Over 1,000 Black activists, artists, scholars, students, and organizations have launched a statement
expressing their solidarity and commitment to ensuring justice for
Palestinians. Signatories to the statement span a wide cross-section of
Black activists and scholars, including Angela Davis, Boots Riley,
Cornel West, dream hampton, Emory Douglas, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Pam Africa,
Patrisse Cullors, Phil Hutchings, Ramona Africa, Robin DG Kelley, Rosa
Clemente, Talib Kweli, and Tef Poe. 38 organizations signed on,
including The Dream Defenders, Hands Up United, Institute of the Black
World 21st Century, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and Organization for
Black Struggle.
The statement is printed in full below:
“The past year has been one of high-profile growth for
Black-Palestinian solidarity. Out of the terror directed against us—from
numerous attacks on Black life to Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and
chokehold on the West Bank—strengthened resilience and joint-struggle
have emerged between our movements. Palestinians on Twitter were among the first to provide international support for protesters in Ferguson, where St. Louis-based Palestinians gave support on the ground. Last November, a delegation of Palestinian students visited Black organizers in St. Louis,
Atlanta, Detroit and more, just months before the Dream Defenders took
representatives of Black Lives Matter, Ferguson, and other racial
justice groups to Palestine. Throughout the year, Palestinians sent multiple letters of solidarity to us throughout protests in Ferguson, New York, and Baltimore. We offer this statement to continue the conversation between our movements:
On the anniversary of last summer’s Gaza massacre, in the 48th year of Israeli occupation, the 67th year of Palestinians’ ongoing Nakba (the
Arabic word for Israel’s ethnic cleansing)—and in the fourth century of
Black oppression in the present-day United States—we, the undersigned
Black activists, artists, scholars, writers, and political prisoners
offer this letter of reaffirmed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle
and commitment to the liberation of Palestine’s land and people.
We can neither forgive nor forget last summer’s violence. We remain
outraged at the brutality Israel unleashed on Gaza through its siege by land, sea and air, and three military offensives in six years. We remain sickened by Israel’s targeting of homes, schools, UN shelters, mosques, ambulances, and hospitals. We remain heartbroken and repulsed by the number of children Israel killed
in an operation it called “defensive.” We reject Israel’s framing of
itself as a victim. Anyone who takes an honest look at the destruction
to life and property in Gaza can see Israel committed a one-sided
slaughter. With 100,000 people still homeless in Gaza, the massacre’s effects continue to devastate Gaza today and will for years to come.
Israel’s injustice and cruelty toward Palestinians is not limited to
Gaza and its problem is not with any particular Palestinian party. The
oppression of Palestinians extends throughout the occupied territories, within Israel’s 1948 borders, and into neighboring countries. The Israeli Occupation Forces continue to kill protesters—including children—conduct night raids on civilians, hold hundreds of people under indefinite detention, and demolish homes while expanding illegal Jewish-only settlements. Israeli politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu, incite against Palestinian citizens within Israel’s recognized borders, where over 50 laws discriminate against non-Jewish people.
Our support extends to those living under occupation and siege, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the 7 million Palestinian refugees
exiled in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. The refugees’ right to
return to their homeland in present-day Israel is the most important
aspect of justice for Palestinians.
Palestinian liberation represents an inherent threat to Israeli settler
colonialism and apartheid, an apparatus built and sustained on ethnic cleansing,
land theft, and the denial of Palestinian humanity and sovereignty.
While we acknowledge that the apartheid configuration in
Israel/Palestine is unique from the United States (and South Africa), we
continue to see connections between the situation of Palestinians and
Black people.
Israel’s widespread use of detention and imprisonment against Palestinians evokes the mass incarceration of Black people in the US, including the political imprisonment of
our own revolutionaries. Soldiers, police, and courts justify lethal
force against us and our children who pose no imminent threat. And while
the US and Israel would continue to oppress us without collaborating
with each other, we have witnessed police and soldiers from the two
countries train side-by-side.
US and Israeli officials and media criminalize our existence, portray
violence against us as “isolated incidents,” and call our resistance
“illegitimate” or “terrorism.” These narratives ignore decades and
centuries of anti-Palestinian and anti-Black violence that have always
been at the core of Israel and the US. We recognize the racism that
characterizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is also directed
against others in the region, including intolerance, police brutality, and violence against Israel’s African population. Israeli officials call asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea “infiltrators” and detain them in the desert, while the state has sterilized Ethiopian Israelis without their knowledge or consent. These issues call for unified action against anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and Zionism.
We know Israel’s violence toward Palestinians would be impossible
without the US defending Israel on the world stage and funding its
violence with over $3 billion annually.
We call on the US government to end economic and diplomatic aid to
Israel. We wholeheartedly endorse Palestinian civil society’s 2005 call
for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against
Israel and call on Black and US institutions and organizations to do
the same. We urge people of conscience to recognize the struggle for
Palestinian liberation as a key matter of our time.
As the BDS movement grows, we offer G4S, the world’s largest private security company, as a target for further joint struggle. G4S harms thousands of Palestinian political prisoners illegally held in Israel and hundreds of Black and brown youth held in its privatized juvenile prisons in the US. The corporation profits from incarceration and deportation from the US and Palestine, to the UK, South Africa, and Australia. We reject notions of “security” that make any of our groups unsafe and insist no one is free until all of us are.
We offer this statement first and foremost to Palestinians, whose
suffering does not go unnoticed and whose resistance and resilience
under racism and colonialism inspires us. It is to Palestinians, as well
as the Israeli and US governments, that we declare our commitment to
working through cultural, economic, and political means to ensure
Palestinian liberation at the same time as we work towards our own. We
encourage activists to use this statement to advance solidarity with
Palestine and we also pressure our own Black political figures to
finally take action on this issue. As we continue these transnational
conversations and interactions, we aim to sharpen our practice of joint
struggle against capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and the various
racisms embedded in and around our societies.”
Visit www.blackforpalestine.com for the full list of signatories and more information. You can also follow the statement on Facebook and Twitter. Kristian Bailey is a co-author of the statement along with Khury Petersen-Smith.