FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Contact:

uujme @ uujme dot org

Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East marks 500+ communities pledging to be “Apartheid-Free”

March 21, 2025

Today, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East (UUJME) joins with communities all over the world to mark an important milestone: over 500 congregations and organizations have taken a pledge declaring themselves “apartheid-free.” Pledge signers commit to cut ties with Israel’s apartheid regime against Palestinians and to oppose all forms of racism, bigotry, discrimination, and oppression. These 500+ groups represent hundreds of thousands of constituents and include congregations, faith communities, solidarity organizations, non-profits, student organizations, veterans’ groups, businesses, and even municipalities.

A map and full list of apartheid-free communities can be found here.

The UUJME board stated this about the reason we signed the pledge, “Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East is a proud original signatory of the Apartheid-Free Communities pledge. We took the pledge because it invites commitment to collective study and action within a growing movement of communities in solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle for liberation. As Unitarian Universalists, we center love in human relations and believe in accountable transformation of injustice by building a united symphony of many voices for witness, education, organizing, and advocacy. Taking this pledge and organizing other groups to do so is one of the most meaningful commitments that a congregation or other group can make. UUJME worked in a coalition at the Unitarian Universalist Association 2024 General Assembly to overwhelmingly pass a resolution in solidarity with Palestinians which called for UU congregations to join Apartheid Free Communities. We are proud to support the adoption of the pledge in three UU congregations so far.”

The three Unitarian Universalist congregations that have signed the pledge include All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana; Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists; and the Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco. Several other UU congregations are in discussion about the pledge.

For decades, the Palestinian people have faced Israeli occupation and systematic human rights abuses. Apartheid is defined under international law as a legally enforced system of separation and oppression based on race, creed, or ethnicity. Palestinian human rights groups have described Israel’s policies as apartheid for decades. Over the past few years, much of the international human rights community – including B’tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International – have also joined the call for an end to Israeli apartheid.  

The Apartheid-Free campaign originated in 2022 when an interdenominational coalition of faith groups in North America, convened by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), came together to organize the pledge.

We are proud to be among the original 13 national faith groups that organized and signed the pledge to be apartheid-free.

“The fact that more than 500 congregations, organizations, and businesses have come together to end Israeli apartheid fills me with hope,” said Noor Nabulsi, Apartheid-Free Communications Specialist for AFSC. “These groups represent hundreds of thousands of people from many different places, faiths, and walks of life. What we share is a belief that collectively we are growing the anti-apartheid movement and making it a 21st century issue.” 

Each community that signs the pledge commits to resisting apartheid and all forms of racism and discrimination, but this looks different in every community. It can include community education, political advocacy, divestment, protest, organizing ballot measures, or creative projects. 

UUJME supports local UU congregations in their journey to become apartheid-free.

Learn more at:  https://apartheid-free.org/ 

### 

Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East works within the Unitarian Universalist faith community to educate and mobilize individuals, congregations, and denominational leaders to recognize and counter inequality and injustice in Palestine-Israel and to support our allies in the global justice and anti-oppression movements.

UUJME Statement on the Detention of Palestinian Mahmoud Khalil by ICE/DHS

All Out to Free Mahmoud Khalil and Stop Project Esther - Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East

Opposing genocide is not a crime! 

Halt ICE Kidnappings and Deportations!

Sign the letters demanding Mahmoud’s release!

Donate to his support fund!

Stop Project Esther!

March 13, 2025

=====

The Trump administration has caused the arrest and detention of recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian green card holder, targeted because of his prominence as a spokesperson for the encampment at Columbia University where students and professors were protesting the US-funded Israeli war on Palestinians in Gaza. This arrest is blatantly unconstitutional and straight from well-worn authoritarian playbooks. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must immediately release Mahmoud. Columbia University – and all college administrations – must start protecting their students from the reach of the Trump regime, and elected officials must take all action in their power to ensure that Mahmoud is released and students are protected. Mahmoud was not shown a warrant, and his wife, a U.S. Citizen who is eight months pregnant, was intimidated and harassed.

=====

From Muslims for Just Futures:

“...Columbia University, which recently published a new protocol on its plans to cooperate with ICE, has targeted Khalil for his Palestinian identity and outspoken activism on multiple occasions over the last 17 months. He served as a lead negotiator during the Gaza Solidarity Encampment last spring and has frequently appeared in media interviews and press conferences. Columbia’s continued acquiescence to federal agencies and outside partisan institutions has made this situation possible. Like many other Arab and Muslim students, Khalil has been the target of various zionist harassment campaigns, fueled by doxing websites like Canary Mission. This racist targeting serves to instill fear in pro-Palestine activists as well as a warning to others. Add your name to demand the immediate release of Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil from DHS detention and a reversal to Columbia University's protocol permitting ICE on campus without a warrant.”

=====

Take action now: Movement partners are asking that people quickly send letters to multiple decision makers at Columbia and Barnard as well as DHS, ICE, and other officials using this single-link petition which has garnered more than three million signatures. Additional action links and a fundraising link are listed at the end of this statement.

Details: Columbia University enabled the presence of DHS agents on their campus and in university housing to detain Mahmoud as he arrived home after a Ramadan iftar dinner on Saturday, March 8, with his spouse. He was taken away by plainclothes agents in an unmarked vehicle, with no clear information as to his destination. This is an act of disappearing a person and is highly alarming. Later it was learned that he was swiftly transported from New Jersey to a detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, more than a thousand miles away. Detention facility officials denied him the right to speak privately with his attorneys.

This is a serious first amendment rights violation which must be named as part of the rush into fascism that we are experiencing in the United States. In the lead-up to this abduction, Mahmoud was the target of a smear campaign and was doxxed and received death threats. After Mahmoud contacted university officials for support, none was given.

The Trump administration is platforming and empowering antisemitism, anti-Palestinian racism, anti-Muslim racism, xenophobia, and white nationalism. Nobody is fooled by their claims that they are deporting students in order to fight antisemitism. Deporting students, silencing political speech and dissent, and punishing anti-war student activists endangers all of us. We will not allow our communities to be divided. We must raise our voices and take action to reverse this tide. 

At a March 12 hearing, Federal Judge Jesse Furman ordered that Mahmoud remain in detention in Louisiana awaiting a trial and that he not be deported unless and until there is an order from his court. The detention facility was ordered to permit private consultation with his attorneys.

We will aim to provide an update soon with any further recommended actions and encourage you to subscribe to news and alerts from the Council on Islamic American Affairs (CAIR) and Palestine Legal. 

Palestinians are not strangers to deportation and displacement. In the book by UUA General Assembly 2007 Ware Lecturer Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years War on Palestine, the exile of Palestinian leaders in the 1930s by the British occupying power is documented. The more massive project of displacing Palestinians from their homes–during the creation of the State of Israel and to this day–is also documented, and by now very well known to many. The modern example of mass displacement has been the genocidal war on Gaza in which nearly 2 million Palestinians have been displaced. 

The deportation campaign initiated by the Trump administration uses Executive Orders and directives based on the Orwellian Project Esther which seeks to repress people speaking out for Palestinian rights and lives. Such a project endangers the freedom and safety of all campus anti-war protestors, including Jewish anti-war protestors, targeting international students first and threatening the non-profit status of many groups that speak out for Palestinian rights. Read this article by the CEO of the U.S. Jewish group Bend the Arc about how such campaigns constitute “smokescreen antisemitism” and threaten the safety of Jews rather than protecting them. It is shameful that this campaign was enabled by the administration and some professors of an institution of higher education. Rabbi Brant Rosen has penned a powerful blog post titled "First, they came for Mahmoud Khalil," echoing the famous words of Martin Niemoller about what happened to people under the Nazi regime in Germany.

This case is a test balloon. The justice-loving community must go all-out to demand the freedom of Mahmoud Khalil and push back against the dangerous Project Esther. His freedom is imperative to ensure the preservation of his rights and safety and that of all activists on issues targeted by the Trump administration and its enablers.

=====

Relevant Resources

2024 Action of Immediate Witness: Solidarity with Palestinians, passed by 74% of delegates to the UUA General Assembly. Contains examples of ways to be in solidarity.

2024 Statement in Solidarity with Student Protests for Gaza initiated by MPower Change about the urgent need to protect free speech on campuses, with 12 Unitarian Universalist signatory organizations.

2023 UUJME webinar - IHRA: An Anti-Free-Speech Definition of Antisemitism and How to Oppose It. This definition is being used in Project Esther and other venues to criminalize dissent around speech and activism for Palestinian rights and lives. The Jewish scholarly author of this definition has emphatically rejected its use for codes on campus free speech. 

2018 Action of Immediate Witness: End Family Separation and Detention of Asylum Seekers and Abolish ICE passed by delegates to the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly. The cruelty is ongoing.

Know Your Rights cards in multiple languages, informing you on what you should and should not say when approached by ICE.

=====

Take Action:

To repeat: With two easy-to-use petitions, send letters to multiple decision makers at Columbia and Barnard as well as DHS, ICE, and other officials with these two petitions. 

Note: If you are not a U.S. citizen, for your security and safety please do not provide your real name in the "First Name" and "Last Name" fields of petitions.

Demand the Immediate Release of Palestinian Student Activist Mahmoud Khalil from DHS detention
Campaign by Deportation Defense

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/demand-the-immediate-release-of-columbia-student-pro-palestine-advocate-mahmoud-khalil-from-dhs-detention

Release Mahmoud Khalil & Protect All Student Activists
Campaign by Palestinian-led Adalah Justice Project

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/release-mahmoud-khalil-protect-all-student-activists?source=mc_MahmoudKhalil_2025_03_10

Contact Congress
Campaign by Jewish Voice for Peace

Call Congress

Email Congress 

Donate to the Support Fund

Friends have organized a fundraiser to support Mahmoud and his wife and unborn child.

Donate at this link: https://chuffed.org/project/justice-for-mahmoud-khalil

=====

Sign up for our emails to make sure you are notified of the latest statements, action alerts, and learning spaces: https://www.uujme.org/join

Sign up for our educational webinars and monthly advocacy gatherings on the UUJME Calendar.

I've been invited to join a Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) delegation to Palestine, April 1-8. This delegation is made up of leaders from advocacy organizations that focus on issues adjacent to Palestinian liberation, such as immigration, LGBTQIA+, housing, peacemaking, antiracism, environmentalism, and reproductive justice. We will meet with organizational leaders so that we may learn from, listen to, and relay the stories of the Palestinian people to our own communities when we return home.The goals of the delegation are: 

• Being with and encouraging the people who are under attack
• Exposing human rights violations
• Strengthening and encouraging U.S. advocacy for a just peace

The complicity of the United States in the ongoing forced displacement, illegal detainment, military occupation, and indiscriminate killing of Palestinians is clearer now than it ever has been. As we witness the continued violence of Israeli occupation, many have awakened to the realities of the ongoing Israeli project to destroy Palestinian culture, identity, society, and population. I believe we must continue sharing information and lifting up the moral imperative for Palestinian liberation. Therefore, I am putting my beliefs into action and going in person as a witness to the West Bank. 

I am embarking on this journey with a learner's mind. I know very well that I don’t know everything there is to know about the history of this crisis and the current situation on the ground, which is why I will go and learn from human rights organizations and faith-based organizations within Palestinian communities. I invite you to support this learning immersion journey through donations of any size. My participation is self-funded through my own personal contributions and my professional expenses, but additional funds raised through this platform will be donated to Sabeel for other delegates who do not have the funds to participate. 

If you choose to donate, you do NOT need to donate additional funds to the zeffy platform. Just select zero when it comes to that field on the form (www.zeffy.com/en-US/fundraising/meagan-henry). I will share real-time experiences via social media (Instagram and Facebook) and I will be available to continue to share what I witness and learn upon my return. You can find me on Instagram (@revmeaganbelden) and Facebook (@meaganhenry). May we be mutual partners in the pursuit of freedom. 

In solidarity, Rev. Meagan

By this time, we know this Administration’s playbook. It looks haphazard, and perhaps some of it is, but much of it is calculated to drive us to despair and numbness, to focus our attention on the fear invoked by the Executive Orders and dramatic statements, to draw the eye away from what’s really happening. Underneath all the intended layoffs of federal workers, for example, is the truth in plain sight – Musk and other Administration Republicans are making themselves unthinkably wealthy by raiding public coffers. 

I know personally that this approach to distraction and fear is effective. As we well know, it’s the playbook of authoritarian regimes. A fate from which we as a country now recognize we are not exempt. 

Neither, however, are we powerless. 

In a call this week, a lawyer reminded us that the Executive Orders are no more than a wish at this point. Our current laws and protections still (largely) exist and can be fought for and defended. 

As I listen to Trump’s claim that he’ll move Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt and make Gaza instead “a luxury paradise,” I recognize that same distraction strategy. It’s not that he’s not serious in his intentions, as this would be consistent with his imperialist core. Instead, it’s the recognition that his bluster and bluffing is meant to distract us, again, from the very real dangers he is creating.

The same playbook Netanyahu has used for years. The lies that Israel was in danger and must defend itself against the Palestinians was never true. This claim is a gas lighting of the actual truth, that the deeply oppressed Palestinians fought back in the way they knew and know how against their captors.

It was this same justification that was underpinning Netanyahu’s absolutely leveling of Gaza, a genocide funded by this country and continuing to this day.  The false belief that the destruction of another – the Palestinians, immigrants, transgender individuals – is necessary to the success of society. This has never been true, but this “othering” provides wildly powerful cover for the very worst of human right abuses.

Which is where we find ourselves now. Fighting parallel wars, in the US, in Palestine, in much of the world, as humanity continues to try to hold back a rising tide of authoritarianism.

For it is all intertwined – our fight for our Palestinian siblings is tied up with the safety of our immigrant, transgender, and otherwise vilified cohabitants on this shared earth. When we can dehumanize one group, we don’t stop there. We find ever more groups to dehumanize, until there is nothing left but the “preferred” individuals. We know this horror all too well. 

What, then, do we do as Unitarian Universalists?  

This is the time, beloveds, to be brave in a way most of us never have before. When we were fighting safely from a far distance, with great intent and effort, but still essentially safe. That time is over. 

This administration threatens to deport students who protested the genocide in Gaza, to jail those who use “anti-Semitic” language (which is just code for speaking out against Israel’s actions), to separate us in ways that make us afraid of naming our own truths. 

Yet the Palestinians themselves teach us otherwise. For three-quarters of a century, they have fought for their home, for each other, for mutual care and the strength of love, against brutal conditions and captors.  

We are only just beginning that same fight for our homeland – and for theirs. And if we do it now, not stunned into inaction, we have some hope of saving our country before it descends into a truly authoritarian regime. The time to act is now. 

So, what do we do? 
One answer is to reach out to your local UUJME chapter. If you don’t easily find one, reach out to UUJME directly for help in getting involved UUs in many locations are drawing the connections between the multiple oppressions we face here and that the Palestinians face there, and moving people into meaningful action in community, accountable to the request of the Palestinian liberation movement. 

And this list gives great, finite, suggestions, for those just feeling stuck, not knowing where to begin. 

If you do nothing else, call your representatives every day, and remind them of their power to halt government gone astray. They have powers that they are not yet using. 

Keep the faith, friends. This is a fight we can win.

Rev. DL Helfer

We condemn efforts by the Trump Administration to perpetuate dire conditions for Palestinians.

Unitarian Universalists affirm the guiding power of Love and the values of Justice and Equity, as well as a belief in the dignity of all humans, democratic rights, and compassion in human relations. Our religion has a long and proud history of supporting the United Nations and its efforts toward global justice. UUJME takes inspiration from the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Nearly three-fourths of delegates to the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly in 2024 supported a resolution to take action in solidarity with Palestinians.

One of President Trump’s recent Executive Orders mandates withdrawing the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and extends President Biden’s ban on United States funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the main organization providing humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees. This action continues a devastating impact on the UNRWA budget, restricting the amount of life-saving food and healthcare, as well as education, for millions of Palestinian refugees. The need for UNRWA is greater than it has ever been, after 15 months of genocidal attacks on Gaza, and an escalation of attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The Trump Administration is promoting outrageous designs to continue denying aid to Palestinians while continuing to supply weapons to Israel, and proposing a massive expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland.

UNRWA was established in 1949 to provide support to the 750,000 Palestinians violently displaced from their homes and lands between 1946-1948 during the formation of the State of Israel. The protracted nature of the situation means that refugee status is retained across generations. The State of Israel’s army attacked numerous UNRWA schools and aid sites during a 15-month assault on Gaza and blocked UNRWA trucks carrying food and other aid during the war with full U.S. support. The Israeli parliament has just activated a ban on UNRWA operations in Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, which is an illegal measure for a member state of the United Nations.  Despite Israel’s attempt at cancellation, “the UN Relief Works Agency continues to operate on the ground in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem, carrying out its life-saving humanitarian assistance at this critical moment,” as reported on February 4.

Support the campaigns of the UNRWA USA National Committee:

• Spread awareness. 

  • Distribute the #HandsOffUNRWA flyer in your congregation and other circles.

  • Speak up on social media using the sample posts in the flyer to repost the Hands Off UNRWA graphics on Instagram.

• Advocate. Contact your U.S. representatives using the UNRWA USA advocacy portal to urge them to restore US government funding.

• Donate to UNRWA (tax deductible) at https://donateunrwa.org/int/en/general.

• Stay informed. Check the UNRWA Situation Reports page and follow UNRWA USA on social media: @unrwausa

Our work and the work of UNRWA will continue until there is a just solution.