The 2017 Just Faith Delegation traveled under the auspices of the Interfaith Network for Justice in Palestine and was co-sponsored by American Muslims for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship.
Read eyewitness accounts, reports from meetings, and experiences with Palestinians and Israelis below.
Exclusive content is also available on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook under the hashtag #justfaith17.
While 23 members of the delegation arrived safely, 5 were prevented from boarding the flight to Israel. The Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders were possibly singled out for their public support of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on the state of Israel. Upon arrival at the Lufthansa check-in counter at Dulles International Airport, an airline employee informed the group that the Israeli government had told the airline not to let them board.
At a time when Israeli forces increased the daily repression of Palestinian civilians, including those exercising their freedom to worship, to speak, and to protest, this interfaith delegation sought to respond and act in solidarity. Israel's actions to bar faith leaders and activists from witnessing and lending an interfaith voice for peace is concerning.
This delegation was Eyewitness Palestine's 62nd, successfully exposing more than 1,200 people to the daily realities facing Palestinians in their quest for justice.
We believe in the power of eye-witness experience and transformation. Given the opportunity to speak directly with Palestinians and Israelis, delegates return to the United States better informed, more energized, and with a deeper understanding of the possibilities for true justice in the Middle East.
You can stop the people's imaginations, their voices crying for justice, no matter how hard you try, you cannot hide the truth from the sun / You cannot steal the love from the heart that will be pierced for the freedom of Falastin, today, tomorrow, and the next day, / when the people of the land and the land of the people here in God's sight will forever remain.
Read MoreAt Al-Fara'a prison, a child was forced to paint a mural for the enjoyment of his captors, his torturers. This beautiful talent he had was co-opted and used as an instrument of his torture alongside humiliation, sleep deprivation, confinement, and much worse. So he painted his village as he remembered it, as he imagined it, on a wall in the dining hall where the Israeli officers who held him and other captive children ate their meals in between torturing the children in this prison.
Read MoreDear all my relatives, friends and barely acquainted friends who support the Zionist project of Israel,Please sit with me for a while, I have too many stories that scream to be told.
A twelve year old boy picks up a stone and throws it at a fully geared soldier. The boy is sent to a prison for 20 years. Maybe bargained down to 18. His family will not be able to visit because they will not get permits to travel.
Returning home from Palestine this week has been illuminating and challenging to see the interconnectedness between my state and the homeland of Palestinians, a place equal in size and 5,860 miles away. I have noticed striking similarities in the way that farmers here take pride in being from Maryland, raising their children and tending to crops in the same place for generations, similar to the way that Palestinian farmers claim nine centuries of heritage in one place. I feel despairing to imagine if all the farmers in my county were forcibly displaced at the rate Palestinians have been, over 95% of the indigenous population. I have also seen that Maryland has largely erased its genocide against the Native American peoples, the Iroquois-speaking tribes of my county, while Israel denies the on-going ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Read More“This is what we want as a Palestinian people, is to feel and have dignity. We are human beings. We are no less than any other people. We have a right to self-determination... I can assure you, we are strong. We are the stones of the valley. We have been here forever, and will continue to be here forever.” -Raji Sourani
Read MoreHow are they getting away with this? This rhetorical question dogged me for days as I learned about the intricacies of Israel's occupation of Palestine: Concrete slabs 26 feet high tearing through Palestinian neighborhoods and farmlands. More than 100 permits required for ordinary tasks like building a room in your house. Palestinian children being sentenced to five to 20 years in prison for throwing stones, a common form of protest.
Read MoreI think that the occupation exists in part because of the Jewish community’s historically-justified fear of annihilation. That fear has led the Jewish community to align itself with empire, militarism, and white supremacy. Those tendencies and ideologies have never been safe havens for Jews. We need a movement that will allow Jews to feel safe, that will recognize their fears, and that will show them how much we have to gain by realigning ourselves with our values and with oppressed communities around the world, starting with our Palestinian brothers and sisters.
Read MoreSome impressions of a tour that tore my heart, of a talk that was fierce, of a leader that asked us to build bridges and another look at the WALL.
Read MoreToday we visited the Palestinian village of #Lifta which was attacked by Zionist militias and destroyed during the #nakba in the lead up to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
Read MoreAs we got of the bus we could here sound bombs and rubber bullets being fired just down the street from us. I started crying in grief, despair, anger. Why are they doing this? Why is nothing sacred in the Holy land?
Read MoreThis list is an interpretation of the daily tasks and hopes of those on the front lines of the resistance to injustice, working to end the occupation.
Read MoreLast Friday, I woke up and decided to go to Friday prayers it sounds simple enough, but in occupied Jerusalem where nothing is ever that simple or easy. In order to just get off the street I was on I had to go through an Israeli military checkpoint then another and another. If that wasn't enough I spent most of my time at the mosque feeling afraid that at any minute something could go wrong and we would all be in danger.
Read MoreIsraeli occupying forces in Hebron forcibly segregated our #JustFaith17 delegation according to religion.
Read MoreWe are returning to Jerusalem and we hear the unmistakable clatter of low flying military helicopters. Two of them headed back towards Hebron. We are frightened for what our friends might be experiencing.
Read MoreI saw among the best minds of Judaism some destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked, dragging themselves through Jerusalem's streets looking for a homeland, a refuge, a release from shamefearagonytrauma through an angry fix, angelheaded chosen ones burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo by way of the machine-gunnery of night [...]
Read MoreWhat about me threatens you most? My Muslimness? My womanness? My Palestinianness?
Read MoreI hope I will be able to put today into coherent words at some point, but tonight - tonight there are no words.
Read MoreIn the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says, "I tell you, if you keep quiet, the stones will cry out." In this desert land, where every edifice and road filled is intentionally designed by rock from the stone dirt landscape, it is clear. The stones have been crying out so long their hoarseness can only be translated from silence.
Read MoreThe words that are currently coming to me fall far short of the outrage and grief I feel. There is so much to say, but the event that is fresh in my mind - and in my ears - is yesterday’s attack on Muslim worshipers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque by the Israeli government. The very least I can do is to bear witness to their resistance.
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