The final stages of malnutrition and death.

That’s where Gazans are now. Suffering needlessly at the hands of the Israeli military and government, supported by the US as always, dying a horrible and prohibited - as starvation is not an allowable tool of war, even - death.

Dying, too, is our belief in our governments. Long gone is the belief that those in power can or even want to do the right thing. More governments, including our own, driven by racism, power-grabbing, money, anti-muslim hate, and sheer greed. 

For months, years, many have pled, bargained, protested, and barricaded, trying to get the government to change its actions. All for naught.

For this wasn’t pre-ordained, these horrors, but perhaps pre-destined. This was always the plan, those in power never saw Gazans, Palestinians, as fully human. And it is easy to kill what is not seen as human.

G-d knows, we’ve learned that lesson well. 

We vilify and we kill. More than 56,000 (far more, as this count is more than a week old), disappeared here in the US, in plain sight. Cruelly, violently, and without accountability, because those taken (so far) are almost entirely brown-skinned. Who the white men in power find, still, to be less than fully human.

We’re just beginning here in the US. One does not allocate those billions of dollars to ICE without intending to detain and kill large numbers in this country. None of us are safe. They will eventually come for us all who do not meet the white, Christian nationalist criteria of “worthiness.”

I have often quoted my colleague, Rev. Julian Jamaica Soto, that “all of us need all of us to survive.” This remains so. 

There is no excuse, no valid one, for failing to speak out, to scream, about this horror happening in Gaza, in the US, and elsewhere right now. This isn’t anti-zionism, it isn’t antisemitism, this isn’t about Hamas, or immigration, or crimes, or anything else; this is about the right for people to exist, wherever they are, without being persecuted and killed for their very existence.

What’s happening in Gaza will haunt me, will haunt us, for the rest of our lives. What’s happening here, in our own country, will ultimately do the same.

SPEAK OUT. Fight back. Risk your own safety. For even if you don’t care about Gaza — and I hope with all my heart you do – one day this will be us. And wouldn’t you want someone fighting for your very existence?

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       

The past year of growth has positioned us to need and seek a quarter-time administrative assistant.

We are excited for this opportunity to obtain support for our expanding work. The administrative assistant will support the board and our chapters work and will interface with a quarter-time organizer.

To read the job description, you may access either a Google doc or a Cryptpad doc. For the Cryptpad doc, you will see a shield icon before the page opens. We are in the process of migrating away from Google.

We look forward to receiving and reviewing applications by July 10 and getting to know applicants during the last half of July. Our hope it to make a decision by early August.

Google Doc

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If you have questions, email us at uujme (at) uujme (dot) org.

UUJME will be at UUA GA 2025 in person and virtually! You must be a registered attendee to participate in our programs and visit us at the in-person booth (except on Sunday from 12-2:30 pm Eastern when the Exhibit Hall is open to the public). Find out more about the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly at https://www.uua.org/ga. 

At #UUAGA2025 find us in person at Exhibit Hall Booth 617, or via our Virtual Booth and EduCenter space. We offer two LIVE programs defining accountable action in solidarity with Palestinian rights and lives. 

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June 20: Apartheid-Free Communities in Solidarity with Palestinians - MULTIPLATFORM EVENT - in person at the Baltimore Convention Center Ballrooms I & II, and livestreamed in the Whova app, 1-2:30 pm Eastern.

In accord with General Assembly 2024’s AIW “Solidarity with Palestinians,” affirming support for Apartheid-Free Communities, this interactive workshop with UU and Palestine solidarity partners supports action to dismantle apartheid and counter “all forms of racism, bigotry, and oppression, including racist discrimination, islamophobia, antisemitism, and xenophobia in our own communities.”

Panelists include Palestinian co-founder of the BDS Movement Omar Barghouti, Rev. Dr. Allison J. Tanner, National Organizer of the Apartheid-Free Communities pledge movement, Devin AC Dadah of DRUUMM, and Taha Hayat of the first UU congregation to sign the pledge. There are now four UU congregation signers!

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June 21: EduCenter live webinar “Action Network in Solidarity with Palestinians” - Live webinar via the Whova app's EduCenter space - 1-2:30 pm Eastern.

We’ll begin with a vigil for Gaza, and then short presentations sharing how to take accountable faith-based action rooted in love, following up on the UUA GA 2024 Action of Immediate Witness “Solidarity with Palestinians.” Safety for beloveds in Palestine, Israel, and the wider SWANA region will come from dismantling imperialism. Join us to learn more and make connections.

Presenters include Rev. Dr. Allison J. Tanner of Apartheid-Free Communities, UUJME Board Member and main proposer of the UUA GA 2024 Action of Immediate Witness "Solidarity with Palestinians," the Rev. DL Helfer, UUJME President Dana Fisher Ashrawi, and UUJME National Co-Organizer India Wood - and others to be announced.

Over the last 18 months – the world has watched in horror at the unfolding genocide in Gaza. Millions of people around the world protested, mock-died in the streets, wrote and sang and protested for Palestinians, with Palestinians. Our efforts driven in part by the belief that our actions would create change. If we could make the leaders understand the harm they were causing, the unbearable brutality of their decisions to unendingly supply Israel with weapons with which to slaughter Palestinians, we thought protest would at the very least slow the cruelty.

We were wrong.

Senators and representatives, Presidents and Administrations, they weren’t confused or questioning about their actions. Instead, they held – hold – an unwavering commitment to Netanyahu’s genocide. This wasn’t a situation in which decisions were made about collateral damage or moral injury, about noncombatants or slaughtering of innocent peoples.

To the contrary, our elected leaders were fully aware of their decisions, unwilling to reconsider no matter the outcry. The slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, the destruction of their lives and their homes, their land and their history, it wasn’t a miscalculation. It was a plan. One with a specifically desired outcome.

In these days of horrors increasing in the United States – legal citizens removed in plain sight, in situations so torturous that rumors of suicide have already leaked out – it is impossible, then, to ignore the parallel. Who will this administration kill en masse, now that we are once again aware that imperialist and increasingly authoritarian leaders will continue to wantonly kill those who they deem expendable.

This is only the beginning. One day, millions of people will look back at the genocide in Gaza and realize this is when leaders around the world, and everyone who remained silent, everyone who supported these murders, one day they will see their complicity. And they will see what their complicity led to – ever more genocides of ever more people deemed expendable. They’re coming for immigrants. They’re coming for trans people. They’re coming, if more indirectly, for women, for disabled people, for those deemed less desirable, those who they believe the world would be better off without. And still, they come for Palestinians and Palestine.

In a mere number of weeks since the new Administration took power, we see the vestiges of civil society increasingly stripped away. People stunned into silence. Afraid to protest publicly. Fearful of fighting back. Far too many are simply obeying in advance, falling into line for fear of
what might happen to them if they don’t self-censor.

But what happens if we do? Where are the millions who protested for Palestine when we need you here too, protecting immigrants, trans people, and all those deemed unworthy? All those who will in short and horrifying order, suffer the same fate as Palestinians. Where are your hearts and bodies on the line? Does our solidarity with Palestinians and each other end now, as our own safety decreases?

For those who can’t speak for themselves, for those truly in harm’s way, we need you, every single one of you, now fighting a much wider fight, one we must survive together.

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