Statement of Solidarity with the People of Palestine

The UGlobe Decolonization Group stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people. As a group of researchers who examine and work for decolonization, we support justice and freedom in Palestine. We call for an end to settler-colonial violence sanctioned by the state of Israel. We call upon our elected representatives to apply political and economic sanctions upon Israel, to urge that Israel cease its attacks on Gaza, and that it cease the eviction of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah homes in East Jerusalem, a region considered Palestinian territory under international law. We call for accurate media reporting in which Israel’s disproportionate use of brutal force against the people of Gaza and the resulting civilian deaths is exposed. Language matters. What is happening in Gaza and elsewhere is not an ‘escalation’ without agency; it is not a sudden ‘flare-up’ without context; what is happening is the consequence of decades of Israel’s practice of violent settler-colonialism built on economic disenfranchisement and on the dehumanization of Palestine people. We acknowledge Europe’s long histories of colonial violence and we contest those narratives of empire that minimize or ignore this violence. The plight of the Palestinian people is part of a larger history of settler-colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism in which European nations and North American and other settler-colonial nations have been complicit for centuries. We add our voices to those of our colleagues in the Graduate Gender program at Utrecht University and the Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies in making this statement of solidarity. As they state: “At a time when public and scholarly critiques of Israel in US and European universities are being silenced by the charge of anti-Semitism, we firmly stand by our responsibility to speak out against such grave human rights and environmental violations against Palestinians. This comes from the conviction that a political critique of Israel’s settler-colonial state violence cannot and should not be conflated with the racist speech of anti-Semitism.” As scholars committed against racism we stand against all forms of racist discrimination, and we stand against Islamophobia and against anti-Semitism. The struggle against racism and other forms of discrimination is fundamentally a struggle for equality and justice, and it should never be instrumentalised to justify human rights violations. We refuse to be complicit in this brutality and violence through our silence. We recognize the rights of all peoples to be free from attack, occupation, and violent repression and to live in freedom and dignity.