We write with grief and rage as we watch the horrifying Israeli air
and ground attacks on Gaza. As Jews committed to ending Zionism, the
founding ideology of Israel, and all forms of colonialism, we stand
in solidarity with the Palestinian people, who continue to struggle
in the face of these attacks, much as they have against more than 60
years of ethnic cleansing and racism. As Joseph Massad recently
wrote, Gaza is in uprising against genocide, and is receiving today
the same indifference from the capitals of the West that the rebels
in the Warsaw Ghetto received in 1943.
We stand with the hundreds of thousands who have taken the streets
in solidarity with Gaza’s resistance. We stand with all those who
struggle against racism, dispossession and genocide.
We stand with the majority. We will not be silent on Gaza.
We reject Israel’s pretense to act in response to rocket attacks on
Israel by Hamas. Israel broke the ceasefire on November 4, 2008,
while world attention was focused on U.S. elections.
What the Israeli government calls “security” is fundamentally
opposed to the real safety of all people living in the region.
Residents of Sderot and other towns bordering Gaza have begged the
government of Israel to maintain the cease-fire and accused it of
“wasting that period of calm, instead of using it to advance
understanding and begin negotiations.” With United States, European
Union, and Egyptian collusion, Israel imposed a siege and blockade
for over two years, intentionally preventing its economic recovery,
degrading its civilian infrastructure, attempting to dismantle
self-governance, and preventing travel and obstructing humanitarian
aid. That siege, which was and continues to be a gross violation of
human rights and a crime against humanity, led directly to the
present escalation. As of today, Israeli forces have killed over 700
people and injured thousands. Israel has bombed mosques,
universities, police headquarters, roads, office buildings, and
residential neighborhoods, and schools, causing indescribable and
horrible destruction. This isn’t defense. This isn’t a war between
two sides. This is terrorism. This is genocide.
We stand with the majority. We will not be silent on Gaza.
As Jews, we have an additional responsibility to speak and to act
against these despicable acts, because we are heirs to the victims
of a genocide, because Israel is claiming to “defend” us through the
ethnic cleansing of Palestine with the ultimate goal of erasing the
Palestinian people, and also because of the role played by the
Jewish organizations in the United States and the West in
justifying, perpetrating, and escalating Israeli state terrorism
against Palestinians.
We recall that the violence in Gaza today is the inevitable
outcome—the latest link in a chain of terror—that results from an
ideology based on the dispossession of the indigenous people of
Palestine in favor of European Jews. Just as the ideology of White
racism was the backbone of Apartheid in South Africa, so the
ideology of Zionism explains the history of violence in Palestine,
the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the occupation of the West bank and
Gaza in 1967, and the many massacres that Israel perpetrated
periodically since 1948 to the present one in Gaza. The maintenance
of the Israeli state as a state founded on and perpetuating Jewish
privilege requires the denial and attempted annihilation of the
Palestinian people.
We recall that unless this ideology is delegitimized and defeated,
the violence in the Middle East will continue to escalate until
either Palestinian or Jewish existence in the area ends, and
possibly both. Racism and colonial domination will never be the
basis for peace.
We stand with the majority. We will not be silent on Gaza.
We insist on an immediate end to Israel’s assault, a complete
withdrawal of all Israeli forces, a complete and unconditional end
to the siege, and the restoration and extension of the ceasefire. We
insist on the establishment of a special international tribunal for
investigating the crimes of the Israeli leadership of this siege.
We affirm the urgent need for Jewish resistance to Zionism and stand
committed to the extrication of Jewish history, politics, community,
and culture from the grip of Zionism.
We situate our work in a long legacy of Jewish people throughout
history who have stood in solidarity with others in common struggles
against all forms of racism, empire building, and repression. As a
growing sector of the Palestine solidarity movement, we call upon
all Jews of conscience to take a strong stand against the current
escalation of violence, as well as the murderous ground upon which
Zionist ideology and the Israeli state has been constructed. We call
on Jews to put an end to complicity, to break the silence, and to
confront the fallacy of a Zionist consensus. We call on anti-Zionist
Jews around the world to organize in escalation against the
massacres on Gaza, and to continue to support Palestinian resistance
through campaigns of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, and through
actions that target their own governments’ financial and political
support for Israel.
We stand with the majority. We will not be silent on Gaza.
WE call on you to JOIN US in continued ACTION! |
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