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St Clement's is honoured to present a free, public screening of Where Olives Trees Weep on Saturday April 26th at 6 pm. A panel discussion will follow and will include Independent Jewish Voices speaker Sid Shniad, Palestinian Christian and Vancouver School of Theology alumnus Shadia Qubti, and Simon Fraser University professor Tamir Moustafa. The film will be shown upstairs in the church.
Childcare is available (please contact the organizer in advance of the event to confirm). Parking is available in the lot. There is a ramp, stairlift, and accessible washroom on site.
Where Olive Trees Weep explores themes of loss, trauma, and the quest for justice. It follows, among others, Palestinian journalist and therapist Ashira Darwish, grassroots activist Ahed Tamimi, Israeli journalist Amira Hass, and trauma specialist Dr. Gabor Maté.
St Clement's Anglican Church in North Vancouver, BC, Canada strives to be an inclusive, welcoming Christian community, faithful to Christ's call to love God and serve the contemporary needs of a changing world. We hope this film screening will help educate our church community and anyone from the broader neighbourhood who attends, on the perspectives and experiences of Palestinian people today. St Clement's proudly supports Alongside Hope (PWRDF), the Anglican Church of Canada relief organization offering humanitarian response in Gaza and the West Bank.
About the panel:
Sid Shniad (pronounced "Shnide")
Sid has been active in labour, anti-war, and anti-racist movements his whole life. He worked as the research director of the BC-based Telecommunications Workers Union from 1980 until 2009, playing an active role in promoting pay equity and women's rights and combating the deregulation of Canada's telecommunications industry.
In 1980, he became a founding member of the BC Organization to Fight Racism, which was established to combat the KKK when it threatened to sink roots in the province. In the run-up to the launch of the war in Iraq in 2003, Sid helped establish StopWar.ca, the BC-based anti-war coalition.
He is an active member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada, an anti-Zionist Palestine solidarity organization, which he helped found in 2008.
Shadia Qubti
I am a Palestinian Christian born and raised in Nazareth who has worked in faith-based peacebuilding and advocacy initiatives through local and international organizations in Israel and Palestine for 15 years. My academic and public speaking interests focus on theological conversations between Palestinian Christian and North American Indigenous understandings of land, explored in my MA thesis at Vancouver School of Theology. I am (trying) to develop a contextual decolonial approach through Palestinian land-based readings of biblical narratives, including recent work on the Nativity story and an upcoming exploration of Jesus at Gethsemane. As a Palestinian Christian and member of a faith community, I am grappling with theological responses amid genocide. I am particularly dedicated to amplifying the voices and perspectives of women and other marginalized communities, which led to co-founding the Women Behind the Wall podcast. I am currently working as the Community Engagement Animator at Trinity Grace United Church in Vancouver, Canada and serve as a Commissioner to the 45th General Council of the United Church of Canada.
Tamir Moustafa
Tamir Moustafa is a Professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University. His research and teaching are centered on the politics of the Middle East, religion and politics, and comparative law and society. He is the author or editor of four books on various topics, including the role of courts in Egyptian politics and religion and politics in contemporary Malaysia. Born and raised in Southern California to an Egyptian-American family, it was Palestine that piqued his early interest in the politics of the Middle East.
Helen Dunn
Helen Dunn is a priest in the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster, serving as rector of St Clement’s in North Vancouver, BC located on the unceded and traditional territory of the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Helen played a small part in the grand opening of Creekside Commons, a wheelchair-accessible outdoor meeting space that gathers human and more-than-human creatures alike. Creekside Commons gets its name from Acts 4:32: “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.” “Held in common” is understood to include rewilded gardens that encourage the flourishing of plant life native to the watershed as well as the care for and preservation of a salmon-bearing stream.
Helen is a regular contributor to the Wild Lectionary blog and is beginning to engage more fully in conversations concerning theology and land, especially those regarding the Christian response in Israel and Palestine.