Soon after October 7th, 2023 the Black Rose/Rosa Negra International Relations Committee (IRC) convened a special meeting to draft a statement condemning what was already becoming a genocidal assault on Gaza and the Palestinian people by the occupation forces of the Israeli state.
Given the urgency of the moment and the swelling Palestine solidarity movement in the United States, the membership of our organization made the decision to limit debate on the draft statement and instead move to a referendum vote to publish and distribute the statement as quickly as possible.
Over the intervening months, the membership of Black Rose/Rosa Negra continued to closely analyze the unfolding genocide in Gaza and to participate in deep and rooted social movement organizing in opposition to US support for Israel.
During this time our membership also returned to the text of our original statement, debating more fully certain elements which were cause for disagreement. Out of this constructive and comradely internal debate emerged a version of our original statement that is only slightly modified grammatically, but much clearer in its support for Palestinian self-determination and national liberation.
After being carried with overwhelming support in a membership referendum, we adopted the updated version of our statement, which we present below.
Black Rose/Rosa Negra External Education Committee (EEC) and International Relations Committee (IRC) 2024.
Updated Statement: Stop the Genocide in Gaza! End the War on Palestine!
As Israel carries out a genocidal assault on Gaza, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their ongoing struggle for self-determination and an end to occupation and apartheid.
The horrific violence being waged against the people of Gaza today is a direct outgrowth of the everyday violence of Israeli settler colonialism, which has only intensified in recent years.
Israel has imposed a suffocating blockade on the Gaza Strip since 2007 — the longest siege in modern history. This brutal blockade by land, air, and sea has destroyed Gaza’s economy and confined more than 2 million Palestinians to an open-air prison with severe shortages of food, water, fuel, electricity, and medical supplies, in addition to multiple Israeli military bombardments during this period of collective punishment. Today Gaza appears less an open-air prison and more an open grave.
For more than 75 years, Palestinians have been waging a national liberation struggle against Israel’s settler-colonial project in and outside of Gaza. This struggle has taken on a variety of forms, from armed resistance to non-violent direct action. But regardless of the form, the response from the Israeli state, Zionist settlers, and their apologists, has always been the same: the weaponization of anti-semitism, accusations of terrorism, disinformation campaigns, and the continuation of systematic ethnic cleansing.
Israel’s call for a “complete siege” of the Palestinian enclave has rightfully been deemed a “textbook case of genocide.” High-ranking Israeli officials have referred to Palestinians as “human animals”, Zionists in Tel-Aviv recently hung a banner over a highway that read “Zero Gazans”, and near the West Bank, Israel’s National Security Ministry is distributing thousands of rifles to Zionist civilian settlers.
The Israeli military recently ordered 1.1 million Palestinians to evacuate from Gaza within an impossible 24-hour period, during which they proceeded to shower Gaza with airstrikes. Israeli violence against the Palestinian people has included the use of white phosphorus in crowded civilian areas and the murder of evacuees. The casualties from this genocidal attack continue to grow into the tens of thousands.
Given that the US is Israel’s most significant ally, those of us living in the heart of the empire have an obligation to do all in our power to halt this genocide. But what does showing solidarity with Palestine look like for us? In the face of deeply rooted state support for Israel, we must redouble popular efforts to deprive the Israeli state of legitimacy and aid from the US. Those who work and reside in the US have a special obligation to do this: the taxes taken from our paychecks bankroll Israel’s occupation and its genocide of Palestinians.
To resist this genocide, we must build the strength of popular organizations such as labor unions and community organizations to take action in solidarity. Although demonstrations and civil disobedience bring attention to the issue, we can only force the end of our government’s support for Israel by building and using popular power.
On the labor front, workers in the US must break the current silence of their unions. Workers must push their unions to release clear statements of support for Palestine and demands to end US aid to Israel, support and attend demonstrations for Palestine, and build the capacity for work stoppages, the prevention or delay of arms shipments, along with pension fund divestment. On the education front, educators and students must divest universities and colleges from Israel. For community organizations, organizers must aim to end law enforcement training partnerships between the United States and Israel, support the ongoing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and fight back against pinkwashing in queer spaces.
We must also look for opportunities to link these efforts across sectors and movements, as a coalition of community and labor organizers in the California Bay Area have demonstrated is possible through a successful 2021 campaign to block an Israeli cargo ship from being offloaded at the Port of Oakland.
The road ahead requires sustained organization and effort, and will not be easy. Nevertheless, this is a moment in history where our action or inaction will be keenly
remembered and judged. It is imperative that we seize this moment—against genocide for all and forever, for the end of Israeli settler colonialism, and for Palestinian self-determination.
(Updated 7/20/24)