Statement in Solidarity with Palestine
Photo by Intersect Antigua
Intersect Antigua and Barbuda strongly condemns the despicable and atrocious forms of violence including genocide, apartheid, settler colonial occupation, and displacement being meted out to native Palestinians by the settler colony of Israel and its allies.
We call out and denounce all Zionist rhetoric that reproduces the colonial grammar of dehumanization - language that conflates Palestinian life with animality and barbarism - language that casts Palestinian people as unfit for life.
We call out and condemn the United States government for funding the genocide in Palestine.
We call out and condemn funding organizations for depoliticizing feminist movements by revoking money and opportunities to those who express solidarity with Palestine.
We call out and condemn Christian Zionists in the Caribbean and beyond who support the expansion of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank through missionary tourism and by spreading religious propaganda that demonizes Palestinians.
We call out and condemn news outlets and media organizations for perpetually situating Hamas as the beginning of violence while minimizing and ignoring the active structure of Israel’s settler colonial occupation which has created conditions for violence to thrive.
We strongly urge all stakeholders to note and recognize that this is not a war against Hamas. This is ethnic cleansing and genocide, with a hundred-year history, against Palestinians. The figure of the terrorist is a construction that serves political and imperial interests. We hear the recurring refrain of “do you condemn Hamas” from countries like the United States and the UK that not only have their own histories of settler colonial and imperial violence, they also continue to terrorize Black, Brown, and Indigenous people within and far beyond their own borders.
We call out and condemn news outlets and media organizations for devaluing the lives of Palestinian people by neglecting Israel’s 16-year blockade on Gaza while focusing on Hamas’ attack. Western journalists continue to decontextualize the attack as senseless violence. We have witnessed Western journalists absolve Israel of wrongdoing despite the unconscionable and deplorable conditions in which the settler colony of Israel has forced Palestinians to live and despite the murder of thousands of Palestinians over the years.
Israel significantly restricts the movement of Palestinians. There are streets on which Palestinians are not allowed to walk. There were businesses that Israel forced Palestinians to close. Most Palestinians are not allowed to vote. Many Jews born and raised in the U.S. and Europe still immigrate to the settler colony of Israel today to dispossess native Palestinians from their homes and land so that they can settle there. Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are still discriminated against and Palestinians in exile are not allowed to return to their homes.
Decades rhyme and this year resonates, like so many others, with the violence of Apartheid in South Africa. Writing in 1985, Caribbean-American feminist Audre Lorde said that “every year 500 million American dollars flow into the white South African death machine...” Today, the United States sends nearly $4 billion in annual military aid to Israel with President Joe Biden recently requesting over $10 billion to further strengthen Israel’s military to genocide and terrorize an already-besieged and tormented people.
This is a reproductive justice issue.
This is a disability justice issue.
This is an environmental justice issue.
We will not look away. We must raise up a cry of transnational feminist solidarity, a polyphony of rage and dissent, against the ongoing violence against Palestinians by Israel and its allies.
A CALL TO ACTION
We call on Caribbean and international feminist collectives, gender affairs bureaus, and gender justice organizations to join in solidarity with the movement for Palestinian liberation. Audre Lorde said that “our silence will not protect us.” Just as we agitate for decolonization and condemn our own colonial history, we must speak out against colonial forces abroad. Our collective strength is needed to bring an end to colonial occupation and apartheid.
We call on Caribbean feminist groups to organize by sharing resources, hosting teach-ins, raising funds, petitioning your governments, protesting, and any other action supporting Palestinian liberation.
We call on media organizations to cover the mass mobilization of people expressing transnational solidarity with Palestine and to emphasize the ongoing colonial occupation and current genocide.
We especially call on the Government of Antigua and Barbuda and CARICOM heads of government to not only demand a ceasefire and the opening of a safe humanitarian corridor but also an end to Israel’s settler colonial occupation and apartheid.
We call on the United Nations General Assembly to uphold and protect the principles of human rights through a resolution that puts an end to the colonization of the Palestinian people. It is an utter disgrace that the United Nations Security Council continues to fall short on its mandate to maintain peace and security, especially for the Palestinian people. We therefore call on the international community to strongly demand a reform of the Security Council and the use of veto power that counters the rights of all peoples.
Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization demands the repatriation of land to Palestinians and the end to settler colonial occupation. Decolonization demands material reparations.
We write in solidarity with Palestine to shout APARTHEID NO MORE. GENOCIDE NO MORE. SETTLER COLONIALISM NO MORE. We lift our collective voices to cry:
From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free!
View our solidarity art for Palestinian liberation
Access our library of educational resources on Palestine
N.B. Intersect’s statement was presented at the 43rd National Women’s Studies Association Conference in Baltimore, USA.
