Sacred Witness

We’ve returned home from Palestine and Israel where we led AFCFP’s first “Sacred Witness” tour with 15 diverse leaders from the U.S. We developed the tour in response to this pivotal moment marked by a fragile ceasefire, mass grief, escalating occupation in the West Bank, crises in global leadership, and a rising wave of international solidarity. Our purpose was clear: to bear witness, deepen partnerships with those on the ground, and return home to advance the work for just peace and collective liberation.

Each day, we felt the weight of history and witnessed enduring pain and defiant hope. From Bethlehem to Hebron, Kibbutz Re'im to Gaza, Al-Twani to the Nova Music Festival site, we encountered personal stories of how the deepest forms of loss are spurring nonviolent actions to confront systems of injustice, stop cycles of destruction, and co-create a new reality in the land. We saw how the personal becomes political when too much has been stripped away and how the political must be personal if we expect to make change.

On the last day of the tour, we planted olive trees with CfP in Battir to support a Palestinian family facing settler violence within the system of ethnic cleansing. With our fingers to the earth, we saw the military approaching across the valley, yet we held fast to our task—staking our claim to the belief that, no matter the weight of the struggle, we must sow seeds of change. Though the military pressured our group off the property, the 50 trees we planted remain—a living symbol of our defiant hope, rooted in the land.

As one of our tour hosts, Zoughbi, shared, “Everyone is capable of doing evil, and everyone is capable of doing good.” Indeed, we saw the ravages of fear, trauma, and hatred spreading. And we also saw beauty spreading—beauty in the way activists transform destruction into fuel for co-creation; beauty in how communities confront injustice by creating systems of shared protection and responsibility; beauty in the way personal experiences are igniting collective political actions; beauty in the ways Israelis and Palestinians resist dehumanization by building partnerships marked by joint works for all lives from the river to the sea.

As we process all we witnessed, we hold the profound power of those we met who refuse to give up the fight for a just peace, especially now. They showed us in new ways that the kind of hope that can help us press forward—and the kind of “pressing” that can produce hope—will only come when we take action together in the face of adversity. We carry the responsibility to stand in solidarity with those persisting against all odds, and we invite you to join in doing the same.

 Join us on March 13 for a CollectiveED “Sacred Witness” tour debrief, featuring four diverse participants of the tour—Weylin Lee, Sheila Weinberg, Hassan El-Tayyab, and Ariel Eckblad—who will share reflections and next steps for action.

We look forward to seeing you online and continuing this journey through our collective work here at home.

In solidarity,

AFCFP Team