Israel & Palestine

Israel/Palestine

The conflict between Israel and Palestine is one of the most challenging peacemaking concerns we confront as a multifaith community dedicated to nonviolence. The genocide of six million Jewish people during the Holocaust remains a wound that requires our best efforts at challenging anti-Semitism when and wherever it occurs. We affirm the Jewish people's historic connection to the land of Israel and their concern for safe haven.

  The displacement of 750,000 Palestinians from the holy land in 1948 known as The Nakba, the post 1967 Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian people, now in its forty fourth year, and the failure of the international community to negotiate national, civic and human rights in behalf of the Palestinian people in the context of numerous Peace Plans is also on our hearts and minds as a multifaith community dedicated to nonviolence and a cherished vision of a multicultural multifaith peace upon the land that is sacred to the Abrahamic faith community.

  Finally, we are sensitive to the issues of Islamophobia as we take up the work of nonviolence and peace advocacy in relationship to Israel and Palestine. There are some basic affirmations that guide our work and the conversations we have among ourselves as well as with others on the issue of Israel and Palestine:


 

1) We affirm the dignity of each person in the world and honor the profound interconnection we share as one human family. 
 
2) We understand the term “violence” to include all violations of human dignity; that is, all attempts at treating persons as things, from large systems designed to humiliate and dehumanize to individual acts of impulse, and from bullying to murder. 
 
3) We believe that violence, in any form, cannot lead to peace, genuine security or right relations among communities in conflict around the world. We place our faith in the power of nonviolence as an inner pathway and a collective response to injustice. 
 
4) We believe that Israel’s forty four year occupation of Palestine, along with the accompanying infrastructure of occupation including settlements, Jewish only roads, the Wall of Separation, destruction of homes, trees and the siege of Gaza are forms of violence that must be dismantled for peace to emerge among Israelis and Palestinians. 
 
5) Terrorist attacks, missile strikes, suicide bombings and all other actions that harm or kill others, especially when directed at civilian populations, such as the rockets fired on the people of Sderot, Israel are heinous, wrong, and contrary to international law. As proponents of nonviolence, we feel that these acts cannot be justified for any reason. True peace cannot be realized in an atmosphere of fear, mistrust and the real insecurity that such actions create.   
 
6) We are Christians, Muslims and Jews who seek, to the best of our ability, to live faithfully according to the teachings of our traditions as we understand them. However, we do not pretend to speak for all Jews, all Muslims, nor all Christians. We recognize the wide divergence of opinion in each of our communities, and often those divergent opinions are held by teachers and leaders and adherents whom we hold in the highest regard. What distinguishes our work, perhaps, is our commitment to nonviolence which defines our opposition to war, militarism and systematic injustice in all forms as well as our pro-active responses. 
   
7) The Community of Living Traditions is committed to supporting and nurturing the work of partners in Palestine and Israel who share our love and faith in the power of nonviolence to transform conflict into the hope for peace. We stand in solidarity with those who resist violence with nonviolence. 
  
8) Emotions on these difficult matters run high. We at the Community of Living Traditions are always prepared to listen and dialogue respectfully with those with whom we disagree.

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