Jewish Organisations' Passover Statement, After 40 Days Of Starvation

Why is this year not like the other years?

40 days of starvation

For 40 days, Israel has blocked all the essentials of life from reaching 2.3 million Palestinians civilians in Gaza. In the Torah, 40 days and 40 nights are a metaphor for an extended time. These 40 days have indeed been endless, barbaric – and Israel’s crime of starvation continues.

This weekend we enter the Jewish festival of Pesach. Around the world, we will open our services by saying,

Let all who are hungry come and eat.

Each year we envision liberation, but this year is not like the other years. This year, these words feel unbearable.

Pesach teaches us that the most odious crime is one people’s subjugation of another: a crime built on a lie. This year we are shattered by witnessing Gaza struggle each day to survive the crime of genocide, built on the lie of Jewish supremacy.

We plead and we work for the end of this needless hunger, for ceasefire, for the justice which underlies real peace.

This year we gather to hold back the despair. Next year, may the criminals be held accountable while all of Palestine breathes in safety.

***

About Global Jews for Palestine: We are Jews from many countries, who are members of local, national and international networks and organizations. We are multi-ethnic and multi-generational and our members embrace a broad range of viewpoints on Jewish religious and ethical traditions. We are connected by our involvement in the struggle for Palestinian rights, and by our determination to work for justice. We oppose Zionism and all forms of racism and colonialism.

We believe that it is our particular responsibility to challenge Jewish organizations whose alliances and actions undermine Palestinian human and national rights, promote Jewish exceptionalism, and overturn Jewish social justice traditions. At the heart of our work is the fight for Palestinian liberation and the struggle for a world free of racial and ethnic hierarchy, colonial domination, and unbridled militarism.

© Scoop Media