Dear UUA Press Release Team,

This letter is written to you on behalf of the SWANA DRUUMM Caucus. Your statement released on September 23rd of this year titled Living Our Shared Values Amid Ongoing Violence was extremely harmful to our community. We found it fraught with misconceptions, untruthful obfuscations, painful disregard, and a prevalent categorization of dehumanizing rhetoric. Our caucus is everlastingly compassionate, patient, and faithful. We have lived in this society and understand that our demonization is used as a tool for nation building. Parsing through the propaganda, stereotypes, and even linguistic mistranslations can be difficult for non-SWANA folx. We’re tired, however, we are willing to take the time to break through those colonialist underpinnings, belief structures, and societal formations. It has no longer become productive to share our grievances in a manner which does not share our dynamic cultural lens. That is what this letter is going to convey: The manner by which your statement was harmful, and a critique of the general narrative which the letter pronounced; a narrative which is objectively false.

Your statement begins by recounting the aspirations of Raghad Ezzat Hamouda, an English literature student living in Gaza. It then mentions the October 7th attack, immediately after recounting Hamouda’s story. This implies to readers that Hamas is the cause of inaccessibility to schooling. The use of passive language further perpetuates this narrative. For example, you say, “few schoolbooks that remained accessible to students in the weeks after Hamas’ attacks on October 7th are now scattered and burned.” Where this statement fails is describing how these books were “scattered and burned.” How the Israeli military has been methodically destroying every school in Gaza using demolition charges. Secondly, you reference the “death of parents, caregivers, and siblings across generations,” however you do not indicate how they died. They were killed in Israeli airstrikes, by Israeli soldiers, using Israeli drones, or Israeli artillery funded by the United States. Not naming this is a complete obfuscation of the truth. The parents of Palestinian children did not disappear into thin air. They were murdered by the state of Israel: discriminately and indiscriminately.

Israel has been strategically bombing infrastructure for decades. These bombing campaigns have taken place in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, and 2022. In each bombing campaign Israel killed mostly civilians. The ruling Likud party refers to this military tactic as “mowing the grass,” which has of course, all too predictably, morphed into full scale annihilation of the Palestinian people. The framing in your statement serves to deny this fact. By only mentioning the displacement of “Gaza’s 625,000 schoolchildren” you erase the thousands of Palestinians who have been killed by the Israeli military. Over the past year, Israel has killed over 40,000 people and maimed or injured over 100,000. This intentional mass killing by Israel includes forcible starvation measures, the poisoning of aquifers, and the blocking of medical aid. Renowned medical journal The Lancet conservatively estimates that these deaths will reach 186,000 or 7.9% of all people living in Gaza.

Furthermore, only naming Hamas as the sole attacker on October 7th comes across as a further dehumanization of Palestinians and Arabs. It paints the picture of Arabs as “mindless fanatical barbarians” who are reflections of a one dimensional intolerant society. In reality, the attack on October 7th was a joint-militant operation, led by Hamas, which saw a broad coalition of Muslim militants (from various Islamic branches), secular Marxists, democratic socialists, communist revolutionaries, Pan-Arabists, and many other factions with varying ideologies. And since Israel’s ground invasion, more militant factions from a diverse set of backgrounds have joined in the fighting. Insistence on only citing Hamas is not only misleading, but it denies that Palestinian society is a complex and dynamic system with a coherent conjoining view of liberation. Instead, we’d rather you use the term “Hamas-led” or “joint-militant attacks” to more accurately reflect the situation.

The statement then goes on to recount the story of Eden Yerushalmi, a student who was abducted on October 7th. Yerushalmi gets a far longer and more empathetic paragraph than Hamouda. It laments at her captivity, her death, her calling in life, and the trauma of her family. Hamouda is not given this same level of care. All we get from her is a quote: “‘The war destroyed all my ambitions and there was nothing left.’” Do you see the issue here? You illustrate the life of Yerushalmi in a way which allows us to empathize with her, and the relatable Westernized lifestyle she lives. The same care and consideration is not given to Hamouda. The trauma of Hamouda’s family is not mentioned, her calling in life is not mentioned, the death of her family members are not mentioned, or the blatant fact that there is a high likelihood she will die by the military machine of Israel. We are genuinely baffled by this apparent imbalance within the statement.

By the 4th paragraph, Lebanon is mentioned, yet no details are given. It does not mention Israel’s detonating of thousands of pagers which in an instant maimed thousands and killed dozens. A terrorist attack which was intentionally conducted on the anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, to further traumatize the Lebanese people. The people of Lebanon are terrified to touch their devices, afraid that their phones, laptops, and tablets will explode in their face. None of this is mentioned, instead Israeli society is once again lifted up and centered. You say, “Israeli citizens take to the streets to demand the return of the hostages” then equate it to the global student protests. These protests are extremely different. The global student protests are calling for an end to genocide, whereas protests in Israel are not. In truth, the vast majority of Israelis are in support of the genocide in Gaza. The protests in Israel are demanding a release of hostages and regime change. They are protesting to preserve the state of Israel, because they believe continuous wars will result in an abolition of the Israeli colonial experiment. While these protests nationwide are massive, they are nowhere near comprehensive. The protests are in some ways a continuation of the protests which were taking place before October 7th. The entire SWANA region was watching Israel closely, and many concluded, including Israel academics, that Israel was on the verge of civil war. Divide between secular Zionism and ultra-orthodox Zionism has been growing for decades. Before October 7th, it was culminating into a situation in which far-right leaders were on the precipice of galvanizing an Israeli settler army to take control of Israel and secure a Jewish-only-state through the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians. This, unfortunately, is the only logical end result of a society which teaches its children hate and conditions them to be occupational soldiers right after high school.

Additionally, the ceasefire negotiations and hostage negotiations are not a multifaceted issue. Hamas and international negotiators, over the past 11 months, have repeatedly put forward ceasefire proposals which would see a release of Israeli hostages. In each instance, Israel has denied any proposal put forward which would put an end to hostilities and see a release of hostages. By not mentioning this fact your statement acts as a further obfuscation of truth. You perpetuate the “bothsideism” myth of equal contest. Israel is in control here. Israel has always been in control. Gaza has been an open-air-prison for almost two decades. Israel has used Gazan labor to grow its produce, work in its factories, build its roads, homes, and overall treat Gazans similar to how the U.S. treats undocumented immigrants. Equivocating the two societies, as if they are equals, is not acceptable.

This statement combined with the unaddressed harm at the last General Session of the General Assembly, feels like a double blow to our community. We are specifically referring to the AIW: Solidarity with Palestinians, and several of our members being targeted in the Whova chat, plus the amount of lies and misinformation that was allowed to be spewed without a fact check. The amount of emotional labor we put into that GA, just for our voices to be heard, took a physical toll on many of our members. We worked countless hours trying to get our UU community to recognize the inherent worth and dignity of the Palestinian people. For our community it weighs heavily upon us. We would like to point you to the SWANA DRUUMM Caucus statement for more information regarding our perspective.

We hope that this letter proves useful to you in recognizing what mistakes were made. Next time you put a statement like this out you should reach out to the SWANA DRUUMM Caucus. We’d be happy to review any statements or help formulate a statement which reflects our humanity. As individuals from SWANA we have unique insights which have been cultivated throughout our lifetime. We are more knowledgeable than those just now learning about the plight of the Palestinians or just now learning about the lived experiences of SWANA. Please, use our knowledge, perspectives, stories, and our dynamic cultural lens. As the SWANA DRUUMM Caucus we politely request that you take this statement down or revise it heavily. You are welcome to formulate the new statement off of this letter or reach out to us for assistance.

Sincerely,

SWANA DRUUMM Caucus