Bethesda Friends Meeting

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  • Called Meeting regarding joining Apartheid-Free Community

Called Meeting regarding joining Apartheid-Free Community

  • November 10, 2024
  • 12:00 PM
  • hybrid (Meeting House and Zoom)

Since early this year, the Peace and Social Justice Committee has been considering whether to ask the meeting to join the Apartheid-Free Communities (https://apartheid-free.org/) coordinated by the American Friends Service Committee. We realized we needed more time than our normal agenda allowed and scheduled a special committee meeting on September 29, open to anyone in the Meeting. Six people came together.

 We started by reading the definition of the crime of apartheid by the United Nations (https://bit.ly/3BIH58t) and the UN resolution that Israel should end its military occupation of Palestine (https://bit.ly/48ppQ8F). We agreed that Israeli laws and practices meet the definition of human rights abuses as detailed under the definition of apartheid. We felt that standing against apartheid feels like a moral statement. Joining the Apartheid-Free Communities helps build a movement to dismantle apartheid, educates us about the issues, and informs us about strategies. We also recognize that many fear that such a movement to change Israeli policy might jeopardize the status of Israel as a safe haven for the Jewish people. However, we hope that joining the Apartheid-free community would actually give us tools to combat antisemitism in this country and increase Israeli security in their region.

This called meeting is an opportunity to continue to thresh out this question with a larger portion of the Meeting community, and it is now on the calendar for November 10 at 12:30 p.m. after Meeting for Worship, in the meetinghouse and on Zoom, using the same Zoom link as for meeting for worship. If a sufficient number of friends are in unity, the proposal can proceed to meeting for business.


Bethesda Friends Meeting

Mailing Address:
P.O. Box 30152, Bethesda MD 20824

Our Meetinghouse is on the campus of the Sidwell Friends Lower School at the intersection of Edgemoor Lane and Beverly Road in Bethesda, Maryland

We are a member organization of the Religious Society of Friends

www.bethesdafriends.org
301-986-8681
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