About Us

For over forty years, Middle East Peace Now (MEPN) has been a resource for the Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota area. We are a registered 501(c)(3) and are operated by a nine person volunteer Board of Directors.

In early 2021, we revisited and reflected on our purpose as an organization and we are happy to share our updated Guiding Principles.

OUR PURPOSE

Educate Host monthly speakers (local, national, and international) and serve as a resource for exploring Middle East related issues.

Network Collaborate with individuals and organizations to advance mutual goals.

Advocate Take action to promote our guiding principles to elected officials, media, and other groups.

 

MEPN’S GUIDING PRINCIPLES

We believe and acknowledge that the United States plays a major role in the destabilization of the Middle East. We see our role as U.S. citizens and taxpayers to combat the use of our country’s name, constitutional rights, and tax money for suppression and oppression of people around the world. We believe that an essential key to peace in the Middle East is justice for the Palestinian people; supporting justice for Palestinians and ending ongoing U.S. unconditional funding of Israel are steps toward the end of imperialism.

We are guided by the following:

  • We understand Zionism as a political ideology separate from Judaism, and one that is rooted in colonialism and racism.
  • We acknowledge that the liberation of Palestine is one of many interconnected struggles for liberation and human rights, both locally and globally.
  • In working toward justice and liberation, we confront the violent manifestations of colonialism and white supremacy in all its forms here in the U.S.: Zionism, racism, sexism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, anti-semitism, mysogyny, homophobia, transphobia, economic oppression, etc. We seek to work with other groups in our communities that hold similar values.
  • The Palestinian cause does not stand alone in its struggle in the Middle East; it is an important front in combating colonialist efforts that have long aimed to divide and conquer the region. The United States and the Western world have done their destructive parts in orientalizing the people of the Middle East.1 We work to combat orientalism through carefully considered verified speakers.
  • Israel was created in part as a tool for the Western world to control the resources in the Middle East. Recognizing funding and policies that utilize Israeli intelligence and projects for the benefit of colonization, we work to bring awareness to intersectional struggles around the Middle East and the Arab world.
  • When considering the future of the Palestinian people and a Palestinian state, we assert that Palestinians have a right to self-determination. We reject any negotiations or plans that are orchestrated without the full participation of Palestinians. Successful resolution hinges on the ability of the Palestinian people to exercise their fundamental rights to liberty and justice.
  • We support the Geneva Conventions and United Nations Resolution 194. Palestinian Right of Return is a necessity for realizing a just and durable solution; we believe in holding the U.S. and Israel accountable to International Law.
  • Palestinians have the right to resist the oppressor. We support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), a Palestinian-led, nonviolent strategy to achieve justice for Palestinians and hold Israel accountable for ongoing human rights violations and apartheid.2
  • The liberation of Palestine is a cause, not a conflict. As articulated by Jeff Halper in his article The Decolonizing of Palestine Towards a One-State Solution (Jan. 2021), “If the problem is a dispute between two countries or a civil war between two nationalisms, as the Palestinian/Israeli “conflict” is often phrased, then a conflict-resolution model might resolve it. But it cannot resolve a colonial situation. That requires an entirely different process of resolution: decolonization, the dismantling of the colonial entity so that a new, inclusive body politic may emerge.” 3

  

The Middle East Peace Now Board of Directors, February 2021

Thank you to American Muslims for Palestine – Minnesota and Jewish Voice for Peace – Twin Cities for sharing their frameworks, which inspired the points above.

 

  1. The term “orientalism,” coined by Edward Said in his 1978 book, Orientalism, denotes the exaggeration of difference, the presumption of Western superiority, and the application of clichéd analytical models for perceiving the Oriental world.  Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978).
  2. More information about Israeli Apartheid available from Badil, see Karine Mac Allister, “Applicability of the Crime of Apartheid to Israel,” last modified 2017, https://www.badil.org/en/publication/periodicals/al-majdal/item/72-applicability-of-the-crime-of-apartheid-to-israel.html.
  3. Jeff Halper. “The Decolonizing of Palestine Towards a One-State Solution,” Americans for Middle East Understanding 55, no. 1 (2021), http://www.ameu.org/Current-Issue/Current-Issue/2021-Volume-55/The-Decolonizing-of-Palestine-Towards-a-One-State.aspx