Jews for Palestinian Right of Return Salutes Movement for Black Lives

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Jews for Palestinian Right of Return Salutes Movement for Black Lives
August 8, 2016

We salute the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) platform for courageously endorsing the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

Rejecting false conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, M4BL defiantly speaks truth to power: BDS is necessary because Israel is a genocidal apartheid state armed by more than $3 billion each year from the same U.S. government that practices racialized state violence at home.

This is graphically reflected in Israel’s 2014 massacre of 2200 Palestinians — including 500 children — in Gaza, and countless other crimes since the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians during the Nakba (Catastrophe) that created the “Jewish State” in 1948.

Your internationalism echoes Malcolm X, SNCC, the Black Panther Party, Muhammad Ali, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and other freedom fighters of the 1960s who stood in solidarity with Palestine. It recalls Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s opposition to the Vietnam war on the grounds that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” and the movement to divest from apartheid South Africa.

M4BL’s steadfastness in the face of attack is similarly inspiring, and we are proud to stand with you for “a world in which the full humanity and dignity of all people is recognized.“