NYC Councilmember Charles Barron: Free Palestine!

Statement by New York City Councilmember Charles Barron.

Let’s be very clear. The attack on Israel by Hamas, on October 7, 2023 was not an “unprovoked attack”; it was inevitable and must be put into historical context and cannot be used as a justification for escalating the continuing genocide against the Palestinian people.

Let me state unequivocally that I have always deplored any intentional killing of innocent non-combatant women, children, and men in any theater of war, anywhere in the world including the so-called Middle East.

The road to peace in the so-called Middle East can be achieved if the international community calls for the apartheid Israeli government to end its decades-long colonization and illegal, immoral occupation of Palestinian land, since the Balfour Declaration in 1917. The international community must support the right of Palestinian refugees who were forcibly displaced from their land, to return to their homes.

From the Englishman Lord Balfour’s Declaration, in 1917, to support the Jewish people in establishing a “national homeland” in Palestine; to the Nakba (“Catastrophe”) when 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in 1947 to establish a Jewish state in 1948; to the present; tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian women, children, and men have been killed by Israeli forces.

In 2014, a United Nations report documented that in the attack on the Gaza strip, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) killed 1523 Palestinians, which included 509 children.

Earlier this year, before the October 7th attack, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Donald Trump of the Middle East, and his fascist right-wing government annexed more settlements in the West Bank, killing over 239 Palestinians and 40 of them were children. The armed Jewish civilian settlers participated in the killings, according to international reports.

The United States for decades has supplied the state of Israel with billions of dollars worth of arms to continue the occupation of Palestinian land. For over 16 years, Israel has imposed an illegal blockade on Gaza. Nothing comes in by land, sea or air! No food, no electricity, no fuel! The blockade did not start as a reaction to the latest attack.

This madness must stop! How much blood must be spilled before Israel ends its occupation of Palestine?

Free Palestine and there will be peace in the Middle East!

Oct. 12, 2023