Solidarity with Palestine: Resources to connect our struggles
A month ago, the POWHR team called on the United States government to declare an immediate ceasefire. Vice President Kamala Harris called for an immediate, temporary ceasefire. As an environmental justice group, POWHR is committed to sharing resources to explain why we oppose the ethnic cleansing of Gaza perpetrated by the Israeli government.
The conflict
We recommend a brief animated history on the “Question of Palestine” created by the United Nations. The head of the UN António Guterres has been calling for an immediate ceasefire since October 18 and has encouraged support of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), against the wishes of the US and Israel. Israel has called for Guterres to resign, following Guterres’s insistence that we must contextualize the October 7 attacks on Israelis by Hamas within ongoing structural violence perpetrated by the Israeli government, a product of settler colonialism. In the International Court of Justice, South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians.
Prominent Israeli government officials have called for the annihilation of Gaza, the starvation of its people, and removal of Palestinians. We take seriously the deliberations by scholars of genocide regarding ways in which the term genocide applies to the current conflict.
Connections with police brutality
Police brutality continues to threaten our communities. We stand in solidarity with the fight to stop Cop City – a destructive and widely-opposed police and fire department training facility in Atlanta, Georgia. Meanwhile, US police are being trained in Israel, including Virginian and West Virginian forces. These ties between US and Israeli officials normalize practices of mass surveillance, criminalization, and violent repressure of communities the governments deem threatening. In Georgia, a “police exchange” program with Israel coincided with the doubling of fatal police shootings, which disproportionately impact communities of color.
Connections with weapons production
We support organizers in MVP-impacted communities in the New River Valley who have called for the closure of the Radford Army Ammunition Plant (RAAP) over concerns stemming from suspected environmental health impacts. The arsenal is operated by BAE systems, which supplies the Israeli government with the weapons used to murder Palestinians. In 2019, Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC proudly proclaimed the importance of fracked gas to US military operations throughout the Southeast.
Connections with water pollution
We work to protect water. The devastation of water pollution is visible to people along the MVP route. Even before this war, 97% of Gaza’s water was unfit for human consumption due to a polluted and depleting aquifer and few desalination plants. The war – and conflicts past – has endangered most viable water sources.
Connections with fossil fuel extraction
We oppose the expansion of fossil fuel production in sacrifice zones globally. During brutal attacks on Gaza late last year, the Israeli government gave licenses to Israeli companies to explore fracked gas in Palestinian territory, which has sizable reserves of oil and gas. An author of a 2019 UN report on oil and gas in Palestine said of the current crisis: “In the Middle East, you can never talk about conflict without the corresponding associations of oil and gas.”
