Palestinian solution is needed

To the Editor:

If terror were rain, there would be a deluge in Gaza. If death were a rockfall, there would be an avalanche in Gaza. If injustice, if crimes against humanity, if genocide were the wind, there would be a hurricane in Gaza.

For 75 years, the people of Palestine have suffered humiliation and atrocities. They have suffered occupation, displacement, destruction of livelihoods, blockade, apartheid. If they have escaped the cage, they have had no right to return. In Gaza, they have lived in the world’s largest open-air prison, a thin strip of land 25 miles long, crammed with 2.2 million souls, half children, bordered by barbed wire and gun towers and by the sea and gun boats.

The Palestinian people have the legal right to resist, peacefully or by taking up arms, the horrors visited upon them by successive Israeli governments.

When Hamas exploded on Oct. 7 in attacks that few people could believe were not expected by the Israeli government, and to which the Israeli military did not respond for many hours, Netanyahu began a campaign of collective punishment against the civilians of Gaza.

The project of the Israeli government is Zionism. Zionism is not Judaism. Zionism is a form of racist settler colonialism. To be anti-Zionist is not to be antisemitic. It is, in fact, to long for the safety of Israeli people, because anti-Zionists know that as long as Zionism persists, there will be no safety for Israelis or their victims. 

In this time of multiplied horror for the Palestinian people, the United States is deeply complicit. Whose side are you on? What are you doing to stop genocide? Raise your voice, move your body, for ceasefire and humanitarian aid, and for an end to genocide, crimes against humanity, occupation.

Whether you are Jewish or not, join Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now. Work, in the long-term, for a single, democratic, non-theocratic, multiethnic state for Palestinians, Israelis, and all peoples within what once were the borders of Palestine. This is the only path to a free Israel and a free Palestine.

Jennifer Scarlott
Coordinator, North Bronx Racial Justice