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Israel is massacring us. Palestinians need people around the world to take a stand

A global campaign of protest and civil disobedience is vital if the will of free peoples is to defeat the powers that support and finance the regimes of genocide and occupation
Mourners react next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at a hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on 17 October, 2023 (Reuters)

Friends and comrades.

If you are reading this from outside Gaza, you know more about the news than I do.

We in Gaza are cut off from the world. Since the beginning of the Israeli attack on us, Israel's defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has issued a decision to cut off electricity, fuel and materials for 2.3 million civilians living in Gaza, half of whom are children.

In the few times that I have been able to connect to the internet, I have read about and watched the horror of the atrocities that have occurred in various places in the Gaza Strip, places that I cannot reach due to the complete paralysis of life and the interruption of communications and electricity.

In just eight days to date, over 2,800 people have been killed in Gaza, the vast majority of them civilians. Dozens of entire families - men, women and children - have been exterminated in their beds, after Israeli warplanes bombed their homes as they slept.

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These terrible massacres against civilians are not a mistake, but rather a clear decision carried out by Israel with premeditation.

Israel is always proud of its technological progress. It possesses smart weapons that can accurately identify targets. Therefore, destroying civilian homes and killing thousands of people can only be an intentional decision.

We are being slaughtered

These massacres are a translation of Gallant's declaration at the beginning of this aggression that the Palestinians are "human animals", a phrase that essentially means that their killing is justified.

Entire neighbourhoods in Gaza, such as the Rimal district in the heart of Gaza City, have been turned to rubble under intense, destructive Israeli bombing.


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Israel has been asking hospitals to evacuate patients in order to bomb and destroy them.

Israel has hacked local radio and demanded more than a million residents of the northern Gaza Strip head to its south. Is there another name for all this other than genocide?

Israel has not changed and is not responding to the Palestinian resistance. This is the nature of Israel, from the first moment of its founding in 1948.

Israel, from that first moment, displaced the Palestinians and forced them to leave their cities and villages through the pressure of the massacres it committed, and then established a state called Israel on the ruins of their towns.

Israel today seeks to complete what it began 75 years ago and is working to displace the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, in order to evacuate the land for its racist state.

Israel today seems completely safe from being held to account for its crimes because it receives unlimited support from the United States administration and western governments.

This support represents open complicity for the annihilation of the Palestinian people.

We are being slaughtered, and if the 1948 genocide happened when there was scant media coverage, it is happening today in front of eight billion people watching the massacre in real time.

Dignity and justice for all

What will it take to stop this massacre?

The only way is you. We trust the ability of the free people of the world to stop this madness. What is happening here is not the battle of the Palestinians alone, it is the battle of the racist colonial powers in the face of the values of freedom, dignity, and justice for all human beings.

Be with us in our common struggle for a world without genocidal regimes, ethnic-cleansing regimes or racially discriminatory regimes.

The extermination of the Palestinians did not begin on 7 October; rather it is an ongoing approach.

Before 7 October, Israel was following a strategy of systematically displacing us in less noisy ways by making Gaza a place unfit for decent living conditions.

Yes, we can stop this madness. This is the historic moment for us to stand together and say: enough!

But the momentum of the massacre today is an opportunity for all of you to take a historic stand in which you prove that the will of free peoples is stronger than the powers that finance and support the survival of regimes of genocide and occupation.

We call on you, in the name and memory of the hundreds of children exterminated by Israel in recent days, and in the name of all the oppressed whose dignity is being violated, to take your historic stand.

This is the time to announce demonstrations, sit-ins and civil disobedience in cities around the world.

Yes, we can stop this madness. 

This is the historic moment for us to stand together and say: enough! To say loudly and forcefully that the time for regimes that propagate genocide and racial discrimination has ended forever.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Ahmed Abu Artema is a Palestinian journalist and peace activist. Born in Rafah, in 1984, Abu Artema is a refugee from Al Ramla village. He authored the book "Organized Chaos".
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