Nov 13, 2023
As adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle and signatories of the Declaration for Life, Sexta Grietas del Norte condemns the Israeli state’s war on Gaza, and stands in solidarity with Palestinian people everywhere in their struggle for life, dignity, and liberation. Outcasts in their own land, Palestinians have seen their homes and villages destroyed, their land and water stolen, and their holy places desecrated by an occupying power. They have every right to regain their original territories and to resist this ongoing erasure, subjugation, and dehumanization!
It is ironic that both the state of Israel and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights were born in the same year: 1948. Despite the lofty ideals of its Declaration, and despite being a direct response to the atrocities of World War II, the United Nations, controlled by the U.S. and Western European powers, went on to re-create the same imperialist and colonial behavior of the past by imposing a new and foreign political entity, the state of Israel, upon the peoples of Palestine. Zionism, a settler-colonial ideology, was championed as a response to global anti-semitism, and thus, that new state brought with it the poisonous European racist arrogance that sees all “others” as inferior. This has led, despite glowing initial promises of equality for all, to the present settler-colonial apartheid state in which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has continued to be violated daily, and on a massive scale for generations.
There is no need for us to itemize decades of crimes and violations of human rights perpetrated by the government of Israel on Palestinians; they are well known to all the world. They are also abetted by the billions of dollars in military aid provided to the Israeli war machine by the US government every year.
Our compañer@s in Chiapas are also being targeted by tentacles of the same military-industrial capitalist hydra for their struggle against oblivion. In neocolonial, neoliberal “Western” regimes, such as the U.S., the government violently represses its own people too, labeling them as domestic terrorists when they defend lands, waters, and life.
We decry the use of military violence that aims to extinguish the Palestinian peoples and all those who struggle against oppression. There will be no peace until the land and people of Palestine are free.
We understand that the movement to free Palestine–like the Palestinian people themselves–is diverse, and includes many different perspectives, positions, and visions of a liberated future. While the politics and choice of tactics of some factions may be at odds with the Zapatista principles we adhere to, we affirm the right of Palestinians to resist occupation. Our solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people against genocide and occupation and for life, dignity, and freedom is unwavering.
On October 12, we joined the call by the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) “to denounce the war against the peoples” everywhere. From Maui, Espanola, Haiti, Palestine, Rojava, Guatemala, Armenia (Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh), Atlanta, to Mexico and beyond: we say stop the war against all peoples of the world and long live struggles for dignified life!
FREE PALESTINE! CEASEFIRE NOW! END THE OCCUPATION!