July 1, 2020

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Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP) was founded in 2001 to urgently demand that RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES MUST STOP BLESSING WAR AND VIOLENCE.

We are a broad spectrum of people of faith, universalists, and humanists who are deeply concerned about the United States’ engagement in endless wars that drain our resources and distract us from the work of justice at home. We proclaim that we will not bless war. We declare that we will not be silent in the face of an escalating spiral of violence and a voracious war-making system. We promote justice and peace at home and around the world. And we seek to show that poverty, racism, and injustice are forms of violence that impede peace.

Therefore, as people of many faiths and backgrounds:

We support, without hesitation, the rights of Jews, Muslims and Christians, as well as persons of all other or no particular faith, to live in peace, with justice and dignity, in the Land many of us call Holy.

We lament, without wavering, the displacement of Palestinians in 1948, and again in 1967; the ongoing military occupation of lands intended by international agreements for a Palestinian state; the continuing theft of lands for the creation of illegal colonial settlements; and the system of laws consigning non-Jewish citizens of Israel to second-class status.

We further lament our own complicity in these actions by our failure to speak out against them.

We oppose, without reservation, the plans of the current Israeli government to annex portions of the Occupied Palestinian Territories into the State of Israel, including the Jordan River valley, the lands upon which some 100 illegal settlements are currently built, and agricultural lands and communities in and around east Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin.

We call, without uncertainty, on our Senators and Representatives, and on the eventual Presidential candidates, to take a clear public stand against Israel's denial of full rights to non-Jewish citizens of Israel, and against the continuing military occupation and planned annexation of lands in the West Bank. We believe that early and sustained vocal opposition to annexation from the United States Congress will enhance the possibility of delaying and limiting, and even derailing these annexation plans.

We further call upon our elected representatives to use their “power of the purse” to withhold military and other financial aid from the State of Israel if it does not award full and equal human rights to Palestinian citizens of Israel, or it moves forward with annexation of all or part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. 

We finally, in the strongest terms possible, call upon the current and future U.S. administrations to abandon biased and damaging policies that reward unilateral action by Israel. Instead, the United States government should call for and reward behaviors that will promote a just, negotiated peace agreement addressing key issues, including the status of Jerusalem, ending the siege of Gaza, establishing viable borders, sharing natural resources equitably, and guaranteeing the rights of refugees.