Join our call for peace 🕊️
Artwork by Maya Amer Design
Hi friends, it’s Kat & Lauren 👋. We are the founders of Paradice Palase.
It’s been a very challenging and transformative last 6 weeks for the world. We’ve taken some time to consider how to contribute to this critical moment. As an organization that supports artists through resource sharing, listening, and learning, we are compelled to share resources related to the Palestinian/Israeli crisis to our broader communities, as this is a crucial humanitarian issue.
We feel it is vital to speak out for the things we all purport to hold valuable, the prized tenets of our own country that privileged folks like ourselves are granted (and often take for granted every day): freedom of movement and of religious practices, democracy, peace, safety, access to shelter, food, water, and utilities, access to healthcare, literally just being able to live our lives comfortably with loved ones. We implore our community to do your part, in any way you can, in this fight for peace and liberation of oppressed peoples, as we should also do within our own communities here at home.
It is truly worth it to spend time listening and educating yourself on this issue with an open mind. Years and years of propaganda and media manipulation, the collusion of our own country in perpetuating the issue at hand, our own pain and defensiveness that comes with reconnecting with the fact that our nation (which is intertwined with our own worldview and identity) was founded upon the same horrible crimes that are being committed within this conflict - all cloud our judgement, understanding, and ability to empathize or take accountability as we try to process what is happening and figure out what actions to take.
At the end of the day, we wish to see a ceasefire, a real and lasting peace deal between these communities, immediate aid sent to the victims of this conflict, and an end to the violence and hatred being cast upon Jewish and Muslim people internationally. As the death toll in Gaza continues to increase and the outlook for the Israeli hostages is getting dismal, we must implore our leadership to take action in a way that does not involve violence or further harm.
Below you will find some resources for actions and education on this matter. Please note that they do lean heavily in support for Palestinians, as we feel they are in dire need for aid and support right now. Additionally, their perspective has long been obfuscated, and it’s time we finally seek to uncover their history and plight as well.
With love,
PARADICE PALASE
đź“š Resource Center
RALLY
• Contact your representatives to demand an immediate ceasefire and end of U.S. aid for Israeli apartheid. This link includes a script and click-to-call feature.
• Join a local protest against the occupation and current genocide in Gaza.
• Help to re-instate Jewish Voices for Peace & Students for Justice in Palestine at Columbia University by submitting this form; show your support for these important civil rights groups
• Urge President Biden to formally call for a cease-fire using this form page hosted by Jewish Voices for Peace.
• Stop Gaza Genocide: Ceasefire Now! Toolkit created by US Campaign for Palestinian rights.
DONATE
[we found some of these through Anti-Racism Daily and The Cut]
• Charity Navigator is a database of vetted and highly rated charities involved in humanitarian relief, recovery, and peace-building efforts. This link is a filtered list of orgs specifically aiding civilians in Israel and Gaza, with sub-categories like “emergency housing”, “psychological support” and “food & supplies”.
• PaliRoots and the Middle East Children’s Alliance are mobilizing to deliver food and hygiene products to displaced families across Gaza - from Beit Lahia in the north to Rafah in the south.
• World Health Organization are shipping life-saving humanitarian supplies from the United Nations and the Egyptian Red Crescent entered Gaza.
• Israeli Red Cross: Help is desperately needed to put more ambulances on the road and to replenish supplies for EMTs and paramedics and for MDA’s blood services division.
• Bring them Home Now: This forum offers Israeli families holistic medical and emotional support as well as professional assistance, and advances the ongoing efforts locally, regionally and globally, to bring the hostages and the missing back home.
• Palestinian Youth Movement is a transnational, independent, grassroots organization of young Palestinians in Palestine and in exile mobilizing to end the occupation.
• Direct Relief provides humanitarian aid in more than 80 countries and is currently working with health-care partners in Israel to support victims of Hamas’s attacks.
• Anera provides life-sustaining humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Jordan. Their staff in Gaza use donations to purchase hygiene and medical kits and prepare hot meals while the organization prepares relief supplies to be sent in if a humanitarian corridor is opened.
• IfNotNow are a movement of American Jews organizing their community to end U.S. support for Israel's apartheid system and demand equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Palestinians and Israelis.
• HOMOCATS are an arts group that are currently fundraising for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza. You can purchase a t-shirt as part of their fundraising efforts.
• Doctors Without Borders can also be directly donated to here.
• Alliance for Middle East Peace is a coalition of over 170 nongovernmental Palestinian and Israeli organizations dedicated to peace building, currently supporting member organizations that are providing emergency response on the ground across Israel, Gaza, and other occupied territories.
• U.N. World Food Programme has been distributing fresh-baked bread, canned food, and ready-to-eat meals to victims in emergency shelters across Gaza.
• IsraAID is a global NGO based in Tel Aviv, Israel with a mission of supporting people affected by crises like natural disasters, post-conflict situations, and epidemics. The group is currently housing evacuees from Gaza, operating child-friendly spaces where kids can play and process, and distributing resilience kits to families, among other tasks.
• Oxfam is preparing to deliver critical assistance — including access to water, sanitation, food, and cash for victims — in Gaza once it is safe to do so.
EDUCATE
• Occupation of the American Mind: Isreal’s Public Relations War in the U.S.: Is a documentary that breaks down the devastatingly effective public relations war that Israel and right-wing pro-Israel advocacy groups have been waging for decades in the US.
• Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid: In this book, President Jimmy Carter shares his intimate knowledge of the history of the Middle East and his personal experiences with the principal actors, and he addresses sensitive political issues many American officials avoid. Pulling no punches, Carter prescribes steps that must be taken for the two states to share the Holy Land without a system of apartheid or the constant fear of terrorism.
• On Palestine: Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky, two leading voices in the struggle to liberate Palestine, discuss the road ahead for Palestinians and how the international community can pressure Israel to end its human rights abuses against the people of Palestine.
• This NYTimes Article: More than 125,000 Israelis have been evacuated along the Gaza and Lebanon border since October 7th - the largest internal displacement in the country’s history. Another example of ultra-conservative policy and action in Israel’s government resulting in the upheaval of generations of civilian livelihood - even within its own country.
• A TLDR History of the Ben Gurion Canal Project: This Instagram Reel is around 20 minutes long and was created by a civilian (reposted by @muslimslifenet) who did the research so we don’t have to! The canal was first proposed by Israel in the 1960s but never found enough footing. It was re-visited in 2021 following the Suez Canal boat crash fiasco and as of today seems likely to receive funding. It’s a very interesting slice of history that informs a unique possible motive behind this war.
• On Antisemitism: Solidarity And The Struggle For Justice: This book by Jewish Voice for Peace is a curated collection of essays that provides diverse perspectives and standpoints on the contemporary definition (and re-defining) of antisemitism. Each contribution explores critical questions concerning uses and abuses of antisemitism in the 21st century, focusing on the intersection between antisemitism, accusations of antisemitism, and Palestinian human rights activism.
• This TIME article & this Al Jazeera article: Both of these articles published post-Oct 7 outline the rise of Hamas and the many key factors and players that contribute to the current actions of the terror group.
• Decolonize Palestine: A collection of resources for organizers and anyone who wants to learn more about Palestine.
MENTAL HEALTH / COMMUNITY BUILDING
• Good Grief Network: Good Grief Network provides short term accessible, virtual groups on collective grief. Usually they focus on climate change but they have been opening groups to people facing war and collective violence.
• Muslim-Jewish Solidarity Committee: Muslim Jewish Solidarity works on community building.
• Child Mind Institute: The Child Mind Institute has been hosting free groups for anyone affected by the war.
• USA Palestine Mental Health Network: Community and mental health resources for people from Palestine.
Subscribe to Anti-Racism Daily, a email newsletter that does much of the legwork in providing resources, tools, and think-pieces on how to actively combat racism in your daily life - both out in the world and within yourself (PARADICE PALASE are long time subscribers, it’s taught us a lot!)
Do you have resources you’d like to share with us? Email us at greetings@paradicepalase.com!
A closing thought —
This quote by adrienne maree brown from EMERGENT STRATEGY Shaping Change, Changing Worlds has really stuck with us. We hope it inspires you as much as it did us…
One thing I have observed: When we are engaged in acts of love, we humans are at our best and most resilient. The love in romance that makes us want to be better people, the love of children that makes us change our whole lives to meet their needs, the love of family that makes us drop everything to take care of them, the love of community that makes us work tirelessly with broken hearts.
Perhaps humans’ core function is love. Love leads us to observe in a much deeper way than any other emotion. I think of how delightful it is to see something new in my lovers’ faces, something they may only know from inside as a feeling.
If love were the central practice of a new generation of organizers and spiritual leaders, it would have a massive impact on what was considered organizing. If the goal was to increase the love, rather than winning or dominating a constant opponent, I think we could actually imagine liberation from constant oppression. We would suddenly be seeing everything we do, everyone we meet, not through the tactical eyes of war, but through eyes of love. We would see that there’s no such thing as a blank canvas, an empty land or a new idea—but everywhere there is complex, ancient, fertile ground full of potential.