This was originally written to be ready to speak at a march for a Ceasefire in Gaza, but I didn’t end up speaking.

We're calling for a real, permanent ceasefire for all of Palestine, not just Gaza but the West Bank as well. Not a pause, not a ceasefire that has an end date before it even starts. A real ceasefire, meaning Israeli forces will have to stop bombing, shooting, and sniping Palestinians and stop demolishing and stealing Palestinian homes and land.

We've heard a litany of excuses for the genocide that's happening in Gaza. And we've even been told that genocide isn't a word to just throw around and that serious people shouldn't call this a genocide. But the definition of genocide is:

• Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

  • Killing members of the group; 

  • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; 

  • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 

  • Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; 

  • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

How is there any question that what we’re watching happen, what our President, Government, Military, and minority of the country is facilitating and participating in, is anything but genocide?

We've been told there was a ceasefire on October 6th. But that could only be true if the hundreds of Palestinians killed and thousands injured in the West Bank this year before October 7th don’t matter. To say nothing of those killed, maimed, and injured in Gaza in 2023 before October 7th and whether they matter.

All of us standing with Palestinians deserve credit and acknowledgement, because there are attempts to paint every criticism, every statement of fact of what the Israeli government, and military has done as anti-Semitic, which is not true, and cannot be true. When people are uncomfortable with the answers, they must shout down the people asking the questions. I fear the unfounded “anti-Semitic” attacks would be far more successful if there weren’t so many strong, proud Jewish voices called to solidarity with Palestine by their Judaism, saying “not in our names,” calling for an end to the bombing, the occupation, and the apartheid.

We've seen this pattern of oppression, apartheid, and occupation before. Folks here will recognize it, from our communities, and from our country’s history: 

• from enslavement

• to the 13th Amendment “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime”

• to Reconstruction 

• to Jim Crow

• to Vietnam 

• to Iraq 

• to the violent and militarized policing that we as a country, and a state, fail to hold accountable.

So what can we do?

We need to hold our politicians accountable. Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Colman is the only NJ Representative co-sponsoring the Ceasefire resolution in Washington. Congressman Donald Payne Jr. signed onto a letter supporting a ceasefire. Congresswoman Mikie Sherril signed a letter pushing for a “shift” in military tactics, months into the genocide, but fell short of calling for a ceasefire. Our Senators are absent. Our federal representatives need to hear from us because we are funding and supplying this genocide.

Biden is complicit, the US military is complicit, politicians who remain silent are complicit.

Without our funding, our bombs, and our cover in the UN, the genocide would not be able to continue. So keep up the pressure, keep calling, keep telling your elected officials Palestinians matter, keep telling them you refuse to be complicit with genocide.