**This statement does not convey the position of the network in its entirety, but solely of those undersigned.**
On April 27th, Human Rights Watch issued their seminal report “A Threshold Crossed”, describing in detail the methods through which Israeli policy has systematically dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians mainly by virtue of their identity. According to Human Rights Watch, “these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
In the days following the report, we began to hear more frequently about the many Palestinian families who were threatened with forceful displacement from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, echoing the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their cities and villages in the last century. This latest forced displacement was accompanied by attacks on Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem during one of the Islamic year’s holiest nights (Laylat Al Qadr, The Night of Fate) and some of Islam’s holiest days (Eid El Fitr, Holiday of Breaking the Fast) and by a campaign of stalking, terrorizing, attacking and arresting protestors. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), Israel’s brutal attacks on the besieged Gaza sector in the same period have killed more than 240 civilians, including over 60 children. Rockets from Gaza have killed 10 Israeli citizens in the same period.
As members of a decolonial network, our scholarly work is deeply rooted in anti-colonial thought, postcolonial theory and decolonial practices and in solidarity with the oppressed. We find that the displacement and persecution of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah Neihbourhood is a continuum of the settler-colonial logic practiced in Palestine since 1948, where Israel continues to establish and expand illegal settlements in the West Bank, and expropriate homes and land from Palestinians in favour of Jewish settlers. Even though a ceasefire has been reached with Gaza, the displacements in neighbourhoods such as Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan are still an ongoing threat that must be stopped immediately. These acts are clear violations of international law. Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem condemns Israel’s displacement of Palestinian people from their homes and lands, and asserts that the Israeli Nation State Law enacted in 2018, which protects the Jewish right to self-determination above all others, has resulted in legitimizing such acts, creating a discriminatory hierarchy of rights.
Therefore, we stand in solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle against displacement and colonization. We also stand in solidarity with groups and individuals all over the world, regardless of their faith – Muslim, Jewish, other faiths, secular – and regardless of their ethnicity or nationality, who are rejecting Israel’s ongoing violence, colonial expansion and displacement of Palestinians.
The purpose of this statement is to condemn the colonial policies of a state, and does not target or seek to hold responsible any ethnic or religious group. We, the undersigned, wholeheartedly condemn anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism. We explicitly reject any attempts to demonise Jewish people for the actions of Israel, for which they are not responsible, anymore than Palestinians are to be held responsible for the actions of regional representatives/authorities like Hamas, who similarly do not represent all Palestinians. We support all good faith dialogue and action seeking to challenge expressions of Israeli state power that continues to marginalise Palestinian people as part of the expansion of the Israeli settler-colonial project. Further we reject the claim that to criticise Israel is tantamount to criticising Jewish people: we recognise that such claims, with their false equivalence between the state of Israel and all Jewish people, are themselves a form of anti-Semitism.
Dr. Julia Schöneberg, University of Kassel, Germany
Dr. Juan Telleria, University of the Basque Country
Prof. Dr. Aram Ziai, University of Kassel, Germany
Dr. Paola Minoia, University of Helsinki, Finland
Prof. Dr. Lata Narayanaswamy, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Prof. Dr. Wendy Harcourt, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague, The Netherlands
Dr. Kalpana Wilson, Birkbeck University of London, United Kingdom
Prof. Dr. Cheryl McEwan, Durham University, United Kingdom
Prof. Dr. Jónína Einarsdóttir, University of Iceland, Iceland
Prof. Dr. Parvati Raghuram, The Open University, United Kingdom
Laura Sobral, Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal
Predrag Milić, TU Vienna, AustriaBurcu Ateş, Middle East Technical University Ankara, Turkey
Burcu Ateş, Middle East Technical University Ankara, Turkey
Prof. Dr. Inga Kuźma, University of Lodz, Poland
Prof. Dr. Ruth Arias-Gutiérrez, Universidad Estatal Amazónica, Ecuador
Prof. Dr. Giti Chandra, University of Iceland, Iceland
Danilo Babic, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Dr. Ethemcan Turhan, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Prof. Dr. José-Luis Anta Félez, Universidad de Jaén, Spain
Dr. Cristiano Gianolla, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Dr. Su-ming Khoo, NUI Galway, Ireland
Prof. Dr. Seema Arora Jonsson, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Yafa El-Masri, University of Padova, Italy
Mariasole Pepa, University of Padova, Italy
Prof. Dr. Unai Villalba, University of the Basque Country
Prof. Dr. Alexander Horstmann, Tallinn University, Estonia
Dr. Sara Riva, University of Queensland, Australia
Dr. Stefano Moncada, University of Malta, Malta
Jelena Vicentic, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Prof. Dr. Daniel Bendix, THH Friedensau, Germany
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