Land Day: We won’t back down, we won’t get tired until we stop the genocide!

As we mark the 48th anniversary of Land Day, we commemorate all of the Palestinians murdered in Israel’s #GazaGenocide against 2.3 million of our people in occupied Gaza. In more than 170 days of Israel’s genocidal war, over 33,000 Palestinians have been murdered, at least 13,000 of them were children. 

On this day in 1976, Israel’s apartheid forces murdered six Palestinians (all “citizens”) as they took part in non-violent protests against the relentless settler-colonial theft of their land. Every March 30th, Indigenous Palestinians everywhere commemorate Land Day in honor of the struggle against Israeli settler-colonial oppression and for liberation.

Over the last months, unprecedented numbers have gone to the streets and mobilized in a myriad of ways to stop the US-Israeli genocide and dismantle Israel’s 75-year-old regime of settler-colonial apartheid. Mass protests are rising again in numbers, boycotts are gaining more impact, and the first states are cutting military ties with Israel. Land Day is a day to affirm that we won’t back down, we won’t get tired until we stop the genocide and hold Israel and its accomplices accountable, and until the Indigenous Palestinian people can enjoy freedom, justice and equality and its “full menu of rights” under international law.

As of March 20th, 75% of Gaza’s population or 1.7 million Palestinians are internally displaced, uprooted from their homes and land, now mostly reduced to waste by Israel’s Western-supplied weapons. The UN has warned of catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation. In the words of Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, “We've never seen a civilian population go so hungry and so completely in any time in modern history. We've never seen children pushed into malnutrition so quickly.”

This Land Day, let’s not just commemorate Israel’s past crimes, but also fight to end its ongoing #GazaGenocide as well as ongoing Nakba, and, most importantly, to ultimately dismantle its underlying apartheid. Without this, Gaza will go down in history not just as the world’s first live-streamed genocide but also as the cemetery of the international legal system.

The Palestinian leadership of the global BDS movement calls on all people of conscience worldwide to amplify the Palestinian people’s priority demands and help us build the necessary people’s power towards imposing on the US-Israeli genocidal axis:

• A permanent ceasefire and lifting of the siege to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

• Canceling plans to further ethnically cleanse Palestinians, whether within or outside the Gaza Strip. 

This demands more pressure to end all state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, including:

• Imposing lawful sanctions on Israel, starting with a comprehensive #MilitaryEmbargo.

• Applying substantial pressure on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to end its complicity of silence, dismiss its current genocide-enabling Prosecutor, and immediately act to stop the unfolding genocide, starting with prosecuting Israeli war criminals.

• Fully supporting South Africa’s genocide proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and taking action to ensure implementation of the provisional measures ordered by the ICJ.

To mark Land Day in the midst of the US-Israeli genocide, we call for joining BDS groups and solidarity partners of the BDS movement in your countries to:

1. Act against the companies profiting from Israel’s genocide and apartheid. 

2. Wherever possible, join demonstrations in your country calling for: Ceasefire NOW! Lift the Siege NOW! #MilitaryEmbargo.

3. Organize or join groups organizing peaceful disruptions, sit-ins, occupations targeting complicit governments’ offices, MPs, complicit public and private institutions, or complicit companies targeted by BDS campaigns. 

4. Join groups, particularly workers’ unions, disrupting the transport of weapons, weapon parts, and other military equipment to Israel, including in transit states. 

5. Raise awareness around you about Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid and support your community/center/workplace/trade union/organization to declare themselves an Apartheid Free Zone (AFZ). A toolkit and a checklist are available. 

6. If not done yet, convince your city council/trade unions/cultural and academic institutions to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and lifting the siege and to cut existing complicit ties with apartheid Israel.
    

Channel your rage, frustration, and grief into effective, strategic BDS action and pressure to stop the genocide and dismantle Israel’s regime of settler-colonial apartheid, the root cause of this oppression and unspeakable violence.