Amistad Signs Black For Palestine Solidarity Statement
We at Amistad Law Project are distressed and outraged by the unconscionable violence the Israeli military is inflicting on the Palestinian people in Gaza with the full support of the United States government. In 2015, we signed onto Black For Palestine's solidarity statement in the wake of the 2014 massacre in Gaza. Today we join over 2,000 Black voices and organizations in demanding an immediate ceasefire. You can read the whole statement below and see the Black For Palestine website to sign the statement and access more resources.
Black Solidarity with Gaza
We make this statement as Black people in solidarity with Palestinian people, committed to our collective liberation, in grief and in outrage at the catastrophic violence that the state of Israel is enacting on Gaza. As we write, Israel has killed more than 8,000 Palestinians in Gaza - including 3,300 children. Over 20,000 people are injured.
We are coming together to demand:
- an immediate ceasefire
- the unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid and services, medical teams, supplies, and trauma care
- the immediate restoration of water, food, fuel, electricity, and internet
- ending the U.S. obstruction of Palestinian protections against genocide under international law
- the prevention of forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza outside of Palestine
- an end to the siege on Gaza and the occupation of Palestine, including U.S. support
We refuse to remain silent or inactive as two million people in Gaza—half of whom are children—are fenced into an open-air prison, facing the bombs and barricades of the Israeli military. We condemn the displacement of over a million Gazans who have nowhere to run as their homes, shelters, evacuation routes, and border crossings are bombed. We cry out as Israel continues to target hospitals, mosques, churches, schools, bakeries, entire neighborhoods and entire families—the lifeblood and foundations of community.
We name the murderous responsibility of the United States government in particular, which is supplying aircraft, weapons and diplomatic cover to Israel as its forces commit these atrocities. After the Israeli Minister of Defense called the Palestinians of Gaza “human animals” on October 9th and announced that they would be denied life necessities—the U.S. Secretaries of State and Defense, and President Biden himself went to Tel Aviv to only affirm their support of Israel’s genocidal actions. We are angered that the U.S. was the sole country to veto the UN Security Council resolution for a humanitarian ceasefire.
All life is precious, we reject the targeting of civilians, and we mourn the loss of all civilian life. The Israeli government, its allies, and Western media have tried to isolate, demonize and dehumanize the people of Gaza to provide a false justification for Israel’s unjustifiable mass killing. Our solidarity is in defiance of those efforts and against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which perpetuates a cycle of violence and death.
Israel is an occupying power engaged in countless violations of international law towards its occupied population. Our demands in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and freedom are for more than the basic necessities under war. We stand with the Palestinian people who have been struggling for their land, their homes, their families and their future for a century and who remain steadfast in the face of the ongoing catastrophes and atrocities committed against them. We honor the strength, the resilience, the commitment, the love, the memories, and the songs of our kin in liberation.
We make this commitment in a long tradition of Black people standing with other peoples around the world in our shared struggle against oppression, racism, and colonialism. This includes calling for an end to U.S. aggression in the Vietnam war, standing with anti-colonial struggles around the world, and most recently with the Black uprising of 2014 and building solidarity with Palestinians over our shared terrain of U.S. and Israeli state violence and disregard for our lives.
We call on Black youth, elders, students, artists, workers, people of faith, activists, teachers and politicians to fearlessly mobilize and speak out for Palestinian freedom, to organize our communities and institutions to do the same. Our collective demands are stronger than any attempt to silence or attack us. We will meet those challenges together and united, we will overcome them.
We stand in solidarity with Palestinians and we will stand here until Palestine is free.