Divest from Israel now

As I arrived in Palestine under a “special humanitarian visitor permit” to participate in my father’s funeral, to the very land where I was born, raised and went to school, I was forced to recognize that soon I shall be ejected from my home one more time, very much like millions of others. I am denied my home, my history, and barely able to bury my father where he and I belong—in Palestine.

For decades we as a people have been relegated to the margin of history, trivialized as a culture and butchered as humans—all while successive US administrations remained complacent, at best.

Following the dismemberment and occupation of Palestine by Israel 52 years ago, and as a result of the entangled web of international resolutions and agreements, the majority of which were brokered by the United States, the Palestinians are left today with the very crumbs of their historic land. Since Israel declared itself a state on the ruins of the Palestinian society, at least 415 villages and towns have been completely erased from existence, some 5.5 million Palestinians remain scattered as refugees,78 percent of historic Palestine has been transformed into an exclusive theocracy inhabited mostly by Jewish settlers, and Palestinian history has been perverted and turned on its head.

Today, as a second popular uprising (Intifada) rages on in the face of one of the mightiest armies in the world, the Palestinian people are demanding an immediate end to the occupation, the return of the refugees, an unconditional independent state with Jerusalem as its capital and adherence to international law. Facing these demands that are guaranteed by countless United Nations’ resolutions calling for a Palestinian state and the return of refugees, Israel continues to wage a war of extermination on what is left of the Palestinians. And the United States remains a dangerous partner in this formula of ethnic cleansing.

To stop the onslaught against the Palestinian people, it is time for the American public to own up to its responsibility and terminate its partnership with Israel as U.S. tax dollars are transformed into bullets and tanks, which kill innocent children, erase villages, confiscate land and destroy homes. It is also time that we declare to Israel that we shall boycott any and all of its products until it abides by international law. Divesting from Israel is not only an economic imperative for the American people but is also an investment in justice and a lasting peace.