"Our message of peace
is a call to action
for other ordinary people like ourselves
not to hand over your lives
to whatever puppeteer is in charge this time round
But to take responsibility for the revolution
First, the inner revolution
to give love, to give empathy
It is this that will change the world" Vittorio Arrigoni
"Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians." Nelson Mandela
"MOTOROLA SOLUTIONS profits from Israel's control of the Palestinian population by providing surveillance systems around Israeli settlements, checkpoints, and military camps in the West Bank, as well as communication systems to the Israeli army and West Bank settlers." Jewish Voice for Peace
"We are not asking you for heroic action or to form freedom brigades. We are simply asking you not to be complicit in perpetuating the crimes of the Israeli state." Boycott National Committee
"When the Etzel and the Stern Gang massacred 250 Palestinians at Deir Yassin, outside of Jerusalem we should have said enough. When in villages throughout Palestine, Jewish brigades implemented a procedure of expulsion - we should have said enough. When soldiers rounded up Palestinian men and massacred them collectively – we should have said enough. When other men were forced to dig their neighbors' graves – we should have said enough. When women and children were ordered to walk towards Arab countries, while Jewish soldiers fired shots over their heads – we should have said enough. When Palestinian men were forced into labor camps, where their labor included destroying Palestinian homes – we should have said enough. When on the Eve of Passover, in an operation called "Cleaning Out Chametz", the Haganah shelled the Palestinian residential quarters of Haifa, forcing 70,000, 90% of the city's Palestinian residents, to flee – we should have said enough. When similar operations were carried out in Jaffa, Tiberias and Safad – we should have said enough. When the 10,000 Palestinian residents of Majdal, now Jewish Ashkelon, were enclosed for two years in a ghetto, or closed militarized area, and later forced on trucks and transferred to Gaza – we should have said enough. When the IDF forced the inhabitants of the cities of Lud and Ramle out of their homes at gunpoint and forced them to march west towards Jordan – we should have said enough. When, after villages were depopulated, they were obliterated by the IDF, houses and mosques bombed and bulldozed, all signs of former life destroyed – we should have said enough. When Palestinian homes were confiscated by Israel and repopulated with Jews – we should have said enough. When the Haganah used live fire to prevent villagers from returning to their homes – we should have said enough. When Israel continues to deny that the forced expulsions happened – When Israel and the American Jewish community continue to deny the Right of Return to the refugees of 1948 - We say: enough!" Jews Against the Occupation-NYC, NAKBA DAYENU
"Caterpillar Inc. has a long history of complicity in extensive human rights abuses and violations of international law within the Occupied Palestinian Territory. For decades, Caterpillar equipment has been used to demolish thousands of Palestinian homes, leaving more than 50,000 civilians displaced. Palestinian and international civilians have been killed and injured in such demolitions. Caterpillar machinery is instrumental in construction of Israel's illegal separation-annexation wall, in destruction of Palestinian olive groves and farmland, and in extensive construction of Israeli settlements that illegally expropriate Palestinian land. Caterpillar has long been on notice about the pattern of Israeli human rights violations committed with its equipment, yet it continues to sell to the Israeli government, putting corporate profit before human rights." Cindy and Craig Corrie
"While Palestinians are not able to access universities and schools, Israeli universities produce the research, technology, arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation. BGU is no exception. By maintaining links to both the Israeli Defence Forces and the arms industry, BGU structurally supports and facilitates the Israeli occupation." Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"To travel only blocks in his own homeland, a grandfather waits on the whim of a teenage soldier. More than an emergency is needed to get to a hospital; less than a crime earns a trip to jail. The lucky ones have a permit to leave their squalor to work in Israel's cities, but their luck runs out when security closes all checkpoints, paralysing an entire people." Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"Palestinian citizens of Israel face a growing system of Apartheid within Israel's borders, with laws and policies that deny them the rights that their Jewish counterparts enjoy. These laws and policies affect education, land ownership, housing, employment, marriage, and all other aspects of people's daily lives. In many ways this system strikingly resembles Jim Crow and apartheid South Africa." PACBI
"The similarities between the situation of East Jerusalemites and black South Africans [are] very great in respect of their residency rights. We had the old Group Areas Act in South Africa. East Jerusalem has territorial classification that has the same sort of consequences as race classification had in South Africa in respect of who you can marry, where you can live, where you can go to school or hospital." John Dugard
"... the OPT has become a test for the West, a test by which its commitment to human rights is to be judged. If the West fails this test, it can hardly expect the developing world to address human rights violations seriously in its own countries, and the West appears to be failing this test. The EU pays conscience money to the Palestinian people through the Temporary International Mechanism but nevertheless joins the United States and other Western countries, such as Australia and Canada, in failing to put pressure on Israel to accept Palestinian self-determination and to discontinue its violations of human rights. The Quartet, comprising the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and the Russian Federation, is a party to this failure. If the West, which has hitherto led the promotion of human rights throughout the world, cannot demonstrate a real commitment to the human rights of the Palestinian people, the international human rights movement, which can claim to be the greatest achievement of the international community of the past 60 years, will be endangered and placed in jeopardy." John Dugard
"We all share a responsibility to reject unjust laws and practices – including discrimination, exclusion and ethnic cleansing – and to insist that the guidelines by which we live are those which maintain the rights and dignity of all people. In the United States, many believed that an economy built on slavery was compatible with democracy; that wasn’t true. We reject the Zionist assertion that a Jewish settler-colonial state can be democratic." International Jewish Anti-zionist Network
"In my view, the abhorrent and draconian control that Israel wields over the besieged Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), coupled with its denial of the rights of refugees to return to their homes in Israel, demands that fair-minded people around the world support the Palestinians in their civil, nonviolent resistance." Roger Waters
"As Jews of conscience, we call on all supporters of social justice to stand up for Palestinian Right of Return and a democratic state throughout historic Palestine — “From the River to the Sea” — with equal rights for all. The full measure of justice, upon which the hopes of all humanity depends, requires no less." Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
"As someone whose mother and father were murdered in Auschwitz, and who herself survived the Nazis’ barbarous nationalism thanks to the courage of a group of Catholics, Protestants, Communists, and Jews, I find the idea that defending the “Jewish state” supersedes all other human obligations both immoral and senseless. Nothing, not even the Holocaust, justifies Israel’s treatment of Palestinians or the continuing efforts of pro-Israel zealots to show Arabs and Muslims as less than human." Annette Herskovits
"The temptation is to speak in muffled tones about an issue such as the right of the people of Palestine… yet we would be less than human if we did so." Nelson Mandela
"The purpose of nonviolent direct action and civil resistance is to take risks - to put ourselves “in the way” of injustice. We take these risks well aware of what the possible consequences may be. We do so because the consequences of doing nothing are so much worse. Anytime we allow ourselves to be bullied, every time we pass by an evil and ignore it - we lower our standards and allow our world to be made that much harsher and unjust for us all." Ramzi Kysia, The Free Gaza Movement
“Almost 58 percent of Palestinians live in poverty, and about half of this group lives in extreme poverty. About 50 percent of Palestinians experience or risk experiencing food insecurity. Food insecurity is particularly severe in Gaza, where the majority of the population relies on humanitarian assistance to survive.” The Canadian International Development Agency
“CATERPILLAR profits from the destruction of Palestinian homes and the uprooting of Palestinian orchards by supplying the armor-plated and weaponized bulldozers that are used for such demolition work.” Jewish Voice for Peace
"The original Palestinian refugees and their descendants are estimated to number more than 6.5 million and constitute the world’s oldest and largest refugee population. Israel implements a Law of Return giving every Jewish person rights to settle in Israel as a citizen and denies Palestinians the Right of Return guaranteed under international Law." Rabbi Alissa Wise
“The plight of Palestinian refugees needs to be resolved equitably and in a manner that promotes peace and is consistent with international law. Within the framework of an equitable agreement, the refugees should have a role in determining their future, whether pursuing return, resettlement, or financial compensation. Israel should recognize its share of responsibility for the ongoing refugee crisis and for its resolution.” Jewish Voice for Peace
“Many Jewish schools and communities wrongly teach that in 1948 Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Yet the place where Israel was founded was never empty or barren, it was home to almost one million Palestinians living in over 700 villages and cities, who share a vibrant history and culture. Most of these villages and cities were depopulated and renamed during and after 1948, as part of the still ongoing efforts to undermine and disavow Palestinian identity and history.” Rabbi Alissa Wise
“This year Palestinians are refugees next year, may all Palestinians have the right to return to their home lands and to Jerusalem. Next Year in Jerusalem! Next Year in al-Quds! Next year in a City of Peace!” Jewish Voice For Peace
"ICAHD calls on the international community – the UN, governments, political parties, human rights and political groups, trade unions, university communities and faith-based organizations, as well as concerned individuals – to do everything possible to hold Israel accountable for its occupation policies and actions while ensuring the equal rights and security of both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples." Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
"You may have the bulldozers, planes and helicopters that smash houses to rubble, the commandos who descend from ropes on ships and kill unarmed civilians on the high seas as well as in Gaza, the vast power of the state behind you. We have only our hands and our hearts and our voices. But note this. Note this well. It is you who are afraid of us. We are not afraid of you." Chris Hedges
"Immediate steps shall be taken, in Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories or all other territories which have not yet attained independence, to transfer all powers to the peoples of those territories, without any conditions or reservations, in accordance with their freely expressed will and desire, without any distinction as to race, creed or colour, in order to enable them to enjoy complete independence and freedom." UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples
