Statement

As a Quaker organization seeking a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) strongly opposes the Trump administration’s recent decision to allow the expenditure of U.S. taxpayer funds in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

FCNL opposes the administration’s efforts to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran and to undermine and formally kill the Iran nuclear deal.

I was deeply moved to visit the Supreme Court last Sunday, along with hundreds of others paying tribute to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The mood was solemn and reverent for this woman who let her life speak—as an attorney working for civil rights, as a Supreme Court Justice, and as a family woman.

As we confront systemic racism, climate change, an economic crisis, sharpening political divisions and the threat of a pandemic, I welcome the International Day of Peace as an opportunity to reflect and recommit to global cooperation and peace.

Sept. 21 marks the International Day of Peace and 2020 is the 75th anniversary of the signing of the UN charter. To mark the occasion, the Quaker United Nations Office led FCNL and more than 170 peacebuilding organizations from around the world in calling on the international community to recommit to the founding vision of the United Nations: international peace and friendly relations among nations.

As organizations that are part of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) we are deeply concerned about the threatened Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank. Such an action would violate international law, formalize land theft, further entrench inequalities and the denial of Palestinian rights, intensify human suffering, and make realizing a just and lasting peace more difficult.

Our hearts are broken as the fault lines of racism continue to be starkly exposed in the violence that ended the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and uncounted numbers of African Americans, not only in recent years but since Africans were first brought to this country as enslaved people.

As a faith-based organization with a long history of advocating for peace in the Middle East, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) opposes Israel’s proposed annexation of Palestinian territory. We call on Congress to declare it will not recognize a unilateral assertion of Israeli sovereignty over Palestinian lands and that such annexation will irreparably harm the U.S.-Israel relationship.

In the United States, 100,000 people; across the globe, 350,000 people. All dead from the COVID-19 pandemic that has hit our country like a tsunami; that has devastated people across the globe. It is a time of cosmic sadness that calls us to pause, to reflect. At FCNL, we join with siblings from many faith communities in a time of mourning, a time of lament for the lives lost, the families in despair, the feeling of hope diminished.

On May 15, the Supreme Court heard arguments on two cases involving “faithless electors” to the Electoral College. One case is from Washington State (Chiafalo v. Washington) and the other Colorado (Colorado Department of State v. Baca).