Our souls have not been forsaken to the imperialist death machine. We are still very much alive with beating broken hearts.
Reflections on our Facilitated Conversations on Palestine by Natalie Armitage
On October 7th 2026, we marked the third anniversary of a day that so many of us dread and brace against before we switch on the news. We do this for many different reasons.
Two and a half years ago in July 2024, Charity So White published evidence that highlighted very clear anti-Palestinian racism. Of their sample, almost 50% of UK charities simply didn’t respond at all. Nothing. Business as usual. Around 20% said something internally (presumably to support staff affected by it) – yet over 50% of respondents said they were “extremely disappointed” with their organisation's handling of the situation in Gaza. 63% felt misaligned with the work they were doing. Where do you think these numbers might be now?
The Facilitated Discussions for Palestine, we hosted in 2025, was an attempt. An attempt to broach the deafening silence. The screams cut short that we hear ringing in our ears every day. An attempt to create time to think about the unthinkable, to name the indescribable, and to honour well over 73,000 of our human kin brutally murdered in front of our eyes. Funded by our taxes. To talk about it, we must whisper in rooms at work. No somatic training on earth can hold the grief, shock and rage of witnessing a live streamed Genocide. No solution is enough on its own.
Starting - simply somewhere - with the third sector, we made space to say the words (what words? Any words. No words. Tearful words. Rageful words). An attempt to stop, to feel, to offer something – anything – for people we know came to this sector with a vast range of histories and reasons. We did this knowing the insidious silence that has infected our privileged world is so deadly, and costly, reinforced by propaganda so loud and abrasive, intentionally employed to make us doubt our own sanity as we attempt to carry out daily work, life and ‘missions’.
We started with two and a half hours. We vetted everyone who signed up for our own safety, aware of the risks we were taking. Aware of the expectations that grief is to be rationed according to race. When the tiny little windows on our screens opened into a Zoom room, we faced one another as strangers, sometimes tenuously linked, mostly not at all - and we began. We reassured everyone that their names, faces and organisations would remain anonymous. No script, no prompts, just a confidential space to talk.
Over preparedness taught me to have some slides to show the history of Genocide in Palestine, which ended up just becoming a reminder. I attempted to lead a grounding exercise - but was aware that the very soil we are trying to connect to is the same soil used to make and launch bombs more sophisticated than we can imagine to murder babies and children. I could not offer relief from that; instead we strengthened our resolve to honour the truth. I opened every session with the latest thing I had seen, that made me scared of my own desensitisation. I invited others to share the very top thing on their chest in a similar way, and we worked our way around. Honouring our truths together.
Immediately people began sharing stories of NDAs they had signed at work that came alongside newly re-issued contracts, of social media clauses about “representing the organisation” that came with penalties for non compliance. Not just from funders, or charities, but also sole traders, social enterprises and case workers. Stories of being threatened with contracts ending, funding being pulled and being told that they were ‘deviating from strategy’ when they advocated for more truth. Self-employed people shared about losing their income for openly standing with Palestine, no longer hired for their work, with family members warning them to stay quiet, worrying for their safety and livelihoods.
How isolated they felt.
How they didn’t want to care about any of that. And how they still did.
We heard from all races and ethnicities up and down the country, who were part of various protests and resistances outside of their day job - but with no room whatsoever to bring it up at work. We heard from people full of rage and anger and needing to shout and cry and be held. We exchanged handles, and notes, and links to groups others might find in the chat.
We heard from people living in Reform governed areas, seeing the ramping up of Islamophobia everywhere they look, seeing brown neighbours on their street getting beaten by white racist ‘gangs’ and going to dinners and realising some of their closest friends in their personal life support Zionism. We heard from many Diversity, Equality and Inclusion professionals who had been welcomed into organisations under the guise of ‘we want to be anti-racist’ heartbroken at the total betrayal of organisational values and commitments.
I tried to bring it back to Palestinian voices, and now in 2026 it is getting harder and harder to connect with them directly. Many if not most journalists have been murdered, shadow banned, maimed and silenced as punishment for reaching us. The constant images and videos saturating us, keeping us overstimulated and distracting has made us numb. They are disappearing from our timelines slowly but surely.
Myriads of chaos, violence and noise that many thought they would never see happen in the UK: the weaponisation of the word “terrorism” used to arrest elderly middle class white folks, carried off into police vans for holding signs opposing Genocide (which is our duty under the Geneva Convention). The rocketing of police brutality for simply speaking in Arabic or wearing a Keffiyeh is suffocating everyone
Yet, even with all of our systems conspiring to disconnect us from the truth, and from our humanity, people still showed up and wanted to talk.
Every session, we read a passage from the book “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” by Omar El Akkad. We allowed the words, the voice, the truth, from Palestinian writers to move us in community. We sat, we connected, we cried and we could feel the same humanity within ourselves that we share with Palestinians. Our souls have not been forsaken to the imperialist death machine. We are still very much alive with beating broken hearts.
This space didn’t happen by accident. If we leave it to the sector as it is now, it won’t happen on its own.
Standing with the people of Palestine is not reserved for the campaigners, the people getting arrested, the protests or the boycotts alone. It is not something outside of you, your work, or your organisation. It starts with the truth. Naming, acknowledging the truth for what we all know it is. Then courage. Courage to broach the sector’s avoidance and insistence on prioritising the comfort of those in positions of power. Name, the truth, take courage and speak. The second we stop talking about Palestine, we have rended the lives of thousands of people in a Genocide to the deafening silence across the third sector.
So here is our offering to you: talk with us, grieve with us, heal with us.
We intend to host more spaces for healing and connection that feel safe enough, like our discussions on Palestine, for people to enter. Through these; we empower one another to break through the sector’s expectations of compliance and truly meet one another. When we do, we connect, we build solidarity, we organise.
“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians” – Nelson Mandela, 1997.
From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.