+ Why should the Israel/Palestine conflict matter to Christians? To me personally?

“Sharing the land is the biblical vision we see in the Hebrew Scriptures and thus must be the prophetic vision of the church in this land and all around the world. The reality on the ground is that of ‘walls,’ yet what is needed is a vision of ‘bridges.’ Palestinians and Israelis must think collectively in terms of a common future in which they will cooperate together, not a divided future in which they are separate. I echo the words of the Kairos Palestine Document, ‘Our future and their future are one: Either the cycle of violence that will destroy both of us, or a peace that will benefit both.’”

~Munther Isaac, The Other Side of the Wall , pp 218-219

The Israel/Palestine conflict is not just a local issue for those living where Jesus walked. For decades, western Christians have contributed to building “walls” in Israel/Palestine. We continue to sustain them through our theologies that justify, condone, and even amplify violence; with our political beliefs that fuel tensions and distrust among Christians, Muslims, and Jews around the world who are watching this conflict; and in our policies and tax dollars that directly fund ongoing conflict and war. We are culpable for this conflict, and we are called as peacebuilders and followers of Jesus to repent, or turn, and work to make things right.

• Palestinian Christians, “A Call for Repentance: An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians”
• Daniel Munayer, “Christian community must take responsibility for promoting reconciliation,” The Jerusalem Post
• Munther Isaac, “God is Under the Rubble in Gaza,” Sojourners, 30 October 2023
• Daoud Kuttab, “Why does the Christian West ignore Palestinian Christians’ plight?” Al Jazeera, 25 December 2023
• Munther Isaac, “Munther Isaac Easter Vigil for Gaza 2024”
• Todd Deatherage, “Evangelical, Pro-Israel, and Pro-Palestine”
• Gregory Khalil, “Evangelical Christians must rethink their reflexive support for Israel”
• Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon & Dr. Bruce Fisk, “Christian Nationalism and Christian Zionism: Two Sides of the Same Coin?”

+ How can I understand such a complex history more deeply?

“As for those not directly affected by this struggle, it would be helpful if more conversations could hold greater complexity—the ability to acknowledge that the Israelis who came to Palestine in the 1940s were survivors of genocide, desperate refugees, many of whom had no other options, and that they were settler-colonialists who participated in the ethnic cleansing of another people. That they were victims of white supremacy in Europe being passed the mantle of whiteness in Palestine. That Israelis are nationalistic in their own right and that their country has long been enlisted by the United States to act as a kind of subcontracted military base in the region. All of this is true at once. Contradictions like these don’t fit comfortably within the usual binaries of anti-imperialism (colonizer/colonized) or the binaries of identity politics (white/racialized)—but if Israel/Palestine teaches us anything it might be that binary thinking will never get us beyond partitioned selves or partitioned nations.”

~Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, Canadian Jewish author and activist

The Israel/Palestine conflict is a story of competing traumas that have largely been generated and sustained by western Christians. The historic Jewish experience of Christian antisemitism, pogroms (organized massacres of Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe), and the Holocaust generated a deep longing and need for a homeland in which Jews feel safe. After World War II, the British gave parts of the land of Palestine to Jews from Europe, despite the fact that Palestine was not a “land without a people,” as Zionists claimed. When the UN offered the Jewish minority the majority of the land for a new state called Israel, the lives of the indigenous Palestinians who lived there were uprooted and actively destroyed. Palestinians rejected the UN partition plan, and after Zionist militias began an ethnic cleansing of Palestinian towns, several Arab states invaded the new state of Israel. By the end of the fighting in 1948, Israel had wiped out hundreds of Palestinian towns, taken 78% of the land of Palestine, and refused to allow more than 750,000 Palestinians to return to their homes. The new state of Israel had created a massive refugee crisis and relegated more than 100,000 Palestinians who remained in Israel to the status of second-class citizens. This was called the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) and it tore the fabric of Palestinian society and culture, creating the ongoing trauma for Palestinians as foreigners and refugees in their own land and abroad.

These competing traumas, Jewish and Palestinian, are the basis for decades of conflict that have brought us to today: the Jewish people in need of security and safety after centuries of persecution now dominating traumatized Palestinians who have been left without land, resources, and rights.

• Jewish Voice for Peace, “Israeli Palestinian conflict explained: an animated introduction to Israel and Palestine”
• Vox, “The Israel-Palestine conflict: a brief, simple history”
• Global Conflict Tracker: Center for Preventative Action, “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”
• Palestinian Christian Huda with Andy Larsen, “Why is There a Conflict. A Palestinian Shares Her Story”
• Preston Sprinkle, “A Palestinian Christian’s Perspective on the Israel-Palestinian War: Daniel Bannoura,” Theology in the Raw
• Hannah Maté, “Dr. Gabor Maté on Israel/Palestine - October 28, 2023”
• Naomi Klein, “Israel, Palestine, and the Doppelganger Effect”

“Palestinians have become the indirect victims of the Judeocide of the Second World War. The Jews were the direct victims and the Palestinians are the indirect victims. They are not responsible for what happened; the responsibility rests firmly on the shoulders of Christian civilization, which wiped out six million Jews—not on the Arabs, the Muslims, or the Palestinians.”

~Tariq Ali, Speaking of Empire and Resistance, Pakistani-British journalist, historian, and public intellectual

+ What about Palestinian suffering, oppression, and apartheid?

“We are horrified by the refusal of some western Christians to condemn the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine, and, in some instances, their justification of and support for the occupation. Further, we are appalled by how some Christians have legitimized Israel’s ongoing indiscriminate attacks on Gaza … Moreover, we categorically reject the myopic and distorted Christian responses that ignore the wider context and the root causes of this war: Israel’s systemic oppression of the Palestinians over the last 75 years since the Nakba, the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the oppressive and racist military occupation that constitutes the crime of apartheid. This is precisely the horrific context of oppression that many western Christian theologians and leaders have persistently ignored, and even worse, have occasionally legitimized using a wide range of Zionist theologies and interpretations.”

~ Palestinian Christians, “A Call for Repentance: An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians”

After the British gave Palestinian land away to establish the state of Israel in order to support longer-term Western regional interests and in part out of penance for Christian antisemitism, Palestinians ask, “Why do the Palestinians have to pay for what happened to the Jews in the Russian pogroms and the European Holocaust? The Palestinians had nothing to do with it.”

The state of Israel – not to be confused with Jewish people – has imposed a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians in all the territory it controls: Israeli sovereign territory, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Israeli laws, policies, and practices are designed to advance the supremacy of Jewish Israelis and maintain a cruel and comprehensive system of control over Palestinians, who face discrimination, dispossession, and repression of dissent. Palestinians are fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and subject to a constant state of fear and insecurity.

Many Americans who criticize America do so out of a deep love for their country. Similarly, many Christians criticize Christianity out of a deep love for Christ and the Church. With the same spirit, this criticism of the state of Israel is not discrimination, targeting, violence, or dehumanization of Jews because they are Jewish (antisemitism); instead, this criticism is about inherently self-defeating policies and practices of the state of Israel, which are perpetuating trauma and cycles of violence. We wish to see a holistic, just, and durable peace, where everyone - Jews and Palestinians alike - are free from fear and living with safety, justice, and flourishing relationships.

• Amnesty International, “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity”
• Peter Beinart, “It’s Time to Name Anti-Palestinian Bigotry”
• Andy Larsen, “Daily Life & Obstacles to Peace in Hebron”
• Infographics to visualize injustices against Palestinians (via Visualizing Palestine 101):
  • Historical Context: Placing the present-day situation in the context of Zionist settler colonialism and the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians.
    • Settler colonialism is still a reality
    • Zionism is recent history in Palestine
    • The Zionist colonization of Palestine
    • The ethnic cleansing started before the war (1948 Palestine War)
    • Israel’s history of military expansionism
    • One population is replacing another
    • Where Palestinians live today
  • System of Control: Illustrating Israel’s apartheid-style system of control over all of historic Palestine, exercised through military, economic and bureaucratic means.
    • Israel controls the land, air, and sea
    • Palestinian territory is divided and fragmented
    • Some people are more equal than others
    • Israeli law institutionalizes discrimination
    • How the PA aids Israel’s occupation
  • Structural Inequality: Highlighting examples of the injustice and discrimination perpetrated against Palestinians on a day-to-day basis.
    • Captive to an unequal economic system
    • More Palestinians are getting killed
    • Israel incarcerates thousands of Palestinian citizens
    • Destroying homes and building in their place
    • Israel exploits Palestinian natural resources
  • International Impunity: Demonstrating how the international community is failing to hold Israel accountable for its continuing violations of international law.
    • Some countries never face sanctions
    • How the US veto enables Israeli impunity
    • US taxpayers subsidize Israel’s military
    • Global complicity in Israel’s arms industry
  • Future Possibilities: Highlighting specific Palestinian demands towards a better future, and how each demand is realizable and founded in international law.
    • Palestinians want freedom, justice, and equality
    • What full equal rights should look like
    • The world is against the occupation
    • There’s enough space for everyone
• Democracy Now, “Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé on Gaza War, Hostages & the Context Behind Current Violence”
• “Apartheid” reports from top human rights organizations in the world (including Israel’s):
  • Kairos Palestine, A Dossier on Israeli Apartheid: A Pressing Call to Churches Against the World
  • B’Tselem, A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: THIS IS APARTHEID
  • Amnesty International, Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: A Look into Decades of Oppression and Domination
  • Yesh Din, The Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of Apartheid - A Legal Opinion
  • Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed - Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution
  • United Nations, Israel’s Occupation of Palestinian Territory is ‘Apartheid’
  • Al Haq, Israeli Apartheid - Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism
  • International Human Rights Clinic, Harvard, Adameer, Apartheid in the Occupied West Bank: A legal Analysis of Israel’s Actions

“How then now to create and maintain a state for another people in a land already inhabited? Squaring that circle has been the essence of Israel’s dilemma ever since its establishment and the cause of the Palestinian tragedy…for what the Zionists envisaged was a project that was bizarre and, on the face of it, unworkable: namely to set up an ethnically defined, Jews-only collective, existing on a land belonging to another people and to their exclusion. Moreover, this new creation was supposed to prosper in perpetuity, irrespective of native opposition.”

~Ghada Karmi, One State. Palestinian-born academic, physician and author

+ What about Jewish trauma and the need for security and safety?

“One of the biggest events in my life that was a turning point was my visit to the death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland as part of the Bearing Witness Retreat. In there, as a Palestinian, I met the shadow of my enemy. Even while living under the oppression I realized that my enemy even in their power is driven by fear and trauma. I realized how the collective trauma of the past is inherited by the next generation and carried in every decision they make to the future. Unless we acknowledge and heal the traumas of the past, we will only move forward with mistrust, fear, and suspicion - things that do not allow for true peace.”

~Sami Awad, Palestinian activist for nonviolent resistance and trauma healing

Jewish history is full of persecution, pogroms, and trauma, primarily at the hands of Christians. Like all people, Jews have deeply needed a place to call home, where they can be safe and free to be themselves. Unhealed trauma and ongoing antisemitism have reinforced the need for a strong military to guarantee the safety of Jews and say “never again” to the many attempts to eradicate them as a people.

At the same time, they are no longer a powerless people; the Israeli military is one of the most powerful in the world and receives billions of dollars in military aid and other support from the USA annually. For Jewish Israelis in particular, the fear of being a persecuted minority is accompanied by fears that subjugated Palesetinian people will rise up against them and that the world may abandon them to another genocide. Unhealed trauma and the combined fears of being both the persecuted minority and the powerful colonialist threatened by the uprising of Palestinians trap the state of Israel into a paradigm in which it is constantly fighting for its own existence.

This creates a complicated psychological state where Jewish Israelis are caught between the simultaneous traumas of being the historically victimized and the new perpetrator, which is exacerbated by the very real and documented abuses of the Israeli military and vigilante settler groups on Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. This is a very important aspect of the collective psyche in Israel which prolongs the dysfunctional state of affairs in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories.

• Gerard S. Sloyan, “Christian Persecution of Jews over the Centuries,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Sami Awad, “On Auschwitz, fear, and the meaning of nonviolence”; “Nonviolence in the Holy Land” (Metta Center for Nonviolence); and “A Holy Land For All: Sacred Activism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”
• Jessica Stern and Bessel van der Kolk, “POV: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Psychology of Trauma”
• Jamie Dettmer, “How the Holocaust shapes Israel’s war in Gaza” (Politico, 2 February 2024)
• Khaled Diab, “How Trauma Drives the Politics of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”
• Michael Segalov, “Israelis and Palestinians are steeped in a history of trauma. It reproduces and continues” (The Guardian, October 28, 2023)

“Zionism is complicated. Jews really do have a millennia-long ethnic, cultural, and religious connection to this land, despite many years when most (but not all) of us were exiled. Our return in the 19th-20th centuries was also inextricably tied up with European colonialism, and we have behaved like colonists. We have two great fears: One is the fear of the Jews in exile, the perpetually persecuted minority who endured countless Crusades, pogroms, massacres, and ultimately the Holocaust. The other is the fear of the colonialist, that the subjugated indigenous people will savagely rise up against them. Both those fears were fully realized on October 7. We are living through something worse than our worst nightmares. There's a third nightmare, buried more deeply but still very much in our national consciousness. That's what we call "churban" -- destruction. We still remember and commemorate the destructions of the first and second Temples and Commonwealths, and the subsequent exiles. I think we are always aware that there could be a third destruction…so we're scared about that as well.”

~Ilana, Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem

+ What about antisemitism?

“Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)... Our aim is twofold: (1) to strengthen the fight against antisemitism by clarifying what it is and how it is manifested, (2) to protect a space for an open debate about the vexed question of the future of Israel/Palestine.”

~Jerusalem Declaration, International scholars in antisemitism studies and related fields from Europe, the United States, Canada and Israel.

As the Jerusalem Declaration articulates, antisemitism is “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).” Antisemitism has a long and horrifying history. Antisemitic violence has also been prevalent and growing in recent years, from the murder of 11 congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 to the dramatic escalation of antisemitic hate crimes in the wake of the Israel-Hamas War in 2023. Antisemitism is completely incompatible with God’s vision of holistic and just peace and flourishing relationships.

Currently, there is ongoing debate among Jews and Jewish antisemitism scholars about how to define antisemitism in the modern world. The controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition was written in 2016 and includes 11 examples of antisemitism, 7 of which focus on the State of Israel. The Jerusalem Declaration followed four years later, seeking a more nuanced definition of antisemitism and responding to the pitfalls of the IHRA definition, which “blurs the difference between antisemitic speech and legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism.” The Jerusalem Declaration asserts that the IHRA definition “causes confusion, while delegitimizing the voices of Palestinians and others, including Jews, who hold views that are sharply critical of Israel and Zionism. None of this helps combat antisemitism.”

At Peace Catalyst International, we find that the Jerusalem Declaration definition and guidelines for combating antisemitism most align with a peacebuilding posture and approach, and we encourage all people who aspire to contribute to a holistic and just peace for everyone between the river and the sea to read it in full. Just as Peace Catalyst works to correct ways that Christians have contributed to harm because of our deep love for Jesus, we follow the lead of many prophetic Jewish-led organizations who are working against the harms perpetuated by the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories (e.g. B’TSelem, Breaking the Silence, Combatants for Peace, Jewish Voice for Peace, The Parent Circle Family Forum, Americans for Peace Now, If Not Now, Independent Jewish Voices, Women Wage Peace, Zochrot, Green Olive Tours, and more). We believe this is not a sign of Jews being antisemitic but an example of the many Jews who are courageously working to secure Palestinians rights, justice, and liberation. Their leadership inspires us to collaborate across identities, resist antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism, and combat dehumanizing political policies that prevent collective flourishing and a holistic and just peace for all.

As the Jewish Declaration states, “While antisemitism has certain distinctive features, the fight against it is inseparable from the overall fight against all forms of racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and gender discrimination.” We believe that safety, dignity, and justice for both Jews and Palestinians is only possible by combating anti-Jewish and anti-Palestinian discrimination, prejudice, hostility, and violence in all their forms, including the structural violence that Palestinians face under the Israeli occupation.

• International scholars in antisemitism studies and related fields, Jerusalem Declaration
• David Neuhaus, S.J., “Anti-semitism and Palestine”
• Peter Beinart, Debunking the myth that anti-Zionism is antisemitic
• Gabor Maté, “From Pain to Liberation: Healing Collective Trauma”
• “Gabor Maté on Israel/Palestine - October 28, 2023”
• “Gabor Maté explains how he sees the Palestine Israël conflict”
• BBC, “What's the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism?” (29 April 2016)
• Jewish Voice for Peace, “On Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism and Dangerous Conflations”
• For a better historical understanding of antisemitism and Jewish responses to it, read Jewish author Naomi Klein, “Israel, Palestine, and the Doppelganger Effect” (chapters 13 and 14 from her book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, freely available from her publisher)

+ How has Christianity, the Bible, and theology contributed to the conflict?

“Despite its motivations, evangelical support for Israel—also called ‘Christian Zionism’—has had disastrous consequences for all Palestinians. Perhaps ironically, it has made the pursuit of peace for both Israelis and Palestinians alike much more difficult.”

~Telos Group

Christianity has a long and messy relationship to Israel/Palestine. Christians tend to feel a sense of religious kinship with the Jews, because Jews gave us the Bible and Jesus. However, that history is complicated by the long and tragic history of western Christian antisemitism on the one hand, and a sense of complicity and guilt associated with the Holocaust on the other. To complicate matters further, since 9/11, Christians also have strong antipathy toward Islam, which in turn has opened the doors wide for simplistic and one-sided support for “vulnerable Israel against Muslim threats and Palestinian terrorism.” A binary, good-vs-evil view of faith, bolstered by various Christian apocalyptic eschatologies, imagine a battle between light and darkness in the modern state of Israel. These views contribute to a zero-sum approach to the Israel/Palestine conflict and create a simple, impassioned, and compelling rationale for dehumanizing people made in the image of God.

The most serious threat comes from Christian Zionists who are armed with a violent theology that supports a Holy Land exclusively for the Jews and, therefore, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Christian Zionism developed from John Nelson Darby and his 19th century “Dispensational” theology, which permeated American Protestantism via the incredibly popular Scofield Reference Study Bible and and later with the publication of the Left Behind series. Christian Zionism encourages unilateral support for the state of Israel because of its interpretation of biblical prophecies: that Jesus cannot return until all the Holy Land is occupied by Jews. Some Christian Zionist support for Jews and Israel comes out of a belief in the inevitability of the battle of Armageddon – an apocalyptic war to end all wars – where they believe a large number of Jews will suffer and perish. In Christian Zionism, war is not something to be avoided, but inevitable, desired by God, and even to be celebrated.

Christians must repent and turn from unChristlike attitudes and theologies that perpetuate supremacy, racism, dehumanization, and violence in all their forms. Instead, we must relearn theologies, practices, and political postures that align us with Jesus to see everyone as made in God’s image. We must find creative ways to work toward holistic and just peace for everyone. Only then can we become simultaneously pro-Palestinian, pro-Israeli, pro-Muslim, pro-Christian, pro-Jew, and ultimately pro-peace as we follow Jesus in his liberative work toward shalom/salaam/eirene for everyone.

• Telos Group, “Evangelicals & Israel/Palestine FAQs”
• US evangelical pastor describes how Zionist Christians contribute to injustices in Palestine (3 min summary from Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon)
• Tony Campolo, “Christian Zionism: Theology that Legitimates Oppressions,” Sojourners, 19 May 2010
• Faisal Mohammad with Stephen Sizer, “Q&A: For every 1 Jewish Zionist, there are 30 Christian Zionists, and Netanyahu exploits this”
• Sophia Lee, “Fractured Are the Peacemakers,” Christianity Today, 18 March 2024
• Christian Zionism – Professors, pastors, leaders of church-related organizations, and laity all working together toward one purpose: to examine a theological teaching called Christian Zionism that is growing in the church today.
• Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East (NEME), Resources

+ What can I do to help make things right?

“Our word to the Churches of the world is…a call to repentance; to revisit fundamentalist theological positions that support certain unjust political options with regard to the Palestinian people. It is a call to stand alongside the oppressed and preserve the word of God as good news for all rather than to turn it into a weapon with which to slay the oppressed. The word of God is a word of love for all His creation. God is not the ally of one against the other, nor the opponent of one in the face of the other. God is the Lord of all and loves all, demanding justice from all and issuing to all of us the same commandments. We ask our sister Churches not to offer a theological cover-up for the injustice we suffer, for the sin of the occupation imposed upon us. Our question to our brothers and sisters in the Churches today is: Are you able to help us get our freedom back, for this is the only way you can help the two peoples attain justice, peace, security and love?”

~Palestinian Christian leaders, “Kairos Palestine: A Moment of Truth”, a document written in 2009

Foreigners cannot be the heroes or the saviors in the Israel/Palestine conflict. Rather than imposing “solutions” we, along with the majority of the world following this conflict, must listen to the voices of those in Israel/Palestine and follow their lead. In 2009, Palestinian Christian leaders wrote “Kairos Palestine: A Moment of Truth” and challenged the Christian church to act: first, to repent from theologies that justify injustice and oppression; second, to “come and see” and listen to their voices; and finally to follow their lead and “go and tell,” sharing the truth about injustice and all forms of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian racism.

By humbly listening and learning, building relationships online and on trips, and speaking the truth about what we learn, we can support Palestinians and Israelis in their efforts to build broader coalitions of people working for a holistic and just peace for everyone. Your involvement in this work matters. Invite your friends, church, and wider network into this learning journey to become pro-Palestinian, pro-Israeli, and pro-peace.

START SMALL

• Listen and Learn
  • The first and most important step is to listen, learn, and deeply empathize with the experiences, narrative, pain, fears, and hopes of both Palestinians and Israelis. Familiarize yourself with the history and the core needs above and begin following the Palestinian and Israeli organizations and voices listed below.
• Build Relationships and Solidarity With Palestinian and Israelis
  • Join webinars and Zoom meetings with Palestinians and Israelis via recommended organizations listed in the Israeli & Palestinian Voices section below
  • Sign up for Israel/Palestine trips or pilgrimages with Telos Group, Green Olive Tours, or Peace Catalyst International (coming soon – contact Andy Larsen or Mercy Aiken for more information)

RAMP UP YOUR ENGAGEMENT

• Bring Your Community Along
  • For communities with a small and escapist view of God’s mission and salvation, consider beginning conversations about peacebuilding more generally by leading an “Introduction to Christian Peacebuilding” small group.
  • Invite members of your church or community into your learning journey about Israel/Palestine by starting a book group or watching a documentary together (see recommended books and documentaries below).
  • As your circle grows, encourage leaders to get involved, consider trips to Israel/Palestine (see above), and encourage church and community leadership to expand efforts to “listen and learn” and “build relationships with Palestinians and Israelis”
  • Build collective capacity and commitment to advocate as a community (see below).
• Advocate With Your Representatives
  • Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) has great resources regarding effective advocacy, including Best Practices for Effective Advocacy and 101: Grassroots Activism Guide.
  • To learn more about current advocacy campaigns, follow along with Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now.
  • Learn from 5 Calls about why calling your House representative works and read their guide to getting started.
  • Telos Group also has excellent advocacy resources; see also their post, A War Crime Cannot Justify a War Crime – Call Your Member of Congress Today.
• Join Direct Actions * Join Jewish Voice for Peace by finding local organizing efforts and getting involved
  • Follow Americans for Peace Now and their Action Alerts.
  • For ways to volunteer and join Christian groups working in solidarity with Palestinians to end the violence and occupation, please refer to the Gaza Ceasefire Pilgrimage, Christians for a Free Palestine, and Mennonite Action.