The African Americans for Justice in the Middle East & North Africa, a collection of activists and scholars in support of peace, justice and self-determination, issued the following statement in response to the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people of Gaza. The statement reads as follows:
The African Americans for Justice in the Middle East and North Africa (AAJMENA) urges President Obama to intercede to end the slaughter of innocent Palestinians in Gaza. Israel’s practice of collective punishment and its detestable killing of large numbers of Palestinian children and entire families is simply unacceptable by any standards of international law and morality. AAJMENA stands united in condemning the collective killing of hundreds of Palestinians who are besieged and confined, unable to take refuge from Israel’s military aircraft, tanks, bombs and naval shelling.
AAJMENA deplores the aggression being carried out by the Israel Defense Force. The people of the United States can no longer stand by as the government of the United States continues to both justify and fund Israel’s war of aggression, its seven year siege of Gaza, and its multiple decades long illegal occupation of Palestine. The silence of the people of the United States in the face of this horror implicates the United States in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
We of AAJMENA urge President Obama to make every effort possible to end the Israeli administered, and U.S. sanctioned, siege of Gaza. Israel must agree to an immediate cease fire and start negotiating in good faith for the end of its illegal occupation and settlements policy
Only through a just peace agreement that recognizes the right of the Palestinian people to national self-determination will the predictable cycle of violence end; a violent cycle which is the outcome of Israel’s long-standing, illegal occupation–and Gaza blockade–that we, the tax payers of the United States have sanctioned and funded.