May 15, 1:00 PM EDT - Virtual
2025 Joint Nakba Remembrance Ceremony: Holding onto Home, Holding onto Hope
Gaza is out of food. Aid trucks wait just outside its borders yet are denied entry. Families are eating grass, animal feed, anything they can find to survive. The UN has called it what it is: a deliberate, manmade famine. A result of calculated military policy. Nearly half of Gaza’s population are children, and there is no way out. They are being starved.
The cruelty we witness each day is unbearable. Israeli families of the hostages plead for their release—kidnapped loved ones still alive, held in unimaginable conditions by Hamas, while their government turns away. Palestinian families, too, suffer the pain of absence. Thousands are held in Israeli prisons, many without charge or trial, disappeared into a system with no accountability.
We are witnessing a crisis of humanity and we must refuse to look away. Our hearts are large enough to hold all who are suffering. We stand with life, believing that every child deserves to eat, every family deserves to be whole, and every person deserves to live free.
In such a moment, we ask: In the face of profound injustice and suffering, how do we resist the pull of vengeance? How do we honor every life without equating narratives or erasing anyone's pain?
At Combatants for Peace, we believe that breaking the cycle of violence and building a just peace require opening our minds to the perspectives 'the other' and opening our hearts to their suffering. If you joined the 2025 Joint Memorial Day Ceremony, you took part in one of two transformative ways that CfP models this commitment each year. On May 15th, CfP will host the annual Joint Nakba Remembrance Ceremony, which—like its sister ceremony—invites us to grieve across divides and cultivate hope for a different future. We invite you to join us for the virtual livestream so that our grief and hope may be complete.
Register - Joint Nakba Remembrance Ceremony (May 15th)
This year’s theme, “Holding onto Home, Holding onto Hope,” speaks powerfully to the present moment. The ceremony reflects on the enduring cycle of displacement and loss that Palestinians have experienced since 1948. Yet the ceremony also looks ahead. It affirms a vision of peace rooted in dignity and justice—a vision in which Palestinians are not defined by displacement, but by their right to live freely and securely.
Holding onto home is about more than geography; it is a commitment to reconciliation—not only for individuals, but for the land itself. It is a vision of collective liberation, where the oppressed are free from domination and the oppressors are freed from the systems that bind them to violence. It is a call to weave peace into the collective identity of all who call this place home.
Register for the Virtual 2025 Joint Nakba Remembrance Ceremony