We salute all the participants in the Global March to Jerusalem who have overcome great obstacles in order to demonstrate their solidarity and raise awareness to the horrifying persecution that Palestinians living in Jerusalem face. Jerusalem is at the center to the Palestinian liberation struggle.

As Jews committed to justice and equality, we stand in unequivocal solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle against apartheid and for self-determination, return and full equality. As Jews committed to justice and equality, we also claim our own struggle against Zionism, which has debased our histories, usurped our past and traditions and turned them into weapons of oppression. We long for an open Jerusalem, a city once again hospitable to all people and all faiths, a symbol of peace, universality and co-existence. We call for a Jerusalem that embodies the best of its rich past that nourishes humanity and evokes the hopeful future that inspires us all.

We honor today the inspiring steadfastness of Hana Shalabi and Khader Adnan, and the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners who are the backbones of the Palestinian struggle, and call for sustained solidarity with all prisoners of conscience.

From the uprisings in the Arab world, inspired by the many decades of Palestinian resistance to colonialism, through the revolts of the people in Greece and Spain, inspired by the Egyptian uprising, and to the Occupy Wall Street revolts in the US that followed, the world has entered a turbulent period, a period of both great hope and great danger. The world’s ruling classes and their local partners stand united in draining every last scrap of wealth from the earth. The ruling classes of the world are ruthlessly committed to preserving their power over us even at the cost of destroying our one and only common planet. The ruling classes all over the world are seeking to roll back every achievement that people have achieved over the last century in order to fund their bonuses. The people of Palestine and the Middle East have been subjected to the most brutal oppression for decades in order to preserve the system of oil, arms, and finance that is an important pillar of global domination.

Palestine is therefore in every heart beating for freedom, a source of inspiration for solidarity across the whole world, and a victory for Palestine is a victory for oppression everywhere. The Global March to Jerusalem responded to the call for solidarity from Palestine in a time of ferment and revolt. Like so many other popular initiatives, like the struggle in Palestinian communities such as Bil’in and Ni’iln, like the occupation of Tahrir Square, like the Occupy movement in the US, like the popular uprisings in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and Tunisia, the Global March to Jerusalem embodies at its heart a yearning for a radically different vision of the world, a vision of the world remade to be ours, by the struggle of people in solidarity with each other. This vision is both necessary and challenging. We are grateful for the Global March on Jerusalem for taking a step towards re-imagining that spirit of Jerusalem. Let us all stand together and build that vision together and make it real together.

United, the People, will never be defeated.

In Struggle and Solidarity,

The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network