Steering Committee member of Jews for a Just Peace
A singer based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Stephen Aberle is a steering committee member of Jews for a Just Peace, an organization that views Israel as an oppressor nation that subjects the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank to many forms of cruelty and abuse.
In March 2002 Aberle summed up his own (and his organization’s) perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict when he said: “We believe Israel has the right to exist and endure, and its people to live in peace and security. We also believe the Palestinian people have the right to live in peace and security and to establish their own viable independent state in the whole of the West Bank and Gaza Strip should they so wish. … We believe the most urgent obstacle to peace has been and remains Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the consequent oppression of the Palestinians. Occupation is violence and this occupation must end before there can be any hope of a true and lasting peace.”
“We deplore all violence against civilians,” added Aberle. “This includes violence against Jewish civilians, through suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks, for example. It also includes violence against Palestinian civilians ... We do not believe that Israel’s security is served by injustice against Palestinians.”
Aberle supports the Palestinians’ “right of return” to Israel -- not only for the relatively few remaining survivors who were among the 725,000 Arab refugees who fled Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, but also for their 5 million-plus descendants, regardless of whether those descendants have ever lived in Israel.
