NNIRR Joint Letter Demanding Ceasefire

Immigrant Justice Advocates Stand with the Palestinian People,
Demand #CeasefireNow

We are organizations across the U.S with missions to advocate for immigrant and refugee justice. Collectively, our missions compel us to fight back against the cruelty of detention, deportation, criminalization, surveillance, border militarization and state-sanctioned violence in the United States, and to demand dignity and justice for all.

In this moment of unspeakable heartbreak and devastation, the same values that guide our work each day call upon us to raise our voices. Genocide is unfolding before our eyes, and we cannot look away. Immigrant and refugee communities know the horrors of war, dispossession, and violence. People who have fled violence are members, clients, and leaders in our organizations and communities. History demands that we act, that we act now, and that we act together.

We demand:

• An immediate ceasefire in Gaza, as well as the unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid and services, and the immediate restoration of water, food, fuel, electricity, and internet.
• That Congress reject funding requests that further enable the collective punishment and unfolding genocide of the people of Gaza.
• That the U.S. government cease its support for the Israeli government’s apartheid, occupation, and systematic dispossession of Palestinians.
• That all organizations – and elected officials – who support immigrant and refugee rights support these demands and speak out against attempts to dehumanize Palestinians.

We believe that all life is precious and that no human being is disposable. Every single human life has intrinsic value. 

We mourn the lives of 1,400 Israelis killed on October 7 and the taking of over 200 hostages whose safe return we call for. We reject the targeting of civilians and remember them during this heartbreak. 

The Palestinian people have endured decades-long occupation, ethnic cleansing, and state violence. This includes the most recent collective punishment by the Israeli government that has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians. Entire family trees have been extinguished, and over 4,237 children have been killed.

This has happened with the full support of the U.S. government that has continued to fund the  Israeli government’s apartheid with $3.8 billion in military aid annually. 

The displacement of over a million Palestinians in Gaza has drawn comparisons with the violent expulsion and displacement of some 700,000 Palestinians upon the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. This is known as the Nakba or “catastrophe” in Arabic. Currently, Palestine refugees represent 70% of the total Gaza population.

We oppose the Israeli government’s genocidal actions and rhetoric against the people of Gaza. Yet, the Biden administration said it would impose “no redlines” on the Israeli military and has given a green light in both message and funding.

The result: the Israeli military dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza in one week, cut off access to food, fuel, water, medicine, and electricity, and rendered nearly 1 million Palestinians homeless. An unfathomable death toll rises each day.

We stand with countless Palestinian people, Jewish people, and communities of diverse faiths and ethnicities around the globe who demand an immediate ceasefire.

We recognize the common threads that link our work with struggles for justice across the globe. The Biden administration’s attempt to fuse funding for ICE and CBP with funding for the state of Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Gaza is a stark reminder that our work does not take place in a silo. We see shameful, xenophobic attempts to demonize Palestinian refugees and to fearmonger about the U.S.-Mexico border.

In the United States, we have seen first-hand how policing, incarceration, deportation, repression at the border, and a legal system all too often devoid of justice, perpetuate abuses of power and criminalize communities of color. This is state violence – the use of governmental authority to cause harm to entire groups of people.

Decades of brutal military occupation have subjected Palestinians to state violence every day through surveillance, humiliation at checkpoints, expulsion from their homes, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, and summary executions. International human rights groups (including Israel’s leading human rights group B’Tselem) have concluded that the Israeli government through its law and policies practices apartheid. Meanwhile, journalists have documented that many surveillance technologies and other “systems of control” originally designed by the state of Israel for the occupied Palestinian territories have been deployed at the U.S.-Mexico border, causing tremendous human suffering.

We recommit to fighting racism and xenophobia, including profiling and targeting of Palestinians and Muslims in the United States by government agencies. We call out statements from public figures and biased media which have spawned anti-Palestinian racism. We are also deeply alarmed by the rise of anti-semitism and Islamophobia, in the United States and around the globe, and are heartbroken over attacks driven by these systems. There is no room for anti-semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia or racism in any movement for liberation.

We are speaking out because our collective work demands that we stand for common humanity, compassion, and the liberation of oppressed peoples. We urge all who fight for immigrant justice to join us.

For a list of all signatories click here.