Pursuing a Just Peace in Israel/Palestine: What Can Quakers Bring to the Table?

This and our other First Monday Lectures are streamed live and available as recordings on our YouTube channel, Pendle Hill USA.

Travel directions to Pendle Hill. Please make sure to review our health and safety expectations at https://pendlehill.org/stay/covid-19-information/. If you’d like to join us for dinner before the event, please sign up at least 24 business hours in advance.

Since October 7, 2023, national Quaker organizations like the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) have joined many other Christians, Jews, and Muslims around the world calling for a permanent ceasefire, release of captives, the restoration of full humanitarian aid to Gaza, and long-term action to foster a just peace in Israel/Palestine.

A fundamental question remains, however, for individuals, local congregations, and regional bodies: what can we do to work for peace and justice in Israel/Palestine in this moment? In this talk, Steve Chase will share his reflections on how we can more effectively engage in individual and congregational self-education and dialogue about the root causes of the current crisis, as well as take personal and small group leadership for mobilizing more Friends to show up faithfully and speak truth to power in this challenging moment. Such activism is especially needed from U.S. Friends, because for decades our government has been the major global enabler of the State of Israel’s policies of ethnic cleansing, military occupation, illegal settlements, apartheid, and intense violence and repression against Palestinians.

Thanks to the generous support of the Friends Foundation for the Aging, we’re able to make this and other free, online programs accessible to f/Friends of all ages.

Leader

Steve Chase is a long-time Quaker activist, educator, and writer living in Washington, DC. A member of Friends Meeting of Washington and the Quaker Palestine Israel Network, he is the author of the Pendle Hill pamphlet Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions? A Quaker Zionist Rethinks Palestinian Rights (PHP #445). He is currently working on a book entitled Seeking Justice in the Holy Land: The Quaker Struggle for Moral Clarity on Israel/Palestine, and he has been selected as Pendle Hill’s 2024 Henry Cadbury Scholar to support his archival research. He visited Israel/Palestine in June 2023 as part of an annual Quaker service-learning delegation sponsored by Friends United Meeting.