A Secular Buddhist Response to Gaza

September 18, 2025


This article was written by Sharon Tobias, Nan DiBello, and Karsten Struhl. They are members of SBN's Secular Dharma and Political Activism group. This article presents their perspective on this issue and does not represent the position of SBN as an organization. As noted by the authors, we hope the article encourages debate and discussion on how Buddhists could respond to this crucial issue.

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As secular Buddhists we are moved to respond to the enormous suffering, starvation, and violence inflicted on the Palestinians in Gaza by Israel’s genocidal policies.  The Israeli government, with the complicity of the United States, is destroying the very lifeline of the Palestinian people with the purpose of making Gaza uninhabitable for the Palestinians. It has become obvious that their intent is to force all  Palestinians out of Gaza.  While we condemn Hamas’ horrific actions on October 7, 2023 and feel compassion for the suffering of the hostages and their families, we refuse to turn away from Israel’s ongoing efforts to brutalize the Palestinian people and “ethnically cleanse” Gaza.

The Israeli government’s actions have been deemed illegal and condemned as genocide by top UN officials and world leaders, by international human rights and aid organizations, by the major Israeli human rights organization, B’tselem , and by medical and physician organizations. In addition to the murder and maiming of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians  by guns and bombs, to the deliberate attacks on hospitals, medical workers, and journalists in Gaza, mass starvation has been and continues to be used as a weapon of war.

Gaza’s population has been systematically denied food, water, medicine, fuel and other basic supplies needed for survival. Humanitarian aid groups such as UNRWA have been prevented from delivering needed supplies while systematic attacks on the health system in Gaza have deprived life-saving care to severely ill and malnourished children and babies. Meanwhile, Palestinians face continued displacement from their homes to supposed “safe” areas which are then subsequently bombed. And those Palestinians trying to get the meager amount of aid that is allowed often have to face the bullets of the Israeli army. All this amounts to the destruction of the infrastructure of Gaza and the obliteration of the Palestinian land and people.

Our response to the destruction of Gaza and the Palestinian people is informed by our compassion for the suffering of all people involved and a recognition of their common humanity - both Palestinians and Israelis. Several core principles of the Buddha’s teaching contribute to our response:  the interdependence of all beings; the teachings of non-harming; and the ethical values of care and compassion. Based on these principles and values, we have an obligation to actualize Buddhism’s ethics of wisdom and compassion in today’s world. Therefore, we join with other humanitarians and activists in speaking out and condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza. At the same time, we must do all that we can to provide Palestinians with humanitarian assistance (food, water, medicine, shelter, etc.) in conditions of safety and security and to resist the complicity of the United States.

We join with others such as the United Nations special rapporteur (Francesca Albanese), the United Nations Special Committee, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Center For Constitutional Rights, the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars to urge the United States to stop supplying weapons to Israel and to condemn this genocide and illegal occupation of Gaza. Our hope is that this statement will encourage a larger discussion among secular Buddhists and other Buddhist groups about how to respond to suffering in Gaza, in Israel, and in the world.


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10 Replies to “A Secular Buddhist Response to Gaza”

Jesus Perez

Congratulations to the authors for their courage in speaking clearly. I do not believe that in the history of humanity there has ever been a genocide supported by so many lies, so much propaganda, so many powers, so many economic interests. And yet, if in the West we cannot call things by their name, does it mean that we have completely lost every trace of morality and ethics? And if, as Buddhists, we accept this criminal ignominy, then what kind of Buddhists are we? Perhaps Buddhists centered only on our own egotistical ways of thinking, disregarding the suffering of the world.

In essence, all genocides are the same: the intent to destroy a people, a culture, a history. In this sense, this genocide is just as criminal as the Jewish Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the genocide in Rwanda, and others less known. In the face of genocide, we cannot and must not look the other way. Silence is always complicit. Silence was complicit in Nazi Germany, just as now it is complicity not to raise our voices against this terrible and monstrous genocide, where the most fanatical and immoral already dare to speak of building a tourist resort on what was once Gaza.

We must not let the genocidal monster consume our humanity

Jeff Waistell

Thanks Sharon, Nan and Karsten for your most welcome statement.
Thanks Jesus for your very helpful reply and I will comment below on your points: “so much propaganda”, “consume our humanity” and the danger of “silence.”
For me, the bottom line is that I must say and do all that I can to call out, and call for a stop to, genocide – otherwise, I would lose my humanity. If any ideology prevents me from doing that, then I must critique and only selectively draw from it.
Various ideologies have caused many people to do seriously mad and bad things – and so I find it necessary to humanity-check ideologies with questions like – is this view really humane/ethical/moral?
The fact that many Buddhist leaders and practitioners remain silent about genocide means that I can no longer identify as a Buddhist (although my contemplative practice is supported by learning from the mindfulness traditions, as well as other traditions). This is compounded by the fact that some Buddhist leaders have been reported by the media for their abuses.
Personally, I have encountered Buddhist leaders declining to call out genocide – and I have encountered sangha members refusing to criticise and one even calling the Gaza Genocide “propaganda”. I left the sangha as a matter of principle and I now practice by myself.
And yes, as you say: “Silence is always complicit.” Silence is seriously dangerous for Gaza but it is also very dangerous for other countries, given Netanyahu’s ‘Greater Israel’ remark: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/16/arab-islamic-countries-condemn-netanyahus-greater-israel-remark
Reflecting on how Buddhist leaders have been complicit in violence and war in countries like Japan (the Rape of Nanking), I remind myself that Buddhism has passively or actively supported war (e.g. see ‘Zen at War’ by Victoria, Brian Daizen, 2006). See also:
https://inquiringmind.com/article/3002_17_purser-the-militarization-of-mindfulness/#:~:text=Perhaps%20in%20the%20circumscribed%20world,from%20which%20MBSR%20was%20rooted.
If Buddhism is hesitant to criticise even the most heinous of crimes against humanity – genocide – is this really right thinking, right speech, right action?
What is wrong – is it ideology, its interpretation, its practice, or all of these?
If Buddhism is deficient in the face of genocide, can I learn from the prophets of the Hebrew Bible to discover my own inner prophetic voice? The prophets of Israel drew strength from the wilderness and spoke out with dynamism and zeal for the marginalised and vulnerable. I can learn from the prophets of Israel by listening to my own inner voice, in order to foster critical thinking. Prophets operate across the boundaries of the desert and society, telling truths that must be spoken. So I can learn from them to form my own prophetic voice in speaking truth to power (I have paraphrased this paragraph from – https://www.thecatholicnetwork.co.uk/11950).

Jeff Waistell

There is Jewish blood in my family – but that in no way stops me from speaking truth to power, in the same way as many Jews do in the US, UK, EU, and Israel (see the BBC News report “Protesters pack Tel Aviv square to demand Gaza ceasefire”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cgq7qpqz27qo). Indeed, the campaign group ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ campaigns to save Palestinian lives.
Israeli activists have marched to the Gaza fence: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/19/world/video/israeli-jews-gaza-fence-march-digvid-vrtc
It is heartening now to hear more and more voices calling to stop the Gaza Genocide and ethnic cleansing – including an Israeli ex-PM and a senior US military commander. Jewish faculty at Oxford have released a statement on the University’s response to student protests against the genocide in Gaza”. They argued that “the characterisation of Jews as a uniform mass with a single viewpoint is itself a common and insidious antisemitic trope” – and moreover they state “the rising tide of rhetoric conflating criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza with antisemitism, and by the use of this rhetoric to justify government interference and repression of student protest—all under the pretext of ‘protecting’ Jews” (https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/an-open-letter-from-concerned-jewish-faculty-at-the-university-of-oxford/). See also: ‘Jewish staff oppose uni’s Gaza protest proceedings’ (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly3jld7gnyo).
Israeli rights groups have accused Israel of genocide in Gaza: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c776xkvz6vno
Historically, the most vehement of Israel’s moral critics have been from within Israel: see my previous post referring to the prophets of Israel.
Some jews argue that the Gaza Genocide is “A total violation of Judaism”: https://prismreports.org/2024/09/23/orthodox-jews-anti-genocide/
The Jewish and Christian scriptures state: “You shall not kill” – and “You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not covet your neighbour’s goods”. These are not options – they are commandments.
In stark contrast, the silence of Buddhist groups is of the utmost concern. The arguments usually put forward relate to being peaceful – but this is to mistake pacifism with passivity. Another argument relates to non-discrimination. However, I protest without discrimination, just as I would have protested the Jewish Holocaust if I had been alive during WWII.
Right mindfulness is not a simple focus on individual enlightenment and therapy or interpersonal relationships. It is not enough to be peace but to make peace in order to address “structural violence”, a term first coined by Thich Nhat Hanh.
Right mindfulness and right action is not passive in such situations as genocide nor does it simply and solely focus on the meditator’s feelings about the war: this is Disengaged Buddhism. Right mindfulness and right action actively campaigns for peace in a peaceful manner: an Engaged Buddhism that reduces the suffering of others, including those in the greatest need of our help. Such engagement is not only liberating for others – it is also liberation for the meditator.
Thich Nhat Hanh stated: “Sometimes non-action is violence. If you allow others to kill and destroy, although you are not doing anything, you are also implicit in that violence. So, violence can be action or non-action.”
Thich Nhat Hanh said that when bombs are falling and people are crying, you cannot stay in the meditation hall. He coined the term “Engaged Buddhism” during the Vietnam War, as a way to respond to the suffering he witnessed. He emphasised that true Buddhism involves engaging with the world’s problems and working to alleviate suffering, yes within oneself, but also in those around you, which includes Gazans experiencing genocide. 
Thich Nhat Hanh said that while meditation is a vital practice, it shouldn’t be the only response to suffering. He advocated for compassionate action, including helping those wounded by bombs and working towards peace. 
We can see how Thich Nhat Hanh would have acted on the Gaza genocide:-
“Peace is not simply the absence of violence; it is the cultivation of understanding, insight and compassion, combined with action.”
In 1966 Thich Nhat Hanh left Vietnam for the US to call for peace. He persuaded Martin Luther King to come out against the War, shifting the tide of public opinion…Thich Nhat Hanh went on to lead the Vietnamese Buddhist Peace Delegation at the Paris Peace Talks.
He brought his message of peace to US Congress during the bombing of Iraq, and to parliaments in India, the UK, and Northern Ireland. He has led peace walks for gatherings of thousands in Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Hanoi, Macau and New Delhi. In these walks, he says, “Each step is a realisation of peace. Each step is a prayer for peace…
…It is possible for us to do something now. Don’t despair. There is something we can all do. There is still a chance. Recognise that, and do it, and you will find peace.”
(https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/key-teachings).
As Thich Nhat Hanh says, once there is seeing, there must be acting. One follows the other: there is no choice.
Best regards,
Jeff

Jesus Perez

Disengaged Buddhism is a very fitting term to understand the non-compassionate vision of Buddhism, one into which too many Buddhists fall (not only secular Buddhists). For some it may be a divisive term, but I believe it effectively expresses a kind of Buddhism that has adapted, that has succumbed to the great ruler of our age: the ‘self’.” But then the question soon comes up: is this kind of Disengaged Buddhism really Buddhism

Murray Reiss

Yes. And what can we actually do? My dominant response, alongside outrage & anguish, is a deep feeling of utter powerlessness.

M

Such a ill informed biased article. Don’t let any facts interfere with your narrative!
The mere fact that you chose to cite the folowing demonstrate the obvious!
We join with others such as the United Nations special rapporteur (Francesca Albanese), the United Nations Special Committee, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Center For Constitutional Rights, the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars to urge the United States to stop supplying weapons to Israel and to condemn this genocide and illegal occupation of Gaza. Our hope is that this statement will encourage a larger discussion among secular Buddhists and other Buddhist groups about how to respond to suffering in Gaza, in Israel, and in the world.

Hearty thanks and congratulations to Sharon, Nan and Karsten for their powerful statement on the Gaza genocide, and to Jesus and Jeff for their contributing comments. I agree with them all without reservation. Not just with what they’ve written, but their choice to publish their responses in the clear, uncompromising terms that befit serious dharma practitioners faced with the suffering, horror, and gross criminality being visited on Palestinians in Gaza in particular, but also in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

I’m not just a senior dharma teacher but I’ve also long been a university scholar and teacher in the discipline of genocide and Holocaust studies. Each genocide has a stock set of ‘characters’: the perpetrators, their enablers, denialists, by-standers, rescuers, and (of course) victims. They’ve all reported for duty once again in the current genocide, and it helps us to clarify our own individual and collective ethical relationship to what is unfolding in Gaza. The identity of some of these characters are obvious. The perpetrators are the Israeli government and armed forces; the enablers are the US and German governments who arm and encourage the perpetrators; the denialists comprise the bulk of the western media; the rescuers are the medical staff who’ve thereby become the perpetrators’ priority targets; the victims are the Palestinian people.

But who are the bystanders in the present case? It’s all of us who don’t go on protest demonstrations and who carefully avoid mentioning the Gaza genocide. Or who misdescribe it in sorrowful terms as if it’s just another war, just another expression of human nature at work that we can’t really do anything about, so our indifference is ok. We baulk at taking the word ‘genocide’ – ‘the g-word’ – into our mouths, not just because it denotes something specific and especially evil, but because that word demands an active response. Abraham Lincoln wrote: ‘We – even we here – hold the power, and bear the responsibility.’ One of the best books I came across in my research was Samantha Power’s 2003 ‘”A problem from hell”: America and the age of genocide’. She opens with Lincoln’s words, then spends the next 619 pages showing how by-standerism has been the official but unannounced policy of the US government in the face of all genocides since the UN genocide convention came into force in 1948. Many other governments have followed suit. They’ve all given their citizens permission to duck moral responsibility in the same way.

But by-standerism is utterly alien to dharma practice.

Jeff Waistell

Thanks Winton. Great insights about the stock set of ‘characters’ – and a problem from hell – both of which I would like to comment on.
At an ideological level, the actors include 2 political ideologies: capitalism, which is making its way with the plan to turn Gaza into a Mediterranean resort. The ideology of Western settler colonialism is another political actor in Gaza (and elsewhere, with threats to the Greenlandic Inuit, for example).
The other ideological actors are 3 ‘religions’ that have lost their way…
As I mentioned previously, Thich Nhat Hanh stated: “Sometimes non-action is violence. If you allow others to kill and destroy, although you are not doing anything, you are also implicit in that violence. So, violence can be action or non-action.” However, SBN has rightly raised concerns over silence from many (but not all) Buddhist leaders and practitioners.
Orthodox Jews argue that the Gaza Genocide is “A total violation of Judaism”: https://prismreports.org/2024/09/23/orthodox-jews-anti-genocide/
The Jewish and Christian scriptures state: “You shall not kill” – and “You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not covet your neighbour’s goods”. These are not options – they are commandments. These tablets of stone from Moses have been broken and lie shattered amongst the ruins of Gaza.
The Israeli/Jewish and Christian ideologies are now wedded together in a marriage made in hell, with Netanyahu, Trump (a Christian who uses his beliefs to support his policies), and Tony Blair (a Catholic convert) continuing to work together towards a future transitional governance for Gaza. You know the record of the first two. Tony Blair is from my country, the UK. Tony Blair and his Labour Party neither apologised nor recompensed Iraq for the UK-US genocide of the Iraqi people. More recently, the “Tony Blair thinktank worked with a project developing the ‘Trump Riviera’ Gaza plan” – and this thinktank has been embroiled in a separate controversy over its connection to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the controversial Israeli- and US-backed delivery group” who have been exterminating starving Palestinian children and their families queueing for food, water, and medicines.
Alarmingly, now, one proposal is for Tony Blair to lead a Palestinian transitional authority. The fox is being tasked with caring for the chickens. Moreover, the last nation/national representative that should be running Palestine is an ex-PM from the UK after its role in the ongoing destruction of Palestine for over a century and to this day, still selling arms and supplying intelligence to Israel. The world has many good countries that could provide genuine help – and Britain (and the rest of the Western world) – is not one of them.
See “Tony Blair in discussions to run transitional Gaza authority” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3drmk95xlzo
Ireland and South Africa have both suffered oppressive regimes and have had some (limited) success in shaking off this oppression – and so they would be good candidates for helping Palestine. Moreover, as reported in the media, the Palestinians should not have a single representative in any transitional arrangement, as that would be just another example of racist western colonialism pretending that indigenous people from non-western countries cannot govern themselves, providing a rationale for them to step in with their own covert self interests.

Arif Pervaiz

It is worth noting than an earlier opinion piece carried by SBN, full of racist tropes and occupation talking points, did not carry a statement disavowing any connection with the views expressed in it but this piece against the genocide of Palestinians seems to have prompted the Editor(s) to include a disclaimer. I leave it to each of you (in the event this letter is not censored!) to make of it what you will!

I commend the writers for willing to stand up and call out the atrocities being committed against an entire people, their culture, and the means of survival with the full diplomatic, financial and military support of major western countries. This is all the more significant in the face of majority western buddhist teachers and institutions keeping quiet and thereby siding with the powerful colonial aggressors. I suspect those who claim to follow the path of the Buddha and who appear to conflate acquiescence with equanimity will have much to answer for in the fullness of time.

For those interested, please see/sign up for:

https://buddhistsagainstgenocide.org/
and
https://liberationcircle.org/

Jeff Waistell

Thank you, Arif, for your insightful posting and this link (https://buddhistsagainstgenocide.org/) – which makes me realise that there is another occupation waging war right now, namely the occupation of Buddhism and its silencing.
Many reasons have been put forward as to why Buddhism is largely silent about the Gaza Genocide. Personally, I believe there is another reason, in fact the fundamental cause, of this silence, which is McCarthyism.
Eight decades ago, McCarthyism was campaigning against “MARXISM, UNESCO and
ONE-WORLDISM” allegedly promulgated by “our Screen, Radio and TV” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anticommunist_Literature_1950s.png).
McCarthyism opposed vaccinations and medicines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unholy_three.png).
Other manifestations of McCarthyism included unsubstantiated accusations of far-left extremism; personal attacks; firings; actions against government employees, prominent figures in the entertainment industry, academics, comedians, presenters, thinkers, writers, left-wing politicians, lawyers and courts, and the UN.
Actions included blacklists and revocations of passports and visas,
There were also attacks on principles: of democracy (the voting process for elections), truth, reason, logic, diversity, law, equality, inclusion, social justice, public welfare, the right to criticise and protest, internationalism, civil liberties, liberalism, leftism, democracy and free speech.
Sound familiar?
That is why there is a new movement to resist the resurgence of repression and McCarthyism, as reported by CNN today:
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/01/entertainment/jane-fonda-relaunches-committee-first-amendment

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