Four actions you can take to mobilize for #UNGA78

Today, 19th September, the General Debate of the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (#UNGA78) will open in New York, with the participation of representatives of governments from around the world.

For decades Palestinian civil society and solidarity groups have denounced Israel’s settler-colonial regime as including apartheid against the entire Indigenous Palestinian people. Today, leading international human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, Israeli organizations like B’Tselem, numerous global figures, UN Special Rapporteurs, and most recently 100’s of Jewish and Israeli academics have all come to the same conclusion. Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians. 

An increasing number of states have designated Israel an apartheid state, with some, most notably South Africa and Namibia, frequently condemning Israeli apartheid including at the UN. In 2023, South Africa's Foreign Minister made a call to the International Criminal Court prosecutor to issue arrest warrants against Israeli leaders for perpetrating apartheid. A number of states have also made legal submissions to the International Court of Justice addressing Israel’s system of military occupation and apartheid. 

The UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) published a detailed legal study concluding, among other things, that Israel has been perpetrating apartheid against the Palestinian people since 1948.   

This year alone, the Belgian cities of Liége and Verviers decided to end ties with Israel citing its regime of “apartheid, colonization and military occupation.” In April, Oslo (Norway) decided to exclude companies that directly or indirectly contribute to Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise, while the mayor of Belém (Brazil) has recently declared the city an Apartheid Free Zone.

Most recently, the Disciples of Christ Church, with over 350,000 members in North America, passed a resolution in solidarity with the Palestinian people, including a condemnation of Israeli apartheid.

Despite these stepping stones on our march towards liberation, this year under the current Israeli government, the state’s most far-right, fundamentalist and openly racist ever, Palestinians are enduring and resisting a marked increase in pogroms, land theft, ethnic cleansing, and massacres. Our Nabka didn’t end in 1948, it is ongoing. 

Yet, it’s always darkest before dawn! Palestinians remain steadfast in the face of apartheid. We need your support to ensure that the UNGA responds to the Palestinian demand for freedom, justice and equality. Now is our chance to ensure that world leaders hear the global call for a UN-led investigation of Israeli apartheid.

In the past, the UN General Assembly condemned apartheid in southern Africa as a threat to international security, and as a flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the right to self-determination of peoples under colonial and foreign domination. It called on all states to end military, economic, cultural and diplomatic relations with South Africa and established a special UN Committee and Center to help eradicate apartheid.

It’s past time for the UN to do the same with Israeli apartheid.

Your help is needed to ensure #UNGA78 takes action!

We need you to take these four actions now:

1. Mobilize support in your organization to join over 300 civil society groups from around the world that are demanding the UN investigate Israeli apartheid. Not part of an organization? Share the letter on your social media or with your email lists.

2. Use the template letter found here to write to your political representatives demanding they act to ensure that UNGA78 will speak out and take action against Israeli apartheid.

3. As citizens of conscience who want a world without racism, oppression and apartheid, help create/support Apartheid Free Zones in the local businesses of your region, in cultural associations or in activist spaces in which you participate, or help create Apartheid Free Churches and communities where applicable. 

4. Take part in our Global Day of Action, further details coming soon.