Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
QuakerSpeak is a weekly video series. New video every other FRIDAY!
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Filming and Editing by Layla Cuthrell
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Transcript:
I have relied heavily on my Quaker faith in how I look at the injustice that is affecting my people. It is easy to fall into the trap, in Palestine, of wanting to fight back and wanting to revenge, because you get angry every day and humiliated every day. And to have our Quaker faith remind me that the solutions are not violent ones, it gave me an opportunity, especially in a in a place where we are living such a violent realities with occupation and apartheid day in and day out, to reflect back and inward. And to understand better what we mean by our testimonies of peace, our testimonies of equality.
My name is Joyce Ajlouny. I use she/her pronouns. I am a Palestinian-American Quaker. And I moved to the United States 12 years ago. And for the past seven years, I have had the honor of leading the AFSC, the American Friends Service Committee, which is a 107 year old global peace and social justice organization doing amazing work around the world and in the United States.
I am asked a lot of times to explain what living under military occupation is like, and I always say, “Do you have a few days?” So for me, yes, I did not live in a refugee camp. I lived in the city of Ramallah and had a relatively comfortable life. That does not mean that I did not struggle with daily humiliations and threats on my rights, on my life. There are so many examples of those experiences that haunt me till today. When you live in a place that treats you as subhuman, that your life is not worth living, you know, that continues to haunt every Palestinian. Unfortunately, my voice and the voice of my people for the past decades has been silenced. We have never been given the chance to speak about our history, and how we were there, and that Israel was not created on the land without a people for a people without a land. We have been dispossessed, massacred, ethnically cleansed for the past 70 some years. Gaza has been bombed and attacked so many times before October 7th. Generations families obliterated. Christians, Muslims, everyone. Occupation does not discriminate. This is not a response to the October 7th attacks on Israel. And this is not about Israel defending itself. This is a continuation of what I grew up with.
How do I cope with genocide taking place every day against my people? How do I cope? I don't know if I'm coping. How do I accept that our world order has allowed this? And then as an American, my own tax dollars are supporting the genocide against my own people. Like how do I sit with that? I think if AFSC and Quakers play a vital role in showing a path in supporting also those so many Palestinians, so many, who believe and have been working all their lives to resist nonviolently. Accompanying them, empowering them, giving them agency, convening them, in the hope that they will one day attain their freedom and dignity back.
What does just peace in Palestine and Israel look like? Is a question that I have contemplated oftentimes. Everybody living in harmony with equal rights, dignity and freedom, no exceptions. This is what peace looks like -- but when you add the word ‘just’ peace, then there's another layer that you have to consider. And with justice means acknowledgment of the harms that have been perpetrated by the Israeli government and its supporters, including the US government. And then the second layer is a restoration of rights. Palestinians who are today living as refugees in Lebanon, in Syria, in Jordan, on the West Bank. Over 500 villages where obliterated in 1948. They have the right to go back. There's a U.N. resolution, 194, that says they have the right to return. Reparations. Our water sources restored. Settlers today on the West Bank have a green light from the military, from the Israeli military, to do they want. So they continue to not only harass, but to commit pogroms against the Palestinian villagers. These are illegal settlements. So there has to be a restoration of rights. After that, then there's space for reconciliation, for healing -- so we can live in that beautiful piece of land from the river to the sea together.
What has happened in Gaza? It put us back decades. If I had any hope for peace, just peace to be attained in Palestine two years ago...I've lost it now. The only thing silver lining I see, and I want to say that, is with the amazing solidary that I have seen from people...
___
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
QuakerSpeak is a weekly video series. New video every other FRIDAY!
SUPPORT QuakerSpeak! quakerspeak.com/donate
SUBSCRIBE for a new video every other week! http://fdsj.nl/QS-Subscribe
WATCH all our videos: http://fdsj.nl/qs-all-videos
___
Become a Friends Journal subscriber for only $28
http://fdsj.nl/FJ-Subscribe
Filming and Editing by Layla Cuthrell
___
Transcript:
I have relied heavily on my Quaker faith in how I look at the injustice that is affecting my people. It is easy to fall into the trap, in Palestine, of wanting to fight back and wanting to revenge, because you get angry every day and humiliated every day. And to have our Quaker faith remind me that the solutions are not violent ones, it gave me an opportunity, especially in a in a place where we are living such a violent realities with occupation and apartheid day in and day out, to reflect back and inward. And to understand better what we mean by our testimonies of peace, our testimonies of equality.
My name is Joyce Ajlouny. I use she/her pronouns. I am a Palestinian-American Quaker. And I moved to the United States 12 years ago. And for the past seven years, I have had the honor of leading the AFSC, the American Friends Service Committee, which is a 107 year old global peace and social justice organization doing amazing work around the world and in the United States.
I am asked a lot of times to explain what living under military occupation is like, and I always say, “Do you have a few days?” So for me, yes, I did not live in a refugee camp. I lived in the city of Ramallah and had a relatively comfortable life. That does not mean that I did not struggle with daily humiliations and threats on my rights, on my life. There are so many examples of those experiences that haunt me till today. When you live in a place that treats you as subhuman, that your life is not worth living, you know, that continues to haunt every Palestinian. Unfortunately, my voice and the voice of my people for the past decades has been silenced. We have never been given the chance to speak about our history, and how we were there, and that Israel was not created on the land without a people for a people without a land. We have been dispossessed, massacred, ethnically cleansed for the past 70 some years. Gaza has been bombed and attacked so many times before October 7th. Generations families obliterated. Christians, Muslims, everyone. Occupation does not discriminate. This is not a response to the October 7th attacks on Israel. And this is not about Israel defending itself. This is a continuation of what I grew up with.
How do I cope with genocide taking place every day against my people? How do I cope? I don't know if I'm coping. How do I accept that our world order has allowed this? And then as an American, my own tax dollars are supporting the genocide against my own people. Like how do I sit with that? I think if AFSC and Quakers play a vital role in showing a path in supporting also those so many Palestinians, so many, who believe and have been working all their lives to resist nonviolently. Accompanying them, empowering them, giving them agency, convening them, in the hope that they will one day attain their freedom and dignity back.
What does just peace in Palestine and Israel look like? Is a question that I have contemplated oftentimes. Everybody living in harmony with equal rights, dignity and freedom, no exceptions. This is what peace looks like -- but when you add the word ‘just’ peace, then there's another layer that you have to consider. And with justice means acknowledgment of the harms that have been perpetrated by the Israeli government and its supporters, including the US government. And then the second layer is a restoration of rights. Palestinians who are today living as refugees in Lebanon, in Syria, in Jordan, on the West Bank. Over 500 villages where obliterated in 1948. They have the right to go back. There's a U.N. resolution, 194, that says they have the right to return. Reparations. Our water sources restored. Settlers today on the West Bank have a green light from the military, from the Israeli military, to do they want. So they continue to not only harass, but to commit pogroms against the Palestinian villagers. These are illegal settlements. So there has to be a restoration of rights. After that, then there's space for reconciliation, for healing -- so we can live in that beautiful piece of land from the river to the sea together.
What has happened in Gaza? It put us back decades. If I had any hope for peace, just peace to be attained in Palestine two years ago...I've lost it now. The only thing silver lining I see, and I want to say that, is with the amazing solidary that I have seen from people...
___
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
