By Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 30, 2023
Contact:
Wiscoforpali.org
608-440-9587
wiscoforpali@gmail.com
Event: https://fb.me/e/34CWuApJG
“Wisconsin All Out For Palestine”
Saturday, December 9, 2023, 1 p.m
State Capitol, Madison, WI
Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine (WCJP), representing more than 50 organizations throughout the State, sponsors the “Wisconsin All Out For Palestine” rally and march on Saturday, December 9 at the Capitol. We welcome all to join in voicing our urgent demands. This family-friendly event begins at 1 pm at the Capitol.
Our diversity of speakers demonstrates widespread opposition to US policies toward Palestine and the whole region. Coalition convener Janan Najeeb joins speakers from co-founding organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace, and Milwaukee Muslim Women Coalition, as well as representatives from Indigenous, Black, LGBTQ+, Labor, and other BIPOC and workers’ communities Coalition demands:
- Permanent ceasefire in Gaza
- Lift the siege of Gaza
- End all USA aid to Israel
- End Israeli occupation of Palestine
- End criminalization of speech in support of Palestine
- Free all political prisoners in Israeli prisons
- Reparations and reconstruction for Gaza
The WCJP was formed on Oct 8 in response to Israel’s declaration of war on the Palestinian people in Gaza, where civilian deaths and injuries have reached a level without historic precedent. The UN Secretary-General declared, “Palestinians in Gaza are suffering a humanitarian catastrophe. Almost 1.7 million people have been forced from their homes – but nowhere is safe.”
The UN Executive Director on Women, Sima Bahous, estimates 67% of the civilians killed are women and children. She concluded, “Women and girls are paying the biggest price. Two mothers were killed every hour, seven women every two hours.” Thousands of women deliver babies in Gazan hospitals without adequate water, medicines, or energy to power medical equipment. Women undergo dangerous c-sections without anesthesia or antibiotics. No incubators or formula are available for the hundreds of babies who lost their mothers.
Half of all housing units in Gaza are damaged or destroyed by US-supplied planes flown by the Israeli military, with more than a million people internally displaced. President Biden signed off on brutal bombing campaigns, including targeting the remaining Gazan hospitals housing refugees, and injured and ill people. This inhumane destruction inflicted on a civilian population must end.
For seventy-five years, the government of Israel forcibly expanded an apartheid regime, destroying Palestinian homes and villages, stealing Palestinian land, and segregating and fragmenting Palestinian families and communities. Palestinians are killed with impunity, leaving the entire populace in a state of constant fear and insecurity.
This year, under the most racist, far-right government in Israeli history, the theft of Palestinian lands accelerated at a furious pace. Heavily armed Jewish settlers, living in hundreds of illegal settlements on stolen lands, killed countless Palestinians and terrorized communities, while Israeli Occupation Forces protected the aggressors. Israeli forces repeatedly storm the holiest Christian and Muslim sites in Jerusalem. These wanton human rights abuses must stop!
The events of October 7, 2023, did not happen in a vacuum. They were the result of decades of brutal oppression, starvation, surveillance, imposed poverty, mass incarceration, and frequent bombardment. Resistance to oppression is not terrorism. The United Nations affirms the right to self-determination and the right to a people under foreign occupation to resist the occupiers. Palestinians fight for liberation, self-determination, and the right to return to their land. The Palestinian struggle is akin to the Black struggle in apartheid South Africa. The actions of the Israeli government are akin to the US Government’s treatment of the Native American population. Seventy-five years of oppressive occupation must end!
While the Israeli government wages a genocidal war in Gaza under the guidance of the Biden administration and with the support of most Wisconsin Senators and Representatives, we stand in solidarity to demand change. We stand in unity to say “Never again for anyone!” We stand together to demand our federal and state representatives position themselves on the right side of history.
Special interests and lobbies must not displace the just demands of the public. We stand in solidarity with the just struggle of the Palestinian people and in recognition of the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed to maintain Israel’s brutal apartheid system. We are a broad representation of Wisconsin people who will not rest until Palestine is free – from the river to the sea!
FREE PALESTINE
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