Palestine, Our Homeland Issue #3

We begin by giving thanks to God for the blessing of this moment—to tell the story of Palestine as we know it, and to share our perspective of the world as we live it. We speak for our people whose story has so often been silenced or stolen. From the roots of the olive groves of our ancestral homeland to the exile of the diaspora, Palestinians carry with them the essence of humanity, beauty and grace. Palestinians rise with an unwavering spirit, patient in sorrow, defiant in hope. It is our deep sense of duty—born of love, memory, and truth—that kindles a light within us, guiding us to stand against injustice and to speak with clarity and courage in the face of silence. 

In our time, as the world bears witness to relentless violence, occupation, and dispossession in Palestine, clarity is not just a virtue—it is a necessity. This issue of our journal arrives during a moment of deep reckoning, as we are called to confront not only the present genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, but the historical structures that have made that suffering possible, even justifiable, in the eyes of some. 

The Holocaust was an unspeakable trauma—a rupture in human history that demands remembrance and moral vigilance. But the aftermath of that trauma saw a people who had been systemically persecuted take refuge and establish sovereignty on a land that was already inhabited. This was not a blank slate. It was Palestine: home to a rich and rooted society of Palestinians—Muslims, Christians, and Jews—who suddenly found themselves rendered invisible, dispensable, and ultimately exiled. This ethnic cleansing was the beginning of the catastrophe for Palestinians, also known as the Nakba, which continued by the establishment of illegal occupation and apartheid, and which continues today by the ongoing genocide in Gaza. 

For Palestinians who still hold the keys to their homes, now behind fences, walls, or in refugee camps, the idea that they must remain dispossessed so that others may feel safe is a cruel inversion of justice. That those fleeing horror in Europe found refuge is not the issue—what remains unacceptable is that this refuge was built on another people’s erasure. 

Palestinians have long insisted that this is not, and never was, a zero-sum conflict. Their resistance has not been rooted in the desire to dominate, but to exist freely on their own land, with dignity and full rights. They have not demanded exclusion but return. Not supremacy but equality. To end the Nakba. 

There is a vision, long articulated by Palestinians and supported by many Jewish voices of conscience, that stands against apartheid, occupation, and siege. It imagines a decolonized, democratic future in all of historic Palestine—from the river to the sea—where Jews and Palestinians live as equals, not as rulers and subjects. This vision rejects the logic that some lives are collateral, that some homes are permanently lost, that some truths must remain untold for the sake of fragile political illusions. 

It is not a fantasy. It is a demand grounded in international law, in human rights, and most of all in the moral certainty that what was done to one people should never justify doing it to another. 

We dedicate this issue to that vision of ending the ongoing Nakba of Palestinians, starting with the end of the genocidal campaign in Gaza. In it, you will find our voices that do not flinch from the hard truths, nor shy away from imagining a future that restores what has been stolen: land, memory, lives, and justice. 

Palestine is a blessed land. There is room in it for everyone—those who were born there, those who were expelled, and even those who sought sanctuary after unimaginable suffering elsewhere. The path forward is not easy, but it begins with recognizing that liberation for one people cannot mean subjugation, erasure and genocide for another. 

Justice is indivisible. Dignity cannot be partitioned. And from the river to the sea, every Palestinian deserves to be free.