A series of short video talks about why advocate for justice for Palestine

Jewish, Palestinian, and Quaker voices come together to explore the question “Why do Quakers care about Israel Palestine?” A QuakerSpeak video with a Quaker call to action on Israel-Palestine: Jennifer Bing, AFSC Middle East Program Director; Rabbi Brant Rosen, former AFSC Midwest Education Director; Ayah Bashir in Gaza; and Tamara Tamimi, Jerusalem

Jean Zaru is a Palestinian Quaker from Ramallah Friends Meeting. In 2019, she sent this video message to Annual Sessions.

Chris Jorgenson traveled twice to the region, most recently in early 2020 to volunteer at the Ramallah Friends School

Carole Rein explored the region in 2018 and has spoken about her experiences to numerous Quaker meetings in New England.

Seeing in Palestine, an article by Carole Rein about her 2018 journey to the Holy Land

Skip Schiel has photographed in the region since 2003 and currently concentrates on his project, “The Ongoing and Relentless Nakba.”



More coming from activists, stay tuned to this channel

Expanded Minute For Palestinian Children Spurs Quakers To Further Action Here At Home

Israeli border police arrest a Palestinian youth for throwing stones at their checkpoint in Ras al-Amud neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Friday Sept. 23, 2011, just hours before their president, Mahmoud Abbas, was to deliver his widely anticipated request to the UN. Photo by Mahfouz Abu Turk

Northwest Quarterly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, March 7, 2021: No Way to Treat a Child

Minute 2021-03-10

We recognize our own involvement in the incarceration of children and youth, most of them black and brown, here in the United States. Whether in prisons or cages for recent immigrants, this is no way to treat children. We ask New England Yearly Meeting to begin to join in this work.

Spirit leads Northwest Quarterly Meeting to ask New England Yearly Meeting to engage wholeheartedly with American Friends Service Committee’s No Way to Treat a Child campaign “which seeks to challenge and end Israel’s prolonged military occupation of Palestinians by exposing widespread and systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system.”  This rights-based effort to halt ongoing infringement of children’s human rights stems from Friends’ belief that no child should be denied due process or tortured.

NEYM Minute 2019-36 urged monthly and quarterly meetings to live into Minute 2017-46, particularly as it applies to Gaza and the West Bank. Consequently, Northwest Quarter requests that New England Yearly Meeting embrace No Way to Treat a Child by calling upon Friends everywhere to endeavor to end these violations of children’s human rights by:

  • Learning how placing children in military prisons violates international law and impedes the right to a childhood;
  • Talking with members of Congress to co-sponsor the bill that replaces H.R. 2407 “Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under the Israeli Military;
  • Writing letters in local newspapers as one of many ways of How Quakers can join No Way to Treat a Child;
  • Accompanying  American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)—as led locally, nationally, and internationally—in that Quaker organization’s effort to end “the Israeli occupation of Palestinians by exposing the systematic ill treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention;”
  • Connecting what Friends learn about settler colonialism, here in the States, transnationally with Israel Palestine.

—Approved Northwest Quarterly Meeting March 7, 2021

Background information:

While urging Friends everywhere to engage wholeheartedly with American Friends Service Committee’s No Way To Treat A Child program, Quakers in northwestern New England—originally Abenaki/Pennacook land—committed themselves to address systemic racism within our own meetings and communities in Vermont and western New Hampshire: “We recognize our own involvement in the incarceration of children and youth, most of them black and brown, here in the United States.”

The March 7th decision followed earlier approval that Northwest Quarterly Meeting had given No Way To Treat a Child when it convened in Middlebury on December 8, 2019 and again in Burlington on March 8, 2020. This month’s expanded endorsement was an essential and courteous “assist” to New England Yearly Meeting’s presiding clerk who is preparing for Quaker’s upcoming annual meeting in August 2021.

Friends recognized that it is important work that could not wait for three months until their next Quarterly Meeting to continue. The path to their March 2021 decision began 15 months earlier when Northeast Kingdom Quaker Meeting urged Northwest Quarterly Meeting to endorse AFSC’s rights-based campaign, No Way to Treat a Child—“which seeks to challenge and end Israel’s prolonged military occupation of Palestinians by exposing widespread and systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system.”

Consequently, Friends acknowledged the enlargement of what we had already approved a year ago by including five action steps. One of these urges local Quakers to apply what they are learning about settler colonialism here in the States, transnationally with Israel Palestine.

Earlier the yearly meeting’s presiding clerk, Bruce Neumann, had urged Northwest Quarter Friends to be as specific as possible—while waiting for the new House Resolution that replaces HR 2407— about naming steps that describe how Friends can “endeavor to end these violations of children’s human rights” as AFSC has urged for a number of years.

Original article on No Way to Treat a Child minute March 2021

Israel must release all Palestinian child detainees amid COVID-19 pandemic (Defence for Children International (April 2020)

Israeli border guards detain a Palestinian boy during a demonstration outside the Lions Gate, a main entrance to Al-Aqsa mosque compound on 17 July 2017 (AFP)

Quakers (and others) can strengthen their opposition to caging children by joining the No Way To Treat A Child campaign.

Image result for children arrested israel

Friends can strengthen their opposition to caging children by joining the No Way To Treat A Child campaign. Spirit continues to lead Northeast Kingdom Quaker Meeting to explore, discern, and season our support of No Way To Treat A Child over a year when Northwest Quarter (comprising Friends from Vermont and western New Hampshire) supported passage of Rep. Betty McCullum’s H.R. 2407: Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under the Israeli Military Occupation Act. Friends in Maine and New Hampshire—Belfast, Midcoast, and Hanover Monthly Meetings—recently sought our help to learn more about this effort to prohibit U.S. taxpayer funding for the military detention of children by any country.

Friends agree that no child should be tortured and no child should be denied due process. AFSC’s campaigns for justice in Palestine and Israel reflect a rights-based approach. Since HR 2407 died in the last Congress, a new “House Resolution” is likely to come forward during the opening months of this current 117th Congress. We urge Friends to engage with your members of Congress to become co-sponsors of legislation supporting the rights of children.

 

Reminding us that “there are 200,000 young people under 18 years old in prisons throughout the United States” AFSC’s Healing Justice Coordinator Lewis Webb asserts that America’s criminal justice system targets black and brown children in the same way that the Israeli military occupiers target Palestinian children. Monthly Meetings can respond to New England Yearly Meeting’s Two Calls to Action transnationally by examining settler colonialism both here in the States and in Israel/Palestine. Join AFSC’s effort to defend immigrant rights and broadcast how enforcement, detention, and deportation is, as Kristin Kumpf calls it, a “cycle grounded in violence.”

H.R. 2407 – Promoting Human Rights For Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation

Northwest Quarter Minute on No Way To Treat a Child

An Israeli soldier holds down 11-year-old Palestinian boy Mohammed Tamimi in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/Getty
2020­3­8. A number of Meetings in the Quarter have considered the Quarter’s charge to look at the AFSC’s No Way to Treat a Child program. Friends in Bennington, Burlington, and Putney as well as Friends present report being in unity with this program. Others are still considering or have not yet had a chance to complete this task. We spoke of ways to continue with this concern.

We ask New England Yearly Meeting to consider supporting the AFSC program “No Way to Treat a Child” and support the bill HR2407, entitled “Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under the Israeli Military Occupation Act” at Sessions.

We might like to hear more information on a Zoom call or a webinar, although we may tap into existing webinars on this topic. We would like to have a Quarter letter-writing campaign, and Progressive Secretary might be a tool to accomplish this. We might host speakers at a future Quarterly Meeting. We are in this for the long haul.

Several people stepped forward to move this work forward. Carl Williams, Connie Kincaid-Brown, Scott Rhodewalt, and Susan Rhodewalt will work on a letter packet. Ruah Swennerfelt will work with Progressive Secretary to post the letter. Ruah Swennerfelt will also invite Brad Parker of the National Defense for Children and Jennifer Bing of the American Friends Service Committee for our Zoom call or webinar. Cliff Bennett and Scott Rhodewalt will help.

We leave the discussion of this topic reminding ourselves again to search for the courage to talk with our neighbors on these hard topics. It is part of a larger picture. Concern for the safety and welfare of children applies not only to the Israeli/Palestinian border but also treatment of children at the U.S.- Mexico border and in our detention system. We need to hold ourselves accountable. We also need to trust in the Spirit.

Defense for Children International-Palestine

Is this disturbing video Israel’s Eric Garner moment? by Max Fishermax, August 31, 2015

Selectively ending incarceration during the age of the coronavirus pandemic

Israel raids offices of Palestinian prisoner rights activists ...

Palestinian prisoners sit during visiting hours at Israel’s Gilboa prison (AFP)

Friends’ compassion for those who are imprisoned (about 2.3 million) leads us* to call for monthly and yearly meetings throughout this nation to support:

    1. American Friends Service Committee’s call for compassionate release of elderly people and others who are medically vulnerable;  (AFSC)
    2. Palestine’s request that Israel “take immediate action to release all Palestinian child detainees in Israeli prisons due to the rapid global spread of the COVID-19 virus” as this is No Way To Treat A Child.  (DCIP)

Quakers’ legacy of being imprisoned offers us empathy for all who face the current pandemic while detained in intrinsically unsanitary and crowded conditions. Incarceration during the time of plague is genocide. Consequently, the Israel Palestine Working Group and the Racial, Social, and Economic Justice committee of NEYM urge all Friends to work for the release of the vulnerable.

*The Israel Palestine Working Group and the Racial, Social, and Economic Justice Committee of New England Yearly Meeting

Supreme Court Rules California Must Cut Prison Population : NPR

Inmates at California’s Chino State Prison sit inside a metal cage in the hallway as they wait to be assigned permanent housing or for medical, mental health, counselor or other appointments.
Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Minute of Concern for Palestinians in Gaza

UPDATED CASUALTY FIGURES (MARCH 30-AUGUST 9, 2018):
KILLED: PALESTINIANS, 172; ISRAELIS, 1
INJURED: PALESTINIANS, 15,504; ISRAELIS, 20
HOSPITALIZED: PALESTINIANS, 8,598; ISRAELIS, UNKNOWN

(Source: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, August 9, 2018)

FROM BURLINGTON FRIENDS MEETING, BURLINGTON, VERMONT, JUNE 10, 2018

Friends’ concern for the sufferings of all peoples leads us to oppose the recent escalation of violence by the Israeli political establishment against the Palestinians of Gaza. How should we as Quakers respond to this tragedy still taking place along the border of the Gaza Strip? [which began in late March, 2018, and continues thru this posting, July 4, 2018]

Gaza contains nearly 2 million residents in an area of 141 sq. miles. Israel imposes an economic cordon sanitaire around the region with the result that its economy is nearly destroyed and 80 percent of residents rely on international assistance. Travel in and out is sharply restricted by Israel and Egypt.

Since March 30, 2018, thousands of residents of Gaza, more than 80 percent of whom are refugees or the descendants of those displaced during the establishment of Israel in 1947, began marching toward the barriers that keep them from work, travel, foreign markets, and their ancestral lands. While still within Gaza, they were met by Israeli snipers who shot into Gaza from embankments across the line. On May 14 alone, 58 demonstrators were shot dead and 1,360 wounded with fragmentation rounds that often lead to amputations and permanent crippling. The dead include 6 children.

As a response to this unarmed, non-violent civilian protest, these premeditated and systematic shootings are a clear violation of international norms which forbid targeting noncombatants and require proportionality in the use of force, even in wartime. Clearly marked members of the press and the Red Crescent have been among the victims.

The United States is deeply complicit in these events. Since 1946, the U.S. has given Israel $134.7 billion in military and missile defense aid, $3.775 billion in 2017 alone. The weapons purchased are used to kill Palestinians. On April 6, the United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution supporting the right of Palestinians to “demonstrate peacefully” and endorsing Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for an independent investigation into these events.

On the day when 58 Gaza residents were shot dead by Israeli snipers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was welcoming U.S. Middle East Advisor Jared Kushner, his wife Ivanka Trump, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and four U.S. Senators on the occasion of the symbolic opening of a planned United States Embassy in Jerusalem. The embassy will be on land declared neutral in the 1949 armistice agreement and considered by the United Nations to be in occupied Palestine.

Friends are witnesses to these horrific events. Unless we speak out forcefully in protest, we will also be complicit. Removal of people from their land, their confinement in what amounts to a concentration camp, denying them sanitation, adequate health services, and employment, and then systematically killing them when their despair boils over into nonviolent protests all work against the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth. Quakers must protest this occupation by demanding that the U.S. government end all military aid to Israel and support international efforts to immediately end the illegal blockade of Gaza. We urge each Monthly Meeting to address this crisis through internal discernment and public activism.

Palestinians stage a protest within the ‘Great March of Return’ demonstrations near Israel-Gaza border in Gaza City, Gaza. Getty Images

The plea of refugees in Gaza to return to their ancestral villages now in Israel is the central focus of the Great March to Return . It began on April 2, 2018, was planned to end on May 15, but currently (August 15, 2018) is ongoing. These dates mark two important historical events, Land Day when 6 Palestinians were killed as they attempted to return to their villages in 1976, and Nakba Day marking the beginning of The Catastrophe, or the Grand Dispossession in 1948. The violence of this effort—as of August 9, 2018, Israeli army snipers have killed 172 mostly unarmed Palestinians, with 17,504 wounded (more than 1000 of them children), many with life-threatening injuries, overwhelming the already stressed medical system—led to this minute.

We attempted to bring this minute to New England Yearly Meeting (Quaker) Sessions this summer (2018) but because of our working group’s slip up and a packed business agenda,  we failed. However, Burlington Monthly Meeting may bring it to its Quarter, “seasoning” it for next year’s NEYM Sessions. We’re also working on a revision  (Minute inspired by Burlington Friends’ minute), not yet official from us.

NEYM unites on a statement about Palestine-Israel

(Dating back to late 2014, after a summer of unprecedented violence over Gaza and inspired by a statement from Britain Yearly Meeting in August 2014, Friends Meeting at Cambridge, followed by Salem Quarterly Meeting, and finally the Yearly Meeting itself unites on the following statement.)

Minute 2017-46 Annual Sessions at Castleton, Vermont, August 8, 2017

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) testimony on peace, justice, and nonviolence is based in our experience of the divine in all of creation and within all persons. Thus, we are deeply troubled by the suffering and injustice caused by the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and we are concerned that our government perpetuates that violence by continuing to send billions of dollars of military aid to the region. Continue reading “NEYM unites on a statement about Palestine-Israel”

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