Alwaght- More than 1,000 black-skinned US citizens and 43 organizations have signed a solidarity statement with the black life of Palestinians suffering Israeli regime's brutalities.
"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," the statement reads.
Viewing the list of signatures, high-status activists such as scholar Cornel West, 1960s activist Angela Davis, and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors are seen.
Mentioning the Israeli regime's crimes in Palestine, including last summer’s violence, Tel Aviv regime's siege on Gaza by land, sea and air, three military offensives in six years, targeting of homes, schools, UN shelters, mosques, ambulances, and hospitals, and massacring children in an operation it called “defensive”, the black activists rejected Israel’s framing of itself as a victim, saying "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 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,” the statement reads. “Soldiers, police, and courts justify lethal force against us and our children who pose no imminent threat.”
Additionally, the statement criticized officials from the US and Israel, as well as the media, for “criminalizing” the existence of blacks and Palestinians and referring to their movements as “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,” the letter reads. “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.”
The statement also supports of the the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS movement), which attempts to increase economic and political pressure on Israeli regime by boycotting regime's goods, institutions, and by pushing for sanctions against the country to put an end to the apartheid regime's occupation and colonization of Palestinian land.
