Justice is the project of spacious, fearless hearts

AJV statement to the vigil, Waitangi Park, 15/10/23

Ko Marilyn Garson, Ko Fred Albert aku ingoa. We are the founders of Alternative Jewish Voices.

Some of you know me. I lived in Gaza four years. I loved its city streets. They felt like a village because everyone knew everyone. Those velvet sunsets over the port. The hair-tearing stress behind the blockade conditioned people not only for resistance but for the fearless mutual aid that you witness in the streets under fire. In 2014 I was part of the UNRWA emergency shelter team. The hair still jumps up along my arms to remember the screaming after the bombs. I can still see the neighbours race toward the fires and the rubble to dig with their bare hands. That my friends and colleagues should be dying in hunger and darkness and indifference – I can’t bear it.

To every Palestinian who has spent their breath trying to make people understand the reality, the threat, the urgency; the simple fact that history didn’t begin last week, I want to cut through the denial and the dehumanisation to say that I also know this truth. A-J-V is with you for the coming mahi. More and more Jews around the world are unlearning the myths of Zionism and taking up solidarity.

I want to speak to the sheer weight of these days, of pushing through the pain underwater. We have come together today to stretch our hearts wide enough to hold all that pain. We are here to pause, to let our hearts break open. Let the sadness wash over us while we honour all the losses.

When we find each life precious – that is when justice takes root. Justice is the project of spacious, fearless hearts.

While justice is this distant, I search for words that I can wedge like a foot in the door, to prevent my own heart from closing. I learn from Palestinians, from tangata whenua, how to conduct a long, big-hearted liberation. I don’t know how else to live up to the demands that this moment makes on us. And I learn from open-hearted Jewish sources. I want to offer you some words from the rabbinic council of Jewish Voice for Peace:

May the One Who Remembers allow us to hold in one hand 75 years of occupation, dispossession and violence and in the other a future of peace, justice and freedom.

May the One Who Loves Justice fortify us to reinforce our solidarities with all those who share our vision of justice and dignity for all people

May the One Who Knows Hope instill in us the confidence to imagine wholeness, safety, and freedom for all people.

May the One Who is Without Limit expand our sense of what is possible as we reach for justice, freedom and peace for us all.

Olam Chesed Yibanenu – we will build this world with love – we will move this world because we must.

Thank you – Allah yatik al afiah, b’tzedek.

Marilyn Garson and Fred Albert,

Wellington peace vigil, October 15 2023