What Does Just Peace in Palestine and Israel Look Like?

“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?

8 thoughts on “What Does Just Peace in Palestine and Israel Look Like?

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

    1. 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!)

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

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