Call for Peace, Free Speech, Justice for Gaza, Defunding Arms to Israel + Peace Event

Call for Peace, Free Speech, Justice for Palestine, Defunding Arms to Israel + Peace Event 11/15 Berkeley 11 am

Berkeley, Ca Nov. 14, 2025. The Social Justice Committee of the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists (BFUU) is hosting a Peace Conference Saturday Nov. 15 from 11:00 AM and calls on the US government to cease military aid to Israel but to direct those funds to humanitarian aid. Our position arises from UU moral commitments and dedication to nonviolence, human rights, and justice. We are guided by UU principles affirming the inherent worth and dignity of every person; justice, equity and compassion in human relations; and the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. In light of the crisis in Gaza and the historic injustices facing Palestinians, financing that mass suffering violates our principles.

In addition, there are five federal laws that the US and Israel are violating by unconstitutional support of the illegal, genocidal war in Gaza: The Foreign Assistance Act, The Arms Export Control Act, The US War Crimes Act, The Leahy Law protecting human rights, and The Genocide Convention Implementation Act.
Under the Genocide Convention, we are bound to "prevent " and "punish" any of the following acts committed with "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Article III makes it a crime to be "complicit" in Genocide.

Clearly, the world has been witnessing “genocide”: bombing of homes, hospitals, schools; death and destruction inflicted on civilians by the world’s sixth largest air force; people burned and buried alive, starved, deprived of water, fuel, electricity, and medical supplies. Yet our government supplies billions in aid and military support, plus diplomatic cover at the United Nations. The genocide continues after the latest "peace plan" returned the remaining hostages. US complicity with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and Genocide is undeniable. The 9/29/25 Peace Plan looks like “a blueprint for the eventual take-over of Palestinian Land, a fig leaf for annexation”, wrote Marc Wutschke. Chris Hedges predicts the plan will legitimize genocide “under US Protection”. The Ethnic Cleansing of the Gaza Strip and West Bank continue under the rubric of “voluntary transfers” while Israel holds a gun to Palestinians' heads.

Even in “progressive” California, the legislature passed and the Governor signed AB 715 which outlaws teaching about the genocide in schools, silencing speech critical of Israel and Zionism, labeling it “Anti-Semitism” and establishing penalties and loss of employment for truth tellers. Instead of preventing genocide, which is the responsibility of all nations who agreed to those protocols, our DA’s use court resources to prosecute for “felony vandalism” elderly women for “symbolic speech” (merely placing washable red handprints on an official’s garage door to say: “You have blood on your hands!”) There must be accountability, instead, for those who enable genocide by voting to arm Israel, who take contributions from the perpetrators, and who accept bribes from weapons manufacturers and surveillance tech corporations.

Martin Luther King said: “Somehow this madness must cease.” Injustice without accountability normalizes genocide. International Humanitarian law, established by the nations of the world after World War II because Nazi atrocities “should never happen again”, is shredded by failure to hold Israel and complicit Western powers accountable. Genocide must not be permitted with impunity lest it be repeated wherever nations with superior weaponry covet land/resources of weaker peoples. Gross inhumanity eventually comes home, exemplified by the current US administration violating the Posse Comitatus Act by bringing into our cities military personnel for domestic law enforcement. Cruelty and heinous crimes are committed in our name at home and abroad, our taxes squandered for murderous madness instead of the betterment of humanity and the health of the planet.

Brave persons of conscience are rising up. E.g. In northern California, at least two important lawsuits were filed seeking to hold elected officials liable for the deaths and physical/psychic injuries caused to themselves and their relatives as a result of this on-going genocide, and re enjoinIng “use of our tax dollars to fund the atrocities and crimes to which our elected officials are making us complicit.” Judges dismissed the cases, rationalizing that the judicial system is impotent to rule in cases involving “foreign policy”, the purview of the Executive Branch. That doctrine must be challenged and cannot withstand scrutiny under the US Constitution. Article VI of the Constitution, which all attorneys and judges take an oath to uphold: “… all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land, and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby ...” Genocide Conventions were adopted by treaty. Judges are bound by them even if they fear repercussions. Judges are required to uphold the law and take all necessary steps to prevent and punish the International Crime of Genocide.

A Social Justice Committee friend, attorney Marjorie Mikels, states: "If elected Attorney General of California, I vow to take all action using the authority vested in me to uphold the First Amendment rights of free speech (including symbolic political speech), association, press and religious freedom, and to uphold the Constitutional duty to prevent and punish Genocide and our complicity in it.”

Meanwhile, Committee members and allies continue lobbying and protesting. A huge peace conference, also about Venezuela etc., takes place at BFUU, 1924 Cedar St., Sat. Nov. 15 from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM with many riveting speakers organized by the United National Antiwar Coalition.