Statement in Solidarity with the People of Palestine

The Editorial Collective of AGITATE! Unsettling Knowledges, the Imagining Transnational Solidarities Research Circle (ITSRC), and the faculty in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine and condemn the Israeli state’s brutal settler colonial violence and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. As members of a land grab university that resides on the unceded land Mni Sota Makoce of the Dakota people, many of us live in the U.S. and are painfully aware of our complicity with the settler colonial violence against Indigenous people and the continuing dispossession of their land on Turtle Island and the U.S. imperialism that engenders the maiming and killing of the Palestinian people by the U.S.-backed Israeli state. We insist on our ethical and political responsibility to raise our voices against settler colonialism, and the U.S. government’s enabling military and monetary support of the apartheid state of Israel.

A recent Human Rights Watch report acknowledges that Israel continues to “[commit] crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.” The Israeli state’s forced removal of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem and the Israeli state’s disproportionate war against the people of Gaza are the most recent episodes of blatant state-orchestrated ethnic cleansing that has been going on for decades. Yet, the U.S. administration remains silent in the face of this massacre, refusing to recognize Israel’s persistent violations of international laws and human rights obligations. In fact, Israel has never been held to the same legal and human rights commitments that the U.S. demands from states to which it provides military and monetary support.

Writing from the site of the murders of Jamar Clark, Philando Castile, Isak Aden, Dolal Idd, Jamar Clark, George Floyd, and Daunte Wright, we reaffirm our commitment to anti-colonialism, abolition, and the dismantlement of militarized state violence across the world. Like many U.S.-based universities, the University of Minnesota has investments in companies that do business in illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine. We ask our university to divest from Israel, and support the call by Palestinian civil society for BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions).

As educators and cultural workers, we respond to the call by the Palestinian community in Lydda for international protection for Indigenous Palestinians from Israeli state-sanctioned pogroms. As scholars and solidarity workers who seek justice everywhere, we respond to the call of Palestinian feminists and Palestinian freedom fighters for transnational solidarity and assert that Palestine is a feminist issue. “Freedom is a constant struggle” and none of us will be free unless the Palestinian people are free and Palestinian land is liberated. We stand with: the people of Palestine in their demand to end settler colonialism in occupied Palestine and their right of return; Native, Indigenous, and First Nations peoples in their struggles for liberation, land return, and restorative justice in the Americas; Black people in their struggle for reparations and against anti-Black racism in the U.S. and the Americas; Asian Americans in their struggle against U.S. white supremacy, war, and imperialism; Muslim Americans in their struggle against Islamophobia, and the struggles of all peoples around the world whose lives have become disposable by settler colonialism, the U.S.-backed dictatorships, sanctions and wars. In Palestine, Kashmir, Minneapolis, Colombia, India and elsewhere, the dispossessed people’s protests against the tremendous forces of settler colonialism, brutal state repression and genocidal state apathy are repeatedly reduced to “riot,” “anti-nationalism,” “national security threats,” or “conflict” between two equal sides. We strongly reject the logic of “both sides” when it comes to violent power that subjugates people and constructs them as “terrorists”, robbing them of their dignity and humanity and their right to struggle for justice.

Lastly, we object to the curtailment of academic freedom when it comes to critiquing the apartheid state of Israel. The conflation of objections to the Israeli state’s settler colonial violence with anti-semitism is itself a violent oppressive form of censorship and an insult to our academic and moral integrity. We echo the South African anti-apartheid leader Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Palestinian civil society who have rightly pointed out that “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

Free Palestine from ongoing settler colonial terror—now!

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Endorsed by:

AGITATE! Editorial Collective
Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS), University of Minnesota
Imagining Transnational Solidarities Research Circle (ITSRC), University of Minnesota
No Sanctions on Iran Coalition
Race, Indigeneity, Gender & Sexuality Studies (RIGS), University of Minnesota
Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University
Midwest Thamizh Sangam, Illinois
Mizna
Julie Santella
Sawsan Abdulrahim, Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut
Omer Aijaz, Brunel University London
Kriti Budhiraja, Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota
Diane Lopez
Niloofar Adnani, University of Notre Dame
Koni Benson, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Laura Hill, Language Attitude
Coral
Lisa Albrecht, University of Minnesota, Emeritus
Vishal Jamkar, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, U of Minnesota
Faranak Miraftab, University of Illinois
Emina Buzinkic, Transbalkanska solidarnost & ITSRC & AGITATE!
Beaudelaine Pierre
Joseph Gillenwater
Mara McPartland, UMN Geography, Environment & Society
Mubina Qureshi
Marcus Palmer, Texas A&M University-San Antonio
Anya Achtenberg, IJAN; RESPECT (Responsible and Ethical Cuba Travel); International Women’s Writing Guild
Sussan Tahmasebi
Katrien Vanpee, University of Minnesota
Monica Jarvi
Linda Mokdaf, St. Olaf College
Kevin Ehrman-Solberg, Mapping Prejudice Project, UMN Libraries
Hale Konitshek, UMN Dept of GWSS
Sydney Ji
Kathryn Haddad
Haydar Azzouz
Colleen Rost-Banik, Lecturer, University of Hawaii system / UMN aluma
Cindy Wiesner, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
Anne-Marie Debbane, Ph.D., York University
Ali Yıldırım, University of Minnesota
Behnam, Academia
Maria Cecilia Schwedhelm, University of Minnesota
Tayler Nelson, University of Minnesota- Twin Cities
Mangai A, Marappachi Theatre
Mohamed Shahid Mathee, University of Johannesburg
Dr. Laura Mills, University of St Andrews
Ronald Sultana, University of Malta
Veronica Briseño Castrejon, University of Calgary
Khaldoun Samman, Professor
Tessa Farmer
Ella Heaton
Carol Fadda, Syracuse University
Fida Adely, Georgetown University
Crystal, University of Minnesota
Neha Vora, Lafayette College
Nasreen (Kabir)Mohamed
Emek Ergun, UNC Charlotte
Amir Rabiyah
Surafel W A, Addis Abeba University
Sahar D. Sattarzadeh
Carla Schick
Naimah Petigny, University of Minnesota- Dept of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies
KENNETH E SALO, University Of Illinois
Mona Bhan, Syracuse University
Snigdha Kumar, University of Minnesota
Miray Philips, Sociology, University of Minnesota
Merle Davis Matthews, Ph.D. Student, University of Minnesota
Anton Shammas, University of Michigan
Kari Pederson, University of MN
Carla Schick
Marguerite Mills, Geography
Fauzia Dawood
Atilla Hallsby, University of Minnesota
Sumanth Gopinath, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Adan Jerreat-Poole, Ryerson University
Anna Guevarra, Founding Director, Global Asian Studies, University of Illinois Chicago
Sheema Khawar, York University
Artists at Q.arma Building, NE Minneapolis Arts District
Soha Bayoumi , Harvard University
Kamakshi Amar, Masters in Gender Studies Candidate, London School of Economics & Political Science
Sirma Bilge, Professor, Universite de Montreal
José Manuel Santillana Blanco, Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies Department
Jyoti Puri, Simmons University
Roozbeh Shirazi, University of Minnesota
Brittany Knutson, University of Minnesota—Twin Cities
K. Christine Pae, Ph. D, Denison University
Alex Willetts Klapperich, OLPD
Josh Morrison, University of Minnesota
de andre’ beadle, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Beth Capper, Dept of Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Alberta
Demetrius McClendon
Sayan Bhattacharya, Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies
Shannon Winnubst, Department of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Caroline Bayne, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Serra Hakyemez, University of Minnesota
Dina M. Siddiqi, New York University
Quill, GWSS grad
Vadivelu J Babu, Midwest Thamizh Sangam, Illinois
Tanmoy Bhattacharya, University of Delhi
Mark Pedelty, UMN Communication Studies
Mary Jo Klinker, Winona State University
Sima Shakhsari, University of Minnesota
Shahnaaz Suffla, University of South Africa
Mayssoun Sukarieh, King’s College London
Zakia Salime, WGSS, Rutgers,
Selma Banich, Transbalkan Solidarity and For BREAD
Nikoleta Sremac, Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities
Dena Al-Adeeb, University of California, Davis
Richa Nagar, University of Minnesota
QTI Coalition of Colour, Cambridge, UK
David Faust, University of Minnesota
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Syracuse University
Rebecca Jurisz, University of Minnesota
Elizabeth Calhoun, University of Minnesota
Nailah Taman, Mizna
Laila Zaitoun, Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Literature, Western University, Canada
Caity Curry, University of Minnesota
Serawit Fantaye, Bayreuth
Sangeeta Kamat, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

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