Cultural Survival expresses our profound grief for the thousands of Palestinians and Israelis killed in recent weeks after Hamas’ horrific October 7 attack and taking hostage of innocent Israeli civilians and the ongoing bombardment of Gaza by the Israeli military. We repudiate the current and decades-long genocidal violence against the Palestinian people. We add our voices to those of millions of people around the world demanding a safe corridor for humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip and demanding an immediate ceasefire.
We are an Indigenous-led organization that for more than 51 years has denounced colonial imposition on Indigenous Peoples around the world, including practices of discrimination, marginalization, forced assimilation, ethnic cleansing, genocide, apartheid, and crimes against humanity against Indigenous Peoples to remove them from their lands and disrupt their cultures, languages, and identities. We denounce all forms of hate including Islamophobia and antisemitism.
The Palestinian people have suffered under illegal military occupation for more than six decades in the territories where they have historically lived. They continue to suffer under military siege upon the lands where the Palestinians who have not been expelled from their territories continue to live. Palestinians continue to be subjected to daily humiliations of living under apartheid practices, the economic blockade, theft of lands, hardships of limited access to clean water, construction of illegal settlements, and general destruction of social conditions.
Recognizing this deep power imbalance between the State of Israel and its closest ally, the U.S., and the Palestinian people, we affirm the words of many organizations and individuals that while the Palestinian people have the right to resist Israeli occupation, Hamas’s violent and brutal attacks and hostage-taking against civilians, including children, Elders, and activists for Palestinian justice, violate international law and constitute war crimes. Likewise, Israeli retaliation against civilians, the use of chemical weapons like white phosphorus, and the blockading of humanitarian aid constitute war crimes and have no place in a solution to mediate peace.
We are firm in our values to uphold human rights and international law. We demand an immediate ceasefire, immediate restoration of fuel supply, electricity, water, and communications in Gaza, access to humanitarian aid in Gaza, that forcibly displaced people are able to safely return to their homes, and negotiations to release the hostages, as well as action on efforts to address the underlying causes of this decades-long conflict and commitment to long-term solutions.
