On Nakba Day, Jewish Groups In 19 Countries Scream, Open The Damned Gates!

We are Global Jews for Palestine, a collective of Jewish groups in 19 countries. For five years, we have made statements on Nakba Day, the anniversary of the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes to establish the state of Israel in 1948. This year we scream.

Right now, 2.3 million Palestinian people are being tipped into intentional, avoidable starvation and they can not wait for help. Every hour Israel’s brazen, genocidal crime of starvation wastes more innocent lives.

2.3 million people are trapped behind an illegal blockade wall, while thousands of trucks stand idle with their cargo of food, just beyond the crossings. 2.3 million human beings have been subjected to the most intensive use of explosive weapons in human history. The land of Gaza has been carpet-bombed, its environment poisoned, its hospitals and schools and homes laid waste. The people now being starved are the survivors of what was already beyond imagining.

We cannot understand the silence, let alone the quiet permission of inactivity, let alone the profitable arms trade in which most of our governments are complicit. It defies understanding.

As Jews, we were raised to judge harshly all those who stood aside while Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust. We were born with a personal stake in the agreements that states signed after World War II, hoping to avert any such nightmare again. But here we are again. A century of global aspirations to limit the harm of war by distinguishing civilians from combatants also lies buried beneath the rubble of Gaza.

This Nakba Day, the fires of catastrophe are blazing. We beg our friends, neighbours, colleagues, and strangers to stand up and join forces to douse these flames.

It is the silence and inaction of our governments which has allowed Israeli war crimes to escalate to this horrific level.

This Nakba day we are now watching children in Gaza die of malnutrition in real time.

Now, today, our governments must take action.

Stop arming Israel. Sanctions now.

Israel’s impunity must end here.

Open the damned gates!

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