Statement on Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
At a special congregational meeting on April 7, 2024, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation Santa Rosa voted unanimously to make a public statement in regard to the ongoing violence in the Israeli / Palestinian conflict. The Bilateral Ceasefire Resolution reads as follows:
As Unitarian Universalists, we are a faith community guided by love. We are called to uphold the inherent worth and dignity of every person––to work for justice, equity, and compassion in human relations, and to hold ourselves accountable to actively work against racism and oppression wherever it exists.
Therefore:
We, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation Santa Rosa, compelled by faith, conscience, and our guiding Principles, call for an immediate, unconditional, bilateral ceasefire, and an end to all hostilities in the current conflict between the Israeli government and Hamas. To that end, we call for these actions:
Hamas must immediately release all the remaining hostages violently abducted from Israel.
The Israeli government must immediately halt its disproportionate and indiscriminate military assault on Palestinian Gaza, which has caused unimaginable human carnage and catastrophic suffering for the civilian population, many of whom are women and children, who played no role in Hamas’s attack on Israel,
The Israeli government must also immediately cease its punitive blocking of humanitarian aid, which is resulting in starvation, illness, and death for thousands upon thousands of people. An estimated one million lives in Gaza are currently threatened by famine. We join in the public outcry of faith communities the world over, humanitarian aid organizations, and the international community, demanding the people of Gaza be given immediate, unimpeded access to water, food, medical supplies, and life-essential services.
The United States government must immediately cease providing weapons and funding to the Israeli government for use in its military operations in Palestinian Gaza. We call for our government to bring all its influence and effort to the de-escalation of the violence, and to provide continuing humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, ensuring it reaches them.
We urge all governments, organizations, and people everywhere to remain aware that the heinous killing and kidnapping of innocent Israelis on October 7th, 2023, was carried out by Hamas, not the Palestinian people, and that the genocidal violence in Gaza is being perpetrated by the fanatical, right-wing government of Israel, not by the people of Israel. The increased hateful rhetoric and violence toward our Jewish and Palestinian siblings is antithetical to efforts toward a peaceful outcome. We stand steadfastly against antisemitism, islamophobia, racism, oppression, and any supremacist action that leads to the violation of individual and collective human rights.
While of deep concern, the issues of Israel’s illegal occupation in the West Bank, and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, must right now yield to the urgency of stopping the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
One of the guiding Unitarian Universalist principles is the understanding that we all exist in an interconnected and interdependent web of life. In the truest sense, there is no me/you or us/them, there is only all of us together––our fates inextricably linked. To liberally paraphrase the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we must learn to live together in love and peace, or we will foolishly perish together in hate and violence.