This is a Genocide: Call for Ceasefire, Boycott and Land Back for Palestine

Israel is the perfect example of what happens when the collective trauma of war and genocide go unaddressed and unresolved.

The oppressed group repeats the cruel cycle of violence and becomes the oppressor, doing what was done to them, and even more, to another group.

We are all capable of committing great atrocities. 

We have watched for more than 75 years, as  Israel now allies itself with colonial Western imperialists like Britain and the USA in the most violent catastrophe to displace their generous hosts since the Nakba of 1948. 

The Nakba displaced millions of Palestinians from their homes, an intentional process that continues to erase the culture and history of the Palestinian people. The questions to ask ourselves right now: Are we going to watch, yet again, while the Zionist white supremacist Israeli terrorist regime kills all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as we do nothing? Are we going to remain complicit, and neutral? Or are we going to finally stand against this grave injustice?

Are we going to stay complicit as we watch Palestinians’ homes get destroyed and taken from them? Are we going to watch as Palestinians are killed by the descendants of the same people they warmly welcomed to their homes?  Are we going to close our eyes as Palestinians pay with their lives and homes for the sins of Europe and her violent settler offspring in North America? 

I want us to think about this narrative of “homeland rights”. Israel is basically a nuclear power military base that has been bolstered by the imperialist powers of Britain and funded by the USA for the past 75 years. 

We are witnessing yet another Holocaust, this time by the state of Israel on the Palestinian people, whose ancestors received destitute European Jews, expelled from Europe, as refugees. 

Occupied Palestine is the home of the Palestinian people. They have been fighting for decades against eradication and expulsion from their ancestral lands. Are we going to keep watching their slaughter,  as we hypocritically say “never again”? When the main culprits have never stopped their genocidal grab of power, lands and resources?

I want us to stop and dissect the Zionist narrative: that for Germany and its allies to pay for their sins of the Jewish Holocaust, Palestinians must all die and lose their ancestral lands. 

I want us to reflect on whose life is deemed more valuable and whose life is considered “collateral damage” in the game of imperialism and settler colonialism.

I want us to challenge the narrative that the liberation of Palestine is antisemitism when Palestinians themselves are Semitic people. 

I want us to think of the decades of media propaganda that is funded by the white supremacist nation of Israel and all its imperialist allies: the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada and the EU, with the exception of Ireland. 

I want us all to be Palestine, today, tomorrow and forever! 

Our collective lives depend on the rightful end of Israel’s settler colonialism.

If you ever questioned what side of history you would be on, when the world’s atrocities that led to the Holocaust, slavery and colonialism were happening, now you have your answer.

I hope you are satisfied with that answer within yourself and in your role within the collective.

Decolonisation for Palestine means occupied Palestine land is given back to the Palestinian people wherever they are in the World today.

Decolonisation means Palestinians should not pay for the sins of what Nazi Germany did to the European Jews.

Decolonisation means that Palestine is free again by any means necessary.

We at Distinguished Diva, pledge our support for the Palestinian people in the face of the ongoing genocide initiated by Israel and confirmed by the words of Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant. 

we call on all our partners, friends and collaborators around the world to formally align themselves with the movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS).

Useful Materials and links:

A Textbook Case of Genocide

The UN Genocide Convention lists five acts that fall under its definition. Israel is currently perpetrating three of these in Gaza: “1. Killing members of the group. 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” The Israeli Air Force, by its own account, has so far dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated areas in the world—almost as many bombs as the US dropped on all of Afghanistan during record-breaking years of its war there.

Raz Segal, A Textbook Case of Genocide 

In the linked article above professor of modern genocide, Raz Segal, lays out the specific ways in which the siege that we have witnessed by Israel on Gaza is a continuation of the Nakba of 1948: the catastrophe that saw the newly-formed Israeli government displaced at least 750 000 Palestinians from their homes and sequester 78 per cent of historically Palestinian land. Further, we are witnessing what Segal articulates as a “textbook case of genocide”, underscored by years of settler-colonial occupation, apartheid and continuous contravention of international law on the part of the state of Israel.

Segal is not the only one to sound the alarm. UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese released a statement: “The international community has the responsibility to prevent and protect populations from atrocity crimes. There is a grave danger that what we are witnessing may be a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Nakba, yet on a larger scale. The international community must do everything to stop this from happening again. In the name of self-defence, Israel is seeking to justify what would amount to ethnic cleansing.”

Dozens of scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies made the same claim: “We are compelled to sound the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. We do not do so lightly, recognising the weight of this crime, but the gravity of the current situation demands it”, as they wrote in a public statement

Please Watch the Black Feminist Writers and Palestine

Call to action for our community

We make an urgent call, in the face of these atrocities to support the call of the Palestinians on the ground:

  1. Keep sharing the voices of Palestinian journalists, artists and creators on the ground as they are being hunted and their families targeted by the state of Israel. Share their stories, and amplify their voices online and offline. Keep their voices alive.
  2. Donate to the medical relief fund whatever you can.
  3. Formally endorse any BDS movement by signing on to the ones in your country.
  4. Attend any pro-Palestine event in your area. Call or email your political representatives to urge them to call for a ceasefire.
  5. Support your local Palestinian businesses in these difficult moments.
  6. Declare said affiliation in a public manner.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be FREE.

Distinguished Diva

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