The One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC) stands in solidarity with you, the courageous and principled students and faculty at dozens of universities throughout the United States, demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, divestment of your universities from companies profiting from Israeli wars on the Palestinians, and for Palestinian national rights.
We recognize the genuine jeopardy in which your protests over the ongoing genocide in Gaza and, more broadly, the need to liberate Palestinians from the yoke of Israeli colonization, apartheid, violent repression, and displacement. As students, you are vulnerable to smear attacks and punitive actions taken by the university authorities at the most critical time in your lives, when you are about to embark on your professional life and futures. As faculty, you are putting your careers on the line. We are all aware of the dozens of lecturers, mainly but not solely of Palestinian origin, who have lost their jobs for speaking out for Palestinian rights or teaching and writing critically about the causes of Palestinian suffering.
Zionism is not simply a slogan or an accusation. It is a self-proclaimed project by nationalist Jews to dispossess the Palestinian people from their land and replace them with Jews, to transform an Arab country into a Jewish one. Palestinian resistance to their violent displacement is not anti-Jewish; Jews lived peacefully in Palestine and the wider Arab world for millennia. It is anti-colonial. Palestinians are fighting their colonial oppressors, who in this case happen to be Jews, just as all colonized and oppressed peoples have fought against their oppressors, whoever they may be. Jews could have lived in Palestine, their Land of Israel, peacefully and in security had they come to integrate into Palestinian society rather than to destroy it. The genocide that is happening before our eyes in Gaza, together with the violent campaign of ethnic cleansing now taking place in the West Bank, are only the latest and most visible manifestations of a prolonged process of genocide against the Palestinian people that must be halted – and Palestinian rights restored in a process that sees the return of the refugees and all exiled Palestinians.
The ODSC also salutes all those from other communities that have come out in support Palestinian rights. You recognize, as we do, that the Palestinian struggle is only one front in a global struggle for justice, economic and social equality, freedom from racism and gender inequities. As Palestinians and anti-colonial Israeli Jews, we stand with you as comrades in struggle. Know that you are making history and building a more just world. Fighting for Palestinian rights is fighting for everyone’s rights!
