Artwork by Imad Abu Shtayyah
This year’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) takes place amid Israel’s intensified genocide in Gaza, which has escalated once again with renewed bombing, mass starvation, and forced displacement of Palestinians. Israel, fully supported and armed by the US and other western powers, has massacred hundreds of Palestinians since the early hours of Monday, 18 March, many while sleeping. Meanwhile, Israel continues its brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem.
We must double our efforts now to end the US-Israeli genocide and Israel’s decades-old regime of settler-colonial apartheid.
Through these months of genocide, Palestinians as well as people all around the world have kept the pressure on states, corporations and institutions to end complicity in Israel’s atrocity crimes. IAW 2025 marks a pivotal moment in the struggle for Palestinian liberation and global decolonization. This IAW coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Call, #BDS20 - two decades of steadfast popular resistance, effective intersectional solidarity, and fighting international complicity in Israel’s regime of oppression.
IAW will launch on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21st and will include Palestinian Land Day on March 30th going into April 2025. Under this year’s theme of “People Power Makes Apartheid History,” IAW 2025 calls for mass mobilization, escalation of peaceful direct actions, and the expansion of Apartheid-Free Zones (AFZs) worldwide.
Mass Mobilizations and Pressure Campaigns. Organize now!
Shut It Down – Disrupt the institutions complicit in Israel’s genocide. Organize strikes (when feasible), walkouts, and sit-ins. No business as usual under genocide.
Expand Apartheid-Free Zones – Demand your university, workplace, union, or city cut ties with apartheid Israel and respect the BDS guidelines.
Pressure Governments for Sanctions – Governments must impose lawful targeted sanctions on Israel, including a comprehensive military embargo. This isn’t a choice but an ethical and legal duty. Ending direct and indirect complicity with Israel is a legal obligation for all states, following the ICJ decisions in 2024.
Mass Mobilizations around March 21 and beyond – Protest in your city, organize targeted direct actions.
Demand Israel’s immediate suspension from the UN, FIFA, the Olympics, and all international institutions.
Amplify Palestinian Voices – Showcase Palestinian culture, resistance, and visions of liberation through film screenings, art exhibitions, teach-ins, and public discussions.
Decolonizing Palestine Is Decolonizing the World
The struggle against Israeli apartheid is deeply interconnected with broader struggles for justice, freedom, equality and dignity worldwide. Israel’s genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip has revealed to the world the brutality of settler-colonialism, militarized capitalism, and Western complicity in systemic oppression. From Rabat to Cairo, Jakarta to Dakar, and Cape Town to Bogotá, global solidarity movements have recognized that the fight to free Palestine is also a fight to free themselves from all forms of colonial domination, racism, and imperial violence. Across the west, solidarity activists are repeating, Palestine frees us all.
As Palestinians, we remain resolute in our struggle, and we take strength from the millions worldwide who have risen up, organized mass demonstrations, disrupted arms shipments, occupied universities and institutions complicit in genocide, forcing many to end ties, and built Apartheid-Free Zones (AFZs) across the globe. The Palestinian struggle, rooted in over a century of resisting settler-colonial oppression, continues to inspire movements against racial, Indigenous, climate, gender, and economic injustice.
Reimagining Palestine After Apartheid
Reimagining life beyond oppression is a revolutionary act, reflecting the steadfastness, sumud, of Palestinians who have stood up to decades of settler-colonialism, apartheid and occupation as well as the ongoing genocide but have not given up hope and continue to struggle for their self-determination. It allows us to sustain hope, renew our determination, and chart a future of justice and liberation. IAW 2025 will amplify Palestinian artistic, literary, and creative visions of a post-apartheid Palestine, drawing connections between our struggle and all movements resisting oppression.
If Palestinian resilience and revival have inspired global struggles for justice, our reimagination of a liberated Palestine will further expand the intersections of solidarity worldwide.
This IAW, we take collective action towards dismantling Israel’s apartheid regime and nurture the hope that any structure of oppression can be defeated. Together, we are bringing the dawn of Palestinian liberation closer than ever. Resist. Rise. Decolonize. Palestine Frees Us All.
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