The Waging Peace Podcast

Fighting for Unity: Ariel Gold's Inspiring Journey from Secular Jew to Palestinian Advocate

• Diana Oestreich • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Get ready to enter the world of Ariel Gold, a fierce advocate for Palestinian rights and the Director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, America's oldest interfaith peacemaking organization . This remarkable woman has spent 20 years working diligently to bring peace to a region marred by violence, and in this episode, she shares her journey and  two action steps we can take to stop the violence  today.

Ariel's testimony of how the violence in the Holy Land has shaped her faith is sure to touch your heart, highlighting the strength found in ancient words and shared human experiences.

Learn about the transformative power of Jewish Voices for Peace and the significant role that women peacemakers play in the Middle East. This episode examines the dire circumstances in Gaza under Israel's blockade and the need for Christian allies to support Jewish Voices for Peace. Ariel's inspiring journey from a secular Jewish identity to passionate advocacy for Palestinian rights serves as a beacon of hope in a divided world. Listen in to understand how small actions can shape a better future, reiterate the necessity of peace, and remind us that we're all created in the image of God.

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Speaker 1:

I am so excited for this podcast today and the person that I have on. I just want to start it with a story. So her name is Ariel Gold, and last weekend we were at a retreat and, anyways, we were sharing this communion service. Now, if you don't know, communion is very specific to whatever group that you're in, and so I was in a circle with a bunch of people from different traditions, different faiths, and Ariel was the only non-Christian there, and so she was just the gutsy person to join in in this communion service and was really different than anything that I had been. So picture we're all in a circle, people from all across the US, all different faith traditions, people with titles that I don't even understand what that means a canon, a bishop, just all these different things. And anyways, we are standing in the circle and there is the bread and it's on this plate and it's being passed, and so the idea is that it's passed to you by the person next to you and then they offer you the bread, which is oftentimes in traditions called passing the peace, and so, anyways, ariel, she leans next to me and then she's like you know, this is the bread of Christ, broken, blessed and blessed for you. And I was like I don't really know what I'm doing either, ariel, but like we got this and she hands me the bread and I just see in her face that this moment of being together and of being people of peace, it was electric. And it had been such a heavy weekend with the bombing in Gaza and the pain of what our faith, traditions and the violence that was handing us, that when she handed me this bread, with this kind of like smile on her face and yet this like heart, I felt that we were passing something bigger than the violence around us. We were passing something bigger than what our faiths had handed us to see the world and see each other. And it was such this like beautiful, like messed up moment, because then I ate the bread before the cup came by and in this tradition you dip the bread in the grape juice. So, anyways, I was messing it up, but it was this really beautiful thing that we saw each other and we saw what connected us beyond, beyond the politics and beyond our histories, and it was as deep want for the future, as peacemakers. So this is why I hounded Ariel to come and be with us today. She is one of the people that I think is changing the world, and I believe that we need the women, as peacemakers, to be the leaders right now. So here is her. She's also incredibly official and has worked with Palestinian rights for 20 years, all over the place. She's the executive director of the fellowship of reconciliation. She's also the national co director of the anti war group code pink look them up and she specializes in campaigns for Palestinian rights. She is also a member of Jewish voice for peace, which, if you are following them, please keep following them.

Speaker 1:

So I want to welcome Ariel, thank you, thank you for being here, and I also want to say would you share what that, what that experience was like? I think you're in communion with a bunch of Christians. As a person, as a Jewish person, yeah Well, I'm going to share a bit about it and then I'm really going to direct folks, because I wrote about it when I got back. It just like spilled out of me, and so it's on red letter Christians blog. It was just recently posted. So what I? What I wrote about my. So if you go to read with other Christians into their blog, you will find it. I believe it's called finding my faith and I spoke about prior to going to the retreat.

Speaker 1:

Since this just horrid war has broken out in Israel, palestine, in the Holy Land, I haven't been able to practice my faith. I haven't been able to. Usually I bake bread from scratch on on Friday afternoon. I am I work day early and I baked bread and then like candles and say prayers and it just centers me and I love it and I just hadn't been able to do that, like I just couldn't say the prayers. I couldn't, I couldn't sit still. I felt like just despair inside and I was a bit nervous about going to the retreat as well because I was like usually I'm feeling pretty, you know, upbeat and optimistic, but I was like how do I show up at this, at this convening, as the only non Christian and being a Jew and like not able to pray? And I walked in. Well, actually, just the airport you were the first person that that I saw, diana, and I knew I was home with my people of whatever faith we are.

Speaker 1:

And by the time we got to the Sunday service to communion, I, during the service was the first time since the war had broken out Amid everybody else praying, I whispered the shema, which is the central prayer in Judaism and it was the first time I've been able to do so, and so when communion happened, I checked in with the pastor pastor and I quietly said the blessing I because I actually I walked in and I was like, hey, I know what this looks like. This is a week, because it's the bread and the wine or juice and so I said the blessings for that we say over bread and the juice and it was yeah, and felt as whole as I can feel in this time where a child is dying in Gaza every 10 minutes. I remember kind of hearing you say that blessing and through the years of just believing and showing up after violence in my community, oftentimes when there was the Tree of Life shooting, we went to the local temple, the synagogue, to be together. And there's something about these ancient words that have been spoken by human beings since the beginning that I feel like had such a powerful way of rooting us in hope that we weren't alone and that violence isn't new. But this was our time to say something.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I feel like you have been one of those voices and people that I have just fallen in love with, and when you, because my background is war and I don't look like it, but I am a warrior and I was a combat veteran in the Iraq war, and so when I see another woman who is fierce and who is pushing back like I know I can see it in your eye I was like, oh, she is in it and I think that's a deeply personal thing, but it also is a highly costly thing. And so I want to honor your voice and I also want, for people who don't know, there is there's just a significant narrative that Americans and American Christianity has created around Israel and also their part of anti-Semitism, and then we're all part of Islamophobia. And so for people who are not in your world, they're not Jewish and they may not even know what narrative they have been being raised in as an American, to see one, the Jewish faith and then two, the actual like 1948, creation of the like nation of Israel. Could you give people just two things that you think are the most important things, in a way, to just see what we're not seeing, because I think most people don't know that they're not seeing a whole picture, which is why things work the way they work, why we're seeing so much violence, because we've only kind of heard one way. Yeah, let me I'll try to give a really brief overview of something that's really not brief, but turning it into you know that, real quick. 1948, the state of Israel was established, which Israel Israeli celebrate as Israeli Independence Day.

Speaker 1:

Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, because it was the mass expulsion of about 750,000 indigenous Palestinians from their lands and homes in order to create a Jewish majority state, and it involved terrific war crimes, as all wars do, and you know, all wars, that's what they, that's what they create, whether in Ukraine or right now in Gaza, they create horrific, unfathomable crimes. So since then and I'm skipping a lot of histories of additional wars there and so on for the past almost 20 years, the very, very small enclave of Gaza it's about the size of New Hampshire, no, actually much smaller than New Hampshire, sorry and it holds 2.2 million people. It is one of the most densely populated places on earth has been for almost 20 years, held under a total siege of air, land and sea, blockaded in by all sides, often referred to as the largest open air prison on earth. Israel controls everything that goes in and out, including having the main say over the border with Egypt. And when I say total control, it comes down to such an extreme that there was a point where it leaked out that the Israelis had had determined the calorie intake that would be able to go into Gaza to make sure it wasn't too hot. So this was so that history that festering.

Speaker 1:

And then you have, you know, occasional bombings and a horrific military occupation in the West Bank. So that is a 75 year long history created such such despair, such inhumanity that it exploded, and it was very predicted that it would explode. On October 7th, when militants from the armed group Hamas control that rules, that is, the government in Gaza broke out and carried out an unfathomable massacre, killing 1,400 people, whole families, slaughtered a music festival of young people like an outdoor rave slaughter and took many people, including the elderly and including children, hostage back into Gaza. And since then, israel, who has carried up many massacres in Gaza in 2014, I thought it was kind of the worst that it could be. It was a 51 day war, 1,400 people in Gaza killed at that time. But this is nothing comparison. It's a whole new playbook. I can't pull up the numbers, but I think it's. You know, it's something like the number of bombs that have been dropped in in. We could look up the exact in Gaza over the past. Now, 31 days exceeds the number of US bombs dropped in Afghanistan in at least a year, right at the moment and when you?

Speaker 1:

You know that part of this, part of this history is that I don't think Americans oftentimes realize that after World War II, like there weren't, there were so many refugees, there are so many Jewish refugees that people made a solution. And so I I don't think Americans realized like we were part of that and it wasn't like the good guy situation all the time. And now, when you see that they're bombing people at that rate I come to the military I'm like that is a total. That is a total destruction of a people and a place and a group. Like that is not a war when there isn't two people that have an army, if only one side has an army and if they're their own citizens, of which Palestinians are part.

Speaker 1:

You know, and I just wanted to you know, say for the record, I also condemn horrifically Hamas as continuing to shoot out rockets from Gaza indiscriminately at civilians, which is a war crime. There have been war crimes committed on both sides, but what's happening now is unprecedented. And you know, I think of it as fueled on pure, pure vengeance, which is not a good thing to have as the fuel. And you know UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez, he said yesterday they're creating a graveyard of children in Gaza. Gaza's population is almost 50% children. Israel has been bombing schools, un shelters.

Speaker 1:

Just over the weekend they were told in Gaza that the Rafah crossing into Egypt would be opened and that some of the injured could leave, and so they pulled together a caravan of ambulances from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and informed Israel. We have this convoy of ambulances, here's the time we're leaving, here's the route we're taking. And they started out through the gates of Al-Shifa Hospital in Israel. Bomb them, and that is not the only time. You know there's continuously they are calling for, they're telling Palestinians in northern Gaza that they must evacuate to the south, and then they bomb the road where they're evacuating. Today in the south, they bombed a at Rafah, near the crossing. They bombed a residential home, killing five in communists near. Also in the south, a family of 15 was killed today. That's just today, and you know you spoke about this. This is the destruction of a people.

Speaker 1:

So I wanna get into faith a little bit here and I'm working on an article on this topic now, but last week, three times in the same week, israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu invoked scripture. Now he doesn't have a religious bone in his body, netanyahu. He is notoriously secular, but he started invoking scripture and specifically the biblical story of Amalak. And in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, amalak is a nation that ambushes the Israelites as they're making their way to the Holy Land, to the promised land. The Israelites are able to beat them back and do continue, and Moses goes up to a mountain to pray and God tells him never forget what happened, and you must wipe the nation of the Amalaks off the face of the earth. And so then we go generations later and a war breaks out over the Amalaks and King Saul destroys every last one of them, except the Amalak King, who he spares. Well, the Amalak King has children. In many, many generations later you have, in modern day, iran, in Persia, and again, this is all stories. Haman, descendant of King the King, carries out a plot, or develops a plot to kill all the Jews in Persia, and this is the story of Purim. And so the invoking of Amalak is a call, it's a message of an intent to commit genocide. And so Netanyahu has been saying remember what Amalak did to us, remember. And we do remember and we will fight.

Speaker 1:

And so part of what I'm writing about, as well as he's not speaking to the victims of October 7th, many of those in the south of Gaza it's called the Gaza envelope are remnants of the Kibbutz's from the establishment of Israel. They're kind of the. They're known as the peacenicks, notoriously secular and left leaning, and the families of the hostage, of the people who were taken hostage and are still being held hostage in Gaza. They have been, they're living in tents right now outside the Ministry of Defense's office, living in tents in protest demanding of the Israeli government to the phrase they're using as everyone for everyone, to that their government must release all Palestinian political prisoners in exchange for their loved ones, and their cries are falling on deaf ears.

Speaker 1:

So who Netanyahu is talking to when he invokes scripture are both the far right, in which is a growing large movement in Israel it's called Cajanism, cajanist which just think Jewish KKK Okay, that's the best description you can read about them in their history but Jewish KKK and to evangelical Christian Zionists here who, even before Netanyahu, were invoking the story of Amalak. Wow, I think that is so devastating and also murderous. Like that is, and like you know, when people are raised in Zionism, somehow it makes sense because you know their father's, everyone says it's okay, but when you look at it it's like any religion that needs to slaughter other people doesn't sound like a religion. It just sounds like human beings wanting their way, and that has been the story forever that people will kill to get what they want. But to say that's a religious call just feels double evil to me as a person of faith. Yeah, and I'm preaching to the choir here about the right wing evangelical movement here in the US, which is far larger than the Jewish American population.

Speaker 1:

So we have a number of organizations. One of the largest is Christians United for Israel, run by Pastor John Hagee in Texas, who notoriously oh I think it was 2008, said that God had sent Hitler as a hunter in order to get the Jewish people back to Israel and because then they're going on and the theory of the apocalypse right, that enough Jews have to return to Israel and then the apocalypse will come and then, as John Hagee said, there will be a sea of blood when anyone who doesn't convert dies. And so that's their angle and it continuously baffles me why that is why anybody could say that that is a genuine concern for Jewish life and safety Right, because it's not, for it's not in service to Jewish folks. And then also, like I definitely like heard about that growing up and was like, oh okay, but as an adult I'm like that sounds like some Harry Potter stuff, like the prophecy of we need this to happen, and then the fact that it all ends in blood, I'm like now that sounds like a video game. So, but the fact that it is so powerfully killing children today and churches are being quiet and they are not even saying that the slaughter of 5,000 children is not okay. Why? Because they have some allegiance to something that serves themselves. And so I know that we were talking earlier. You were saying that speaking up as someone who is Jewish, for not killing people in Gaza is a significant flashpoint, tension point, but it's also the work of your life. So will you share a little bit about what you're seeing with how the Jewish voices really are changing our future right now and growing?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I'll begin with a little bit of my history. I grew up secular and wasn't involved in Jewish institutional community until I came into adulthood, and then I pursued it on my own and then I raised my children in that capacity. And what we're told as Jews, as kids here in the US, the story that we're told, the narrative, as you talked about narratives lies quite literally. We're told that Israel was a land with no people, for a people with no land, and that we went there and we made the desert bloom. And so when I realized that this is not true, this was an ethnic cleansing and there's a military occupation going along, going on there, and it's brutal and it meets the definition of apartheid, I started to get involved in Jewish voice for peace, which is a group that is working for the liberation of Palestinians, knowing that our liberation as Jews is intertwined and cannot be separated from Palestinian liberation, and believes very much that, or what lifts the core concept of Judaism, which is that we are all created in the image of God, and those of us who are faith practicing within that, as well as just reading a piece about flipping the story of Amalak on its head and seeing that as a warning to avoid the evil impulses that cause us to act upon hatred and betray our values that way.

Speaker 1:

So Jewish voice for peace, since this has broken out, and I encourage everyone to join it's not for Jews only so you can go to their website. It's JVPorg. Please join. It's Jews and allies. They have been out in the streets. We have been out in the streets since the war broke out. The first week of the war, there were about 300 rabbis, jews and allies arrested in Congress. Last week, the entirety of Grand Central Station in New York was shut down, with hundreds and hundreds arrested, and you can Google it and you'll see videos of it. It's just beautiful. Yesterday they took over the Statue of Liberty Wow, yes. And said you know, this was a and my Lazarus was Jewish. And here we are and their demands are very broad and clear and immediate ceasefire Aid for Palestinians to get in humanitarian aid for Palestinians immediately.

Speaker 1:

And, oh gosh, I'm forgetting the third one, but it's along those lines there. You know we have to stop the bloodshed. That doesn't mean that the conflict will be solved. That's going to be a much deeper conversation, but it needs to be approached. There is no military solution.

Speaker 1:

I myself am a pacifist. I argue that there's no military solution for anything, but specifically for this conflict. There is no military solution. There must be a political solution that recognizes that we are all created in the image of God. And I forget who it was who said it during the Iraq war. You might remember this Somebody said I wake up in the morning and I think, did I create more terrorists than I killed yesterday? And I forget who that was, but that's what's happening in Gaza anyway. You can't destroy Hamas. You know there's, but you can horrifically traumatize an entire generation which will create the next Hamas. And I think you make a really good point that I was 23 when the Iraq war happened and I was, I was deployed as part of the preemptive strike, but we do know that after 9-11 there was this vengeance.

Speaker 1:

It was impossible as a nation for us to imagine that we would mourn our dead and take care of the victims, and you know like call out the evil for sure. You know like track down the terrorists but not not bomb a nation, because if that, if that made sense, then we would have bombed Saudi Arabia. And it is against the rules of humanity and the Geneva Convention that you don't kill civilians ever, that they are not their government and they are not soldiers. And so I think the significant thing that I see with 9-11 and now is that speaking up and holding your own country and your own allies to account is always the most persecuted thing you can do. As long as we all just have the common enemy, it's fine. But if you hold your own group to account, that says we have to believe that we are equal, that we are all made in the image of God, and killing will get us more killing.

Speaker 1:

I think Jewish voices for peace are being so significant because you had shared with me. These are the largest amount of protests against Israel's war on Gaza since the world protested for the war, for the Iraq war not to happen. And I look back and I think what if the American government and the Brits had heeded the conscience of the world that said do not do this. This will not give us what we want and indeed it failed. And as a veteran, I'm still seeing veterans who are. They want help and they're not doing well and they have been used pretty cheaply by a government that was not honoring their well-being past or future present. And there's a whole generation of young Israelis who are, who were called up to war, hundreds of thousands of youth who are being traumatized now who are being? And for anyone who doesn't know, israel is one of the countries in the world that has conscription, where you are required to serve, and there are conscientious objectors there. It's called the Refusenik movement, but they are very much shunned in society. Israel as a whole is an extremely right-wing, militaristic society, and especially in the last 10 years it has the trends have been to the far, far right. Right now they have the most right-wing extremist government in Israel's history. I mentioned that KKK movement well-imagined David Duke as a member of Congress, because that's the equivalent literally, and so you know this was created from that. And what's being done? These soldiers in Gaza, now these Israeli soldiers, are victims as well, just like the American soldiers who served in Iraq.

Speaker 1:

It's we all must have a right not to kill. I think you know saying that, like we have a right not to kill. I think that is one of these things that I think should be a hashtag, because for our children's children, like Martin Luther King, he said that violence is violence will get you what you want, but it only gives our grandchildren the bitterness and the baggage that they will have to deal with, and so I feel like non-violence is just saying that we won't. We won't take other people and our children's children and put this violence on them to deal with the bitterness. Because I always tell people violence is always the enemy, it's not people, and it needs us to participate Like it needs us to pull the trigger and to drop the bombs Like it's. It can't do anything if we won't participate with it.

Speaker 1:

And I think about when I had visited Israel and Palestine and the West Bank as part of a peacemaking group. That was the first time that I had an AK-47 shoved in my face at a blockade in a checkpoint since Iraq, at the war zone, and like I was like you know, like I was triggered and I and that's when I knew I'm like whatever fabled story that American Christians and Zionists have been telling themselves, this is undignifying, this is an active war, this is horrifying, like I felt it. And you look around and you could see it and it's like this. This is not an okay way for any government to treat their people and I think that violence had, like you said, it's erupted. But I want to go back to how you said. You think that the Jewish voices in America are actually changing things. Yeah, so I'll first tell a little story, because you just reminded me of it or made me want to tell it.

Speaker 1:

So I used to spend, I used to go to the West Bank one or once or twice a year for about a month to work with, work and live with nonviolent Palestinian human rights defenders. Until in 2018, I was deported, in ban, but that's another, that's a longer story for another time. I think you should have that t-shirt. I was banned by Israel, but one of the times I was there I was frequently. Actually, while I was there, I'd be in the West Bank and I was one of few, not just Jews, but American Jews, which is like you think white, white Christian men have privilege. Oh my God, try being a white American Jew. You are the cream of the crop anyway.

Speaker 1:

At those like checkpoints, they noticed that my name is Jewish and it's very Jewish. And actually, when my children were 12 and 13 in between my son's bar mitzvah, my daughter's thought mitzvah I brought them there and we spent three and a half weeks living with Palestinian families. But so then the soldiers you'd see them, you know, at the checkpoints in front of the synagogue mosque area. They're like this is a kid, they're babies. And so they'd be like, oh, you're American and you're Jewish. And then when my kids were with me, oh, my God, you're so cute. And they, like they're babies and they just want to hold my, you want to hold my, my gun. And just like, constantly, constantly. I can't, I can't name how many times they tried to get me to hold their.

Speaker 1:

I didn't serve in the military so I don't know, but it was big. I was just like you know what right, kids and their kid like, because eight babies, yeah, like they want to do other things than we, like they probably want, to date, go to a music concert. Like there's just other stuff that New York, they would say they'd be like I want to go to America, so, okay, so back to the Jewish movement here. So these are really dark times and I won't sugarcoat that at all. And a genocide is happening in front of our eyes right now and I don't so far we haven't been able to stop it, and it's funded with our tax dollars as Americans, and our president who is allowing it to happen and who could stop it at any moment?

Speaker 1:

Because we give almost 4 billion a year in military aid, military support to Israel, and Congress right now is working on a additional package, supplemental package of 14 billion and the artisan support, what you know why. That is like I had read historically that after World War two, the US gave a ton of aid every year and it was to build the country. But this is like 75 years later, like why? What are we, what is America getting by giving $4 billion to Israel every year? And it's often called a US outpost in the Middle East. So it does function for us that way. And we've also parked our largest aircraft carrier and forget I saw today was in a nuclear submarine, something, but we've.

Speaker 1:

And anyway, if we said, stop it, you must stop it or we don't support you, they would have to stop it immediately. And Europe follows our lead on that in the US. So that's the direness of this. There is a reality that we, as one of the most powerful countries and most powerful as Israel, like we could stop this, we could stop it tomorrow. So, yeah, I hear people being like I don't think so. I was like no, no, military, strategically military, the person who funds you and gives you the weapons actually is your boss in many, many ways. And I didn't say well, I asked Netanyahu for humanitarian pause, or I told him he's got to buy by at least international law and stuff, you know, not target civilians. They told me they do the best they can. What else can I do? Just know that is complete, yes, and the rainbow sorry I'm getting there to their hope is so. Yes, we've seen the largest, not just Palestinian rights but into war protests across the globe, and it's the Iraq war. We're seeing that right now.

Speaker 1:

Last, this past, this past weekend, recently got time has gotten funny for me in Washington DC, hundreds of least the organization say it was 300,000 in the streets of Washington DC calling for a ceasefire. And a lot of this is Jewish led, or there are many Jewish led actions Jewish voice for peace and the other organization which is Jewish only is, if not now, which is started by a group of young Jews based on the words of Hillel who said if I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what is there? And if not now, when? So they're, you know, mobilizing in the streets and doing the rest, and it's not just mobilization, it's very targeted actually.

Speaker 1:

So when this first broke out, like nobody was calling for a ceasefire, and I mean to me it just baffles me. I think like that's just the lowest bar, like just stop bombing, just stop that, and then we'll all assess. And you know, try to talk and then just stop bombing. Not even diplomacy or asking anybody to like, it's just to say pause and truly, even with a ceasefire they can start up again in a week, totally. I mean, there wasn't a ceasefire before this broke out. But it baffles me how that is like considered so radical, because I think of it as such a start, starting point, but first initiated by some of our real champions in Congress.

Speaker 1:

Representative Rashida Tlaib, ilhan Omar Cory Bush, jamal Bowman introduced a resolution in the house calling for a ceasefire and we've all, but especially but I'm speaking of the American Jewish effort have been doing endless calls to our representatives in Congress, in the house. You must join this resolution and we're maybe up to, let me say, 15 to 20 now. It's nowhere near stopping it, but it's growing and you know we are making a difference. We are seeing that difference. We are making that difference. Initially, nobody in the Senate would call for a ceasefire. Disappointingly, bernie Sanders has still not, and just last week, and it's due to the pressure, it's due to the calls, to the conversations, to the meetings with our elected representatives. Dick Durbin became the first in the Senate so far the only to call for a ceasefire. And right now I live in New Jersey, so I'm working with Jewish voice for peace in New Jersey and we have in fact, today is a mass call and day. We are in undating Cory Booker's office saying you must join Durbin ceasefire, we need a ceasefire and it's you know I we haven't stopped this yet and we're a long ways away, but we are having an impact and we will see that impact and we will see that impact for a long way, for a long time to come. We will.

Speaker 1:

Our efforts are not in vain. We are building an anti war movement, a peace movement, and we are moving American Jews, despite the back lashes For anybody who's heard that Jewish voice for peace, because there are folks that are calling around and accusing Jewish voices for peace of being pro Hamas. Not true, just go to their website, read anything about them. So there is a smearing campaign. But it's because the American Jewish pro Israel establishment feels our voices and our power and it's so powerful, I think, to see that Jewish voices for peace are leading the way, and I feel like that's the strongest. I mean, that's who we should be learning from, because these are people who are in the trenches. This is their histories and their stories and their futures, and I feel like what we're seeing is a result of men being the decision makers at the table for 75 years.

Speaker 1:

And there's this quote that I want to share with you. I saw it by the Women Wage Peace Group that they're in Israel, so they have been mobilizing women, who oftentimes are the first to be harmed during a war. They're also the ones who pick up the pieces. They're the ones who are caring for the children, so they're really the receivers of all of this violence and decisions that other people are making, even though they're the culture bearers who actually are the ones who will heal the communities and protect them. So this is one thing they had said. They said we can only imagine what a new world could be if there weren't men of war and instead mothers and sisters at the table, absolutely, and in some of the horrors of Gaza.

Speaker 1:

There are many women giving birth in Gaza right now and the few hospitals that are still running at all because Israel has blockaded all fuel from getting into Gaza, the few hospitals that are running. They are doing surgery without anesthesia. One of the hospitals as of the day before yesterday, with the light of cell phones, this includes the Sarian sections, the children's hospital there, the only children's cancer hospital, part of that was bombed yesterday and women are opting, if they can, for C-section because there's nowhere to run, there's nowhere to hide, they're just refugees, and those are brutal. Again, no anesthesia. These are the most dire of circumstances as well.

Speaker 1:

And I want to say, getting back to the Jewish thing, that we need are Christian allies as well, because, as I spoke about, the far right Christian movement here is brutal and that's actually who the state of Israel has been courting. We call it the great divorce because American Jews, by large, 80% of us, vote Democratic, though our institutions still are pro-Israel. That's shifting and so Israel's kind of, the state of Israel's kind of given up on us, the US Jews. We used to be their main support and they've said so publicly. They've said they're going after the American evangelicals and those are the relationships. So when this war first broke out in Christians United for Israel had, they were having their annual fundraiser Israel's ambassador to the UN, gilan Erdad. That's where he went Not just big to Jewish audiences but to be on the stage and they raised, in the span of a week, raised and donated 100 million to support Israel's war.

Speaker 1:

So we need, we need our Red Letter Christians, we need our folks who are on the front lines of Christianity, doing this work simultaneously and together. My work personally, my day job as it is, as I'm the director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and we are the oldest interfaith peace organization in the world and we function on that principle that our faiths are all connected to each other and that we need each other as faith leaders. I I just want to repeat what, what he said and shout it from the rooftops, is that American Christians need to support Jewish for peace and we also need to read a little bit of our own stories and our own leaders to find out how we are exporting our violence, because a hundred million dollars, that is, that is a war monger Like that that matters. And so I feel like, if I can, if I can leave our listeners with you know just two things. It would be to to sign up and support Jewish voices for peace Like you said, it's for Jewish folks and allies.

Speaker 1:

And then, secondly, take it very seriously about how we are part of contributing and exporting violence to Israel and Gaza. That did not come from nowhere. It's currently quite a pipeline, as you said, from the evangelical Christians funding the killing of children in Gaza. And, to be clear for anybody who needs to hear it security for all, everyone for everyone, is always the heart of people across all time. I think we can say that when we're for each other, that means we refuse to accept violence violence against Israelis, violence against Palestinians and I think that that is the litmus test right now that we're all going to have to accept and believe that if we're accepting violence, then we are breaking our bond with each other.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it's all the same struggle, right, the struggle against hatred, whether it's hatred to our LGBTQ plus brothers and sisters, or it's the hatred that tries to control women's bodies, or it's the hatred being that's taking place in the Holy Land right now, the racism that America was built on. It's all the same hatred and it all has the same solution, right, which is to recognize that we are created all of us in the image of God and that that is the core of faith, not any perversions of our holy scriptures of the various faiths that tell us that our faith is about hatred or violence, and to recognize that those are perversions of our faith. I love what you said and so I just want to thank you for being here and also listeners. Also, ariel significant on Twitter, old school Twitter I'll let you find out exactly what's happening. But also support her, because we need women peacemakers to actually be listened to. We bring something completely different to the table and we aren't being listened to. We are not being included, by and large, in decisions.

Speaker 1:

So please support Ariel, please join Jewish Voices for Peace. Continue to be a voice. If I can, just I'll give my Twitter and Instagram handle. Is my first name, A-R-I-E-L. Middle name, elise, e-l-y-s-e. Last name Gold.

Speaker 1:

So at Ariel, elise Gold and I also will encourage folks to sign up for Fellowship of Reconciliation's Newsletters, which go out about once a week. We'll be doing updates on this, and also monthly. We cover peace and justice issues across the country and globe and encourage folks working for peace if they're planning an event or such, to send them to us and we'll help promote them. Thank you so much for that. Oh, sorry, at the F-O-R-U-S-A dot org. Perfect, and also just know we are building our futures together, and so what we do today is what we are going to get in five years from now, and so our children are watching, and I believe that we are building a better world for them by the actions we take today. So nothing is too small, and also nothing is too big. So thank you for encouraging us, ariel, and thank you for continuing to live in the grief and the tension and the relentless hope that means you are not giving up and you are continuing to tell us that we can and we will make a difference together.

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Diana K Oestreich

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