People’s CDC Statement and Call to Action on Palestine
The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, “secondly.” Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story.
–Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “Danger of a Single Story” TEDGlobal, July 2009
As activists engaged in the fight against the COVID pandemic and for public health and health equity, we mourn the loss of life everywhere, regardless of nationality. We are outraged at the possibility that Israel, after making life unbearable and unhealthy for Palestinians for generations, has forcibly evicted and is threatening the lives of 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza– as it has chronically done with those in the West Bank and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Nothing in any history of any armed conflict ever could justify such collective punishment of a civilian population. Nor will such actions keep Israelis safe.
The current bombings are being funded by US taxpayer dollars, as the US sends $3.8 billion dollars to Israel in military aid every year. It is important that your representatives hear your objections. We urge everyone to call Congress, repeatedly until we stop this horrific state-sponsored terror. You can use this link to make it easy. Just enter your address and phone number and they will put you directly in touch with your representatives. They also provide a suggested script.
If you are going to be in the streets in support of Palestine, please wear a mask. If you are organizing a protest, please require and distribute masks and urge people to stay home if sick. Masks keep the movement safer, more accessible and more sustainable.
Free Palestine.
Longer statement with additional history and context
As activists engaged in the fight against the COVID pandemic and for human health more generally, we mourn the loss of life everywhere, regardless of nationality. We are outraged at the possibility that Israel, after making life unbearable and unhealthy for Palestinians for generations, has forcibly evicted and is threatening the lives of 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza– as it has chronically done with those in the West Bank and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Nothing in any history of any armed conflict ever could justify such collective punishment of a civilian population. Nor will such actions keep Israelis safe.
Israel’s 16-year siege of Gaza has choked the economy, and the medical system resulting in critical shortages of food, fuel, and essential medicines and making over 90% of Gaza’s water unfit for human consumption.Home to millions of displaced Palestinians – half of whom are under 18 years old, the UN has long recognized the humanitarian crisis and near-starvation conditions for many stemming from the Israeli siege on Gaza since 2007. As for COVID-19, Israel has refused to distribute vaccines to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, claiming that Palestinians have an autonomous nation while simultaneously preventing the creation of a Palestinian state. The siege and bombings have pushed a dire situation into devastating horror, with Israel cutting off electricity, water, and fuel to the Gaza Strip. With air strikes on civilian areas, and ambulances hit with bombs, injured are being brought to overcrowded hospitals in cars.
We are horrified by the Israeli attack on Ahli Arab hospital today. Attacks on Palestinian healthcare workers and facilities by Israeli armed forces represent a well-documented pattern. As of Oct. 16, 2023, there had been 111 cases of attacks on health care in Gaza, including violence with heavy weapons, obstruction, arrest or detention of medical personnel, and psychological threats and intimidation. According to eyewitness accounts provided by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) just yesterday: “Two of the hospitals MSF supports, Al Awda and Indonesian hospitals, have both sustained damage in airstrikes, while MSF’s own clinic sustained damage in an explosion on Monday.”
“I get calls from our people there in Gaza constantly, patients who have kidney problems, in need for kidney dialysis, who could die in two, three days because they cannot get it, patients with cancer who lost treatment, and other sick people who are in very deep situation,” Palestinian physician Mustafa Barghouti told a reporter this week.
As Noi Katsman said of his brother Hayim, who was killed in the Hamas attack, “Most important for me and also for my brother is that his death won’t be used to kill innocent people. And sadly, my government is using, cynically, the death of people to just kill… I don’t want anything to happen to people in Gaza like it happened to my brother, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have either.”
We demand that the bombing and collective punishment of Palestinians end, that the siege be lifted immediately, an end to the illegal occupation, and an end of US military aid to Israel.
The current bombings are being funded by US taxpayer dollars, as the US sends $3.8 billion dollars to Israel in military aid every year. It is important that your representatives hear your objections. We urge everyone to call Congress, repeatedly until we stop this horrific state-sponsored terror. You can use this link to make it easy. Just enter your address and phone number and they will put you directly in touch with your representatives. They also provide a suggested script.
If you are going to be in the streets in support of Palestine, please wear a mask. If you are organizing a protest, please require and distribute masks and urge people to stay home if sick. Masks keep the movement safer, more accessible and more sustainable.
Free Palestine.