PRESS RELEASE - Pangea Statement on Gaza and Palestinian Liberation

Contacts:

Elena Hodges | elena@pangealegal.org

Vanessa Godinez | vanessa@pangealegal.org 

October 19, 2023

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NO IMMIGRANT JUSTICE WITHOUT PALESTINIAN LIBERATION

As a community legal services organization run by and for immigrants, we express our unequivocal solidarity with Palestine. We support Palestinian liberation in the face of Israeli genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. We know that Palestinian liberation is integral to freedom and justice for all immigrant communities.  

Pangea envisions a world where the fundamental right to move is respected and appreciated by all. We work alongside immigrant communities as they mobilize to stop deportations, end immigration detention, and build toward a future where we all can thrive. We see how the struggle of immigrant communities in the U.S. is connected to struggles against militarism and racial capitalism around the world.

Pangea is especially concerned about the ways Palestinians and allies in the U.S. – including our own Co-Directors and our current and former clients – are facing escalating backlash for speaking out in support of Palestinian liberation. Federal and local elected officials and the news media are contributing to an unsafe environment for our community members. Lawyers, law students, and other advocates around the U.S. are facing retaliation and harassment for expressing solidarity with Palestine. Many of Pangea’s Co-Directors are alumni of Berkeley Law and NYU Law, both of which are failing to support and protect current law students who have spoken out for Palestinian liberation, even as they face death threats, doxxing, and job loss. Here in San Francisco, many of our Co-Directors, clients, and close community members attended an emergency solidarity action for Gaza on October 14, 2023. We note with grave concern the response of San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins, who initially characterized the action as a “pro-Hamas rally” and decried “rising antisemitism in San Francisco and around the country,” while ignoring the mass killings of Palestinians in Gaza and targeting of Palestinian communities and allies in the U.S.

We condemn other acts of violence and harassment that Muslims and immigrants are facing across the country. We grieve the murder of a 6-year-old Palestinian child in Illinois who was recently stabbed to death by his family’s landlord for being Muslim. As ICE and the FBI step up their surveillance, criminalization, and detention of Palestinian and Muslim communities, we also denounce the ongoing role of the U.S. immigration and national security apparatus in repressing and inciting fear amongst members of the immigrant community. We demand the urgent protection of our beloved Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab immigrant communities, along with all immigrant communities.

As immigration attorneys and organizers, we add our voices to the chorus of human rights lawyers and global humanitarian organizations who condemn Israel’s state-sanctioned violence against Palestinians. At this very moment, Israel is committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza take place against a backdrop of the Israeli occupation’s accelerating violence and impunity.

Most of our team members, clients, and community members are originally from countries where there is a history of U.S. and Western imperial powers intervening for financial and political gain, and we are horrified as we watch the U.S. continue to do so in Palestine. Rather than call for an immediate ceasefire, the U.S. has vowed to transfer billions in emergency military aid to Israel. This is in addition to the $3.8 billion the U.S. already sends Israel in military aid each year. While international consensus has emerged that the Israeli occupation amounts to apartheid, U.S. military aid, training, and diplomatic support continue to make the Israeli occupation possible. In turn, U.S. surveillance and criminalization of marginalized and minoritized people, particularly Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color, benefit from intelligence and technology sharing, security cooperation, and joint law enforcement trainings with Israel. Pangea rejects this continuing U.S. complicity in Israeli apartheid and occupation, just as we reject U.S. and other imperial forces fueling violence globally.

We honor and celebrate the history of transnational solidarities with Palestine, including Black and Indigenous solidarity movements. We affirm the common humanity and dignity of Palestinians and all people. We know that our complicity in oppression anywhere has ripple effects for all oppressed people. That is why Pangea’s work alongside immigrant communities is connected to liberation struggles everywhere. We feel acutely the urgency of expressing our support now, in this time of extreme backlash, loss, and pain for Palestinians and other oppressed people. We move, in hope and rage, from an unshakeable belief that liberation is possible. Free Palestine.

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Annotated Sources on Israel’s October 2023 War on Gaza:

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