Reverend Michael Yoshii and four others from the U.S. recently returned from a weeklong stay in Wadi Foquin, a small village in the West Bank rapidly being filled in by surrounding illegal Israeli settlements.
The brief presence of Americans inside Palestinian families slackened ongoing nighttime IDF raids, demolition of homes, settler harassment, and the looming threat of land confiscation to build an apartheid road.
6 p.m. to 7 p.m. | Monday, February 17 (President’s Day) | MCC Conference Room | Join in person or watch virtually at mcceastbay.org/live
Sponsored by Asbury United Methodist Church, Jewish Voices for Peace Bay Area, Friends of Wadi Foquin, Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center, Soul of My Soul Exhibit & MCC East Bay.
- – More talks about Palestine: http://mcceastbay.org/palestinian
Rightfully so, our attention has been on the genocide in Gaza. Learn also about the current climate in the West Bank, which remains under attack.
Reverend Michael Yoshii is a retired United Methodist minister and co-chair of the Friends of Wadi Foquin, an official committee of the United Methodist Church. He will present a report on a recent Protective Presence trip to the West Bank Muslim village of Wadi Foquin.
About the Speaker
Reverend Michael Yoshii is a retired pastor of 30 years at Buena Vista United Methodist Church. He understands the profound impact of such injustices from the firsthand experiences of his former congregation and his parents. This historical and generational trauma, in part, fuels Yoshii’s solidarity within his community as well as with other marginalized groups, most notably for him, Palestinians facing apartheid.
Friends of Wadi Foquin was created in 2009 with a small amount of fundraising to build beehives in the village. This helped offset the significant damage inflicted on agricultural life by nearby Israeli settlements, whose roads are prohibited to Palestinians. Through projects like reclaiming a dilapidated building for a community center or building a soccer field on Palestinian land threatened by the occupation, Friends of Wadi Foquin sent a powerful message that life and dignity will not be denied. This powerful alliance reminds us that the movement for justice anywhere reinforces the struggle for justice everywhere.
Yoshii spoke about the first time he visited Palestine in 2006: “The thing is you’re there in person and physically, viscerally, your body is experiencing the occupation and you’re in the presence of other people who are trying to tell their stories. And the couple of things that hit me, I think that were very central to my identity as a Japanese American. The first thing was about people sharing their stories and their history. I mean, history is essentially being censored, particularly when we went on some of our exposure trips and met people from the North and heard their stories of their families and villages, which are being basically dismantled and demolished, people are losing their homes. There’s a resonance for me as a Japanese American because we went through the same struggle. I can’t say it’s anything in comparison to Palestinians, but the similar thread is that we went through the struggle of needing to tell our story too.” Source
