A Year of Holding Hope through Grief

My heart is heavy with grief and anger at all of the destruction and loss during this past year.

Long before last October, Palestinians had been living for decades under suffocating conditions of Jim Crow-style racism and military occupation. Since Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians last October 7, Israel’s military has killed more women and children in Gaza than any military in any year of the past 20 years. Entire Palestinian families and communities have been obliterated — many by US-made weapons, facilitated by US funding and US diplomatic cover. Those that survive are living a relentless horror of displacement, hunger, and violence. In the West Bank, people live in fear as the grip of occupation tightens, and Israel ramps up military raids and settler attacks.

We mourn every person killed in this incessant violence, Palestinian and Israeli. None of this is justice for the civilians killed by Hamas, whose families’ grief has been used to justify this onslaught, and none of it makes people safer. Families of Israeli hostages illegally held by Hamas are pleading for a ceasefire, but have instead seen their loved ones sacrificed to the drive to war. We decry the killing of all civilians as violations of international law and human rights — including civilians living under governments that commit atrocities.

Now this year’s violence is engulfing even more communities, as in Lebanon where over a million people are fleeing Israeli bombs.

When it becomes too much to contemplate devastation at this scale, when you can’t bear to think about the death of yet another child, giving in to numbness might feel like relief.

But there is so much that keeps my hope alive — and that’s why I’m writing to you today.

I want to tell you about our grassroots partners in Gaza, who are saving lives in almost unspeakable circumstances. Working past the point of exhaustion, community health workers at organizations like the Palestinian Medical Relief Society have provided vital emergency medical care and vaccinated children against polio. Grassroots organizers we support in the West Bank, including midwives like Aisha Saifi, are delivering psychosocial care and maternal health care.

We have been doing this work together for decades now. Years of bringing clean water and health care to Gaza when an Israeli blockade destroyed infrastructure and denied people those basic rights. Years of partnering with Palestinian and Israeli midwives, caring for mothers and new babies cut off from health care by military checkpoints and occupation.

Through it all, our partners still speak out for peace, justice, and human rights. And we’re committed to advocate alongside them.

And now in Lebanon, we’re funding local organizations to protect and care for displaced people, including Syrian refugees who fled their country’s civil war and now struggle to access shelter.

You help make all this possible. Through this terrible year, thank you for standing with us as we equip our partners to protect people, demand rights, and propel hope for justice and peace. 

Over the past year, we’ve been advocating for US policymakers to prioritize peace over war, to push for a ceasefire, to provide aid rather than arming genocidal attacks. Together with a growing movement — nurtured by Palestinian and Jewish organizers and allies — we’ve demanded accountability for violations of international law and human rights. And we’re calling on the US to abide by its own law and support the wishes of most Americans who want to see an end to this violence.

Remember what really keeps us safe — it’s the same thing that will keep people safe in Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, and across the region. It is not bombs or walls but interdependence — the recognition that our fates are intertwined and that only through solidarity and justice can we build a future where peace is possible for all.

With hope,

Yifat