Calling For an End to the Genocide in Palestine
This month, we approach two years of Israel’s war on Gaza, its escalation of genocide there, and its manufacture of preventable famine. As a local food and farming organization rooted in land justice and food sovereignty, we know we must speak out. We cannot achieve food sovereignty locally while billions of our tax dollars are being sent to Israel to carry out genocidal military operations and starve Palestinians.
The horrors of starvation in Gaza are particularly atrocious in light of Palestine’s location in the historic Fertile Crescent – one of the birthplaces of agriculture. In fact, just last month, the Israeli military destroyed the last surviving seed bank in Palestine. The destruction of seed banks, particularly in the context of an ongoing genocide, is an act of ecocide that “reach[es] into an indefinite future…it eliminates not just current agricultural capacity, but future possibilities for food sovereignty.”
What is more, Israel has uprooted, stolen, and destroyed hundreds of thousands of centuries-old olive trees that have not only nourished Palestinian families and livelihoods for generations, but represent Palestinians’ history and rootedness to the land. Israel has arrested Palestinians for foraging historic crops such as za’atar, and routinely cut off water to Palestinians in the West Bank while letting water flow to surrounding illegal Israeli settlements.
We understand that forced displacement, war, and genocide have been perpetrated throughout history – including right here on the land that we now call the Grow Food Northampton Community Farm. The farmland we occupy and steward was stolen by European colonizers from Indigenous Nipmuc, Nonotuck, and Pocumtuc communities over 350 years ago. One small action of repair that we have undertaken on the Community Farm is to plant a Living History Garden (LHG). This year in the LHG, we are growing mlokhiyya and kousa squash, beloved Palestinian crops that, among many others, are deliberately being destroyed by the Israeli military. In the LHG, we share interviews with local Palestinian community members who tell their stories of what these foods mean to them, their families, and their ancestors. We also lift up the work of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library that is preserving Palestinian food and agricultural traditions.
As a food and land justice organization, we are calling for an end to this genocide, land theft, ecocide, and the starvation of the Palestinian people. As residents of the United States, we must understand our role in this genocide and famine. This is not simply a tragedy in a faraway land – it is ethnic cleansing funded by our tax dollars and carried out with weapons made in factories all across the U.S. In the last two years alone, our government has spent more than $22 billion aiding the Israeli military. We ask you, our beloved community, to do everything in your power to join us in calling for an end to the genocide in Palestine.
