AN APPEAL TO UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS:
Update Your Land Acknowledgement to Recognize the Forced Removal of Palestinians
The Action of Immediate Witness (AIW) “Solidarity with Palestinians” approved at the 2024 UUA General Assembly, stated, “The targeted and widespread destruction of medical, cultural, agricultural, educational, and religious sites [in Gaza] constitutes ethnic cleansing.” At the sametime, Israeli settlers have conducted violent attacks on Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank, and some U.S. synagogues have hosted the selling of illegally confiscated Palestinian land in the occupied territories. Since Janu–ary 2025, even during the temporary ceasefire in Gaza, settler attacks on Palestinian villages in the West Bank and home demolitions in East Jerusalem have sky-rocketed.
The AIW called on UUs to “witness, educate, organize, and advocate,” and so we are proposing one step: to extend our Land Acknowledgements of theft of indigenous land to recognize our own U.S. government’s enabling the forced removal of Palestinians from Palestine. Our Palestinian ally, Friends of Sabeel–North America (FOSNA), encourages us to join their ”stand against forced displacement and false doctrines.”
Revising land acknowledgements to acknowledge present reality will enliven the call of the 2020 GA AIW, “Address 400 Years of White Supremacist Colonialism,” to move beyond “simple preliminary actions” toward “the deeper, long-term process of relationship building and cultural healing from the deep harms of colonial genocide.”
PHOTO: Forced removal in Jenin (Wahaj Bani Moufleh/Electronic Intifada, 11 March 2025)
Suggested Addendum to Land Acknowledgements
Short version:
We also bear witness that the United States is still–at this moment–providing the weapons, funding, and diplomatic cover for Israel's forced removal of the Indigenous People of Palestine.
Long version, for a reading or ritual:
We also bear witness that the United States is still–at this moment–providing the weapons, funding, and diplomatic cover for Israel's forced removal of the Indigenous People of Palestine. Like the Trail of Tears, oppression of the residents of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem is the culmination of a colonial settler-replacement project. We will work as individuals, in our congregation, and as a Unitarian Universalist religious movement to end the unjust policies and practices of our nation that abet the forced removal of any People, uphold any apartheid regime, or deny human rights to any human being.
PHOTO: Forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza (Jaber Jehad Badwan/commons. wikimedia.org, 29 January 2025)
Please contact us at [email protected] with your questions, suggestions, struggles, and outcomes when you engage with fellow congregants to bring this proposal to life. – Karen Steele & Steven Sellers (Muskrat) Lapham, Members of the Board, UUs for Justice in the Middle East.
Supporters of this Appeal
Rev. Dr. Clyde Grubbs and Rev. Dr. Michelle Walsh, Ministers-at-Large, Tuckerman Creative Ministries for Justice & Healing * Melissa Nuwaysir, Palestinian American; Co-Coordinator, Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East (UUJME)–Northern Virginia * Mac Goekler, UU Peace Ministries Network * Dana Fisher Ashrawi, President, UUJME * Curtis Bell, Member of the Board, UUJME * Dr. Samira Farwaneh, Member, UU Congregation of Tucson * Rev. DL Helfer, LCSW, Member of the Board, UUJME * David Delk, Trustee, UUs for a Just Economic Community
Link to the flyer version of this blog post.
NOTES
https://www.uujme.org/unitarian_universalists_call_for_an_end_to_the_war_on_gaza_u_s_complicity_in_that_war
https://www.fosna.org/advocacy-direct-action-database/christian-leaders-and-activists-stand-against-forced-displacement https://www.uua.org/action/statements/address-400-years-white-supremacist-colonialism
https://www.uua.org/justice/blog/beyond-land-acknowledgment