Statement was written by the Black Rose / Rosa Negra International Relations Committee (IRC), subsequently endorsed by a majority the organisation’s membership, about the 2023 Israeli bombardment and invasion of Gaza.
October 18, 2023
As Israel carries out a genocidal assault on Gaza, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their ongoing struggle for liberation and an end to occupation and apartheid.
The horrific violence being waged against the people of Gaza today is a direct outgrowth of the everyday violence of Israeli settler colonialism, which has only intensified in recent years.
Israel has imposed a suffocating blockade on the Gaza Strip since 2007 — the longest siege in modern history. This brutal blockade by land, air, and sea has destroyed Gaza’s economy and confined more than 2 million Palestinians to an open-air prison with severe shortages of food, water, fuel, electricity, and medical supplies, in addition to multiple Israeli military bombardments during this period of collective punishment. Today Gaza appears less an open-air prison and more an open grave.
For more than 75 years, Palestinians have been waging a liberation struggle against Israel’s settler-colonial project in and outside of Gaza. This struggle has taken on a variety of forms, from armed resistance to non-violent direct action. But regardless of the form, the response from the Israeli state, Zionist settlers, and their apologists, has always been the same: the weaponization of anti-semitism, accusations of terrorism, disinformation campaigns, and the continuation of systematic ethnic cleansing.
Israel’s call for a “complete siege” of the Palestinian enclave has rightfully been deemed a “textbook case of genocide.” High-ranking Israeli officials have referred to Palestinians as “human animals”, Zionists in Tel-Aviv recently hung a banner over a highway that read “Zero Gazans”, and near the West Bank, Israel’s National Security Ministry is distributing thousands of rifles to Zionist civilian settlers.
The Israeli military recently ordered 1.1 million Palestinians to evacuate from Gaza within an impossible 24-hour period, during which they proceeded to shower Gaza with airstrikes. Israeli violence against the Palestinian people has included the use of white phosphorus in crowded civilian areas and the murder of evacuees. The casualties from this genocidal attack continue to grow, with the threat of a ground war looming on the horizon.
While we reject the reactionary politics of Hamas, narrowly focusing on them overshadows the right of Palestinians to resist occupation and the root cause of violence in the region – Israeli settler colonialism. The brutality of Israel’s occupation existed long before the formation of Hamas—an organization largely created by the state of Israel to destabilize more secular and left-oriented forces of resistance—and would continue whether it was there or not. The overwhelming emphasis on Hamas is a rhetorical tool used by Israel and its supporters to reduce the Palestinian struggle to a one-dimensional boogeyman, providing justification for the ongoing occupation and the dramatic escalation of violence against Palestinians in and beyond Gaza.
Given that the US is Israel’s most significant ally, those of us living in the heart of the empire have an obligation to do all in our power to halt this genocide. But what does showing solidarity with Palestine look like for us? In the face of deeply rooted state support for Israel, we must redouble popular efforts to deprive the Israeli state of legitimacy and aid from the US. Those who work and reside in the US have a special obligation to do this: the taxes taken from our paychecks bankroll Israel’s occupation and its genocide of Palestinians.
To resist this genocide, we must build the strength of popular organizations such as labor unions and community organizations to take action in solidarity. Although demonstrations and civil disobedience bring attention to the issue, we can only force the end of our government’s support for Israel by building and using popular power.
On the labor front, workers in the US must break the current silence of their unions. Workers must push their unions to release clear statements of support for Palestine and demands to end US aid to Israel, support and attend demonstrations for Palestine, and build the capacity for work stoppages, the prevention or delay of arms shipments, along with pension fund divestment. On the education front, educators and students must divest universities and colleges from Israel. For community organizations, organizers must aim to end law enforcement training partnerships between the United States and Israel, support the ongoing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and fight back against pinkwashing in queer spaces.
We must also look for opportunities to link these efforts across sectors and movements, as a coalition of community and labor organizers in the California Bay Area have demonstrated is possible through a successful 2021 campaign to block an Israeli cargo ship from being offloaded in Oakland.
The road ahead requires sustained organization and effort, and will not be easy. Nevertheless, this is a moment in history where our action or inaction will be keenly remembered and judged. It is imperative that we seize this moment—against genocide for all and forever, for the end of Israeli settler colonialism, and for a free Palestine.
Stop the genocide!
Down with imperialism and settler colonialism from Palestine to the Americas!
Long live internationalist solidarity!
Long live Palestine!
Black Rose Anarchist Federation / Federación Anarquista Rosa Negra
Nuestra declaración sobre Gaza en español: ¡Alto Inmediato de Genocidio en Gaza! ¡No la Guerra Contra Palestina!
Taken from https://blackrosefed.org/gaza-statement-2023/
Comments
"we reject the reactionary…
"we reject the reactionary politics of Hamas" ...
"reactionary politics"? that is absolutely hilarious.
it made me think of the famous story about Sigmund Freud who had to sign a statement that he was treated well by the nazi's, before he could leave Vienna after the Anschluss, the German annexation of Austria in 1938. He wrote:
“I can heartily recommend the Gestapo to anyone.”
I think Freud was more to the point than this ridiculous committee.