel's oppressive military occupation. At the denomination’s General Conference in 2024, the UMC became the first church in the world to make that decision.
Perhaps that landmark action and the many other justice-based actions for the Palestinian people seen today in Christian denominations have been a catalyst for this misguided Israeli initiative, targeting thousands of church members with invasive technology and attempting to unbend the irresistible arc of history toward justice.
UMKR's response to this unfortunate venture will be to continue and expand its work of the last fifteen years, reaching out to United Methodists across the Connection, helping church members understand the injustices suffered by the Palestinian people for over 75 years and offering new opportunities to work together as Christian justice-seekers and peacemakers.
UMKR will persist in bringing the church and the world a Christ-centered message of compassion and hope. That message amplifies the call of Palestinian Christians who have implored the worldwide Body of Christ to see their generations of suffering and take effective actions to help them achieve their freedom. As they have written, this is the only way the world can hope to see a lasting peace that is grounded in justice for all the people of the Holy Land.
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United Methodists in UMKR respond to Israeli campaign targeting U.S. Christians with anti-Palestinian messages
News & Analysis Press Release
United Methodists are responding to Kairos Palestine: A Moment of Truth ,a statement of faith and urgent call to action from Christians in Palestine. UMKR seeks, through nonviolent means and in partnership with Palestinian Christians, freedom, justice and equality for all Palestinians and Israelis.
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