JJP statement – Not in our name
Nearly 45,000 killed in GAZA, of whom more than 20,000 are women and children
We demand:
- a permanent ceasefire
- end British complicity with the Israeli genocide
- end the Israeli occupation
We speak as Jews. The destruction of Gaza is not in our name. It is a violation of our values of justice, compassion, truth and peace.
On October 7th Hamas committed a war crime and crime against humanity, slaughtering more than 1,100 people and taking some 250 hostages, mostly civilians.
Israel responded with ferocious, continuing collective punishment. From the beginning, the Israeli army was clearly flouting the principles of proportionality and discrimination central to the protection of civilians in time of war. Authoritative commentators also called their actions a war crime and a crime against humanity. They were devastating conclusions.
As the Israeli offensive continued month after month, evidence mounted that the Israeli government was intent not merely on killing large numbers of Palestinians, but on substantially destroying the Palestinian population of Gaza. The vast majority of authoritative commentators therefore come to the even more devastating conclusion in mid 2024 that Israel is committing genocide.
As a careful organisation that believes in measured comment, JJP initially called the offensive a war crime and a crime against humanity. However, since July 2024, we have believed the term genocide is appropriate and we are using it. The bitter irony could not be greater. Israel, the country born in part from the ashes of the Holocaust, is committing genocide in order to further its nationalist ambitions.
Since October 2024, Israel has been relentlessly targeting Northern Gaza, bombing and destroying housing, hospitals, schools and infrastructure, and denying food and medical care to the population. The Palestinian inhabitants are being forced to flee south, where they have only makeshift tents for shelter, if even that, and are then sometimes bombed in their tents. It is the so-called “general’s plan” to empty Northern Gaza, under which those who remain will be killed. It is genocide by ethnic cleansing. We are witnessing its implementation on a daily basis.
Nearly 45,000 Palestinians have been killed, about four times times the number killed in all six previous Israeli offensives. Many thousands are injured, maimed, or lie buried under the rubble. 1.9 million people have been displaced. The deliberate destruction of hospitals, shelter, sanitation, clean water and food supplies has caused a public health catastrophe.
Many Palestinians from Gaza have been taken prisoner and kept in detention camps in Israel. Evidence of their serious mistreatment is the subject of a petition to the Israeli High Court by several Israeli human rights NGOs. The petition states, “Evidence has mounted on what is allegedly happening at the facility, which reveals an unimaginable reality of surgeries performed without anaesthesia, holding detainees in painful positions for days and handcuffing that leads to amputation.”
Many of those taken prisoner are acknowledged by the Israel Prison Service not to be combatants. In reality, therefore, they are hostages.
António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, spoke truth to the Security Council on 24 October 2023. He said “the deadly assault by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum… the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation…”
- There are now some 700,000 Israeli settlers in 270 settlements and outposts in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. All are illegal under international law.
- The settlement population has been increasing by 20,000 a year.
- Settlers live under Israeli civil law while 2.9m Palestinians live under punitive military law.
- One million Palestinians have passed through Israeli prisons since 1967, many without trial.
- Over 50,000 Palestinian homes had been demolished or destroyed by bombing before October 7th.
- Gaza has been blockaded since 2007. Under international law it is still occupied.
Israel is now addicted to occupation and settlement. Without substantial economic and diplomatic pressure from the international community, it will never change. This cannot be allowed to continue.
Our government has been complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
- The Israeli arms company, Elbit Systems, has several factories in the UK. They make military drones, engines and other parts. Three British companies – BAE Systems, Eaton Mission Systems and L3Harris – make parts for the F35 Stealth fighters used by Israel in Gaza. Our government has continued granting licences to export this military equipment to Israel during the bombardment of Gaza.
- In common with many other countries, the UK suspended funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides desperately needed food, shelter and medicine to the Palestinians in Gaza. That was in response to unproven Israeli allegations that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the Hamas attack, despite those employees making up less than one-tenth of one percent of the 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza. Fifteen other countries reinstated their funding before the UK’s new government followed suit.
We call on people to write to their MPs, demanding that our government:
- Calls on Israel to immediately stop its bombardment of Gaza so that a permanent ceasefire can be achieved
- Stops arming Israel
- Works with other countries to demand that Israel ends the occupation and allows the Palestinians to exercise their right to self-determination
4 August 2024
If you agree with what we have said, look through our website to see what we do and consider joining us. You will find joining information here.