OF COURSE ISRAEL TARGETS CIVILIANS | OF COURSE ISRAEL ENGAGES IN ROUTINE STATE TERRORISM

Since Hamas won democratic elections in 2006, Israel has placed the Gaza Strip in a stranglehold by closing the borders to traffic. This means that the people of Gaza have seen their food supplies interrupted so that malnutrition has steadily risen. Emergency medical supplies have often been choked off so that people have died for lack of proper medical care. Materials needed for the production of goods have frequently been denied access so that the economy has been brought to a halt, jobs have disappeared, and unemployment has soared.

Terrorism is by definition the use of violence and intimidation against civilians in order to achieve political goals. The above acts committed by the state of Israel are acts of terrorism. The bombing of civilian targets, including a university, school, and hospital, are acts of terrorism. The invasion of densely populated cities where civilians cannot escape is an act of terrorism. Israel intentionally directs its violence against the civilian population in the hope that the people will turn against Hamas and blame it for their suffering. In the final analysis, by turning Gaza into a cage and treating the Palestinian people as if they were animals, Israel wants to make life for the people in Gaza so miserable that they will abandon their human right to self-determination. As a former Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff said in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” In fact, these acts of terrorism, which are war crimes, have only served to steel the resolve of the Palestinian people.


WE DEMAND:

The right of return for all Palestinian people to their land in historic Palestine, including what is now Israel.

The full democratic and equal rights for all Palestinians in what is now Israel and therefore the dismantling of the Jewish religious state and the creation of a democratic secular Palestine for all people, regardless of their religious affiliation.

STOP THE BOMBING
ISRAELI TROOPS OUT OF GAZA
OPEN ALL GAZA’S BORDERS
END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL

There can be no peace in the Middle East until equal rights are guaranteed to everyone.