CALL TO ACTION

The US, with the complicity of Arab dictatorships and European satellite states, has once again imposed its will on the UN Security Council, preventing a permanent ceasefire and an end to Israel’s deadly siege of Gaza. This gives the apartheid state the green light to continue its genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged territory, massacring Palestinians (over 20,000 to date), destroying our livelihoods, and reducing the already frail foundations of international law “to tatters,” as Irish President Michael D. Higgins puts it. 

In response to the world’s first livestreamed genocide, Palestinians have called for unprecedented grassroots pressure to end state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s 75-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid. This is necessary today not just to stop the genocide, but also to halt humanity’s descent into an unhinged “might makes right” world order. 

Heeding Palestinian calls and setting an inspiring example in meaningful solidarity, Malaysia has banned Israeli and Israel-bound shipping from its ports. Malaysia, like Indonesia, South Africa, Namibia and a growing roster of states, regards Israel as an apartheid state. Dock workers and their unions in Belgium, Catalonia, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the US and elsewhere have also led courageous solidarity actions to block arms shipments to Israel. We call on all friendly states and trade unions to follow these inspiring acts of solidarity to help end Israel’s #GazaGenocide. If not now, when? 

Forty-six UN experts have warned of Israel’s “genocide in the making” in Gaza, as did hundreds of international scholars. A senior UN Official and a prominent Israeli scholar of genocide have called it a “textbook case of genocide.” Oxfam, as well as Palestinian and international human rights organizations have accused Israel of using “starvation as a weapon of war.” 

Nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza have been forcibly displaced under Israel’s relentless and indiscriminate bombing, many facing famine and the spread of infectious diseases in overcrowded shelters. Recalling Israel’s “long history of mass forced displacement of Palestinians,” the UN expert on the human rights of internally displaced persons has said that Israel’s war on Gaza “aims to deport the majority of the civilian population en masse.” The extent of the US-Israeli- induced hunger in Gaza, according to expert reports, “has eclipsed even the near-famines in Afghanistan and Yemen of recent years.” An expert has told CNN that the intensity of Israel’s bombing of this extremely crowded land had “not been seen since [US bombing of] Vietnam.” As Israeli military and intelligence officers have admitted to Israeli media, “everything is intentional” in Israel’s “factory” of mass murder in Gaza. 

Even genocide-inciting, deeply racist Western media outlets have had to reflect the unprecedented scope of the carnage caused by Israel. AP, for instance, reports on a US study showing that Israel’s war on Gaza “sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history,” while the New York Times admits that Israel’s bombing of Gaza is among “the most intense this century.” In just three weeks during this ongoing genocide, Israeli forces killed more children in Gaza than those killed in all world conflicts since 2019. Since then the number of children murdered by Israel has doubled.

The Western-induced “apocalyptic” humanitarian crisis in Gaza has forced the timid UN Secretary-General, who has yet to condemn Israel by name for its unfolding genocide or for its deliberate bombing of UN schools, shelters and staff, to sound the alarm that Israel’s war on Gaza poses a serious threat to world peace and security. Still, the US government is wielding its mighty power of coercion and intimidation to hold the UN system hostage to its and Israel’s genocidal agendas. 

At a time when the US, UK and other colonial Western powers are arming, funding, and shielding from accountability Israel’s #GazaGenocide, Palestinian civil society calls for ending all business-as-usual with Israel, escalating popular pressure on governments worldwide to push for a permanent ceasefire and lifting the siege, and to this end:

1. Designating Israel as an apartheid state and treating it accordingly;
2. Imposing targeted sanctions on Israel, starting with comprehensive military-security embargoes; and 
3. Following Malaysia’s example by banning all Israel-related shipping from their ports.

To uphold the Never Again! slogan, people of conscience worldwide must make Israel face unprecedented BDS measures in all fields. This is the most effective way to help us #DismantleApartheid and settler-colonialism, the root cause of all this unspeakable violence and oppression, in order to enjoy freedom, justice and equality.