On the Gaza Massacre
As of this writing, 52 Palestinians have been murdered by the IDF. This number continues to rise as the hours wear on. These Palestinians are peacefully protesting the right to return to their homes from which they were driven. Since March, over 100 Palestinians have been killed as they make their way to the Gaza border wall to protest the occupation. As Jews and socialists we renounce this barbarism.
We are struggling deeply with these events. The majority of our members live in the diaspora, but our institutions here, who claim to represent us, send money and resources to this colonizer force. It is not enough to say that we are “diasporists” when so many in the diaspora support Israel’s actions. The occupation of Palestine is not just a moral issue; it is backed by global capital. We seek to dismantle the political and social forces that uphold the occupation and that ensure that massacres like this continue.
We may be the minority, but we will not let our voices be silenced. And yet we know there is little we can say that would bring comfort to those suffering, to families that have lost loved ones. But we want the Palestinian people to know that there are Jews who cannot abide this happening in our name. If Jewish self-determination means murdering innocent people, including children, then we will have no part in it. We ask so-called progressive Zionists to pick a side.
The opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, which accompanies this slaughter of Palestinian protesters today, illustrates the imperial nature of this seven decade war. The Israeli state which dismembers the Palestinian people is the tip of the same sword raised over the heads of Black people and other People of Color in America, which cleaves the children of immigrants from their parents, and which brutally suppresses the people of Puerto Rico whom America has bilked and left to languish after Hurricane Maria. Make no mistake: every American loyal to Empire today has the blood of Palestinians on their hands, just as much as stains the fingers of the proud Israelis they enable.
In the words of Aimé Césaire, we “opt for the broader rather than the narrower choice; for the movement that places us shoulder to shoulder with others rather than the one that leaves us by ourselves; for the one that gathers together energies rather than the one that divides them.”
We opt for an end to nations, to states, and to capitalism. We stand in solidarity with the fifty thousand Gazans who marched today, demonstrating impossible courage in the knowledge of the violence Israel would mete out.
