Black Lives Matter Grassroots, a collection of racial-justice activists, released a statement “in solidarity with the Palestinian people” on Tuesday, days after Hamas terrorists slaughtered at least 900 Israeli civilians.
“When a people have been subject to decades of apartheid and unimaginable violence, their resistance must not be condemned, but understood as a desperate act of self-defense,” the group said.
The organization said it “stands in solidarity with our Palestinian family who are currently resisting 57 years of settler colonialism and apartheid.”
“As Black people continue the fight to end militarism and mass incarceration in our own communities, let us understand the resistance in Palestine as an attempt to tear down the gates of the world’s largest open air prison. As a radical Black organization grounded in abolitionist ideals, we see clear parallels between Black and Palestinian people,” BLM Grassroots said.
“We, too, understand what it means to be surveilled, dehumanized, property seized, families separated, our people criminalized and slaughtered with impunity, locked up in droves, and when we resist they call us terrorists,” the statement adds. “We, too, dream of a world where our people may live freely on decolonized land. May the borders, checkpoints, prisons, police and watchlists that terrorize our communities crumble and may the world we build from their ashes honor those who have fallen in struggle.”
The group concluded by calling for the dismantling of the “entire apartheid system” and urging the U.S. government to “immediately stop funding war and redirect the $4 billion in annual spending from the Israeli military to repair the damage caused by U.S.-backed wars, military air strikes, coups, and destabilizing interventions against oppressed people around the world.”
Israel declared war over the weekend after Hamas terrorists rampaged through communities along Israel’s border with Gaza, raping and torturing civilians and abducting women, children, and elderly people.
A horrifying scene played out at a desert music festival by the Gaza border over the weekend when terrorists descended on the party and murdered and brutalized hundreds of young Israelis. Israel’s search and rescue team has recovered 260 bodies from the site.
One survivor of the massacre at the festival told Tablet Magazine about having seen “bodies, mainly of young women, lying cold and mutilated. Of scantily clad corpses, many of whom appeared to have been shot at point-blank. Of cars, perforated by bullets or blown up by grenades.”
“Women have been raped at the area of the rave next to their friends bodies, dead bodies,” another survivor told the magazine.
“Several of these rape victims appear to have been later executed. Others were taken to Gaza. In photographs released online, you can see several paraded through the city’s streets, blood gushing from between their legs,” the report notes.
At least 765 people have reportedly been killed in retaliatory strikes in Gaza while thousands more have been injured on both sides.
The Israeli military said Tuesday it had retaken the border towns that were overrun by Hamas terrorists over the weekend after having killed roughly 1,500 Hamas terrorists since Saturday.
Other groups have received backlash over similarly pro-Palestinian statements issued in the days since the terrorist attacks, including 31 Harvard University student groups that signed a statement explicitly blaming Israel for the atrocities it has experienced in recent days.
“We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” the groups wrote. “Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum. For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison . . . the apartheid regime is the only one to blame. Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years.”
“The coming days will require a firm stand against colonial retaliation,” the statement concluded. “We call on the Harvard community to take action to stop the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians.”