Coming to Moral Clarity on Israel/Palestine

For decades, Friends around the world have focused on discerning a moral and faithful way forward in applying our testimonies of peace, justice, and equality for all to the people of Israel/Palestine. The unprecedented scale of mass violence that has erupted in Israel/Palestine since October 7, 2023, has only sparked an even wider soul searching…

Workshop Description

For decades, Friends around the world have focused on discerning a moral and faithful way forward in applying our testimonies of peace, justice, and equality for all to the people of Israel/Palestine. The unprecedented scale of mass violence that has erupted in Israel/Palestine since October 7, 2023, has only sparked an even wider soul searching among Friends. Many Friends Meetings are conflicted about how to understand and seek a just peace in Israel/Palestine. How can we learn more? How can we engage in thoughtful dialogue with each other? How do we discern together what public statements to make and what actions to take? What is God’s prophetic call to us?

Coming to Moral Clarity on Israel/Palestine is a workshop designed to help Friends discern together–in deep, Spirit-led, and thoughtful dialogue—about how we might address this great moral issue of our time. We will also explore the potential impact of unwitting anti-Jewish bigotry, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian racism on our outlooks. Toward these ends, we will engage in waiting worship, worship sharing, experiential exercises and debriefs, respectful discussion and information sharing in small and large groups, and listening to reflections and storytelling from the facilitator and likely some guests. Free handouts, as well as materials for modest donations to cover costs, will be available.

We will ask ourselves, in the words of Patricia Loring in Listening Spirituality, where our various views and opinions come from, “whether from various kinds of social conditioning and pressure, from the deformed needs, desires, or fears of the unhealed self—or from the Love that is the gift of the Spirit and can work through each of us for all of us.” The goals of the workshop are to deepen each of our perspectives, become more reflective and informed, learn to listen with love to each other, and have a greater capacity to participate in, or even lead, effective collective discernment processes about what kinds of public witness, prophetic actions, and coalition partnerships are needed for us to be faithful to our spiritual calling to build what Martin Luther King called the Beloved Community.

Leader Experience

I first went public with my own long and sometimes painful discernment journey in my 2017 Pendle Hill pamphlet Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions? A Quaker Zionist Rethinks Palestinian Rights. I have been traveling in the ministry among Friends giving related talks and workshops since the summer of 2023 when I got back from the Friends United Meeting’s service learning trip to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The main focus of these talks, workshops, and dialogues for Quakers and has been on the challenge of Quaker  “Discernment and Action on Israel/Palestine.” In these talks, workshops, and dialogues, I have shared my evolving perspectives and invited others to share their discernment journeys and how these shape their faith-based witness addressing US foreign policy toward the Mideast and protecting people in our communities from anti-Jewish bias, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian racism.  There are many differing perspectives to hear with compassion among Friends as we seek increasing unity and moral clarity on these important issues. For my part, I work with Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s Palestinian and Israeli Peace and Justice Working Group and serve as the Outreach Coordinator of  the Quaker Affinity Group of the Apartheid-Free Communities coalition convened by the AFSC in 2022.