The graduate students of the English Department at Syracuse University unanimously stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine and unequivocally condemn the relentless settler colonial violence against Palestinian lives by the U.S.-backed Israeli state. The Netanyahu-led Israeli government and Israel Defense Forces’ joint decision to engage in ruthless airstrikes and artillery fire on the Palestinian territory of Gaza is the latest assault by the Israeli state on the human rights and freedoms of the Palestinian people. We decry these disproportionately violent acts and grieve the loss of over 200 Palestinians, including over 60 children, whose lives were lost in the ongoing violence that began in the final days of the holy month of Ramadan and on Eid El-Fitr. Further, we see the bombing of the al-Jalaa Tower, which housed the offices of both The Associated Press and Al Jazeera news organizations, as a deliberate attempt on the part of the Israeli government to conceal the full scale of its blatant human rights abuses. These horrific acts are a direct continuation of the Israeli state’s decades-long occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the dispossession of Palestinians, which is manifested through the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank and the expulsion of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah and other neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.
As members of a university that resides on the unceded land of the Onondaga Nation, we acknowledge both our complicity in settler colonial violence against Indigenous people on Turtle Island, and in U.S. imperialism’s role in fostering the Israeli state’s ability to enact these crimes against the Palestinian people. As scholars and educators who believe in the inherent worth of all peoples, we join our voices with those of organizations such as the Palestinian Feminist Collective and Jewish Voice for Peace in calling on the Biden administration to acknowledge the U.S. government’s long-standing complicity, both historical and current, in abetting the Israeli state’s ongoing violence against and disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people. We demand that the U.S. government:
- end its conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism;
- hold Israel accountable for its persistent violations of international law and human rights obligations; and
- cease its monetary and military support to the apartheid state of Israel.
Lastly, we immediately and publicly affirm the right of the Palestinian people to safely return to their ancestral lands and to live fully, freely, and with dignity. None of us are free until all of us are free!