From Israeli citizens to Madrid City Council Representatives,

Dear Madrid City Council Representatives,

We write to you as citizens of Israel (Palestinians, Jews, and others), who actively oppose our successive governments' policies of belligerent occupation, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid against the indigenous people of this land, the Palestinian people. Following years of activism within Israel, we have come to the conclusion that in order to change this reality, an international campaign is required. Therefore, we support the efforts of conscientious citizens around the world, who have joined the Palestinian call for BDS, attempting to persuade their governments and public institutions to endorse a cultural, academic, and economic boycott of Israel, as well as divestment and sanctions policies.

We write to you today to encourage you to hold the State of Israel accountable for its consistent human rights violations and war crimes. As we are informed by our Spanish colleagues, the city council of Madrid collaborates with the Israeli Embassy and co-finances “cultural” productions aimed at whitewashing Israel’s daily crimes, and its system of colonization, occupation, and apartheid.

Israel’s abuse of culture to serve its’ propaganda is outrageous, since culture is meant to promote humanistic values of equality, tolerance, and liberty, while at the same time, Israel denies these basic freedoms to the Palestinian people. Israel’s violent discriminatory practices target Palestinians living under brutal military occupation in the West Bank or under the occupation and siege of the Gaza Strip; it also targets Palestinians living within the Green Line, who are second class citizens, whose lands have been, for the most part, appropriated since 1948, and whose civil rights are being fundamentally violated; it further targets Palestinian refugees, who are not allowed to go back to their homeland, even when they are in desperate need of shelter, such as the Palestinian refugees being massacred in Syria..  

We hope that you will re-examine the situation and realize, that collaborating oon any events with either Israeli Embassy, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), or its benefactors, amounts to complicity with Israeli violations of international law. We hope that Spanish politicians like you, having years-long tradition of struggle for equality and human rights, will join this call for solidarity and cut these specific ties with our criminal regime.

Madrid could follow cities like Geneva in Switzerland, whose authorities have decided to disassociate themselves from the JNF (Jewish National Fund, responsible for the dispossession of Palestinians and the huge-scale theft of their land), and who won support for this move from numerous mainstream organizations.

We ask you, first and foremost, to support the indigenous Palestinian people whose very existence has been curtailed and threatened under a colonial ethnic-supremacist regime. Please do not cooperate with the propaganda machinery of the Israeli MFA!

Please stand courageously with the Palestinian people and make a historical and ethically important decision.

Sincerely,

BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within

(Israeli citizens for BDS)