The Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) has joined an international coalition of Quaker-led organizations in releasing a statement discerning that the ongoing military action of the Israeli government against Palestinian communities in Gaza and the West Bank constitutes genocide. The statement opens as follows:
“‘We are for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom.’ — Edward Burrough, 1659
As Quakers, we recognize the divine imprint in every human being and confess the equality of all to live safely and without fear.
We are also compelled as Quakers to speak truth with integrity, including where it is uncomfortable, yet always to do so in love. This requires us to speak against the catastrophic violence in Gaza.
Friends have a long history of working for peaceful coexistence and justice for all people in the Middle East. We have witnessed times when Jews, Muslims, and Christians have enjoyed peace and cooperation in the region. Since the creation of the state of Israel, our organizations have supported nonviolent efforts among both Palestinians and Israelis to protect human rights, prevent violence, address the root causes of conflict, and promote peacebuilding. We still believe a peaceful future for all peoples is possible.
However, through our decades of humanitarian work and accompaniment with Palestinian and Israeli communities we have witnessed the relentless erosion of justice. This lack of justice and the current violence is rooted in the systemic and violent dispossession of Palestinians from their lands and decades of occupation, apartheid policies, and the systematic denial of Palestinian rights.
This history contextualizes the atrocities that are being perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank today by Israel’s military and government – the starvation campaigns, mass killings, mass deportations, ethnic cleansing, settler violence, and calculated erasure of life. These are not isolated horrors, but the brutal continuation of a 76-year project of displacement and denial of Palestinians’ human rights.
These decades of dispossession, oppression, occupation, and violence are the backdrop to the cycles of violence in the region including the attacks, killings, abductions, and trauma suffered by Israelis on October 7, 2023.
After deep communal and prayerful discernment, informed by our direct witness in Palestine/Israel and our readings of the positions of international human rights organizations, international and Israeli genocide scholars, and experts on the UN Genocide Convention (1948), we are exercising our religious conviction to speak the truth as we see it. We believe with moral clarity, and in line with the definition of the crime of genocide, that the current actions in Gaza perpetrated by the Israeli government, constitute genocide.
Our peace and equality testimonies are clear: Apparent security for some, bought with the insecurity of others, tears at our shared humanity and cannot bring peace. Peace built on systematic oppression is a lie. We name what we see as genocide after deep discernment – not to incite, but to open eyes, minds, and hearts. We name this painful truth with the fervent hope that the violence it describes will cease, and with continued commitment to help heal the wounds of war on all sides.”
Click the link below to read the full statement, including data on the ongoing toll the Israeli military campaign has taken as well as our formal calls to action for the international community. We hold in the Light all suffering peoples and leaders, praying they choose justice. In Palestine and Israel, peace built on equality is the only path forward.
