Members and supporters of the Palestinian Youth Movement held a protest outside the headquarters of the United Nations in New York City on 29 November. The event took place as part of the Transnational Mobilization for Palestinian Resistance, organized internationally by PYM. Events took place around the world in support of the Palestinian struggle, from Manila and New Delhi to Manila, Antwerp, Los Angeles and New York. The call to action was joined by the International League of People’s Struggle.
Samidoun activists joined PYM for the protest, which also was part of the global week of action to demand the United Nations stop doing business with G4S, the British-Danish security corporation that provides equipment and control rooms to Israeli prisons that imprison Palestinian prisoners, checkpoints and the Israeli police in Jerusalem. Palestinian prisoners have urged an international boycott of the corporation. (Click here to take action online and demand the UN drop its contracts with G4S).
The call to action follows event photos:
We, Palestinian youth in exile, call on all Palestinians and our allies to defend our homeland and support the resistance and steadfastness of our people in Palestine. In recent weeks, Al-Aqsa Mosque has been the target of particularly brutal assaults while arbitrary killings are committed daily by the Zionist military and settlers and mass youth arrests are implemented in all historic Palestine. In response to this Zionist violence, we must recognise that resistance is a mandatory element to surviving in the face of an ongoing project of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
The intersections of Zionist military enforcement, settler encroachment, and a complacent Palestinian leadership who are serving as the gatekeepers to occupation and no longer the forerunners of the liberation project, culminate to ensure the suppression of resistance and the acceleration of ethnic cleansing. In this unbalanced struggle between a racist ideology and the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people, Israel still enjoys the support of its allies whom we hold accountable for all these crimes.
However, we as Palestinian youth must assume our full rights and responsibilities to defend our people and our land and take action wherever we are. The current struggle in all of Palestine is ours; it is a question of making justice prevail over a colonial project, and of standing against colonialism in all its forms and manifestations. This struggle is the uprising of a new generation of Palestinians, united everywhere around principles of dignity, justice and the liberation of all Palestine!
Palestinian resistance everywhere shall not end as long as the colonization of historic Palestine is perpetrated, the Zionists imprison and torture our people and impose a brutal occupation and embargo in the West Bank and Gaza strip. Our resistance shall not end as long as our exile endures and we cannot return to our land.
The resistance in Palestine is sustained by our mobilization in the street, and by intensifying the campaign for the boycott against Israel and the sanctions against the Zionist state everywhere. Let us assume our responsibilities and continue to bring together all genuine support to our cause!
While Palestinian youth are constantly organizing locally with a framework of justice, dignity and the liberation of all of Palestine, we call on all the Palestinians in exile, the solidarity movement and all the people who believe in justice, to join us in an international mobilisation in support of the Palestinian resistance on 29 November 2015.
By choosing the “UN international Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” we re-affirm that solidarity is only genuine if it respects the full Palestinian national principles, the role of all Palestinian communities everywhere in their liberation struggle, and the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance. We, as Palestinian youth assert that our struggle and cause is not one in which solidarity allies can displace their guilt and privilege into their solidarity with Palestine. For this mobilisation and the broader struggle, we mandate a critical analysis of understanding solidarity that operates through the “saviour” complex in which the UN and international law is directly responsible for perpetuating. Our mobilisation challenges the ways in which solidarity with the Palestinian people is only done when we are silent in the face of our own oppression. Rather, we have chosen this day for Palestinian youth of the Shatat to take our role in our struggle, lead our allies with justice-centered principles to stand in unconditional support for Palestinian methods of resistance and survival.
Stop the Zionist occupation and colonization of all Palestine!
Full support to the Palestinian resistance!
Freedom for the Palestinian prisoners!
Return of Palestinian refugees!
Stop the complicit silence of the International Community!
Support for BDS – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions against Israel!
