“How do I cope with genocide taking place every day against my people?” Joyce Ajlouny, the Palestinian-American general secretary of American Friends Service Committee, asks rhetorically. “And then, as an American, my tax dollars are supporting genocide against my own people—how do I sit with that?”
“It’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting to fight back, and wanting revenge,” Joyce says about conditions in Palestine, “because you get angry every day, humiliated every day, at what you and your people are going through.” But Quaker faith reminds her that “the solutions are not violent ones—people can transform, people can change.” AFSC continues to support efforts toward a nonviolent resolution to the longstanding conflict in Israel and Palestine.
“I am astounded when I hear Quaker [meetings] feel discomfort about saying we need a ceasefire,” Joyce observes. “This is not a political stand; this is a humanitarian stand… It’s a Quaker stand.” Have you found it difficult to speak about the violence in Gaza among Friends, or to find unity in speaking as a meeting?
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Transcript:
I have relied heavily on my Quaker faith in how I look at the injustice that is affecting my people. It is easy to fall into the trap, in Palestine, of wanting to fight back and wanting to revenge, because you get angry every day and humiliated every day. And to have our Quaker faith remind me that the solutions are not violent ones, it gave me an opportunity, especially in a in a place where we are living such a violent realities with occupation and apartheid day in and day out, to reflect back and inward. And to understand better what we mean by our testimonies of peace, our testimonies of equality.
My name is Joyce Ajlouny. I use she/her pronouns. I am a Palestinian-American Quaker. And I moved to the United States 12 years ago. And for the past seven years, I have had the honor of leading the AFSC, the American Friends Service Committee, which is a 107 year old global peace and social justice organization doing amazing work around the world and in the United States.
I am asked a lot of times to explain what living under military occupation is like, and I always say, “Do you have a few days?” So for me, yes, I did not live in a refugee camp. I lived in the city of Ramallah and had a relatively comfortable life. That does not mean that I did not struggle with daily humiliations and threats on my rights, on my life. There are so many examples of those experiences that haunt me till today. When you live in a place that treats you as subhuman, that your life is not worth living, you know, that continues to haunt every Palestinian. Unfortunately, my voice and the voice of my people for the past decades has been silenced. We have never been given the chance to speak about our history, and how we were there, and that Israel was not created on the land without a people for a people without a land. We have been dispossessed, massacred, ethnically cleansed for the past 70 some years. Gaza has been bombed and attacked so many times before October 7th. Generations families obliterated. Christians, Muslims, everyone. Occupation does not discriminate. This is not a response to the October 7th attacks on Israel. And this is not about Israel defending itself. This is a continuation of what I grew up with.
How do I cope with genocide taking place every day against my people? How do I cope? I don’t know if I’m coping. How do I accept that our world order has allowed this? And then as an American, my own tax dollars are supporting the genocide against my own people. Like how do I sit with that? I think if AFSC and Quakers play a vital role in showing a path in supporting also those so many Palestinians, so many, who believe and have been working all their lives to resist nonviolently. Accompanying them, empowering them, giving them agency, convening them, in the hope that they will one day attain their freedom and dignity back.
What does just peace in Palestine and Israel look like? Is a question that I have contemplated oftentimes. Everybody living in harmony with equal rights, dignity and freedom, no exceptions. This is what peace looks like — but when you add the word ‘just’ peace, then there’s another layer that you have to consider. And with justice means acknowledgment of the harms that have been perpetrated by the Israeli government and its supporters, including the US government. And then the second layer is a restoration of rights. Palestinians who are today living as refugees in Lebanon, in Syria, in Jordan, on the West Bank. Over 500 villages where obliterated in 1948. They have the right to go back. There’s a U.N. resolution, 194, that says they have the right to return. Reparations. Our water sources restored. Settlers today on the West Bank have a green light from the military, from the Israeli military, to do they want. So they continue to not only harass, but to commit pogroms against the Palestinian villagers. These are illegal settlements. So there has to be a restoration of rights. After that, then there’s space for reconciliation, for healing — so we can live in that beautiful piece of land from the river to the sea together.
What has happened in Gaza? It put us back decades. If I had any hope for peace, just peace to be attained in Palestine two years ago…I’ve lost it now. The only thing silver lining I see, and I want to say that, is with the amazing solidary that I have seen from people. Not the governments, from the people protesting outside, calling their senators, calling their representatives, putting their lives on the line.
The solidarity of the Jewish community, especially, that has given me and my fellow Palestinians hope. Those communities, those allies, people of conscience, that have been speaking up, my message to them is not to tire. Whether it’s a conversation with a neighbor or the family member, is to continue and courageously speak truth about those historic harms and what is happening today on the ground. This is not a political stand. This is a humanitarian stand. It’s a human stand. It’s a Quaker stand. I feel like there’s a next generation that is going to understand the truth, is going to be able to lift it up and take us there to a place where we can be free and we can reconcile and we can heal. It’s just going to take a long time.
Discussion Question:
- How can you stand with and advocate for just peace is Palestine and Israel?
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
I see you and am with you 100%
This is not an either/or issue. There is no contradiction or disconnect between the political and the Quaker or spiritual issue. Jesus was political (his upturning of the tables or criticism of the hypocrisy of the establishment). If we follow the light and are guided by it, we will be led to question injustice wherever it occurs and to do all we can to end the situation.
Yes. What we need to hear, keep in front of us, and act on every day in every way we can.
I don’t know how anyone maintains hope, given the inhumanity being practiced, and the impunity of people who don’t seem to care what they are doing to other human beings. I’m grateful to you for speaking of your hope.
I’m still trying to figure out how to post this to my Facebook, and to share with my Senators and others. Your voice is important and needs to be heard by more. I have long stood with Palestine and AFSC. You are giving voice to something so misunderstood and horrific, and it’s happening in our time. Thank you for your calm but very clear words.
Thank you, Sue! You should be able to paste the URL for this page into a Facebook post — or if you wanted to go straight to the video, you could post its YouTube URL. (We were initially concerned about whether Facebook might block this episode due to its subject matter, but we don’t seem to have offended the algorithm, so you should be safe to post as well!)
It’s tempting to feel despairing because neither the Israeli nor the US government cares what we think and will just continue on their destructive paths.
Thank you very much for Joyce’s words of wisdom, experience and conviction. I will listen to this several more times as a source of inspiration and a life-giving force. I plan to share with others.
As an observer I would agree there needs to be a peaceful solution, but the very premise of this article seems to be lacking fairness and objectivity. It ignores critical facts of history, cycles of conquerers that served to drive the Jews from their homeland and scattered a whole people far and wide and hated even unto extermination. The article does not call out
HAMAS for its role in the violence and their stated intent to exterminate the Jews, indoctrination of Palestinian children to hate Jews, and hiding behind civilians, using them as human shields. True peace will not come until all evil doers are held accountable. PS I am not Quaker, but my family was from my father back to the beginning, so the genes for peace, activism, justice and fairness runs deep.
I do wish that this stand could broaden into the deep field of conflict instead of just following the media. Not many know, in fact I’m sure hardly anyone commenting here knows that close to one million Jews fled or were forced to leave their middle east homes. The figure is over 900,000 . So now there is under 5 Jews living in Muslim nations.
As well as now the Exodus of Christians from North Africa and Arabia. Recently 70 Christians were beheaded in the Congo by, well we all know who, so l need not say
The Pope has tried to get some media focus here and has failed. Apparently murdered black Christians doesn’t get the public incensed and that’s not good for media business. Or am l being cynical, l think not.
The reality is with the loss of its Jewish population and now the Exodus of its Christians the middle east is being made over into a monolithic power.
But at the moment good people want to be on the right side meanwhile reality is suspended in the service of righteousness.
Joyce’s quiet advice is powerful, and at least a beginning in something we are powerless otherwise to effect: “Say the word genocide in conversation”. At least some personal awareness and perhaps hope will seed into another person’s heart.
A heartfelt commentary from someone who works to make the world a better and more peaceful place. It is a shame that our leaders are so lacking in even the most basic of spiritual value. They should be listening to Joyce and others like her. Then, maybe instead of thinking that killing people is the path to peace they will wake up to reality and get in touch with their humanity.
The only way to stop the slaughter in Gaza is to arrest the persons who are most guilty of starting and continuing the aggressive policies. As horrific as this behavior is, there are those in the religious community who are teaching their followers that this evil is justified in the Bible.
Several months ago, AFSC General Secretary Joyce Ajlouny gave a short speech on QuakerSpeak entitled “What Does Just Peace in Palestine and Israel Look Like?” In the course of this speech, she specified that she wanted Palestinians to live “from the river to the sea.”
She implied that Israelis could live together with Palestinians, but her choice of words is chilling. “From the river to the sea” is a rallying cry of Hamas, whose attack on and abduction of 251 civilians in Israel sparked the current war that Ms. Aljouny is decrying. Hamas enshrined it in their 2017 charter. The Anti-Defamation League considers it hate speech. Far from words of peace and freedom, this phrase is used to incite violence against Israelis and diaspora Jews.
As a Quaker and a human being, I cannot imagine Ms. Aljouny would condone or support such violence against unarmed civilians. But as a Palestinian-American and lifelong peace advocate, I cannot imagine she is unaware of how her use of an anti-Semitic phrase in a call for peace muddies her intended message.
I call on Ms. Aljouny and the AFSC to apologize for the inflammatory language, and make future appeals for Palestinian liberation without hate speech. And I call on Friends who want a just peace in Palestine and Israel to do the same.