Sign the statement below here.
New York City Council Members: Protesting Apartheid is Not Anti-Semitic!
February 14, 2015
On January 22, Direct Action Front for Palestine unfurled a banner at a meeting of the New York City Council to silently protest an upcoming, all-expense-paid trip to Israel by fifteen Council members.
The banner was dropped as the Council was voting on a batch of resolutions, including one commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Although interruption of that resolution was entirely coincidental, the protesters were widely smeared in the media as “anti-Semitic” for “disrupting Auschwitz liberation commemoration.”
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return rejects this absurd slander and applauds DAFP and others who courageously spoke truth to power at the City Council.
In fact, the Council’s shameful support of Israel — not the protest — is the real insult to the memory of Holocaust victims. In the words of survivor Lillian Rosengarten: “I too am a refugee from Nazi Germany, and I am a Jew who must say no to apartheid, occupation, check points, stolen land, racism and a desire for a Jewish state only obtained through the suffering and blood of Palestinians.”
Israel’s massacre of more than 2200 Palestinians (500 of them, children) last summer in Gaza only adds to the list of atrocities committed to perpetuate that state.
We the undersigned call on the City Council and the media to stop defaming supporters of Palestinian rights with false accusations of anti-Semitism, and to cease their complicity with apartheid Israel.
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return 