A Public Statement on the Gaza Genocide
As of today's writing, there are over 63,000 Palestinians killed and over 161,000 Palestinians injured in Gaza’s ongoing genocide [Source]. There can be no question that it is a genocide, and this fact has been confirmed and echoed by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Amnesty International, International Federation for Human Rights, United Nations' special committee report, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and many more non-governmental organizations, emergency aid groups, genocide studies experts, and international law scholars. Even J Street, one of the largest pro-Israel advocacy groups in the United States, has acknowledged through President Ben-Ami that Israel has broken the international genocide convention.
50501-Houston stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza, the U.S., and abroad, who continue to suffer horrors at the hands of the Israeli government and their international and corporate collaborators. We condemn attempts by the Israeli government and their genocide supporters to obfuscate the scale of destruction and loss of life in Gaza, and their attempts to deflect criticism and evade accountability by conflating public outcry against Palestinian massacre with anti-Semitism.
We call upon elected officials at all levels of U.S. government to condemn the mass murder of the captive Palestinian population in Gaza, and to divest from Israeli training of U.S. law enforcement, Israeli tech firms, and Israeli weapons companies who use their products on Palestinians before selling them to the U.S.
We call upon U.S. arms manufacturers to stop selling arms to the Israeli government.
We call upon U.S. leadership to divert the $3.3bn in annual support to Israel that it relies on to carry out its genocidal campaign to the millions of Americans in need of housing, healthcare, food, and education.
We call upon Texas elected officials to repeal the unconstitutional Texas House Bill 793 in violation of our First Amendment Rights in barring contractors from boycotting Israel, which impacts Texans’ ability to receive state aid.
We call upon the people of Texas to voice support and contribute your support for the Palestinian people and condemn mass murder perpetrated by the Israeli government.
We call upon the people of Greater Houston to support local pro-Palestinian justice groups like Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) Houston, Houston for Palestinian Liberation (HTX4Liberation), and the Students for Justice in Palestine at University of Houston who are doing vital work in bringing awareness to these ongoing atrocities, pressuring government officials to act swiftly and righteously, supporting justice for the Palestinian people, and organizing support for the aid of Gazans.
In Solidarity,
