At the monthly meeting for business in worship on September 14, 2025, Friends Meeting at Cambridge (Massachusetts USA) united on the following statement.
FMC Statement on Gaza, Septemeber 2025 (please download and distribute)
In response to the October 2023 attack by Hamas militants, the government of Israel launched what human rights organizations* have concluded meets the definition of genocide.** The Israeli military is rendering the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for Palestinians.
We are filled with grief at the immeasurable suffering to which the Israeli government has subjected the people of Gaza through massacres, constant displacement, and the prevention of humanitarian aid from reaching the people, as a result of which Palestinians are being deliberately starved to death.
As Quakers we recognize the inherent belovedness of every individual and mourn the deaths and lament the suffering of all Israelis and Palestinians, combatants and non-combatants alike. We plead for an end to the violence, in which our own country is complicit. As faithful peacemakers committed to nonviolence, we call for the following actions:
- an unconditional ceasefire
- an end to all US arms shipments to the region
- the lifting of all restrictions on the provision of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza
- the freeing of Israeli hostages and Palestinian political prisoners
- an end to all acts of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank
Finally, we envision a time when the occupation will end and Palestinians, like Israelis, will finally enjoy full human and civil rights with the recognition of their homeland. And a time when all peoples in the region will be free to live at peace with their neighbors.
* Among these organizations are Amnesty International, the American Friends Service Committee, American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, and the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, along with two Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel.
** In the United Nations genocide convention, Article II provides the following definition (https:/un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition):
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group.
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
