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A painting of many different colored hands holding hearts and bleeding underneath a line of red and green flowers. Text reads Rise up against Genocide free Palestine Over the years, SJF and many of our members, grantees, and partner organizations have supported and organized within the decades old movement to free Palestine. It is devastating and demoralizing to organize for so long and still be where we are today. But it’s important to continue to strategize, organize, move money, attend protests, and promote education in our communities about the brutal genocide happening against the sovereign, indigenous people of Palestine.

This is a time of incomprehensible pain. Our hearts go out to our Palestinian and Jewish siblings who are mourning devastating tragedies in Gaza and Israel. Thousands of precious Palestinian and Jewish lives have been lost to unspeakable violence. As all oppressed peoples know, we carry generations of our ancestors’ trauma in our bodies. In moments like these, when new horrors must be absorbed, it coalesces—filling our eyes and choking our throats. Grief is paradoxical: it stops time and simultaneously makes the world around us spin faster than we can comprehend. As much as you can, make the space to tend to your grief and give to give yourself the tenderness your ancestors deserved. May all those who are grieving be surrounded by loving communities who can carry on the struggle when you need to find the stillness to rest and heal.

screen print image of a red poppy. text above reads Let Gaza live SJF is a foundation that serves a limited region but the struggles we support stretch across oceans, linked by the deep violence of white supremacy, settler colonialism, racial-capitalism, and US imperialism. In 2020, we joined many in calling for abolition as the Seattle Police Department indiscriminately deployed tear gas, a chemical weapon, against our community rightfully struggling for Black liberation. The same officers participate in the Deadly Exchange, traveling to Israel to train with the IDF, who, within the last week, indiscriminately deployed the chemical weapon white phosphorus against Palestinians rightfully struggling for their liberation—and in many cases, simply fleeing for their lives. The Native Nations of the area SJF serves had their lands illegally stolen from them by settlers while the US government turned its head the other way and were relegated to limited regions that shrunk over time, just as Palestinians have experienced over the past seven decades. These examples are only two of the many that illustrate how the horrors Palestinians have faced daily for decades come directly from the same playbook used to subjugate Black folks, Native folks, and people of color, gender oppressed people and queer communities, disabled folks, religious minorities, immigrants, and more here in the US.

Illustration of a person wearing a keffiyeh facing a city at night as bright red clouds billow upwards. The person is defiantly waving a Palestinian flag. White text reads Our voices will never be silenced. As our families and loved ones scrape by, under-resourced in exploitative jobs, billions of our tax dollars are sent to the Israeli military to secure the US’ geopolitical position in its quest for global domination via racial-capitalism. The US’ power is vested in white supremacy. When we denounce white supremacy, we denounce antisemitism. We denounce the rising Islamophobia that threatens the lives of our beloved Muslim communities. We denounce acts of genocide committed for domination in the name of a people who survived a genocide and want never to see its kind again. As donor organizers, we must divest from this evil and be active in our solidarity by moving resources in support of Palestinian lives. This is a global struggle for liberation for the Palestinian people and we urge each of you to utilize the resources and information linked below. Additionally, SJF encourages other funding organizations to follow work by our friends at Grassroots International and learn more about the important role philanthropy can play in this movement.