Statement by the Network in Defense of Humanity on the Genocide against the Palestinian People

Dec 1, 2023 from Caracas

The genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinian people, continuing its policy of state terrorism, has its roots in 75 years of colonization, military occupation and apartheid regime. Not only did the tragedy of the first Nakba result in expulsions and massacres, but since then, Israel’s government funding of the advancing supremacist settlers has entrenched its project of total territorial occupation, compounded with ongoing extermination.

In two months, more than 20,000 people have been killed, of whom 8,176 are children. Out of a total population of 2,200,000 in Gaza over 1,730,000 have been displaced. In defiance of humanitarian law and human rights, Israel commits permanent bombardments, resulting in the destruction of hospitals, schools, mosques and social services. The economic, communicational and political blockade has disrupted the limits of basic survival.

Zionism, expressed today in Netanyahu’s genocidal government, has earmarked for the further development of the colonies and thus for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians: 121 million out of a billion euro package, 23 million of which are destined to “search and destroy” the projects that the EU approved in favor of the Palestinian communities in Area C of the West Bank; 60% of which is controlled militarily and administratively by the occupier.

The considerable sum of 81 million euros will now be spent on the supply of weapons to the settlers, including assault rifles, vehicles, surveillance technologies and drones.

Most of these weapons come from the United States, but the countries of the European Union, as a whole, constitute the world’s second largest supplier of military systems to the Zionist regime; between 2001 and 2020 military systems were exported to Tel Aviv in the amount of more than 7.7 billion euros. This makes Israel one of the world’s leading military powers: with a military expenditure of more than 23 billion dollars a year (approximately 5 percent of its gross domestic product).

Motivated by the geostrategic importance of the area, the economic powers concentrated in the military industrial complex of the United States, NATO and Israel’s war and intelligence agencies, seek the strengthening of Western power to counteract the advance of the pluricentric and multipolar world.

We repudiate Zionism as a supremacist and colonizing ideology and its current political expression, the government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu -also contested by its own people-. We demand that all those responsible for the genocide of these 75 years be tried in the highest multilateral humanitarian courts and by the peoples of the world.

We call for the implementation of a boycott of military, war training and intelligence services marketed by Israel throughout the world. We also call for the cessation of war supplies to that country. We call for the deepening of the generalized boycott of the products exported by that country to the whole world.

1.We applaud the initiatives of breaking diplomatic relations and similar initiatives undertaken by several countries and we call to increase such measures as a gesture of repudiation of genocide.

2.The United Nations Security Council has an obligation to address the demand for a permanent ceasefire and an end to the occupation supported by millions of people around the world.

3.We urge the media to fulfill their responsibility to inform without bias and to report the facts without criminalizing the right to resistance, which is enshrined in the framework of the rights of peoples.

In defense of humanity, we call for increased solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Long live free Palestine, long live the resistance of the Palestinian people !

–Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity