Government is a Public Trust which requires all of our participation. 

ACLU Protestor Rights:  

The First Amendment protects your right to  assemble and express your views through protest. However, police and  other government officials are allowed to place certain narrow  restrictions on the exercise of speech rights. Make sure you’re prepared  by brushing up on your rights before heading out into the streets.

Dear christian,

From March 20 to 23, NVI Co-Directors, Michael Beer, Sami Awad, and board member Mohammed Abunimer, joined the Nuestra América Delegation to Cuba as part of a much larger international convoy of more than 600 people from around the world. We came as activists, artists, influencers, faith leaders, and community organizers, united by a simple conviction: the Cuban people should not be left alone under an embargo that continues to punish ordinary life.

The delegation was supported by CODEPINK, Progressive International, Global Health Partners, and Busboys and Poets, alongside a wider network that included The People’s Forum, Cuban Americans for Cuba, and Global Exchange.

It was our first time in Cuba! What we witnessed was not theoretical, was not news reports, was not propaganda. 

Havana looks like a movie set from the 1950s! The cars and buildings are stunning -- but so run down. During our time there, Cuba continued to experience major electrical outages, part of a broader energy crisis that has left entire neighborhoods in darkness and placed immense strain on daily life. The blackouts are tied to the suffocating impact of the U.S. embargo, including restrictions on oil and essential resources.

In Cuba, this is not an abstract policy debate. It means hospitals under pressure, food and medicine at risk, transportation disrupted, garbage piled in streets, markets shut, restaurants closed, and families forced to survive with less and less.

And yet what we encountered was not defeatism. It was resilience. Generosity. Dignity.

People gathered in the dark. They shared what they had. They played music and sang in the streets. We played spirited mixed-gender ultimate with them (with donated frisbees that Michael brought). That spirit stays with us.

For those of us Palestinians, this was deeply personal. We met with and were inspired by Cuban students and others from around the world including Palestinians. We know what it means to live under systems designed to isolate, weaken, and break a people. We know what it feels like when your suffering is discussed from a distance while you are still living inside it. In Cuba, we recognized something painfully familiar: a people being made to pay the price for refusing to submit.

That is why this trip was not only a solidarity visit with medical relief and aid but also an act of nonviolent defiance.

This said, the convoy defied the embargo and carried real material support. Around 20 tons of aid were delivered, including food, medicine, solar panels, and bicycles. The delegation we were part of brought thousands of pounds of medical supplies and over a hundred suitcases and boxes of humanitarian aid, all going directly to hospitals and health workers facing severe shortages.

After we returned, the delegation faced attacks and accusations meant to discredit the trip and turn solidarity into suspicion. We reject that. People can debate politics from afar, but we know what we saw. The US has no problem engaging and trading with the communist parties of Vietnam, China, Nepal, and Laos. We saw a country under enormous pressure. We saw communities enduring blackouts and shortages. We saw doctors, families, churches, and neighbors doing their best to hold life together. And we saw hundreds of people from across the world choosing not to look away.

The embargo is not just policy, it is collective punishment.

What we carried back from Cuba was more than memory, it was clarity.

The Palestine and Cuba siege are connected, and so must be our response.

What can you do?

• Learn. Stay informed. Support organizations like the ones mentioned above.
• Refuse the narratives that justify collective punishment and oppose US unilateral sanctions on Palestine, Cuba and many other countries.
• Use your voice—in your communities, your platforms, your spaces.
• And find ways—big or small—to stand in real solidarity, including joining future delegations. Visit CUBA!

With Nonviolent Defiance,
Mohammed Abunimer, Michael Beer & Sami Awad

P.S. Please remember to attend our round table Field Testing Israeli Occupation Tech: The Palestine Lab on Sunday, April 19, 2026 3pm ET and see films in advance. This Round Table centers the human impact of this experimentation, examining how Palestinian lives are used as testing grounds for weapons, AI platforms, and policing tactics later exported worldwide. Join the Q&A discussion with: Omar Zahzah, Jeff Halper, Antony Loewenstein, Hassan El-Tayyab

You must register to join the discussion & receive access to the films

Nonviolence International
https://www.nonviolenceinternational.net/

• Dignity for Palestinians: delivers humanitarian aid into Gaza led by the heroic doctor Musallam Abukhalil.
• Center for Jewish Nonviolence: has been on the front lines accompanying Palestinian and modelling what a Jewish society should be: Compassionate, Courageous, and Respectful.
• Holy Land Trust: (HLT) based in Bethlehem and founded by NVI Co-Director Sami Awad, continues its mission of nonviolent resistance and focus on trauma resilience.
• Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine: With NVI and HLT support, Amira Musallam and Mel Duncan have organized some of the elite peacemakers in the world to come to the West Bank and help ameliorate Israeli violence against Palestinians. This is growing fast and needs much support.
• We Are Not Numbers: led by Walaa Sabah, continues to give voice to heroic Gazans. They also have an eponymous new book which is a must read and holiday gift.
• US Boat to Gaza and the Freedom Flotilla: For 17 years we have fiscally sponsored this effort and raised a few million dollars. Unfortunately, David Heap, Canada’s Gaza Boat leader was disgracefully arrested 4 days ago. We are never giving up. Please dig deep because we will return until the siege of Gaza is lifted.
• Villages Group: Led by Tamar Almog and Ehud Krinis. Israeli activists have been supporting and protecting Palestinians in Masafer Yatta every week for 24 years! This amounts to thousands of visits. Incredible.
• Hebron International Resource Network: Provides crucial humanitarian support and programs for Palestinians facing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
• Mennonite Action: A new powerful solidarity movement that is lighting up Christians in the US and Canada to support Palestinians. Listening to them sing is a must.

Wait, there is more! Please support our global partners!

• Western Sahara Solidarity Committee, 
• Ploughshares (direct action against nuclear weapons) program called Isaiah Project, 
• the Syrian nonviolence movement Sullam, and 
• Andre Kamenshikov’s anti-war work for Russians.

If you are feeling overwhelmed, feel free to email or call us and we can talk with you and advise. Feeling overwhelmed is a good thing. It shows that people-power is on the march and together we can move boulders and mountains.

The bottom line is that one of the powerful nonviolent people-power resources is your money. Please invest a percentage of your income or wealth and hit that benchmark every year. Together with a discipline of boycotting malign actors, you can have a powerful impact with your money.

Peace,, 

Mubarak Awad, NVI Founder

9/3/2025

Dear friends, 

Amidst the Nakba of 1948, my grandfather was shot dead on his doorstep in Jerusalem. Since that year, Israel has continued its quest to assert total control over all land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, aiming to fragment, weaken, and ultimately erase Palestinian presence. In 1988, my uncle Mubarak Awad, a popular nonviolent leader, was expelled for life from Jerusalem, where he was born and grew up. My uncle Emil and aunt Mai and their family fled Gaza in 2024 to escape the current genocide. Israel must be stopped.

Since 1967 but more visible for nearly two decades, Gaza has faced a land, sea, and air blockade that blatantly contravenes international law. Presently, it endures relentless bombardment, mass displacement, and deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure. This was never about “Hamas.” Israel seeks to render Gaza uninhabitable and force Palestinians to either leave or lose their ability to survive.

This week, in a landmark resolution adopted by 86% of its voting members, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS)—the world’s largest academic body dedicated to genocide studies, declared that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide, citing mass civilian casualties, starvation, blockaded aid, and collective displacement.

In the West Bank, the pattern of dispossession is equally strategic. Israel is moving to annex Area C, which encompasses over 60% of the territory. Meanwhile, settlements proliferate—most significantly in the E1 corridor—destined to sever Palestinian lands physically and create more modern Ghettos for Palestinians to live in. Cities and villages are wholly isolated from each other by roads lined with gates, checkpoint-controlled entry and exit points, and military roadblocks. What was once daily life—access to schools, mosques, hospitals, jobs—has become a controlled maze (and frequent humiliation at check-points), dismantling any hope for a unified Palestinian homeland.

Photo: Megan Hanna

Photo: Middle East Eye/Mosab Shawar

Israel controls and diverts the majority of West Bank water resources, leaving Palestinian communities with only a fraction of the supply available to nearby Israeli settlements. The systematic destruction of wells and pipelines has left entire villages without access to water, while in Gaza, residents are forced to rely on contaminated or insufficient sources. These policies, coupled with ongoing land confiscations and home demolitions, function as deliberate tools of displacement and deepen the humanitarian crisis.

Palestinians who remain within the 1948 borders—today citizens of Israel—also live under a system of discrimination that treats them as second-class citizens.. They face unequal access to housing, education, and services, alongside restrictive planning laws that deny building permits and facilitate land confiscation. Entire villages, particularly in the Naqab (Negev), remain “unrecognized,” denied water, electricity, and basic infrastructure.

Recent years have seen intensified surveillance, policing, and political repression of Palestinian citizens, particularly during protest movements in solidarity with Gaza and Jerusalem. The goal mirrors what is happening in the West Bank and Gaza: to weaken Palestinian identity, fragment communities, encourage emigration, and reduce political resistance while tightening control over all land from the river to the sea.

Within Jerusalem, evictions, restrictive planning laws, and creeping settlement expansion all serve the goal of erasing Palestinian presence and solidifying an exclusive Israeli identity for the city. Palestinians living in Jerusalem are living daily terror from violent settlers roaming the streets, insulting and physically attacking them. 

Palestinian and Jewish Safety

Israel’s project is clear: to dominate from the river to the sea and beyond. Israel is building a permanent occupation of areas in Syria and Lebanon. Besides greed, Israelis are motivated by the myth that only an Israeli state can ensure Jewish safety. In fact, Jewish safety is endangered by the apartheid state that will never be accepted by Palestinians nor much of the world. NVI strongly believes in nonviolent resistance because we know that we must protect everyone in this wonderful homeland and ensure that Never Again means Never Again for ANYONE. 

Amid this onslaught, Palestinians maintain Sumud—steadfastness. In Gaza, families cultivate gardens amid rubble. Our partner, Dignity 4 Palestinians is doing amazing work providing food, water and medical aid to the most needy in Gaza. In the West Bank, NVI projects and programs such as  HIRN, CJNV, Villages Group, and HLT help people resist expulsion while replanting olive trees destroyed by settler attacks. In Jerusalem and 1948 Israel, Lebanon, Syria and in the diaspora, parents preserve identity, language, and history through storytelling, education, and community—even when every system around them seeks to erase those very foundations. 

Building on the 17 year campaign of the Freedom Flotilla, the Global Sumud Flotilla—loading aid and spirits alike—has taken to the seas to do what states refuse: uphold humanitarian corridors, enforce international law, and challenge siege policies. The flotilla is both an act of nonviolent solidarity and a pointed reminder of government failures—a showcase of what should be happening, but isn’t.

This is not a tragedy—it is a political catastrophe born of deliberate policy choices.  Governments and international bodies must act and international law must be upheld:

• Hold Israel accountable—through enforcement of international law, sanctions, and diplomatic pressure.
• Interrupt genocide—by securing safe passage for aid and protecting civilians, not leaving it to civilians on unarmed vessels.
• Impose sanctions on officials, corporations and anyone responsible for war crimes and genocide.

• Support those working on the ground— Here is a list of our partner organizations. These are some of many who are working relentlessly to address the injustices in Palestine and the world.
  
• Join one of the largest protests in world history on Sept 18, the 1-year deadline for Israel to abide by the International Court of Justice order to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza.
• Call on your governments to recognize Palestine and to vote at the UN to intervene with the on-going genocide in Gaza.
• Boycott, Boycott Boycott. Download the app!.

Keep the pressure on your governments, raise your voices in protest, support the movement to end oppression and violence worldwide.

Sami Awad

Co-Director, NVI

International Court of Justice ICJ; https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204176

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“We must tell our stories and educate our children, for memory is the first step to freedom."

– Raja Shehadeh

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"The land is our mother; we do not leave her."

– Mahmoud Darwish

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Land Day, marked annually on March 30, is not only a moment of remembrance. It is a living expression of identity, dignity, and the deep relationship between people and land.

On this day in 1976, Palestinians organized a general strike to protest the confiscation of thousands of dunams of land in the Galilee. The protests were met with force — six unarmed Palestinians were killed, and many were injured and arrested. Since then, Land Day has become a symbol of resilience, unity, and the enduring connection between people and their land.

Land is not just territory.
It is memory, belonging, and future.

“Land Day” | Issued by the General Union of Palestinian Women on Land Day in 1977, this poster shows a cubist painting by Palestinian artist Mona al-Saudi. (The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive)

At Holy Land Trust, Land Day resonates deeply with our mission. We see the land not only as something to defend, but as something to reconnect with, and build upon.

Across Palestine, this connection to land exists under continuous and intensifying pressure. Ongoing political realities shape daily life — restricting movement, limiting access to land and resources, and creating an environment of prolonged uncertainty. Economic hardship deepens this reality, as unemployment rises and traditional sources of income become increasingly unstable.

Communities also face growing social pressure. The accumulation of stress, fear, anger, and uncertainty affects not only livelihoods, but the emotional and psychological well-being of individuals and families. In many areas, escalating tensions and incidents of settler violence add another layer of insecurity, reinforcing a sense that stability remains out of reach.

The psychological, economic, and social burdens are not separate — they accumulate over time, creating a heavy and persistent reality. Life becomes a continuous cycle of endurance, where moments of stability are often brief and quickly disrupted.

And yet, despite this, people continue to hold on — to their land, their identity, and their determination to remain.

Across different regions of Palestine, this reality takes many forms. Whether in rural communities, urban centers, or areas under heightened restrictions, people navigate daily challenges that affect theirability to plan, to grow, and to feel secure.

Despite these conditions, communities continue to adapt, support one another, and find ways to remain connected to their land and to life itself. This persistence reflects not only resilience, but a deep-rooted commitment to staying, belonging, and continuing forward.

Land carries trauma — stories of loss, displacement, and struggle. Through trauma-informed and nonviolence-based approaches, Holy Land Trust creates spaces where individuals and communities can process these experiences and regain a sense of strength.

Healing our relationship with the land begins with what we build within ourselves and with each other.

From supporting families in cultivating their land to creating safe spaces for women and youth, this work affirms the right of Palestinians to remain, grow, and live with dignity. Resilience here is not abstract — it is practiced daily through presence, care, and action.

Through storytelling and global engagement, these voices are carried beyond borders — inviting others not only to witness, but to stand in solidarity. Because the struggle for land is ultimately a struggle for justice, humanity, and peace.

Land Day also calls for deeper awareness.

The earth is not only land beneath our feet — it is a living source that sustains life. Yet across the world, exploitation, control, and overconsumption continue to exhaust it.

This day invites us to pause…
To return to a relationship of respect, care, and responsibility.
To remember: we belong to the land — not the other way around.

This is not only a Palestinian story.
Land is everywhere.

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Gaza: Education in Ruins 

Months of war have left Gaza’s education system in devastation. Between 90% and 97% of schools have been destroyed, damaged, or require major reconstruction. More than 720,000 students have had their learning completely interrupted –many for the second consecutive academic year.

Schools are no longer safe havens. Many have been turned into overcrowded shelters, while others have been directly attacked. Since October 2023, more than 13,000 students have been killed, tens of thousands injured, and entire generations left without access to safe education. The right to learn—so basic and universal—has become a daily struggle for survival.

West Bank: Financial Hardship and Disrupted Learning 

In the West Bank, the crisis is different but no less urgent. Employment has plummeted by nearly a quarter, and more than 140,000 workers have lost steady pay due to restrictions and withheld revenues. Families are struggling to cover school fees, uniforms, and supplies, placing heavy stress on parents while students carry the weight of uncertainty.

Education as Hope 

Yet, in both Gaza and the West Bank, the determination to learn remains unshaken. Education continues to symbolize resilience, dignity, and the belief in a brighter future—even in the darkest times.