Statement delivered by National Chair of Uhuru Solidarity Movement, Jesse Nevel, at demonstration held by Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations outside Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida in protest of Israeli genocide.
Uhuru! My name is Jesse Nevel and I am here today as a member of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, the organization of white people working under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party.
I stand with the Black is Back Coalition in condemning the Israeli state’s war against the Palestinian people.
I am here as member of APSC, but also as a Jewish person.
As a Jew, I cannot be silent when a government that calls itself “the Jewish state” is carrying out genocide on the Gaza Strip, right before our eyes. As a Jew, I felt it was important to stand here today before the Holocaust Museum – because this museum is supposed to be a symbolic representation of the victims of Nazi genocide against the Jewish population of Europe in the 1930s and 40s, but the ugly truth is that today in 2014, the Jewish State of Israel is the culprit of mass murder and genocide against the Palestinian people.
Right now as we speak, Israel bombs the Gaza Strip. They have murdered 220 Palestinian people in nine days, including women and children. More than 1,600 people have been injured.
Yesterday, video footage was released showing four Palestinian children playing on a beach.
The four kids were between 9 and 12 years old. Suddenly, Israeli air strikes violently and horrifically rained down upon them, leaving their four small, bloodied bodies scattered across the Gaza beach.
As a Jewish person, nothing sickens me more than the fact that, under the banner of a Jewish Star of David and in the name of advancing the interests of Jewish people everywhere, the U.S.-backed State of Israel is carrying out a holocaust against the Palestinians in broad daylight.
I am deeply offended that the Israeli state would hold up the Nazi holocaust as justification for its genocide against the Palestinian people. “Never again”, the defenders of Israel will say as they obliterate Palestinian babies in the Gaza Strip.
This twisted logic begs the question: who sent the Jews into the gas chambers of Germany?
I’ll tell you who it was not: It was not the Palestinians.
And how can Jews say “never again another holocaust” and in the next breath call for more genocidal bombs, bullets and colonial violence against the Palestinian people?
Mosques have been bombed by Israeli war planes and navy. Centers for disabled people, schools filled with children. In fact, 30 percent of those murdered so far have been children.
Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian was snatched by Israeli settlers and burned alive in a Jerusalem forest.
This is no different from how white people lynched and burned alive Africans on this land we call America, or scalped, raped and murdered the Indigenous people on whose land we stand right now. Yet where there is Holocaust Museum for the Indigenous people or the African community?
Gaza has 2 million people crammed together by the colonial state of Israel on a strip of land only 25 miles long and about five miles wide.
The 24/7 bombing of densely populated territory like Gaza is more than a war crime – it is a genocide, plan and simple. It is a crime against humanity.
The leaders of this genocide are not shy about their intentions. Ayelet Shaked, the Israeli member of parliament, said, “The Palestinians have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists…They are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands."
The Israeli state enjoys the support of Jews throughout the U.S. and Europe, but I am standing here today to say that it is time to break ranks, it is high time for Jews to turn their backs on the genocidal State of Israel.
There is no future for Jews if we align ourselves to a genocidal and oppressive regime such as the Israeli state.
Every Jew on this earth should feel the weight of the Israeli genocide on our shoulders.
Every Jew on this earth should feel the weight of the suffering on the Gaza Strip on our shoulders.
Every Jew on this earth should carry with us each day the suffering of every Palestinian girl raped and shot in the head by Israeli Defense Forces.
The sobbing voice of the Palestinian father, walking toward the hospital bed saying, “Wake up my child, I have brought you a toy”, recoiling in agony when he sees that his child’s brains have been blown out of his skull by Israeli bombs—the voice of that Palestinian father and the screams of all of the Palestinian children running for cover under the hail of Israeli missiles should ring in the ears of every Jew on this planet.
We have a responsibility to condemn the Israeli state for its genocide against the Palestinian people.
We have a responsibility to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Jewish people and all forward thinking white people MUST OPPOSE the Zionist State of Israel.
To do anything less is to function as an accomplice in this holocaust that is happening right before our eyes.
Stop Israel’s holocaust against the Palestinian people! Long Live Palestine!