Throughout our history, the Bund has fought to create a fairer and more just world for all, and for the rights of Jews to be treated as equals to all others while having their own political and cultural organisations and representation.
The position we have taken, and will continue to take, on the Israel/Palestinian conflict is consistent with the policies that the Bund has adopted over many decades.
There is no military or terrorist strategy that will provide a pathway to peace and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians. Not the kind of berserk rampage of murder, rape, and kidnapping led by Hamas on October 7th, not the terror of random rocket fire into Israel, and not the deadly bombing and blockade of Gaza.
Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live without the daily threat of violence.
Israeli military victories in battles with the terrorist Hamas and others in Gaza, achieved at a massive cost to innocent Palestinians, amount to very little. There are still hostages who have not been released and there are countless innocent Palestinians displaced. Despite the horrific attack of October 7, and of Hamas’s criminal refusal to release all the hostages, Israel must articulate a path towards a just, lasting, and secure future for Israelis and Palestinians alike based on the principle that all people in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank have a right to self-determination and freedom from oppression and violence.
The path to a just peace for Israelis and Palestinians is not found through the policy of settler expansion and Jewish messianic terrorist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank nor terrorist acts in Israel by Hamas and its supporters. This approach is a prescription for a permanent status quo of suffering that will further degrade Israeli democracy and only entrench the power of the most intransigent Palestinian and Israeli parties.
There is no time to be lost. The deep grief of Israelis and Palestinians should be harnessed as fuel for the difficult and desperate task of working for a just and viable peace for all. Israeli and Palestinian people deserve leadership willing and able to present an alternative to despair. They need leaders who can stop fighting and point in the direction of a pathway to peace, because the other road is an unacceptable future of destruction and death. Everyone, everywhere, should throw support behind a vision for peace and for the voices brave enough to take the hard first steps towards realising that vision.