This 7 October 2025 marks two years of genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank, perpetrated by the Israeli regime. A year ago, we noted the first anniversary of this onslaught with both anger and incredulity that it had gone on for so long. Now, two years into this nightmare for the Palestinians in Gaza and indeed, all of Palestine, we are committed to doing whatever we can to help stop this barbarity.
Close to 2 million people in Gaza have been displaced, most of them multiple times; at least 65,000 are officially recorded as having been murdered, with three times that number injured. Experts warn that the true figures are likely much higher. Others have been starved to death in a deliberately produced famine; others are dying for lack of the medical supplies that the Israeli regime refuses to let through. And Gaza now possesses the highest number of children who are amputees.
Hospitals have been treated as targets; every university has been deliberately obliterated. Over 90 percent of all residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. These are two years of abominable and reprehensible inaction on the part of our governments.
The International Court of Justice effectively accepted that this a plausible genocide in January 2024; but for all the principal international human rights organisations, for leading genocide and Holocaust scholars and for the United Nations, there is no doubt — this is, chillingly, a genocide. The Genocide Convention creates obligations on other nations — certainly not to aid and assist the perpetrators of genocide, but also an affirmative obligation to act to prevent it.
Yet many of our governments are indeed complicit in this genocide by continuing to sell to and purchase arms from Israel, by failing to impose sanctions, and even (in some cases) by supplying surveillance information, which assists the Israeli regime’s military operations.
October 2 was Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. On that day we who are Jewish are called on to atone for our own wrongdoing and that of any members of our communities. Yet it was on this day that Israeli soldiers forcibly boarded the 40-plus boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza. The boats were carrying aid as well as parliamentarians, lawyers, doctors, and activists from more than 40 countries. The seizure was carried out in international waters — yet another violation of international law to add to so many perpetrated by Israel.
Despite the crushing evidence of the Israeli state’s criminality, legacy Jewish establishment organisations in all our countries remain in denial and lockstep with the Zionist state’s agenda. Their principal contribution to the swirling discussion about Palestine is to try to brand those criticising Israel as antisemitic. This despite the fact that many are Jewish. In addition, these very organisations that claim to represent all Jews are fiercely attacking Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab peoples in their respective countries if they dare speak up about the genocide, as well as Indigenous, Black, and Brown peoples.
Those who have supported Israel’s Gaza genocide must be held accountable even if they atone for the rest of their lives.
We emphatically say to the world that Zionists do not speak for us. We align ourselves with the growing numbers of all peoples who care about justice and dignity for Palestinians, for all life and for the planet. The brutality of this onslaught on Palestinians, on their history and connection to the land, and on the land, is antithetical to life itself. Sadly, this is entirely consistent with the behaviour of other settler-colonial regimes and colonizing states. This is why countless Indigenous land defenders around the world have declared their solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Global Jews for Palestine is made up of Jewish anti-Zionist organisations in more than 20 countries from every continent. We call for an end to the complicity of our governments with the crimes that the Israeli regime is committing. We demand that our governments sanction Israel and call for a two-way arms embargo on Israel. We call for Israel to be held accountable, for restitution and reparations. Above all, we demand an immediate end to this genocide, an end to the ethnic cleansing, and an end to Israeli impunity. We are steadfast in our call for freedom and justice and liberation for the Palestinian people.
