We act alongside other writers, scholars, and artists who have expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause, drawing inspiration from the Palestinian spirit of sumud, steadfastness, and resistance. We cannot write a free Palestine into existence, but together we must do all we possibly can to reject narratives that soothe Western complicity in ethnic cleansing. We condemn those in our industries who continue to enable apartheid and genocide. At the same time, we must reckon with the role words and images play in the war on Gaza and the ferocious support they have engendered: Israel’s defense minister announced the siege as a fight against “ human animals” even as we learned that Israel had rained bombs down on densely populated urban neighborhoods and deployed white phosphorus in Gaza City, the New York Times editorial board wrote that “what Israel is fighting to defend is a society that values human life and the rule of law” establishment media outlets continue to describe Hamas’s attack on Israel as “ unprovoked.” Writers Against the War on Gaza rejects this perversion of meaning, wherein a nuclear state can declare itself a victim in perpetuity while openly enacting genocide. What can we do to intervene against Israel’s eliminationist assault on the Palestinian people? Words alone cannot stop the onslaught of devastation of Palestinian homes and lives, backed shamelessly and without hesitation by the entire axis of Western power. ![]() As was the case following the September 11th attacks, Islamophobic political fervor and the widespread circulation of unsubstantiated claims has galvanized a US-led coalition of military support for a brutal campaign of violence. Specious charges of antisemitism are leveled against Zionism’s critics political repression has been particularly aggressive against the free speech of Muslim, Arab, and Black people living in the US and across the globe. These are instances that mark severe incursions against supposed speech protections. Internationally, writers and cultural workers have faced severe harassment, workplace retribution, and job loss for expressing solidarity with Palestine, whether by stating facts about their continued occupation, or for amplifying the voices of others. At least 24 journalists in Gaza have now been killed. We stand in opposition to the silencing of dissent and to racist and revisionist media cycles, further perpetuated by Israel’s attempts to bar reporting in Gaza, where journalists have been both denied entry and targeted by Israeli forces. ![]() We stand firmly by Gaza’s people, victims of a genocidal war the United States government continues to fund and arm with military aid-a crisis compounded by the illegal settlement and dispossession of the West Bank and the subjugation of Palestinians within the state of Israel. We stand with their anticolonial struggle for freedom and for self-determination, and with their right to resist occupation. We come together as writers, journalists, academics, artists, and other culture workers to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine. We share the assertions of human rights groups, scholars, and, above all, everyday Palestinians: Israel is an apartheid state, designed to privilege Jewish citizens at the expense of Palestinians, heedless of the many Jewish people, both in Israel and across the diaspora, who oppose their own conscription in an ethno-nationalist project. ![]() Gaza is the world’s largest open-air prison: its 2 million residents-a majority of whom are refugees, descendants of those whose land was stolen in 1948-have been deprived of basic human rights since the blockade in 2006. However, in the last 19 days, the Israeli military has killed over 6,500 Palestinians, including more than 2,500 children, and wounded over 17,000. Israel’s war against Gaza is an attempt to conduct genocide against the Palestinian people.
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