Noah’s-Ark

A joint call of Palestinians and Jews with Israeli citizenship.

We write as Palestinians and Jews with Israeli citizenship who live as one community on this disputed land. We live together in a Noah’s-Ark that has been sailing through troubled waters long before the flood began on October 7th. In the face of this sea of despair, and the unbearable sights of bodies of defenseless elderly, children, babies and adults. In front of ungraspable cruelty of our people and the inability of many to absorb the pain of the other people we call on Palestinians, Jews, and civil society around the world to join us in appealing to the West– which plays God in our region– to urgently stop this flood. The international community must stop this madness before the flames completely consume the dove, holding its olive branch. Stop this so that the dove can return to us and proclaim an era of justice in the Middle East from out of the debris of destruction.

We are a community of Palestinian and Jews who work together in the space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. We work daily to create a community that is free from racism, patriarchy and all form of oppression and exploitation. We are a small and unified community that refuses to submit to the divisive order of the day, an order full of hate and suspicion. For our work, we are persecuted, as if we were a spectre haunting the Middle East and threatening the colonial order.

As we drown in a sea of unprecedented horror, our pain cries out to the heavens with mortal dread at what is being done in our name and in the name of our God. We believe that religious faith is a sacred relationship between an individual and his/her/their community and God, not one between the state and its subjects. We believe that the colonial edifice that Israel built must be replaced by a space devoid of subjugation and domination, and that the people oppressed by this edifice–those whose future was stolen–have the right to fight for freedom and equality, This includes neither the religious fundamentalist struggle nor the  horrors we experienced here.

We must acknowledge and validate the deep and existential fear that each people experiences but we can’t let it turn into an elimination wish of the other We believe that all humans must be equal and free regardless of origin, race, religion, nationality or gender.

It is self-evident to us that any struggle, whatever it may be, must uphold human rights. The absence of this will only lead one cruel regime to be replaced by another. This insistence should not be mistaken for flattery to a Western moral code, which only condemns the crimes committed by a “barbarian native” against the “white tribe.” We work, and will always work to create an unarmed space of resistance against the occupation and apartheid. Instead of standing by us, the world sends billions of dollars to an apartheid occupying army that violently suppresses every nonviolent struggle for justice and equality with flagrant disregard for international law.

In demanding freedom for Palestinians, we also seek to release Israel from the shackles  of elite rule. Breaking these shackles is the only path for Jewish Israelis to enjoy the pure air of true and equal democracy: a state for all its citizens.

In these difficult days, we ask Hamas to release the elderly, women, minors, and foreign workers among the hostages, and we ask Israel to release the minors, administrative detainees and sick prisoners, with no conditions. We demand Israel to immediately cease the attack and siege on Gaza, and to agree to a prisoner exchange. We demand the international community to stop enabling our disastrous reality, either through direct support or by averting its gaze, and to become part of the fight for sustainable peace and for freedom to all between the river and the sea. These are dramatic moments in which we, all of us, are required to decide – will this land, sacred to three faiths, bring forth a just peace, or a war of mutually assured destruction in the Middle East.

1 Palestinian – human rights lawyer

2 Udi Aloni – filmmaker and writer

3 Palestinian  –  scholar

4 Orly Noy – journalist and writer

5 Ronit Chacham – author

6 Palestinian- scholar

7 Karin Loevy – scholar

8 Palestinian- scholar

9 Yehouda Shenhav-  scholar

10 Anat Matar – scholar

11 Mati Shemoelof – poet

12 Tamar Berger – scholar

13 Haggai Matar – journalist.

14 Eyal Rozmarin- psychologist

15 Amnon Raz Krakotzkin – scholar

16 Gadi Algazi- scholar

17 Eilat Maoz – scholar

18 Yuval Yonay- scholar

19 Palestinian- journalist

20 Gerardo Leibner – Historian

21  Nathalie Rozanes – artist

22 Palestinian- journalist

23 Palestinian – artist and actor

24 Palestinian – author

25 Palestinian – actresses

26 Palestinian – artist and actor

27 Palestinian – activist

28 Palestinian – musician

29 Palestinian – musician

30 Palestinian – musician

31 Palestinian – musician

32 Palestinian – actresses

33 Palestinian – scholar

34 Palestinian – writer