The Bethlehem-based BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights has issued an international call for activists to creatively mark both the 40- and 60-year anniversaries in 2007 and 2008. The timing of this campaign is crucial; as the call says, "this may well be the last decade anniversary when Palestinian eye-witnesses from the 1948 Nakba are still living. Now more than ever, Palestinians are counting on local and global society to build pressure for the enforcement of international law -- the foundation for a just peace". The 40/60 anniversaries offer the chance for a range of creative action across borders: a chance to renew and rethink international solidarity.
Alongside so many people around the world, we stand in support of the struggle for Palestinian liberation and self-determination. As Jews in this position, we can and must disrupt the claim that anti-Zionism is anti-Jewish. We reject the assertions that Israel speaks for all Jews. Instead, we stand in solidarity with Palestinians in mourning the Nakba of 1948 and resisting the Israeli occupation of historic Palestine that was expanded again in 1967 and which continues to facilitate the expansion of the Zionist colonial project to this day.
On the anniversary of the 40th anniversary of the continued occupation of Gaza, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and the Golan, we commit to participating in a year of activities towardsinternational protest for the 60th anniversary of the Nakba on May 15, 2008. We call upon Jewish activists to add to the 40/60 year of activism, including but not limited to the following activism:
- actions in support of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against the State of Israel
- actions that hold our own governments accountable for their political and economic support for and complicity with the state of Israel.
- actions against the Zionist monopoly on Jewish identity and voices
The following signatories are Jewish activists from across the globe committed to the liberation of Palestine from Israeli colonization and the collaborating U.S./European economic and political agenda.
