The world’s peoples have spoken loud and clear: Stop the US-Israel Genocide Now!
How do we definitively challenge the corporate governments, their multi billion dollar profit machines, which promote and drive the war on the Palestinian people?
Many lessons need to be studied and learned from the overturn of apartheid in South Africa and the task of overcoming apartheid in Palestine/Israel.
In the struggle for South African freedom, the world’s people stood on the side of humanity, on the side of justice, and exercised their collective unity to bring the apartheid system to an end.
One of the lessons, we learned is how the world’s people obstructed the complicit corporations and governments profiteering from South Africa’s apartheid, with the tools of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).
Throughout the 1960s to 1980s, cities and towns throughout the globe banned South African goods from their offices and schools. They also banned South African sports teams from its playing fields.
Many unions announced an end to pension-fund investments in companies with South African subsidiaries. Labour unions, student organizations and other public bodies continued for dozens of years of a campaign against the human rights abuses of apartheid South Africa
I came to Canada in 1994 in time to celebrate the official end of the world-hated regime of apartheid on April 27 with the election of Nelson Mandela to the Presidency of South Africa. It was then that the movement for Palestinian freedom blossomed in Toronto and promoted the tools of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).
What is BDS? Simply, Today it’s a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, Justice and equality. It is a social rights movement, anchored in the Declaration of Human rights. BDS is a world movement BDS that urges united meaningful action to pressure Israel to comply with international law.
The world’s peoples, in contrast to their complicit governments, are determined, as proven by the repeated daily and weekly demonstrations these past seven months, demanding a cease fire.
Israeli apartheid has persistently bombarded Gaza with its end goal of destroying all of Palestinian society.
We must not stop insisting that Canada’s so-called leaders, including Justin Trudeau, take immediate steps for a cease fire and to unconditionally stop the genocide.
The situation in Palestine today cries out for us, unionists, students, and ordinary people, to organize effectively for immediate, meaningful and impactful actions.
We are millions and that is our power. We have the ability to stop the governments, the corporations who profit by the US-Israel goals.
We should act in addition to demonstrating our love and loyalty. We should demand that our organizations use the tools of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions.
Boycott Divestment Sanctions is intersectional. BDS allies with movements against anti Semitism, against Black racism, Islamophobia, sexism, anti Queer discrimination, and for Indigenous rights. Palestine freedom is part of the intersectional movement.
Our focus should be to dismantle and ban military manufacture and distribution of equipment, machinery, and bombs that are killing the thousands of innocent civilian’s day-in and day-out. Our Palestinian people are prevented at the point of machine guns and non-stop bombings from accessing food and medical needs
These social justice movements could also use BDS and in that way strengthen world justice against racist complicity.
I am a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust, and understand the system of hate first hand. Hitler’s war against the Jews aimed to eradicate our history and the Jewish people. Nazism Is hatred of the other – it is racism. Colonialism was Hitler’s nationalist program to conquer land for Germany.
Israel apartheid seems to follows in those footsteps.
The government of Israel does not speak for the Jewish people of the world. Zionism is the political ideology of the Israeli nationalist movement to establish a homeland for only the Jewish people. It is that racist ideology that created apartheid.
Judaism, the religion and its traditions, does not stand for racism.
Conflating Zionism and Judaism is an unforgiveable crime against the Jewish people, a crime against the Palestinians, and a crime to humanity.
I was saved from Hitler by world solidarity. I was among the thousands of Jewish children in France who were saved by the solidarity of the Jewish resistance, communities of Christians in Southern France, and the peoples of the world united against Nazism.
Today, Jewish people continue to feel deeply about the Nazi Holocaust and the attempt to destroy and eliminate us. There is anti-Semitism and there is Islamophobia, and there is hate. But all that hate is encouraged by the media owned by corporations who make their profits on colonial projects.
We are opposed to the Israeli system of apartheid. To be against Israel’s policies is not anti-Jewish. It is not anti-Semitic. We claim the Palestinians as our sisters and brothers. We are all humanity. We say: “Not in our name!”
Jewish people are in the forefront of the struggle against Israel apartheid. Many of us recognize its Nazi methods of today. Jews are also in the forefront against the attempt of the US and Canadian governments and its agencies to eliminate the Palestinians from our conversation.
There is a witch-hunt in Canada today against the Palestinians and their defenders This is part of a global organized effort to mute and terrorize courageous people who speak out for the freedom of Palestine.
The US-Israel genocide is parallel to this witch hunt with the same goals: To erase Palestine in its entirety from the world.
Sarah Jama, the independent MPP of Hamilton, Ontario invites us to wear the Keffiyeh, symbol of freedom for Palestine. It is also generally recognized a piece of clothing worn by peoples in the Arab nations. Prohibition against wearing the Keffiyeh is an attack on Palestinians, Muslims, and Arab peoples.
We are all affected by this imperial effort led by the US and Israel apartheid.
We will defeat Israeli apartheid by the solidarity of the world’s peoples. All of the freedom movements globally will be impacted and learn with this solidarity.
We must act collectively through our organizations, choose a target and be strategic. The complicit governments, their financial institutions, and corporate heads will feel our might
End the Occupation. Freedom for Palestine. Freedom for Humanity. The world will be built on new foundations.
