University of Oregon Students for Justice in Palestine: Our Statement on Current Events

On October 7th, Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip carried out an attack on Israeli settlements and military installations, killing over 1,400 people, most of them civilians. In response, the Israeli government has placed Gaza under a state of total siege. Supplies of water, food, fuel, medicine, and other basic necessities have ceased, throwing two million Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are civilians, into a dire humanitarian crisis. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), using American-made aircraft and artillery, are now conducting an intense and unremitting bombardment of Gaza, and are preparing for a devastating ground invasion.

Bombs have leveled entire city blocks, schools, mosques and churches. In one particularly horrifying incident, a missile or rocket obliterated a hospital and killed hundreds. Since October 7th, over 7,000 people have been killed and thousands more wounded, the vast majority of these Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and half of them children. Per the United Nations, over one million Palestinians have been internally displaced in Gaza, about half of the territory’s population.

These recent events are the brutal culmination of over 75 years of occupation, dispossession, and apartheid inflicted on the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli state, with the active complicity of Western powers—above all the government of the United States. Today, the actions and statements of Israel’s leaders constitute more than simply violations of the laws of war, however egregious. Rather, they are steps towards the full physical eviction or extermination of a subject people—that is, towards genocide.

UO SJP condemns without reservation all violence directed at civilian populations, whether carried out by Hamas or by the Israeli government. We also totally reject all racist ideologies that dehumanize groups of people and justify violence, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

As Americans and people living in the United States, we are horrified by the escalating violence, and we demand that it be stopped at its source: by ending the occupation of Palestine and its apartheid regime. We make three specific demands:

1. That Oregon’s members of Congress support an immediate ceasefire and access to desperately needed** humanitarian aid** in the Gaza strip, along the lines of the “Ceasefire Now” resolution proposed by Congresswoman Cori Bush
2. Divestment by public institutions in Oregon, including the University of Oregon, from corporations profiting from the occupation
3. Support for negotiations to end the occupation and lay a foundation for a just peace in the region

International movements of students and working people have ended systems of apartheid in the past, like the movements to dismantle South African apartheid or the Jim Crow regime in the United States. UO SJP aims to walk in the footsteps of these movements for peace and civil rights, and build a powerful mass movement to educate students and force politicians to act. We welcome all members of the UO community who want to act to stop the violence and lay a foundation for a just peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.